http://www.smh.com.au/news/0002/04/pageone/pageone7.html University leaders lash the system By PAUL SHEEHAN Fear and loathing. Loathing and fear. Australia's university system is riven with discontent, division and structural stress. "We are living in a bizarre world," says Professor Stephen Schwartz, Vice-Chancellor of Murdoch University. "It is the worst of both worlds - the negatives of state control and the negatives of market competition. We have futile competition and massive duplication. We have an industrial relations system left over from the dark ages. We have pathetic salaries, and most of the really good staff are looking to go overseas." And Professor Schwartz is one of the optimists. His university, in Perth, is the only one to have received the highest five-star rating in every edition of the Good University Guide and he is one of the most gung-ho university leaders in the country. The pessimists sound worse, much worse: "It is a disaster - I could not even guess the number of deans who feel like putting their heads in the oven," said Professor Rob Norris, president of the Australian Council of the Deans of Science. "In the past two years all science departments have suffered staff cuts of between 7 and 25 per cent. We are paying for the reductions in stress and strain. It will crack." "The kids of today are not getting the same university education of a decade ago," says Ms Jan Thomas, vice-president of the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies. "The students of today are getting a rotten deal." Usually, when the public sector is in stress, the government tries to downplay the problem. But not the Howard Government. "The system has been breaking down for some time - it could never have worked," the Minister for Education, Dr Kemp, told the Herald. The system he is referring to is the explosive growth in the number of universities in the 1980s under the Labor minister for education, Mr John Dawkins. "The Dawkins reforms were based on a fallacy," says Dr Kemp. "The fallacy that you could have all universities offering the same." The historian Keith Windschuttle puts the point even more bluntly: "There has been a dumbing down of the elite universities. Absolutely. The older universities were screwed by the Dawkins plan. They were brought down to the level of the Colleges of Advanced Education." These colleges are lampooned as "the frequently inefficient and quality-diluting absurdities of the amalgamated mega-universities" in a new book, Why Universities Matter , to be published soon. The book's original publisher, the University of Melbourne, declined to go ahead with the project after it became obvious it would include scathing commentary such as this: "The high levels of tension and hostility between the administration or, as it is now called, the management, of universities and the majority of academic staff ... [have] now reached the level of what might be termed a 'cool war ...'" These fighting words were written by the book's editor, Professor Tony Coady, director of the Centre for Philosophy and Public Issues at Melbourne University. The vice-chancellors aren't exactly ready to roll over. "The universities are still providor-driven, not consumer-driven," says Professor Schwartz. "Obviously, if you give the universities more money they will spend it. But will the customer get more value?" The stakes are high. Education is now a bigger export earner than wool. University student numbers have increased by more than 50 per cent in the past decade. The proportion of people with degrees doubled between 1986 and 1996. As Australia enters the Information Age, universities are even more important, yet there are signs the sector is beginning to go backwards. Other structural problems have emerged: Student-teacher ratios have risen. The ratio of full-time students to teachers has increased by 40 per cent in the past decade, says the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (AVCC). Professional are leaving. Between 1982-83 and 1990-91 there was a net loss of 13,639 Australian-born professionals on a long-term basis, says the latest government green paper on education, and this trend continued through the 1990s. Student attrition is high. "About a quarter of the undergraduate population doesn't complete a degree program, and the cost to the taxpayers of this huge wastage has never been revealed publicly," writes Emeritus Professor Frank Crowley in his book Degrees Galore. "There is tremendous wastage in the system," Dr Kemp said. "About 33 per cent of Australian students don't complete the course they started." There may be waste and duplication but the universities are hungry for more funds. "Australia will condemn itself to having a second rate education system unless there is a greater level of investment," says Stuart Hamilton, chief executive of the AVCC. And he says government spending alone cannot bridge the gap. "Funding cannot just come from the public purse, it must come from students, from alumni and from business." The Government agrees. Last year's Cabinet paper on universities stated: "Unfortunately, the higher education system as it stands is not going to make the contribution that it could [due] to the highly regulated nature of the existing system, the problems of which are becoming increasingly apparent ... "Already, eight institutions appear to be operating at a deficit and some regional campuses are at risk." The Labor Opposition has been throwing verbal molotov cocktails over university policy. "Only a fool would argue that Australia's long-term future does not depend directly on our investment in education, training and research - John Howard is such a fool," the education spokesman, Mr Michael Lee, said last year. "If John Howard had maintained Labor's investment in education and research at 3 per cent of GDP he would be spending an extra $2.87 billion in the Budget." But Dr Kemp says the university system has never had more money. "The total revenue of the sector is higher than it's ever been - about $8.6 billion a year, and that's some $700 million higher than it was in 1995." Many vice-chancellors want greater freedom from government control. "If we don't get freedom, the system will sag, creak and become threadbare," the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, Professor Gavin Brown, said. "I don't see any problem at all in having our leading institutions being more privatised." The Vice-Chancellor of Central Queensland University, Professor Lauchlan Chipman, says loathing of the system has now been matched by fear. "The Government is now in the extraordinarily embarrassing position of acknowledging the disease while having thrown out every reasonable prescription at its disposal to deal with it," he says. "As for the Labor Opposition, they have no policies to speak of. We are operating in a de facto bipartisan political vacuum." -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
