Bill Shorten gets what universities have to do has changed; now all he has to do is convince the people who work in them – and find more money to make the system work.
In a speech yesterday the University of Canberra vice chancellor, argued they are, “no longer populated by well prepared, academically high achieving, largely private and selective school leavers from supportive environments with social capital. Students are increasingly diverse in background, life experience and preparation, most need to work, and all expect flexibility, and tech-enabled environments.”
And he set out how they must deliver for all sorts of students and their communities in what and how they teach. “The abundance of, and access to, knowledge has also seen teaching move to facilitated learning and away from an emphasis on transmission of content to encouraging active, collaborative learners, critical thinking and “human skills”.
Plus the way we pay for it has to change.
“The strained 40-year-old funding model of our higher education system undermines our national sovereignty and compounds our cost-of-living crisis,” he said.
“Simply put, we hamper the future of our young not just by the fact they cannot afford a house but even to obtain a modest education which now costs a great deal, trapping young people in a vicious cycle.”
Mr Shorten has a proposal to address this – a “sovereign wealth education fund,” with the money coming from “those who benefit most from a highly skilled, well-educated population – businesses and corporations.”
A 1 % levy on profits would raise an estimated $5.2bn a year and be administered by government, industry and universities, “for agreed national priorities.”
Mr Shorten also recognises that there has to be something in it for business; and that is higher education addressing “the efficiency of how we educate.”
“unless we admit that some of our methods of education need modernising and some of what we do is inefficient, then universities can’t build a solid case for more funding.”
And so he nominates four areas for improvement, teaching, rigorous assessment, better treatment of staff, and institutions specialising.
There is just one problem with his ideas – many, probably most of the students have changed, what universities need to teach and how has changed, as have ways to fund them (where would they be without international student fees.) But academic culture has stayed the same.
Research is still the basis of career-making prestige. There is deep-seated ambivalence, at best, about a lifetime of only teaching.
Universities as superior sorts of vocational trainers is antithetical to the ideal of “higher education” as critical thinking informing scholarship.
To their great credit, Australian academics moved on-line fast during Covid but they mostly still believe in teaching and learning structures designed for elite students. The Uni Canberra union was not thrilled when adopting block-teaching was floated.
And integrating universities into the market economy and being accountable to business people will appall staff who want business people off their councils.
Mr Shorten makes a case for change; now he only has to wait a decade or two until the people that will have to do the changing retire.