campusreview.com.au
of internationalisation in the sector, addressing the needs of
society – vice-chancellors were largely positive, and other leaders
were largely positive about the sector’s capacity to be able to cope
with these. They did identify some challenges that they thought
were going to be harder to address, and these are certainly in the
realm of policy and changes with government and the difficulty in
strategic planning in an uncertain environment.
Can you take me through the strengths that were identified?
This survey asked leaders of the sector to rank what they thought
were some of the important challenges facing higher education in
Australia, as well as undertook in-depth interviews with all of them
to tease out how they thought universities and higher education
in Australia were going to deal with some of those challenges.
Certainly, they identified as their highest priority internationalisation,
student learning outcomes, addressing the needs of society and
strategic planning; but they also identified the need to create
partnerships between industry and universities, and also research
infrastructure as well as the composition of the workforce as key
challenges.
These were all things they thought universities would be able to
meet the challenge of, but were certainly something that would
require a lot of thinking and effort on behalf of the sector. Things
that were ranked, perhaps, lower down than you’d expect from
a lot of common reporting were rankings and the role of Federal
Budget support, and the role of state as well as student financial
aid. While leaders saw these as very important issues, for the
long‑term health of the sector, they were seen as less important
than the other things I just mentioned.
Can you talk me through those four primary challenges you
mentioned?
In terms of internalisation, leaders identified the challenge of
maintaining Australia’s position in the international student market,
as well as building linkages with overseas institutions, certainly in
the face of the rise of large higher education providers in India and
China, as well as the growing maturity of a number of systems
throughout Southeast Asia. There was growing concern Australia
would not be able to maintain its position in terms of its success as
an international student provider.
Student learning outcomes, as well as addressing the needs of
society, were identified as challenging topics for universities, partly
because student learning outcomes are always a challenge in the
face of changing technology and expectations from students, as
well as coping with competitors to the traditional university models,
such as online higher education providers.
Overall, strategic planning was seen as extremely important
and challenging because universities are facing – in Australia and
internationally – multiple headwinds that come from changes
to the international student market, as I mentioned, changes to
technology, but also a re-negotiation of their relationship with
governments, and in particular with government financial support
for education.
It was also mentioned that there were differences in responses
between university sub-groups. How significant were these
differences and can you give some examples of them?
Certainly, there were differences between the different
sub‑groups in Australia, say in higher education. Some of these
workforce
were as expected. For example, Group of Eight institutions saw
international rankings as more important than other groups. The
Australian technology network university leaders saw promotion
of technology transfer and student accessibility as extremely
important. Interestingly, non-affiliated universities saw Federal
Budget support and the role of state governments, student
financial aid, as more important than some of the other institutions.
It’s important to note though that while there were definitely
differences between the sub-groups, some of these were pretty
minor in nature. All institutional leaders, as I said, viewed things
like internationalisation and student learning outcomes as more
important than some of these other issues.
One respondent said he thinks the university system in its
current form won’t exist in 20 years’ time. Why do you think he
believes this?
That kind of response, which was echoed by a number of leaders
throughout the sector, really illustrates the point that universities are
facing challenges on multiple fronts in terms of their sustainability
with government financial support, but also in terms of their
placing Australia in the international student market, but it really
does highlight the challenge that universities face in reinventing
themselves in the face of changing technology. Certainly we’ve
seen the success of MOOC, but as technology has changed
many other sectors of the economy such as music, banking and
the news media, we would expect that technology would have a
dramatic impact on the shape of higher education in Australia into
the future. So these kind of remarks by leaders not only point to the
need to change, but also the fact that there will be a very different
higher education landscape very soon.
Given that the survey was conducted in 2015 and 2016, and
respondents were already concerned about a lack of coherent
government policy and funding, have any of the respondents come
back to you now post-Budget announcements and voiced any
further concerns?
While we haven’t yet had a chance to do a follow-up survey to
test how the most recent announcement from the government
is being viewed by leaders in the sector, one thing that really did
come through the survey is the long-term vision and thinking
of all leaders we spoke to. So while it’s inevitable that the latest
changes may change some of the answers there, the fact that
leaders focused on things like student learning outcomes,
internationalisation and strategic planning showed that they’re
really thinking long-term.
Is this report being brought to the government’s attention, and if so,
how do you think the government will respond to it?
I would hope that any interested parties, be they government or
otherwise, have a chance to read and understand what some of
the leaders have said about higher education, and especially the
important messages in terms of the longer-term thinking, and
also the strategic focus of leaders in higher education. What has
come through the survey and interview process is that Australia
does have a very strong group of leaders within higher education
who are carefully considering the long-term future of the sector to
the benefit of students and to the benefit of the Australian public.
It shows that we are well-placed to contend with a lot of the
challenges which face higher education in Australia. ■
27