Australia’s Universities

2004

Expectations, Developments and Outcomes, 2007

Central Queensland University [CQU] students will not pay higher HECS fees next year after the CQU council yesterday bucked the nationwide trend and voted not to raise fees. CQU vice-chancellor Glenice Hancock said the council opted against following the 25% rises approved by southern universities, despite the revenue it would have raised. "It would have been an easy route to take during these difficult financial times and very justifiable in strictly economic terms," she said. "But the council looked at all the pros and cons and decided not to increase."….[B]oth Professor Hancock and CQU Chancellor Justice Stan Jones said the decision not to increase fees meant revenue and financial savings would have to be found elsewhere. (The Morning Bulletin, 6 March 2004) The significance of this statement lies not just in its appeasement of regional constituents in Central Queensland, Australia; but also in the not so subtle warning that, as a consequence of this decision, the institution will have to fill an expected shortfall in its funding base for domestic students. While specific details of Commonwealth government initiatives to reform the higher education sector are not as yet finalised, one particularly significant initiative is the publicly (i.e. government) controlled enrolment 'balance' among different fields of study. If institutions miscalculate their curriculum mix for publicly funded courses, then what does this mean for their ongoing curriculum development and resourcing of publicly funded courses and offerings entered into with private-provider partners? This paper reports on the beginnings of a research project analysing 'stories from the inside' of a higher education institution that could be described as one of the 'hybrid' universities (Marginson & McBurnie, 2003, p. 58) operating both locally and globally within the Asia-Pacific region. The question used to focus the study asks: What are the implications of these shifts in funding for the future governance of a local-global university that relies substantially for its economic survival on funds generated from networks and partnerships in the public-private higher education sector? Preliminary findings from the first stage of this project report discursively analysed data from aggregated statistics at the national level with individual and focus group interviews with participating lecturers. The themes emerging from these data are clustered around the infrastructure and implications of public-private relationships and alliances and of university governance in the early 21 st century.

Higher Education, 2000

During 2002, the Australian Education Minister conducted a year-long review of tertiary education under the title Higher Education at the Crossroads. The policy statement arising from that review was released on 13 May 2003. It incorporates a combination of new financial incentives on students and universities, potential expansion of full-fee places, and increased intrusion into university priority setting.

During the last decade, competition for funding and privatization transformed most Australian universities into corporate enterprises. This paper describes three Australian universities, established in different eras, all restructuring themselves to become more enterprising: Melbourne University (1855), a traditional university, recently developing Melbourne Private, and creating an alliance, Universitas 21, with Australian and overseas universities to deliver online courses; Monash University,

2005

While the Constitution arrogates responsibility for educational matters to the States of Australia, the Commonwealth has been dominant in the area of university policy since the 1970s. In the creation of 'superministries' (Pusey 1991) in the early nineteen eighties the Department of Education was clustered with the portfolios of Employment and Training (DEET). In the 1990s Youth Affairs was added (DEETYA), then it became Education training and Youth Affairs (DETYA) when employment was relocated. Since 2002 it has been located with Science and Training (DEST). These classifications, while of sociological interest in illustrating the priorities of governments of the day through decisions as to bureaucratic architecture, will be subsumed in text under the 'Department of Education', or 'The Department'. 8 See Foss &Foss (2002) for a summary of the concept of distributed knowledge as taken up by theorists of information technology and organisational theory and as considered in terms of the hypothesis that distributed knowledge causes authority (as traditional hierarchical organisational structures) to fail.

2012

Abstract: Universities play a key role in the national innovation system as generators and disseminators of intellectual property (IP)(Porter 2001; Lundvall 2007). Australia's 38 universities have become active players in the globally competitive field of commercialisation (Harman 2004). While the research performance of Australia's higher education institutions over the past decade has been good their performance in commercialisation has been mixed (Ville 2006).

2012

In the last few years, a scholarly critique of current forms and directions of higher education has become increasingly prominent. This work, often but not exclusively focussed on the American and British systems, and on humanities disciplines, laments the transformation of the university into ‘a fast-food outlet that sells only those ideas that its managers believe will sell [and] treats its employees as if they were too devious or stupid to be trusted’ (Parker and Jary 335). Topics include the proliferation of courses and subject areas seen as profitable, particularly for overseas students;1 the commensurate diminution or dissolution of ‘unprofitable’ areas; the de-professionalisation of academic staff and limitation of their powers in decisionmaking; the dismantling of academic disciplines and department-based academic units; the growing size and authority of management in determining priorities in research (see Laudel) and teaching; quantification and evaluation of academic work...

The rise and fall of Australian higher education There is no doubt that the Australian higher education system has grown dramatically in the last fifty years. Yet so much of this growth has not been primarily driven by the genuine educational aspirations of government leaders to grow a high quality university system. Instead, growth has primarily (though not exclusively) come from real political pressures to broaden access to a university education. Unfortunately all too often the need to address these political demands has led to educational pragmatism, centred on generating university places rather than genuinely building the capability of Australian universities. Now we are on the eve of a further dramatic transformation, again based on the logic of expanding university places. This transformation is driven by a radical model that is unashamedly based on ‘other people’s ideas’, amounting to the effective privatisation of Australian higher education. This paper will reflect on this broad history and will argue that this market-driven model will represent (another) failure of leadership in higher education.

2019

Over the past 30 years, Australia has trialled a series of educational reforms, courting fee deregulation, marketisation and liberalisation. These reforms have been key drivers in the success of Australia’s higher education sector, enabling many of its institutions to ‘punch above their weight’ globally as measured by various global ranking schemas. But it has also created economic dependencies that makes Australian institutions vulnerable more than ever to the political international fluctuations. Over the period 1989 to 2018, domestic student enrolments have seen an annual average growth of 3.4% compared to 11.9% for international students. Since 2000, Australian universities alone have earned more than A$90 billion from international students in concept of tuition fees. Between 2000 and 2017, revenue from international students has increased five times faster than the Australian government contribution to universities. Australian universities are urged to have a sound risk management strategy, realizing that the loss of a market like the size of China will not be replaced by one single market. Australian universities need to diversify their international student recruitment away from traditional markets, instead focus on middle income economies and countries with which Australia has forged strategic trading partnerships, including harmonization and recognition of qualifications. There is no doubt that the road ahead for Australian universities is bumpy. Policy responses from government, civil society, market forces and university leaders need to consider the spectrum of possibilities arising from these demographic and geopolitical shifts. Timeliness and moderation is central to mapping out a way forward.

International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 2000

The Commonwealth Government of Australia appears to be moving towards a national policy on environmental education for a sustainable future. Using the new environmental campus of Charles Sturt University in New South Wales as a case study, this paper outlines how one Australian university is providing sustainability in higher education by integrating its designs, operations and teaching practices. In doing so, it shows recent initiatives in the higher education sector and highlights the gap between Commonwealth Government moves to enhance the national effort and what is happening on the ground. It is suggested that this gap exists because the Government outlines a series of actions rather than a set of ethical propositions for development at a local level.

Proceedings of the 2014 ISAA Conference, The Lucky Country? Canberra (October 2014), 2015

There is no doubt that the Australian higher education system has grown dramatically in the last fifty years. Yet so much of this growth has not been primarily driven by the genuine educational aspirations of government leaders to grow a high quality university system. Instead, growth has primarily (though not exclusively) come from real political pressures to broaden access to a university education. Unfortunately all too often the need to address these political demands has led to educational pragmatism, centred on generating university places rather than genuinely building the capability of Australian universities. Now we are on the eve of a further dramatic transformation, again based on the logic of expanding university places. This transformation is driven by a radical model that is unashamedly based on ‘other people’s ideas’, amounting to the effective privatisation of Australian higher education. This paper will reflect on this broad history and will argue that this market-driven model will represent (another) failure of leadership in higher education.

This paper presents survey findings relating to academics' work attitudes and responses to corporate reforms within eight Australian universities. Academics (n=1,041) responded to

2002

The authors develop a framework to guide University leaders seeking to implement Constituent Market Orientation principles within their organisations as a basis for repositioning, reputation building and transformation from hierarchical fiefdoms to knowledge centres capable of generating cross-disciplinary, problem focused, research and learning programs. The framework is based on Tellefsen’s theory of Constituent Market Orientation and Gardner’s Stakeholder Relationship Management model, and is illustrated by the stakeholder relationship cases of the Norwegian School of Management and the Faculty of Business and Public Management at Edith Cowan University.

2004

The Australian Universities' review, 2016

Massive growth in the numbers of fee-paying international students and an increasing private sector role are two of the most salient features of Australian higher education in the past quarter century. Both these trends were evident in a little known partnership, involving a public regional university and a private entrepreneur, which had its origins in 1993. While hindsight allows us to locate this development in a neoliberal framework, this article explores the origins of the relationship and concludes that while the eventual operation was consistent with the theme of the overall decline of the university as an essentially public enterprise, the role of personalities was crucial in what was initially more serendipity than grand strategy.