Policy paucity ‘ruining Australian universities’ revival efforts’

Canberra’s shallow thinking is hampering Australian universities’ efforts to repair the damage from Covid-19 and contribute to national economic recovery, a panel of Queensland vice-chancellors has argued.

Bond University vice-chancellor Tim Brailsford said that the state’s eight universities were “trying to do the right thing” by Australia. “But unless we have a bit of leadership as to what Australia really looks like, we’re not at a fork in the road,” he told the Committee for Economic Development of Australia forum. “We’re in a big soup ladle, thrashing around the bottom, trying to come up with ideas.”

Professor Brailsford said that discussion about “big Australia”, with predictions that the country’s population would grow by half in 40 years, had disappeared. “Behind the scenes, they’re talking about little Australia – how small should we shrink?

“Our economy is built on the basis of economic growth, which is underpinned by population growth, and neither of those things are happening at the moment. If we don’t really start to think about what Australia and the Australian economy look like going forward, we’re going to miss the moment. We are seeing a bit of headline policy – when you scratch beneath the surface, there’s not an awful lot there.”

Lack of population policy is directly impacting university operations, he added. “Will someone just tell us whether or not they’re actually going to let an international student in the country within the next two or three years? Then we can work on a plan.”

Griffith University vice-chancellor Carolyn Evans said that if Australia could not give international students a sense of when borders might open within three months, it risked losing them for three years. She said that the government had left universities to fund research, facilities and innovation precincts from international students’ fees. “If that’s not the plan going forward, what’s the alternative plan?”

Central Queensland University vice-chancellor Nick Klomp said that about 70 per cent of international students’ spending went to local communities rather than institutional coffers. “If I don’t have a campus in a particular town in regional Queensland, the mayor comes and asks me: ‘Why not?’ And [if] I do, they ask: ‘When are you going to get more international students?’”

Fellow panellists expressed frustration with the government’s move to make universities reframe their business models around commercial returns from research. “You can go down the path of imagining this doesn’t require additional investment,” said James Cook University vice-chancellor Sandra Harding. “The fact is, it will.”

Queensland University of Technology vice-chancellor Margaret Sheil said that overseas commercialisation initiatives such as the UK’s Catapult programme had demonstrated the need for sustained government involvement. “When I hear ministers talking about commercialising research, sometimes it’s translated into the government getting out early,” she said. “The government has got to stay in much longer.”

University of Queensland vice-chancellor Deborah Terry said that Australia lacked “big schemes” to guide commercialisation, such as Japan’s Moonshot programme and the UK’s Grand Challenges. “These are where governments are setting big priorities for the economic future, and universities are part of the solutions.”

Professor Klomp said that rather than develop such schemes, Canberra had saddled universities with the upheaval of a new funding regime. “If the government isn’t going to do big projects or [offer] tax incentives for research and development, they can at least get out the way. What we’ve experienced, though, is new legislation – in the middle of Covid.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com