POLICY & REFORM
campusreview.com.au
Credibility where it
counts
Evaluating the demand-driven
system – and any other scheme
– must be about the student
experience and outcomes.
By Barney Glover and Andy Marks
C
redibility, we are told, is everything.
In an era when brand, integrity
and trust are highly valued
commodities, credibility conveys an entity’s
authenticity, rigour and viability. Opinion
polls rate it and marketers ascribe it a dollar
value. It matters.
Increasingly, credibility is also a
siege-refrain, employed by those whose
grasp on it is slipping. In politics, the media
and in business, the credibility line is
deployed to defend against failing systems,
lapsed processes or questionable integrity.
Credibility was even on the line at the
Australian Tertiary Education Management
conference in Brisbane, where nearly
800 delegates gathered under the theme,
‘Credibility in a Demand-driven System’.
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Credibility may indeed be everything, but
is questioning it with regards to the system
of entry into Australian higher education
institutions entirely helpful, or necessary?
Quite simply, the evidence is in: the
demand-driven system works, it is necessary,
and its credibility is beyond doubt. Even so, it
must be understood that it can be fine-tuned.
The question, then, is not one of credibility;
it’s whether the system can align with the
ever-changing rhythms of disruption.
We must also consider the system’s
inexorable links to higher education’s
structural, operational and strategic
characteristics. Of these, the question of
balance is paramount – balance between
private and public investment in higher
education. Any musings on credibility
should be judged in this wider context.
In grading the system, however, we
must continually question its applicability
to the shifting notions of what constitutes
a student, who should participate in higher
education, and what end it serves.
Change has always been most keenly
felt and manifest at the entry gates to
universities. Just 50 years ago, less than
1 in 100 Australians of working age were
enrolled at a university. Now, that figure is
more like 6 in 100. Similarly, students on a
mid-1960s campus were overwhelmingly
male and of white-Anglo descent.
Pleasingly, the gender and cultural
imbalance has been broadly redressed.
The changing face of Australian students
is worth celebrating; however, it wasn’t the
system of entry that predominantly shaped
the character of our campuses 50 years ago.
Rather, it was social mores, cultural dynamics,
and, to an extent, political ideology. These are
the areas that have been most subject to the
credibility test, and rightly so.
Under prime minister Menzies, the
funding bedrocks of block grants,
scholarships, mature-age entry and
research infrastructure investment
were demonstrable contributors
to the extraordinary growth of
Australia’s universities.
These measures were implemented in
service of the dominant ideological imperative
both major Australian political parties have
held for 75 years – put simply, the need
to develop a highly skilled, productive and
globally competitive workforce. Whether this
was pursued primarily for reasons of wealth or
equity is another matter.
If Menzies was about laying the
foundations for such workforce
development, Whitlam was concerned
with tearing off the roof. Tuition fees for
universities and technical colleges were
abolished. Means-tested financial assistance
for students was introduced. These and
other reforms created a precedent for
universal access to higher education.
That such measures were also good
for the economy was a given. However,
the social and equity uplifts of Whitlam’s
reforms were unambiguous and direct. This
system was about access and it was rooted
not in quantums of demand, but in an
ideological view of fundamental rights.
The introduction of income-contingent
loans through HECS and the progression
of all colleges of advanced education into
universities, under Dawkins, was a push to