Mary O’Kane had a “nagging wish” for a unifying theory of higher education to be the basis of the Universities Accord to “lead us to a sector which is more appreciated by the community at large.”
She did not need one in the end, she said, basically because universities as they stand, “are a great base to build on and we can adjust various things that are out of whack.”
But her brief was to do way more, to set out how the post-school education system should meet Australia’s future skills and knowledge needs. Professor O’Kane described how she, with colleagues Larissa Behrendt and Barney Glover met it, in speech at the University of Sydney, last Thursday.
It was an oration for insiders, addressing the core Accord arcana of access, enrolments, funding models, including a reference to Job Ready Graduates which “needs to be fixed,” but with no mention of how. Plus, there was the occasional reference to the few causes of controversy. Professor O’Kane revealed that a Vice-Chancellor suggested a tax on international students (just not which one). And she explained why the Accord authors abandoned a national university serving the regions. “The great lesson you learn as a reviewer is that opposition to one single recommendation can lead to the whole review being buried.”
Plus, Professor O’Kane floated live questions, on universities’ “size, place and diversity” which she did not say the Australian Tertiary Education Commission the Accord created should address, but undoubtedly will, including:
- Teaching-only universities and centralising research
- Shared services
- Mergers – she mentioned institutions with “limited growth,” Charles Darwin U, James Cook U and Uni Tasmania
- Distinct missions: “Flinders, Griffith, Murdoch, all now less distinctive but early on very much promoting multidisciplinary studies and research”
- Institutional autonomy: “there are times when it is better to encourage competition and times when universities are better off acting as a system. How do we determine which is which and when and where do we do it?” She was talking about teaching and research and optimistically or ominously, mentioned the question would come up in ATEC’s compact discussions.
And ATEC will be in all the discussions, “to allow the core of higher education, if you like, transmitting knowledge and creating new knowledge, to evolve successfully and flourish, that agenda of challenges needs ongoing work on all of those component challenges, and needs to be done simultaneously by ATEC and the sector more broadly,” she said,
As to how that will work out, don’t ask O’Kane. She also mentioned that whoever is ATEC’s Chief Commissioner, it will not be her.