George Williams should be celebrating right now. A renowned constitutional lawyer, the new boss of Western Sydney U had perhaps his most important publication over the past year with a small column in the Daily Telegraph, prosecuting the case that international students matter to his new constituency in Western Sydney.
This is not a comment on academic publishing – George’s contribution to tomes such as this year’s 8th edition of Blackshield and Williams Australian Constitutional Law and Theory: Commentary and Materials is undoubtedly significant and valued. However, in terms of impact publishing, the sighting of an academic wandering voluntarily into the midst of Murdoch’s Sydney rag may be the start of a critical new approach that the sector needs to engage middle Australia more effectively.
Is this the harbinger of a Spring of sorts for the sector, thawing out a level of connection hitherto lost? Too early to tell, but few would argue that Universities and TAFEs alike must start to act differently very rapidly to either influence the raft of legislative and policy changes put forward by the Government, or else adjust to them.
As Gavin Moodie pithily observed on X/Twitter, referencing a Crikey article, “Has Australia moved from ‘stop the boats’ under a federal conservative government to ‘stop the students’ under a federal Labor government?”
Don’t lament, reinvent
Clearly 2024 is not going in the direction that many in the sector had hoped, but it is no time to turn back to the old ways and shut down in a collectivist lament.
We need to dare to do a whole range of things differently.
At Future Campus we are doing our bit by starting with a conference.
We have thrown out the model, where you learn 1-3 things and spend the rest of the time huddled around branded (and bad) coffee queues and instead are choosing an event that you will care about.
Not just because we were turned down by branded coffee financiers, but also because we believe in the power of our own content curation, we are going to give coffee vouchers to two nearby shops, urging delegates to cash in for their beverage of choice, network while they are at the counter and then get back into the room to engage. The time for events where you turn up, air-kiss some people you don’t particularly like and then skip most of the day because it sounds a bit boring needs to be over.
The sector has a dozen series issues at play and while we rejected the sage on the stage pedagogy years ago for students, we somehow still think it’s ok to stick to that format at conferences. Let’s be clear, we’re not doing that.
The time for holding audiences captive without probing and building networks in the room with further questions is also gone. Maybe it was okay in the golden easy years of HE, when the students queued dutifully in waves and begged to be relieved of their hard earned, but the world has changed – we can’t afford the old habits now.
This conference is proudly an experiment, because we are bringing perspectives and content that other conferences can’t touch. We are going to interview each presenter. Of course there will be PowerPoints, and not every moment will be magical. But we think more of your time should be valued and it’s going to happen when you to get a chance to engage, and walk away informing colleagues as well as yourself. We will curate each session, and beam in a few expert folks who can’t get their unis to stump up airfares.
News makers, not takers
We will share a few insights from the conference in videos, and the odd bit of text, but the genius of the event is going to come from the collective insights from presenters x facilitators x audience in the room. At a time when we have a disconnection in narrative and a fundamental failure to engage the community, (or as Mr Clare likes to politely defer to the unmeasured and so far uncontested concept of ‘social licence’), this conference is going to be about engagement – and results.
Why bother you with this?
We have taken up space and your time to explain the process behind the conference because we think different is important. Different media channels with different messages and particularly with different voices are going to be required if we want to thaw the stone cold sentiment that Australians currently harbour towards tertiary institutions. We are going to need to adapt much more rapidly to AI and to the positioning of courses, individuals, institutions and the whole notion of whether a degree is really offering value to your lifeplan.
The same process of deconstructing existing norms for conferences, workshops, publications, meetings, leadership, lobbying and perception crafting needs to go on now to shape or adapt to a time of tremendous change.
While some of Mr Clare’s reforms may be watered down, the tremendous impact on the sector in terms of caps, social attitudes, can no longer be ignored. Business is no longer as usual. We have already been over-run by AI, choosing to engage primarily in learning and teaching, with little consideration of other impacts. It’s no longer viable to chug through the same old playbook and wait for someone else to respond. There are lots of opportunities ahead. They are just not going to come dutifully knocking on your doors in the form of a desperate, wide-eyed kid at open day any more.
