Opinion
Over time, things, people, empires even, tend to fall apart.
If you’re a physicist, you might call it entropy.
You can keep things in a state of order locally, but it takes energy. At a university you need to work hard and smart to maintain excellence.
Many years ago, a Professor of Steam Trains came into my office. He was nearing retirement and fixating on his legacy. He offered to step down at one, but only if I promoted his deputy to Professor, so that his unit could continue.
There were two reasons to say no.
First, I didn’t think his discipline would endure. Surely, we needed someone working on electric or magnetic levitation trains.
But the second reason is more interesting. I wasn’t sure that his deputy was as good as he was. His deputy was very good, but in terms of statistical probability, given our pioneering top Professor of Steam Trains had been so good, it was improbable that the next person would be better.
This statistical problem happens all the time.
When things are truly excellent, it is particularly hard to maintain that standard.
Claudius was a great Roman Emperor. But who came next – Nero! Not good. The probabilities dictated that it would be very hard to find a better Emperor than Claudius, but easy to find a worse one.
This also happens with great films. The sequels nearly always seem terrible by comparison (except, it’s said, The Godfather Part II).
The sequels are not necessarily bad. It is just very hard for them to be better and more successful than that excellent first film. It’s because there is a tiny window available for being better, and a huge, gaping space available for being worse.
The problem of maintaining excellence also affects living organisms. Very few living things reproduce by cloning – by making Mini-Me like replicas, as the Professor of Steam Trains hoped to do. In genetics the equivalent of entropy is often called Muller’s Ratchet. Over time organisms acquire mutations by chance. The problems build up each generation, until eventually the offspring simply become non-viable and the species dies out.
Thus, most organisms don’t rely on asexual reproduction. They invest in sexual reproduction. All the cards are thrown in the air and reassorted. In addition, some cards are torn in half and recombined with other torn cards to make completely new genes. This experimentation and renewal can be more wasteful than relying on cloning an existing organism, but in the long run it avoids the problem of gene decay, and it creates new models, some of which will fit new and unexpected environments.
The problem of maintaining quality also arises when one tries to expand along another dimension, not time but space, when you seek to increase the scale of an organisation.
Imagine the best restaurant you have ever been to. The chef is a genius, and the staff love their work. You enjoy the best possible food, with the best possible ambiance. Then you move house and wonder if the restaurant will become a chain and open a branch in your new hometown.
But, of course, if this happens it probably won’t be the same, and it certainly won’t be better, because it is impossible to improve on perfection. And it is hard to replicate excellence. So, you’ll probably be disappointed.
Restaurant chains tend to deliver what is expected – they are reliable. And often they are cheaper, because economies of scale and the bargaining power that big enterprises enjoy can reduce costs. But it is hard for restaurant chains to be truly excellent.
The higher education system has expanded hugely over time and space. People are beginning to ask whether we have managed to maintain the excellence that folk my age or older fondly remember.
In some corners of every institution I think we have. Magic still happens in every university.
But have we maintained excellence everywhere? The statistics suggests this would be hard, and perhaps for that reason we are now under scrutiny. Has anyone noticed? We have entered a new age of heightened regulation.
The focus has moved from building excellence and celebrating the highest standards to policing minimum standards.
I understand why, but it makes me rather sad.
As our regulatory compliance burden expands it does several things. It diverts resources from the quest for excellence, it creates friction between the sector and a major supporter (the government), and it inhibits innovation.
If you keep insisting on minimum standards, guess what you get? You get those minimum standards – a fast-food service.
If you focus primarily on the blemishes and on the bruises, then that is all you see. You end up with the perception that the whole sector is a mess.
Excellence never comes from regulation alone.
The Universities Accord focusses heavily on expanding student access. While this makes sense, it will not in itself drive excellence. It takes great energy, great strategy, and great processes to build and sustain excellence.
But here’s the good news. When things get really bad that leaves open a huge window for improvement. The chances that things will get worse become relatively small, so things often get better.
It looks like we are in a period of neglect of higher education. It seems that regulation is seen as the only tool available.
Nero fiddled while Rome burned. But not long after him, Vespasian took over, providing vision and new momentum.
Times are bad, but just hold on, if we’re lucky, ‘this, too, shall pass’.
Professor Merlin Crossley is Deputy Vic-Chancellor (Academic Quality) at UNSW