VC’ S CORNER campusreview. com. au
Chart a new course
Disruption is the order of the day; no matter which political party takes the reins of higher-education policy, institutions are in for some major changes.
John Dewar interviewed By Andrew Bracey
Regardless of the eventual outcome of the federal government’ s push for higher education reforms, the sector is already in the throes of upheaval.‘ Disruption’, it seems, has been firmly installed as higher-ed’ s new buzzword of the day, with universities under increasing pressure to evolve virtually every facet of their operations. While technology, with its ability to increase access to education, is a key driver behind this, the expectations of students, staff and governments regarding what modern universities can and should be are also forcing some radical changes. La Trobe University vice-chancellor professor John Dewar – whose tenure was recently extended to a second five-year term – sat down with Campus Review to discuss disruption, the levers of reform and what the future landscape of higher education might look like.
CR: More than a year on from the government’ s announced plans for university deregulation, and with its legislation being repeatedly blocked by the Senate, what kind of disruptions are you expecting to be the key ones for universities?
JD: Obviously we’ re at a period of uncertainty at the moment. [ The education minister, Christopher Pyne ] is planning to bring the legislation back, we understand, later in the year. We assume that if the legislation were to pass, the new regime wouldn’ t be up and running until 2017, as we’ re now essentially past the point at which all of this could happen in the next year. But that still doesn’ t give such a lot of time to adjust to the more deregulated environment.
I’ m sure the higher education sector will rise to that challenge, I have no doubt. Meanwhile, though, I think one of the peculiarities of our current circumstance is that going into the next election we’ re likely to have the two main political parties offering different platforms as far as higher education is concerned. One, as we know, will be heavily focused on deregulation and allowing universities to find their own place in a market. The other will be, one assumes from what we hear from the Labor Party, much more tightly regulated, possibly with a pulling back on the demand-driven system in some areas, and much greater accountability for outcomes.
So the higher education sector landscape could look very different, depending on which of those two ends of the spectrum we end up with. I can’ t remember a time when the different political parties had such different ideas about how to run the system.
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