Rufus Black
This will be big year for higher education in Australia. It promises to be the start of its next major era of reform. If it is as consequential as the previous era, it will change Australia and Tasmania. Those changes will matter to everyone. Having made the transition from an elite to a mass higher education system, we are set to move towards the world of universal higher education.
Just over 30 years ago the then Hawke Labor Government introduced the Dawkins reforms, named after the education minister of the time. The government could see our evolving economy required a much higher proportion of the workforce to have access to higher education, which would be life-changing for many people.
The government’s solution was to create very large comprehensive universities. Amalgamations were required. Here in Tasmania, we saw the University of Tasmania and the Tasmanian State Institute of Technology (TSIT) merge.
Growth was encouraged. The average size of the Australian university - and the University of Tasmania is average sized - went from 9000 students to over 37,000. Many universities, like ours, went from a small single campus to large multicampus institutions almost overnight.
Who attended universities changed. More and more people sought the opportunities for a better job or new horizons at all stages of life. Universities went from places primarily attended by school leavers to universities where today adult learners are just over 60% of all students nation-wide.
Effectively, the Dawkins reforms turned higher education from an elite system into a mass higher education system.
Then, just over 15 years ago, Julia Gillard released Emeritus Professor Denise Bradley’s review of the direction of Australia’s higher education system. Bradley recommended Australia aim to have 40% of our 25–34-year-olds with a higher education qualification by 2020. In response, the government removed caps on the number of students universities could enrol. The result was a further rapid expansion in the size of universities before caps were reintroduced in 2018.
Government funding changed to manage increasing numbers. Students were made to contribute and government spending per student has halved since the 1980s.
To help fund all that was being required of them, universities increasingly turned to international students. In the late 1980s international students were 4% of the student population; today they are over 30% (at the University of Tasmania that number is below 20%).
Competition between universities became more intense spurred on by newly created rankings schemes, which prioritise research publications, especially in the sciences. Government regulation of the growing universities increased greatly.
Universities have changed enormously from what those of us born in the 1970s or earlier experienced as undergraduates. As Michael Welsey at Melbourne University has pointed out in his important book Mind of the Nation, universities have also become very different from the US and UK universities depicted in popular culture. One big difference is scale. The average Australian university is 3 times larger than those in UK and 5 times larger than those in the US. Michael makes the point well that while many in the Australian community, as well as university staff and students, support increased participation, they are also concerned the student and staff experience has suffered over this period.
This system we have is the result of policy choices made and maintained by successive Australian governments. As we face the next major era of reform it is an important reminder of how significant government higher education reforms can be for us all.
The greatest challenge of this next era will be how we can improve the student and staff experience as we aspire to educate an even higher proportion of the population.
What is welcome is that the group responsible for this next era of reform – the Australian Universities Accord Review Panel – made it very clear in their Interim Report that increased access and equity, plus a focus on improving the experience for students and staff is central to their agenda.
They highlight that over the next 5 years 90% of new jobs will require post-secondary education and 50% will require a bachelor’s degree or higher. By 2050 over 50% of all jobs will require higher education qualifications. There is much to be done to enable Tasmanians to access those opportunities: today only 21.9% have a higher education qualification.
The Panel have also made it clear that if we are to address Australia’s social equity challenges, higher education will need to be far more accessible to people from First Nations and lower social economic status backgrounds, rural and regional areas and people with disabilities, all of whom are badly under-represented in the higher education system of today. Again, this matters for Tasmania because we have a higher proportion of people in almost all of these groups.
Overall, they are talking about a move from a mass higher education system to a universal one where higher education can be accessed by anyone to increase the opportunities in their life. The Panel recognises we need to create this sort of system while addressing the funding and scale issues caused by past policy settings. This is a large and long-term task.
The Accord Panel’s final report is due any day now. What they recommend will matter for all Tasmanians. It will shape Tasmania’s future.
Professor Rufus Black is the Vice-Chancellor the University of Tasmania. Previously he was strategic advisor to the Secretary of Education in Victoria and the Founding Chair of the Board of Teach for Australia.