It is unfortunate that Labor’s Universities Accord gives so little attention to the actual situation of Australian universities. These are institutions in crisis. Many are in financial difficulty. Even where income is holding up, many academics feel alienated from the institutions they work for. Universities have become businesses first, and places of learning second.
Academics and those that manage them are regarded as tools of government policy, with little autonomy or agency. But when we consider universities from a public value perspective, that is, how do they generate outcomes that are good for the wider society, the engagement of academics and managers is crucial. Partnership rather than political imposition is needed.
There is more than self-interest at stake here. Unless academics and managers are given a role and their agency acknowledged, Australian universities will continue to founder – neither well-run businesses, nor the professional centres of teaching and research that most Australians want them to be.
What is public value?
A university education confers private benefits on those who undertake it – for example, a better job, and for international students, the chance to live and work in Australia. Public benefits, or public value, are less tangible. The Accord’s final report puts it well (p3) ‘By encouraging intellectual endeavour, creativity and personal accomplishment, higher education adds to the quality of our lives. By pursuing truth through free discussion, higher education promotes democracy and civic values. Those communities fortunate enough to host a university benefit directly from the employment, higher incomes, sporting facilities, cultural and intellectual richness, and other opportunities they bring’.
These kinds of public value come about through the actions of enabled individuals, organisations and communities which are in turn supported by university research, teaching and outreach. The most familiar example is research performed in universities that is freely available to all, and that benefits the wider society. Then there is innovation, the type of research that connects with business or not-for-profit activity – not all of this is captured by the entities themselves.
The impetus for these actions and activities comes from academics and managers in universities. Academic teaching must necessarily be utilitarian, but if it is any good, it will go a bit deeper and a bit further. It is hard to become a successful academic and the work is demanding. Academics help their peers, through mentoring, commenting on work, helping with connections. Managers interpret and respond to financial and other conditions to help this work come about. The problem is that these crucial roles are scarcely acknowledged, let alone rewarded. Collegiality goes largely unnoticed, except when it is not there any more.
Getting the balance right
There is a value conflict at the heart of all this, and it is experienced most acutely by academics. Universities are not schools, managed as one big system by education departments, nor are they bureaucracies whose employees are engaged directly by the state. Australian universities are autonomous institutions that are required to keep themselves solvent while they perform their functions. And here is the rub.
There is a point beyond which business or money-making objectives detract from the achievement of intellectual values. Very large classes are almost impossible to teach effectively, no matter how well the technologies are used. Those tasked with managing them are engaged in a form of mass production.
In this environment, controlling costs is particularly difficult. When student numbers fall, disaster strikes. The University of Canberra, where I worked for many years, is a good example. Poor management has led to massive staff redundancies. Courses cannot be kept going if they are high cost and low revenue, even if there may be sound social reasons for maintaining them. Better-placed universities corner the market, squeezing out smaller contenders.
One answer to this kind of competition might be more differentiation between institutions, but there are huge differences in size and status among them. If you are lower down the pecking order, daily life is often a desperate battle for survival.
Why academics are not popular
When it comes to higher education, as in much else, Australians are ruthless pragmatists. Higher education, they believe, must equip people for jobs, or it is not worth having. The ivory tower may be crumbling, but there is still a perception that academics are remote and self-serving. To say something, or someone, is academic, is not to flatter them.
Once sustained by the unquestioned role of their institutions, academics have not given much thought to the values their work should represent, except that many realise that working conditions make it less and less likely that they will achieve the dreams they may once have had. There is not much joy if your job is uncertain, you are impacted by poor decision-making all the time, and the time and support needed to advance are lacking.
What can be done?
It is most regrettable that ‘management’ has become a dirty word, as universities bend over backwards to extract every dollar they can from their situation. Intelligent management, that takes public value seriously, could achieve a lot. But it needs more skill than can generally be sustained in a system that is constantly under pressure.
Some problems identified by academics will not go away. There are real long term consequences if international students are treated as sources of cash. A lack of concern with the quality of the degrees offered by Australian universities will, sooner or later, kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
International rankings are less important than the extent to which Australian degrees are underpinned by a shared culture of mutual respect between staff and students, professionalism in the content and delivery of programs and clear requirements for application and focus.
In this context, the professional lives of academics, the expectations of academics that are held by society, need discussion. Teaching and research should go hand in hand rather than, as is increasingly the case, being treated as separate specialisations.
University management as a profession in itself remains under-discussed. There is still an assumption that academics, once promoted up the ranks, make good managers. In practice, they become poor businesspeople, rather than expert mediators of a challenging environment.
Above all, there is a need to talk about values, the importance of excellence, of relations with stakeholders and communities and a broad understanding of public value in university management. There is a real risk that, despite good intentions, Labor (like the Coalition before it) continues to see higher education as an industry to be exploited to achieve political objectives, rather than a national asset to be carefully managed and nurtured.