Life After Dawkins: The University of Melbourne in the Unified National System of Higher Education

By Stuart Macintyre, Gwilym Croucher and André Brett

The reconstruction of higher education in Australia through the creation of the Unified National System of Higher Education at the end of the 1980s by John Dawkins is commonly seen as a watershed. It brought new ways of funding, directing and organising universities, expanding their size, reorienting their activities and setting in train a far-reaching transformation of the academic enterprise.

This volume traces its impact on the balance between the University of Melbourne's academic miss on and external expectations, and how it adjusted to neutralise the impact of the change and restore the balance. At Melbourne, the Dawkins revolution changed little in the way it understood itself and conducted its affairs, but changed everything.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Apr 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9780522869750

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Introduction

The reconstruction of higher education in Australia through the creation of the Unified National System at the end of the 1980s is commonly seen as a watershed, bringing new ways of funding, directing and organising universities, expanding their size, reorienting their activities and setting in train a far-reaching transformation of the academic enterprise.

The design and effects of the Unified National System have attracted a very substantial literature that analyses the changes and contests their merits. For the most part such studies have been conducted at the system level, concentrating on particular aspects such as teaching, research and institutional management.

Here we examine the changes holistically at the institutional level, in four studies prepared and conducted to a common framework. They cover two old universities (Melbourne and Sydney), one newer, pre-1987 university (Griffith) and one formed as a result of the reconstruction (the University of South Australia). They also cover four states, allowing us to consider how the amalgamation process set in train by John Dawkins as the Commonwealth Minister for Employment, Education and Training was undertaken in different jurisdictions. Each study examines the changes that were made, their initiation, contestation, implementation and effects from the publication of the Green Paper at the end of 1987 to the change of government at the end of 1996.

The changes introduced by Dawkins have been usefully summarised by Grant Harman:

•abolition of the binary system, with its clear differentiation between universities and colleges of advanced education, and replacement by a Unified National System of higher education

•consolidation of institutions through amalgamation to reduce their number and to secure larger and stronger institutions

•substantial increases in enrolments and attention to student progress rates to secure an increased output of graduates

•greater concentration on particular fields of study, such as computer science, business studies and engineering, which were seen to be crucial to economic growth

•a more selective approach to research funding, with a greater emphasis on national priorities, and substantial increases in the total amount of research funds

•changes in institutional governance to make institutions more flexible and efficient, and to give greater power to chief executives

•changes in staffing to increase flexibility and improve performance

•greater autonomy to institutions within negotiated funding agreements, and efforts to increase institutional effectiveness and efficiency (including further reduction of unit costs per student, improved credit transfer, and rationalisation of the provision of courses by distance education)

•shifting some of the financial burden for higher education to users and encouraging higher education institutions to generate income to supplement public funding.¹

This summary has the advantage that it was made at the time, and is therefore not subject to the subsequent tendency to attribute changes in higher education to Dawkins that were not part of his reconstruction. In many accounts there is a danger of succumbing to the post hoc, propter hoc fallacy, seeing him as responsible for all that followed. Some of the changes were already under way before he created the Unified National System, while others are apparent in countries that did not follow the Australian path.

One purpose of these four studies is to trace the consequences of what he set in motion, another to consider institutional responses. We are interested in the proposals set out in the Green and White Papers that were not implemented, as well as those that were. The universities were not passive instruments of government policy: they resisted some components of the Unified National System and grasped others, and in each of them there was substantial contestation of how it should respond.

Nor, despite its homogenous characteristics, was the creation of the Unified National System ever likely to result in a uniform national system. Each of the universities was distinctive in location, orientation and aspiration. In adapting its organisation and practices to the reconstructed system of higher education, each sought to use some of these inherited characteristics to its best advantage. Accordingly, each study concludes by turning back to the nine components identified by Harman and indicating the outcomes that were reached by 1996.

Notes

1Adapted from Grant Harman, ‘Institutional amalgamations and abolition of the binary system in Australia under John Dawkins’, Higher Education Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 2, 1991, pp. 182–3.

CHAPTER 1

The steady state

By 1987 the Commonwealth Government had constrained expenditure on higher education for more than a decade. The effects on the newer universities created in the heady era of expansion that ended abruptly in 1975 were severe: their plans for sequential development were truncated, leaving them with incomplete campuses and a restricted range of courses. The consequences for long-established universities such as Melbourne were less obvious. They were large, mature institutions with substantial research programs and strong demand for their prestigious professional courses. At least initially, they could economise by deferring maintenance, making do with existing equipment and keeping up their teaching and research in the expectation that growth would resume. It was only as the funding freeze was confirmed in successive federal budgets that it became apparent Australian universities were operating in a ‘steady state’ and the cumulative effects on the University of Melbourne were recognised.

In 1976, 16 057 students were enrolled at the University; by 1987 there were 15 915 (and the number of Equivalent Full-Time Student Units [EFTSU] was 13 965). They were distributed across twelve faculties in numbers that ranged from 3627 EFTSU in Arts and 2668 in Science to 265 in Music, 210 in Veterinary Science and 205 in Dental Science. There was little change in the extensive number of courses offered or the numbers enrolled in them—Melbourne shed journalism, physical education and environmental studies, and in 1985 moved its teaching of business management to a new graduate school.

Partly because of a progressive reduction in the amount the Commonwealth provided for tuition ($8807 per EFTSU in 1980, $7953 by 1987) and partly as a result of increasing salary costs, there was a decline in the number of teachers (who were known as Teaching and Research staff because of their dual responsibilities). The reduction was not dramatic, but it was remorseless. In 1980 there had been 1013 full-time equivalent Teaching and Research staff and 1693 non-academics (who were known as General Staff); by 1988 these numbers had fallen to 944 and 1533.¹ On a head-count there were 1136 in Teaching and Research posts in 1987, supported in their faculties and departments by 707 technicians and administrators. By contrast, the number of Research Only academics (more than half of them in Medicine) grew to 418, supported by 276 technical and administrative staff. Of the General Staff in central administration, there were 288 persons in academic services (principally the Library), 375 in administrative services and another 567 in areas ranging from student services and the student union to property and buildings.²

The ratio of academic to non-academic staff (1:1.34) would seem to belie the traditional conception of the university as a community of scholars who undertook their work and conducted their affairs with a minimum of management.³ That collegial model had operated at the University of Melbourne for almost a century from its foundation in 1853. The professor enjoyed almost complete control of his discipline from devising the course of studies and directing research to selecting other academic staff and allocating their duties. He (there was no female professor until 1975) conducted all dealings with other parts of the university. He corresponded with students, dealt with members of the public and kept up links with relevant professional bodies—and well into the twentieth century he did so in hand-written correspondence in the absence of secretarial support.

The rapid growth of the university in the post-war decades allowed the employment of secretaries, stenographer–typists, librarians, laboratory assistants and other departmental support staff. These scarcely disturbed the prerogatives of academic self-management, although the increased number of academics did. As departments increased in size, professors began to share their authority and delegate responsibilities to senior colleagues. By the 1970s decision-making—in some cases including determination of who should serve as the head of a department—was passing to departmental meetings.

Yet the growth that endowed these departments with an enhanced capacity to conduct their affairs also eroded their autonomy. It was made possible by a national funding system that allocated the university a triennial grant for recurrent costs, capital works and equipment, and required it to develop increasingly elaborate systems to justify requests and account for expenditure. The expansion of higher education also brought a much larger cohort of students, with a corresponding need to plan their courses, meet their needs and track their progress. The coordination of these activities created a larger, more professional central administration and a more hierarchical form of institutional management that sat uneasily alongside the conventions of academic autonomy.⁴

The erection of the Raymond Priestley Building at the end of the 1960s to house the administrators of the University of Melbourne symbolised this transformation. An unlovely, nine-storey structure situated at the centre of the campus—and therefore mounted on stilts to facilitate pedestrian traffic—it was the site of student protest in its early years as demonstrators sought to take their grievances up to the executive suite on the top floor. Subsequent generations of students had to brave the wind that whipped through the undercroft to read examination results posted on boards set out on the pavement below.

The steady state placed increasing strain on teaching. The increase of academic numbers in the years of plenty had allowed much greater subject choice and systematic provision of small-group teaching and laboratory classes. The ratio of students to staff was a little over 11 in 1980 and remained under 13 in 1988, although it was much higher in the faculties of Law (24) and Economics and Commerce (22), where large classes were a source of student dissatisfaction. The apparent stability in these statistics is deceptive since they do not allow for the use of sessional tutors and demonstrators, who lightened the load of academics teaching subjects with large enrolments. The employment of these casual staff, typically enrolled in higher degrees, depended on a discretionary item in the departmental budget, the Other Teaching Allowance, and since that was most likely to be sacrificed in the search for economies, the workload of tenured staff increased over the decade. Students were more likely to notice that the lecture theatres and laboratories were more dilapidated, that feedback on assignments came more slowly and that their teachers were less accessible.⁵

A decline in salary levels and a rise in salary costs were further consequences of the steady state. The salaries of academics were set by a national tribunal and lagged behind other professions in a period of high inflation. Institutions, on the other hand, were faced with the problem of ‘incremental creep’. Lecturers and senior lecturers were entitled to annual increments and eligible for promotion; with reduced turnover, more of them progressed to the highest salary point, and more in turn were promoted to higher levels. A rule that all vacant posts revert to a base-level lectureship brought the number of lecturers up to 298 by 1987, but Melbourne remained top-heavy in its proportion of professors (126) and readers (169). The national character of the steady state also reduced movement between universities and restricted recruitment, with debilitating effects on career prospects and morale.⁶

As the number of Research Only positions at Melbourne indicates, there was substantial growth in research during the decade. The University attracted more than $10 million in grants from the Australian Research Grants Committee and National Health and Medical Research Council in 1987 and another $22 million from government and business. Students undertaking postgraduate and higher degrees numbered 2537 (or 15.9 per cent of all enrolments), a higher proportion than at most universities. But more research placed additional strain on the existing facilities. Some Science and Engineering departments were located in buildings erected fifty years or more earlier, and worked with outmoded laboratories and obsolescent equipment. Botany was fortunate to obtain a purpose-built facility for its Special Research Centre in Plant Cell Biology, and the new Graduate School of Management raised funds from business to assist with the costs of its new building south of the main campus, but these were the only major capital works funded by the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission (CTEC) at this time.

The University budget was determined by a recurrent grant for teaching and research provided by the Commonwealth on the recommendation of CTEC. That grant was $127 million in 1987, supplemented by special grants of $7 million chiefly to allow additional enrolments—but since these additional places were funded at less than full cost, they afforded little relief. The State Government made a small contribution of $2 million, and a new Higher Education Administration Charge of $250 per student yielded $4 million—although most of that went to the Commonwealth. Research grants and contracts, fees for services, benefactions and income from trust funds brought the University’s income to $206 million—but since these were tied to specific purposes, they did not ease the pressure on recurrent costs. And since the Whitlam Government had abolished tuition charges, there was no escape from the steady state.⁷

Twenty years earlier, after the University suffered an acute financial crisis, its new Vice-Chancellor, David Derham, devised a budget system to ensure that the University lived within its means. He determined a ‘basic budget’ for every one of the University’s ninety departments that was based on its activities, staffing and workloads. The dozen faculties in which these departments were located were then designated budgetary divisions. After the University made provision for general operating expenses and the principal administrative divisions, it allocated funds on an annual basis to these academic divisions. The only source of discretionary expenditure was a University Development Fund derived partly from interest on investments and partly from a levy of 1 per cent that CTEC had imposed on universities; after CTEC abandoned this performance-based component, the University maintained the levy for its own purposes. The Development Fund was used to rehabilitate ailing programs, finance early retirements and seed new developments on a modest scale—for the sum available each year was less than $2 million.⁸

In constituting the faculties as budgetary divisions, the budget system enshrined the primacy and the disciplinary character of their constituent departments. Despite the disparity in size and capacity, little thought was given to consolidation or quitting old fields for new ones. Dinny O’Hearn, a legendary rough diamond and subdean of the Arts Faculty, observed that ‘small departments are of their nature conservative and self-perpetuating’, but it was with great difficulty that some of the smallest and most obdurate were merged.⁹ A significant number of Melbourne students were enrolled in combined courses or took subjects outside their faculty of enrolment, yet interdisciplinary teaching and research in such fields as Asian Studies were hampered by the requirement that all courses, schools and centres be located in a single faculty. Deans competed for places on the subcommittee of the Council’s Finance Committee that determined student numbers, for this was the only way they could gain compensation for teaching students enrolled in another faculty who took a subject in their own.

Authority was shared between the University Council and the Academic Board. The Council was a large body of forty members, most of them elected by graduates and staff or serving ex officio, and in 1982 Melbourne had beaten off an attempt by the State Government to increase the proportion of external nominees. The Academic Board was constituted by the professors—and was therefore a Professorial Board until renamed in 1978 to acknowledge the inclusion of non-professorial heads of department. While the Council had statutory authority as the governing body to conduct the affairs of the University, the Board was responsible for academic matters. These were large and unwieldy decision-making bodies, and to coordinate the diarchy there were several joint committees made up of representatives of both along with the principal University officers. David Derham, a lawyer with a predilection for rules and regulations, devised this system of government, one that allowed close supervision of the University’s affairs.

David Derham resigned in 1982 because of ill health and was succeeded by David Caro. A graduate of Melbourne and former professor of physics who served as Derham’s deputy from 1972 before he became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Tasmania in 1978, Caro was deeply immersed in Melbourne’s ways—he was the last to lunch regularly with other academics in the dining room of the staff-run University House. Supporting him were John Poynter, a historian and the senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor, with two other deputy vice-chancellors for research and staffing. John Lovering, a geologist, was responsible for research until he became Vice-Chancellor of Flinders University in 1987, and was succeeded by John Coghlan, a medical researcher. Gordon Stanley, a psychologist, dealt with staffing. These deputies were drawn from the professorial ranks and, apart from Poynter, theirs was a part-time post with a modest loading. Lacking direct authority and operating without budgetary control, they were facilitators rather than managers. The other two senior administrators were the Vice-Principal, Ray Marginson, who dealt with finance, buildings and management, and had helped Derham rescue Melbourne’s fortunes, and Jim Potter, the