Sydney Uni Head Warns Of `second-rate' Institutions
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday March 18, 1998
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, Professor Gavin Brown, has conceded that the quality of higher education is in serious decline, withinstitutions squabbling forlimited public funding while being forced to "dumb down" their curriculums.
He also said in a speech yesterday that Australia could not afford to fund all of its 36 public universities if they all continued to pursue identical goals.
He warned that if the Federal Government did not provide additional funding to cover future pay rises for academics, the system would be thrown into further disarray and result in a "brain drain" of highly qualified staff.
His comments coincided with the release of a study into university enrolments which has found that the number of Australians holding degrees rose by 46 per cent in the five years between 1991 and 1996 to more than 1.45 million (Full report, Page 5).
In a remarkably frank overview of higher education, Professor Brown told a conference in Sydney that Australian universities were at risk of becoming second-rate institutions compared with those in the United States, Britain and several Asian countries.
He said that even the best funded university in Australia was still grossly under-resourced by comparison with major institutions such as the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), or Keio University in Tokyo.
"An optimist might argue that this demonstrates the commendable efficiency of the Australian system, but our competitive position is clearly unsustainable in the long term unless there is a funding change," he warned.
While universities had worked hard to become more efficient and to find alternative revenue sources, the result in the short term had been "an inevit-able decline" in quality.
This was already manifesting itself in crowded classrooms, reduced tutorials, limitedsupport for staff develop-ment, delayed appointment of important staff and cuts to capital works projects.
"We cannot sustain 36 public public universities with more or less identical mission statements," he said. "That does not imply that we should drive some institutions to the wall. Nor does it mean that we should artificially channel funds to a few privileged oldsters.
"It does mean we should overhaul funding mechanisms and that requires an element of market exposure - a system in which . . . universities are free to raise fees at their own discretion."
PAGE 15: The Brown address.
© 1998 Sydney Morning Herald