Do we need universities?

Oct 3, 2024
University, campus and busy students walking to class for learning, studying and education.

Australian universities are starved of funds and forced to operate as commercial entities focused on profit, not the pursuit of knowledge.

While increasingly Australian universities depend on international students as a source of revenue, they are losing their appeal as places of quality education, and it is becoming harder for students to enrol and to obtain visas.

In 2022, Australia ranked fifth in the world as a destination for international students. In 2024, there are around 780 thousand international students in Australia. This cohort was attracted by the picture that local universities presented of Australia being a world-class leader in global research and innovation. Since the election of the Albanese government, however, there have been so many shifts in policy that those already here and those considering to apply do not know what to expect next.

Soon after election in 2022, the government announced that overseas students with relevant skills would be able to stay in the country after graduation. The overall migration cap was lifted. But then concerns grew about non-genuine applications, particularly from India. Restrictions were imposed on the number of hours that students could work. An investigation was launched into questionable VET courses. The public linked the surge in international student numbers with the worsening housing shortage. The 2023 Migration Review prompted ministers to vow that they would scrutinise student applications more thoroughly. Applications from China were often rejected on security grounds with no appeal. In May this year the financial requirement capacity for international students was raised and in July student visa costs rose from $710 to $1600.

The role of higher education in foreign policy is widely recognised. Several international measures of soft power include it in their frameworks. Australia’s 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper states: “Our commitment to education, training and research exchanges will remain central to Australia’s soft power. These exchanges build influence, and strengthen people-to-people links and mutual understanding. Australia will continue to welcome hundreds of thousands of international students to our shores.”

That is a rosy picture that unfortunately does not correspond to reality. Like international student policy, higher education policy has experienced turbulent changes in recent decades, and these have caused serious problems affecting university performance. Reforms began with John Dawkins in the 1980s and continued through to Brendan Nelson in the Noughties. In 2003 the Higher Education Support Act required all university government bodies to include members with financial and commercial expertise. As a result, such people now dominate the boards, councils and senates and their business outlook is applied throughout the campus. Academic staff representatives feel that their views are not taken seriously; student representatives are “yes-men” or “yes-women” and alumni representatives are hardly to be found. This raises the question of how well board members with no professional experience in the education sector are qualified to advise on its development.

Not surprisingly, university boards now focus on profit, and not surprisingly, vice-chancellors’ pay is measured on the same scale as company executives. In 2017, the government froze funding of first degrees, forcing universities to diversify their revenue streams. By 2019, student fees amounted to $12.3 billion nationally, a quarter of universities’ total revenue. This included international student fees as determined by the universities themselves. One study has shown that by 2019 revenue from international student fees, as a proportion of revenue from all fees, had risen by 239% compared to 2008.

In the last decade, government funding of universities has increased, but largely in the form of student debt that will be refunded eventually. By 2020, student loans as a proportion of total government assistance had risen by 138% compared to 2008 levels, while fee contributions, government-supported places and research grants had not increased. International student fee revenue plummeted during COVID, but the government did not provide financial support and excluded public universities from JobKeeper payments. The Job-ready Graduates Package raised the cost of degrees for domestic students, particularly humanities and arts degrees. Now, when unemployment is low and tertiary education costs are high, young people are less interested in degrees. Many technology companies offer in-house training programs that are more advanced and more relevant than those in universities.

These are the commercial realities that universities face having lost government funding and lacking other sources of revenue such as philanthropic bequests that support American private universities. Australian scholars who retain the desire to pursue the search for truth face daily challenges. Few university teachers have permanency, and all have heavy teaching loads.

European universities grew out of the madrassas and monasteries that trained men to lead religious institutions, combining moral and scientific education, but they broke free of those administrative constraints. Academic freedom has always been the cherished principle behind research and teaching. Over the centuries there were clashes between scholars and secular and religious authorities. Then as now, conservative governments have been wary of free-thinkers and have cut funding, at least to disciplines that they regard as irrelevant or vexatious, that is, humanities and the arts.

Modern secular university education paralleled the growth of the nation-state. In 1848, William Wentworth and Charles Nicholson proposed the establishment of a secular state university in New South Wales to help prepare the colony for self-government. The first professors soon realised that they needed independent administration and status, if the principle were to be maintained that freedom of thought was essential to university teaching and research. This principle is enshrined in the Charter of Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom adopted by the University Senate in 2019. Now the dilemma is how to remain true to this principle in the face of government pressure and commercial reality.

Now the time has come to ask whether the Federal Government is really committed to education, training and research or if it is about to throw universities under the proverbial bus.

The world is watching.

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