Opinion
Most of us in the education sector aim to be scholars, but in this media age there are opportunities for those who are more interested in politics than scholarship to step in and contaminate the narratives.
When leaders say things like – universities should return to their mission of serving the public good, what I hear is just a slogan – let’s make Universities great again!
By buying into and fuelling the false narrative that universities have lost their way, these sentiments drag the whole sector down and throw us all under the bus.
It is true that across the West, but less so in the East, there is a concerted political campaign against institutions of learning, but please let’s not join the pile on and degrade our sector from the inside.
The tactic of saying things like – we talk too much about ourselves, and not about the communities we serve – is another direct borrowing from politics. The idea that certain political parties obsess about their own disputes. This is another step towards politicising our sector and walking away from our core role, which is actually learning, scholarship, teaching, and research.
It is hard to counter such narratives and their accompanying rhetoric.
The alternative strategy of saying that universities in Australia have always served the public good, and continue to do so, and thus cannot ‘return’ to that mission, sounds like saying that we have no problems or challenges. It sounds like one is in denial or worse still that one is defensive and trying to defend a sector that, like all sectors, has its flaws.
But let us keep those flaws in perspective. Each time our sector faces a challenge, we strive to improve. We do it because learning is in our DNA. It is wrong to amplify imagined failings.
We face a challenge that politics may enter our DNA as this new tactic – of playing to the gallery, grabbing headlines by expressing sentiments of remorse, with multiple mea culpas, repeatedly assuring the populace that we acknowledge deep faults, showing contrition, and pledging to do better – takes over.
Choosing the political road is fraught with peril.
A reckoning is coming only if we invite it in or build it from within. If we are like Scott of Antarctica, stranded in a blizzard in a tent and Oates decides to leave, let him leave; not go out and then come back and tear down our tent, joining the chorus of voices raised against the sector and its scholars, repeating half-truths about corporatisation and an imagined obsession with money.
I have worked in the sector in Australia for decades. The scholars I know care deeply about learning, they care about their domestic and international students, and they care about research and sustaining delivery in research. This love of research is not a tainted love related to the vanity of league tables, it is because research enhances learning. Research-informed teaching makes Australia stronger.
The research sector is a jungle where treasures can be found but also where only the strongest survive. The constant competition, including the league tables, is often derided these days, but this pressure keeps us strong.
Beyond that the league tables are an opportunity for countries with younger universities to be recognized and to retain and recruit talent. You may see ancient institutions disengage from league tables, hoping to preserve their historic prestige, free from contemporary judgement, but the younger and hungrier institutions will continue to ensure that their achievements are measured and visible.
Australian research achievements are real, and we are poised to ride the wave of the rise of Asia, if we hold our nerve and support our universities, rather than joining the pile on and bringing them down from inside and out.
The alternative is a modern dissolution of the monasteries. With leaders moving away from their conventional roles as scholars to become wily politicians grasping at each new populist mantra, with carefully phrased confessions of imagined past wrong doing, to garner momentary praise, to the long term detriment of a sector that is more serious than populist politics and relies on genuine and deep learning in science and humanities, rather than on trite contemporary spin and modern social media rhetoric.
Professor Merlin Crossley is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic Quality) at UNSW.