Time to reclaim our universities

Australian universities are becoming irrelevant to much of our community, says Jeff Malpas

DOES Australia have a real vision for its universities, either on the part of the Federal Government or on the part of the universities themselves?

The announcements about new funding arrangements and the responses from many universities and vice-chancellors demonstrated the ad hoc, disorganised and largely uninformed nature of the government’s approach.

If truth be told, that approach is largely driven by a deep antagonism towards higher education, coupled with a blinkered policy view that barely goes beyond the mantra, even before the pandemic, of “jobs, jobs and more jobs”. It also revealed the equally limited perspectives of university managers and vice-chancellors.

The response of the latter has, for the most part, not been to address the package in any principled way, but rather to “look at the modelling”. In other words, work out first whether they think their own institutions can benefit from it, and then respond accordingly. The whole affair shows how much higher education is now governed almost entirely by the same considerations of institutional and political self-interest.

Once, Australia was a place that valued education for its role as more than just a provider of skills for employers or a generator of export income.

Once, Australia was a place that saw education, which is much more than mere training, as a value in itself, and as a major contributor to the social and not merely the economic capital of the nation. Universities were seen as providing, especially in the humanities, a flexible and broad education that suited graduates for a range of jobs, not just a single niche. Universities helped support and develop a sense of citizenship and civic virtue, of genuine political debate and social engagement, stimulating curiosity and imagination, and providing opportunities for people to learn and to extend themselves intellectually no matter their background. Campuses were exciting places to be with students, young and old, interested in knowledge and ideas (often gained outside the formal classroom situation as much as within), rather than merely in getting a promissory note for future employment.

There was a vision of universities and of education behind all of this, a vision that led governments from both sides of politics to invest in higher education. The expansion of universities under both Menzies and Whitlam reflected a recognition of the role of universities in generating wealth through their economic effects.

They reflected a recognition of the role of universities in supporting the social and cultural life of Australian society, and the broader importance of education as itself a collective good.

Our universities are rapidly becoming irrelevant to much of our community. Twenty-five years ago, university courses still included a wide range of people — not only those fresh from high school, but many older people who had missed out on university education when they were younger, or who had discovered learning late in life.

Nowadays, things are very different. The old idea of lifelong learning has disappeared, and the focus is on young people getting the skills and competences that it is assumed will lead to a job, even though the job may not be there by the time people graduate.

Even for many young people who are concerned with qualifications for work, the path of an apprenticeship or some other vocational pathway that gives immediately usable skills and an income seems much more attractive.

Is it possible for us to rethink what our universities might be about, to arrive at a new vision (which may not be so far from the old) of what universities are for and why they matter?

And can we find a way to refashion our universities according to that vision? To do so would require some major changes. It requires rethinking some of our fundamental values, but it also requires that we rethink the manner of our politics and the systems by which we manage our institutions.

The problem is not just the limited approach manifest in the policies of the Morrison Government, but the narrow perspective of the often technocratically oriented managers — among whom vicechancellors must be included — who have increasingly controlled our universities over recent years. Articulating a new vision for Australian universities would mean returning universities to a focus on the communities they serve — but for that to happen those communities also need to reclaim universities for themselves.

In Tasmania, establishment of the university arose out of the developing sense of the importance of education to the life of the island. This was not merely about jobs in the narrow sense. That language is not to be found in any of the discussions in the latter half of the 19th century concerning higher education in Tasmania. Domain House, the first site of the University of Tasmania, operated first as a high school, but was built with the idea of a university in mind.

Its very architecture was a gesture towards an ideal of education as more than about utilitarian or economic goals, and its prominent siting was an expression of the importance given to education at the time.

Domain House, even since its transfer back to the university, has tended to be forgotten by many, a largely unused building empty of life. Perhaps we need to bring Domain House back into the life of the city in a way that also brings back a genuine commitment to a broad-based conception of university education and its real value to the island.

THE WHOLE AFFAIR SHOWS HOW MUCH HIGHER EDUCATION IS NOW GOVERNED ALMOST ENTIRELY BY THE SAME INSTITUTIONAL AND POLITICAL SELF-INTEREST

Jeff Malpas is Emeritus Distinguished Professor at the University of Tasmania, Visiting Distinguished Professor at Latrobe University, and fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.