The Headlines
The Social Licence Crisis in Australia
Involving Australia's state governments in the higher ed sector's design could be a key solution to its "social licence crisis".
By Dr Ant Bagshaw
If we can’t rely on our university leaders to work for the system as a whole, where can we find solutions? The answers will need to come from outside, and likely from the political system and policymakers.
I think that we can have system reform which also drives success of our existing leaders and universities. But we won’t get that through only focusing on pursuing the same ways of working, or following the same incentives, or listening to the same vested interests.
In the Australian higher education sector, there’s one major event where (near enough) everyone gathers each year. At the convention centre in Canberra, the country’s capital city, more than a thousand people from across the continent – and a few from further afield – attend Universities Australia’s annual conference.
This year, the sun was shining on the event, badged as a “Solutions Summit” in an attempt to frame it more positively than just a ‘talk fest’. If you haven’t yet been to sample the event yourself, it’s not hard to imagine if you’ve been to any other dated conference centre. Think a large hall with multiple catering stations keeping delegates fuelled with coffee and cake. The brightly-coloured exhibition stands are dotted around with hopeful suppliers of various technology products, consulting services or campaigns.
The formal conference sessions are usually something of a ‘mixed bag’. They’re generally too short, and too polite, to get under the skin of issues. Or too long and too general to leave attendees with anything tangible to take away. So far, so conference.
As the seasoned conference-goer knows, it’s all about the people and not the content. In Canberra, the whole circus is in town so it’s the catch ups, the huddles and discreet conversations which make the experience on not to be missed. There’s also a healthy fringe programme with many meetings and events for those in the know.
One such fringe event – to which I wasn’t invited, but about which I heard a lot – was a joint session of the heads of Australian universities, the vice-chancellors, and their bosses, the chancellors. In Australia, chancellors serve as the heads of the governing board of each institution, and they are typically appointed after having served in senior roles in industry, government or public service. The chancellors are a more diverse group than the vice-chancellors, though not all of those have traditional academic backgrounds.
The topic for this joint session was ‘social licence’ and the perception that Australian universities have lost their way. Typically, the discourse on social licence is framed in terms of high levels of pay for universities’ most senior executives, and how universities have internationalised, something which is perceived to have been at the expense of domestic students. There’s also a narrative that politicians don’t want to hear from universities, and that there isn’t much love for the sector among the policymaking classes.
There is, of course, some truth in all of this. There is a media and political narrative which finds fault in universities. And when I talk to the people in my life who aren’t involved in the sector, there’s significant criticism. There is too widespread a perception that degrees are outdated, that universities as institutions are out of touch with society, that the corporatisation of public institutions has gone too far, and that wokeism is rife.
All that said, we should also remember that universities have never been more popular. A greater proportion of the population is degree educated. The size and scale of universities means that they reach more people through their community activities. Research is genuinely transforming lives, not just in the medical sciences which are often cited, but across the full spectrum of academic disciplines. In my experience, many politicians love to hear about the great work happening in universities. And, at the individual level, people remain proud of their credentials and the association that it gives them as alumni.
On the face of it, it seems entirely reasonable that the vice-chancellors and chancellors should get together to explore social licence. It’s a big and important topic, and – if the detractors are right – it would be better to start addressing any decline before it’s too late. For me, though, I think we’re asking the wrong group to take responsibility for the health of the sector as a whole.
Over the past couple of decades in particular, though part of a longer trend, the corporate university has become the dominant framing for Australian universities. This will be a phenomenon familiar to many around the world, typically associated with marketisation and new public management in countries like the UK. The manifestations of this approach to university management and governance typically includes having smaller governing bodies with more external members and more people with business experience.
In the way universities operate, the dominant narrative is the financial implications of student recruitment and retention. International education is where this is the more alive than anywhere else. The importance of revenue from student recruitment drives decision-making, and overall culture.
As the corporate university framing pervades institutional culture, it also shapes leadership. When chancellors set performance expectations for the vice-chancellors, they do so within this corporate context. University KPIs are for the success – as they frame it – of the individual institution. Those indicators will typically include financial outcomes as well as quality proxies like student satisfaction and success attracting research funding.
University boards, and university executives, all work in this corporatised context. The pressures, which seem to be ever-increasing, are to secure success for their university. If that success comes at the expense of another institution, then so be it. If there’s limited demand, the talk all becomes of ‘market share’.
We see the manifestation of the pressures of the corporate university in the education offer made to students. In Australia, for example, the phenomenon of the double degree provides students with the opportunity to combine multiple interests. But they do so by taking extra classes than they might otherwise do for a single bachelor’s award. For universities, this is great because they can secure more ‘student load’ while recruiting fewer students. My observation is that the popularity of the double degree really serves universities more than it does students. Institutions don’t need to innovate their education offer to develop combined programs which deliver the outcomes students are looking for, but more efficiently.
I’m confident – from many years in and around higher education and knowing many leaders and institutions well – that people are working in good faith, and seeking good outcomes. Everyone wants students to learn, and to take that learning wherever they want to. Everyone wants high quality and high impact research. And everyone wants to have a positive impact on society.
We can have all that goodwill, and talented people leading our universities, and still fail as a system. We can still have a system which isn’t serving every student as well as it might. The system can incentivise more research, but not always better research. We can have a system with a revenue obsession which chips away at delivering for students efficiently.
So when we have a gathering of chancellors and vice-chancellors, we need to be honest about the inherent conflict in their position. They are required to act in the interest of their institution. They are not required to, or incentivised to, act in the interests of the sector as a whole. In fact, if acting in the interests of the sector in a way which could diminish the impact of their institution, then there could be significant personal repercussions.
First, let’s be honest that this conflict exists. We should not pretend that the design of the system leaves people ready and willing to work collaboratively. We need also to reflect that this is deeply personal for everyone involved. This is about status and reputation, and about paying the bills. The stakes are high for everyone because leading a university is a very public position and subject to scrutiny from all sides. As vice-chancellors’ pay has risen – with typically earnings over AUD$1 million per year – the financial stakes are very high indeed.
If we can’t rely on our university leaders to work for the system as a whole, where can we find solutions? The answers will need to come from outside, and likely from the political system and policymakers. This may be the class which is critical of universities, but we need solutions from outside and those with a direct interest in collective success.
In Australia, there is a conspicuous absence of State governments in the design of the higher education sector. Funding and regulation come from the federal government, though universities are mostly established by legislation in their respective states. State government also make appointments to university boards.
I’d like to see states more involved because they are the layer of government with the greatest direct interest in the success of universities. State governments want opportunities for their citizens to be educated, they want skilled graduates for their economies, they want research outcomes driving local innovation and impact, and they want universities to be integrated with other parts of the education system.
If we had a greater guiding hand from states, we could start to address social licence with some tangibility. What does it mean to have a successful higher education sector which serves a defined population and not some vague broader community? How can we take collaborative steps for the greater success of the sector locally?
Managing systems of higher education means thinking about how to fund, regulate and incentivise universities. We need to make sure that that happens at the right level. In the Australian context, we can self-flagellate in the sector that no-one loves universities. We can look to institutional leaders to try and come up with answers. But we won’t find meaningful solutions unless we think critically about the system design which could actually lead us somewhere positive.
I’m an optimist. I think that we can have system reform which also drives success of our existing leaders and universities. But we won’t get that through only focusing on pursuing the same ways of working, or following the same incentives, or listening to the same vested interests.
My pessimistic side knows that it’s easier to stick to path dependencies than to secure genuine change. If we are to have the promised solutions, we need space to think differently and more creatively to secure the benefits of higher education.