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VC’ s corner
university. It was a life-changing year of growing up, learning more about who I was and what drove my passions, of travel, and of learning to be both financially and emotionally independent. I came to university with clarity about what I wanted to study and why, and dived into a wonderful university experience with a confidence and desire that allowed me to investigate all manner of extracurricular activities, including some student politics, and still achieve academically.
We have spent the past year debating government’ s higher education and VET reform proposals and another iteration of reforms has been the subject of Senate Committee reviews or consultative workshops. The key imperative of the higher education legislative changes seems to be fiscal reform as a means, apparently, to promote a quality higher education sector that can compete globally. But should finances be the driver of this debate?
Much has been made in the past 12 months about attempts to‘ Americanise’ the Australian higher education system, a description used primarily to talk up the need to underpin our universities with greater student fees and greater philanthropic support. As laudable as this proposal for philanthropy may be in the course of time, we simply do not have the community engagement and industrial benevolence in this country to match the way the supported the American system has been supported over the past 100 years.
There are, however, other aspects of the American system that are indeed most worthy of consideration. Students coming through the US liberal-arts college system are more broadly educated individuals who, by and large, go on to engage more strategically in their university studies. This is perhaps due to a greater maturity as well as a breadth of foundation knowledge.
And anyone who has had the luxury of a mature-age student or two in a mixed tutorial group of school-leavers in first or second year will know what a difference they bring to the group – their maturity and their contribution of life-experience anecdotes can add a dimension and wisdom that inevitably makes the whole group stronger.
It seems to me that it is time we progressed a discussion in relation to education reform – not from a fiscal perspective, but from a service and life-experience perspective. What do we want the student experience to be? What does society expect for its investment in the next generation of graduates? Perhaps we should de-emphasise the rush to get a qualification and put greater emphasis on the value of a quality education.
As students are asked to make a greater personal contribution to the cost of their education, they inevitably expect a more direct return on their investment – a job, and the qualification needed for it as quickly as possible. This is understandable, but there is a greater public good in an education, from which we all benefit. Nations that invest in education have consistently stronger GDPs. It’ s not just about the potential income benefit for the individual with a tertiary education, there is considerable community socioeconomic benefit in having a bettereducated population.
We need a system that allows students to experience a range of discipline topics, gives them time to work out who they are as people, and gives them a breadth of appreciation of the knowledge systems that exist in our academies. I question whether getting students to choose subject streams commencing in Year 9 or 10 and locking them in as they progress into higher education courses is an appropriate thing to do.
There is much to consider regarding the notion of students delaying their choice in streaming, engaging in a more generalist first degree, and following that with second or postgraduate degrees that deliver a professional qualification or specialisation linked to employment and career directions.
This has been explored by a number of universities. In Australia, the universities of Melbourne and Western Australia have acted on this in different ways. In the context of desired fiscal reforms, this first degree could be the program that attracts the bulk of the tax-funded investment on behalf of the nation, with the specialist program then attracting a greater component of student-contributed fee investment.
Could that be a distinction, perhaps, between the public and the private good, if one is necessary?
The provision of a greater cohort of“ common units” in university degree streams would allow us as institutions to emphasise particular topics given our locations, individualise our particular institutional philosophies and possibly address imperatives for the communities and regions we service. But the way topics various accreditation bodies mandate now dominate our professional curriculum streams makes this almost impossible. Students now get few-to-no electives in which to explore broader interests. There is little capacity to service our locale, such as by ensuring, in my case, that all graduates would get some engagement with Indigenous language and culture.
If we are going to get another chance to discuss educational reform in this country, we need to consider how our system is structured, so that we produce graduates who can think laterally, are adaptable, and are empowered to diversify their interests; the system must provide an education, not just a qualification. We need to address the framework at all levels and focus on the graduate qualities we seek and the needs of our students – and then consider how we structure a system to deliver those.
The system needs reform, but not in a piecemeal way. And the discussion should not be driven foremost by the need to change the financial arrangements in higher education, although clearly the current situation is not sustainable. n
Professor Simon Maddocks is vicechancellor of Charles Darwin University.
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