The "education revolution" Kevin Rudd promised voters last year was one of Labor's election coups. The slogan pithily conveyed the ALP's commitment to end a decade of underfunding in the education sector and to position Australia as a leading knowledge-based economy. But while the education policy was long on initiatives for preschoolers and primary and secondary students (a $450 million plan to give all four-year-olds an entitlement to 15 hours of preschool or early learning each week, and the promise of computer access for every senior high school student), the higher education promises were more modest: 1000 fellowships to prevent Australia's brightest researchers from being lured overseas, grants of $50,000 to research institutions to be used toward the purchase of infrastructure and equipment, and the phasing out of full-fee paying undergraduate places from 2009 (for which universities would be fully compensated).
Some three months into its term, the Rudd Government has been largely silent on the remainder of the "revolution" it has planned for higher education, no doubt causing some nervousness among vice-chancellors, but also prompting others to canvass new approaches to funding and to lifting standards and outcomes.
On Tuesday, Universities Australia, the peak body representing the country's 38 universities, issued a positions paper calling on the Government to "commence further action on its election promises" and arguing, among other things, for an expansion of core university funding and the allocation of between $3-6 billion of the budget surplus to the Higher Education Endowment fund. A day later, Australian National University Vice-Chancellor Ian Chubb warned in a speech that unless Australia adopted a new approach to university funding, it would fall further behind the OECD pack. Chubb argued that the present "one-size-fits-all" funding approach had led to a "dumbing down" of the sector, and that the best-performing universities (those with proven research capacity) should get a larger share of money. On the theme of aiming high, Chubb argued that Australia should not be content with just one or two universities in the various rankings of the world's top 100 institutions, but should aim for up to 10. He said following through on the goal would require "real political courage".
"Australia's catch-up cannot be predicated on a thinly spread distribution of any additional investment," he said. "The hard reality is that the rest of the world is not waiting for Australia, and if we play catch-up politics internally we may well be watching the world from the sidelines," he said. As for the question of the diminished reputation of Australian tertiary qualifications, Chubb called for new minimum standards to be established for university degrees, with benchmarks to allow comparison of degrees bestowed by different institutions.
Chubb's clarion call appeared to catch Education Minister Julie Gillard off guard. Quizzed by journalists about Chubb's speech, Gillard made the reasonable point that overcoming 11 years of neglect would take time, but she had nothing concrete to add to the promises made during last year's election campaign, other than to heap blame on the previous government for the sector's present difficulties.
It was an uninspiring performance, given Labor's professed sympathy for the difficulties facing our universities, and its oft-stated belief that greater investment in education and research is the key to long-term prosperity. It has been suggested before now that Gillard has too much on her plate (her ministerial responsibilities include the equally contentious employment and workplace relations portfolio) but her assertion that "we want the [university] system to be world-class, so wherever students are in this country, whatever institution they're at, they're getting a world-class education" belied an appreciation of the logic of the arguments put forward by Chubb and doubtless shared by the other so-called Group of Eight vice-chancellors, if not those running the small teaching universities facing a possible funding squeeze if more money is directed to those institutions conducting research as well.
Australia certainly has the capacity to lift its spending on tertiary education, but there will never be enough money to ensure that each of the current 40 or so universities can be all things to all students (and researchers) and that each can be "world-class". Chubb's argument is essentially about the need for specialisation, with a bigger slice of funding for those universities in the expensive business of research and is similar to points he raised when talking recently about the future of the Canberra School of Music.
Chubb's arguments might be biased in favour of the existing G-8 universities, but his comments about minimum standards for degrees show a holistic concern for the tertiary sector. Gillard's comments, by contrast, suggest she has more work to do before she is fully across what is, by any measure, a big brief.
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