ISSUES: Higher Education Review
KERRY O’BRIEN: Kevin Rudd's promised education revolution is about to be extended to universities and other tertiary institutions. Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Julia Gillard today announced a sweeping review of higher education to create much greater diversity, be more attuned to the workforce and economic productivity, to improve funding arrangements and provide wider access.
The review, to be chaired by Professor Denise Bradley, the retired Vice Chancellor of the University of South Australia, will recommend priority actions by October with a final report by the end of the year.
Ms Gillard also flagged a move to make academic life more attractive to a broader teaching base. She said the academic workforce had been allowed to age. Of course, it all still begs the question whether the Government will provide a significant spending boost to universities in the May Budget? The Prime Minister has after all, described universities as being on the edge of crisis. Julia Gillard joins me now from Canberra.
Julia Gillard, in setting up this review you obviously believe the university system needs major reform. After 12 years in Opposition and four months in Government why don't you already have a complete blueprint for university reform ready to go?
JULIA GILLARD: Kerry, we have some important higher education policies that we are going to deliver. They include importantly, phasing out full fee paying places for domestic students. We simply don't believe that Australian students should have to pay to get into university and we particularly don't believe that a student of merit who can't pay should miss out in favour of a student who can pay. We've also got promises to double undergraduate scholarships, to have new investments in early childhood places and nursing places, to put a particular incentive in for people to study maths and science, and to rebuild student services. So the Higher Education Revolution is under way. But we want this overarching review to provide a blueprint for the next 10 years for the higher education system and beyond. And there's been no evidence based independent review of the higher education system for a very long period of time.
KERRY O’BRIEN: Well, in looking at where you might want this to go, ANU Vice Chancellor Professor Ian Chubb says universities have
inevitably been dumbed down by a "one size fits all" approach and that the top performers shouldn't be held back. Do you support that view?
JULIA GILLARD: I agree with Ian broadly that we need diversity in the university system and indeed we do have diversity, but government's funding structures and government's ways of relating to universities haven't recognised that diversity. We want to move to a system where we will have mission based compacts with our universities, where we will recognise that the mission of a university that wants to focus on mass teaching of undergraduates will be different from the mission of a university that is intensively research focused and that some of our regional campuses will want to specialise in serving their local community's needs. That requires government to work as a partner in developing the vision and then government to tailor a purpose specific funding arrangements for that university. So when Ian says "one size doesn't fit all", I absolutely agree with that. The future for higher education in this country is of a diversified sector, but we want it to be world class.
KERRY O’BRIEN: He's also saying that currently universities are penalised for success. I think what he's saying is you should inevitably get behind your best performing universities, those that are genuinely in with a chance of being world class?
JULIA GILLARD: We're going to get behind all universities and we're going to recognise that there's diversity in the mission. Of course Ian Chubb at ANU wants to lead a research focused leading institution. He wants to be globally focused. I want each university in this country to be globally focused, to be able to hold up its head on the world stage but in the context of the mission that they've defined for themselves. And so, a regional university that is specialising in meeting the needs of its local community will be a very different institution from ANU and both can be successful institutions, and both can be offering a high quality indeed world class education to the people who study there.
KERRY O’BRIEN: But if you took a university like New England University in Armidale, presumably they would want to provide a certain number of basic courses. I mean when you say meeting the needs of a local community, do you mean particularly industry needs? When you're talking about cities like Melbourne or Brisbane where they might have three universities, are you talking about each of those universities necessarily being different?
JULIA GILLARD: I'm talking about universities working through what they say their vision is and what they say their mission is, and I would expect in my home State of Victoria, for Monash University to describe its role as different from Deakin University. Monash University is a large university, a provider of undergraduate education to thousands and thousands of students. Deakin is also a sizeable campus but in a regional centre in Geelong and it has historically focused on the needs of that community, as well as providing some distance education. So those missions are different, and they're different from Melbourne University's mission. Let's recognise that diversity, let's celebrate it and let's reward it. Let's not continue a "one size fits all" approach from government. Let's not continue government micro managing universities.
And yes we do have to look at funding challenges and we've put the question of funding squarely before the review, because we recognise that the former government starved our university sector and we have to deal with the consequences of that in the medium term as a nation.
KERRY O’BRIEN: With your promise of individual compacts with each university, including funding for that university, are you going to personally conduct those negotiations with each institution, or bureaucrats from your department?
JULIA GILLARD: Well, we are going to have the review. We are going to receive the results of the review. We are going to spend 2009 in compact negotiations with universities with a view to having the new compact structure up and running in 2010, for the academic year 2010…
KERRY O’BRIEN: But how personal a role will you be playing in that? How hands-on will you be?
JULIA GILLARD: Well, I'm a pretty hands-on minister, Kerry, and I think already the universities say my track record is that my door is open to them. I see vice chancellors individually I see them in a variety of settings. I saw some for breakfast yesterday morning. I saw a number of them when I delivered the speech on higher education today, and I expect to have that continuing degree of contact with the sector.
KERRY O’BRIEN: I'm just wondering whether that process, particularly the funding process and even the process of what kind of university they want to be shouldn't be demonstrably at arm's length from the Minister to avoid any danger or even perception of favouritism, or just protecting the integrity of the institution. The vice chancellors have called for an independent commission to act as a middle man, a kind of honest broker between the government and the universities themselves, but you don't seem to like that idea very much?
JULIA GILLARD: Well, I can understand that vice chancellors, having lived through the last 12 years, where often they were denigrated by the former government, where individual academics were criticised severely and personally by the former government and where, of course, the whole university sector was denigrated, starved of funds and the Australian community was basically told by the former government these were ivory towers for self serving elites. I can understand coming from that kind of culture of the former government that vice chancellors are anxious about what should be between them and government. Kerry, I've got an open mind on funding structures. That's why we've got the review.
Ultimately, decision making ends with government, it ends with ministers. Ministers are accountable to the Parliament and I will always properly play that role as a minister. But as this policy agenda evolves then I expect that it will require and indeed properly should require my personal time and attention and I expect to be in dialogue with vice chancellors about it.
KERRY O’BRIEN: The main vice chancellors were making noises a few weeks ago about being concerned, seriously concerned that they were going to miss out on the education side of the Budget process this time in May. The Prime Minister said only a week ago that universities were on the edge of crisis and I just wonder whether by having this compact negotiation process including funding, you're not actually putting off the cold hard cash component of this for another year or even two years?
JULIA GILLARD: Kerry, what we're setting out to do is as I've described it. We want to deliver our promises first and our promises are substantial and we will do that so that they roll out for the next academic year. We want to have the review because we believe that it's been far too long since the higher education system in this country had the benefit of an overarching review. And we're in a competitive world. Competitor nations are going forward; they're investing in higher education. The OECD average increase in investment up to 2004 was almost 50 per cent. That's for public funding in terms of tertiary education; we went backwards by 4 per cent. We have to look at these challenges for the nation, and that's what the review is for.
KERRY O’BRIEN: You said in your speech today that the academic workforce has been allowed to age. What exactly do you mean; that universities are now largely run by a bunch of crotchety old buggers with no fresh blood?
JULIA GILLARD: [Laugh] Well I certainly didn’t mean that as a comment about individual academics Kerry.
KERRY O’BRIEN: Just collectively.
JULIA GILLARD: They are ageing no more rapidly than you or I. We're all ageing a day at a time. But certainly because universities have been starved of funds it’s been difficult for them to bring on new staff and ultimately that tells with an ageing workforce. What that means of course is that they have the benefit of experience amongst their ranks and that's to be valued. But it does mean that they've probably missed out on opportunities to put on new people who would have made a quality contribution and that is to be regretted. Now I can't fix the past, Kerry, but what I can put in place the right structures so we can look to the future. We're a Government that believes this nation's future challenges will best be met if we have a strong world class university system and that's what the review will be part of the process of creating.
KERRY O’BRIEN: Which won't really come into effect before 2010 which does beg the question about how voters will be able to benchmark you and keep you honest when they front up at the next election, but I guess that will have to be the subject of another interview?
JULIA GILLARD: Well I'm certainly happy Kerry for them to benchmark me against election promise delivery and our election promises for higher education will be delivered and then we will be in a new reform world as a result of this review.
KERRY O’BRIEN: Julia Gillard, thanks for talking with us.
JULIA GILLARD: Thank you very much.
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