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This opinion piece was written by Professor Aidan Byrne. Professor Byrne’s former roles range from Dean of Science at the Australian National University to ACDS Executive Member, CEO of the Australian Research Council to Provost at the University of Queensland. This has given him a broad view of the changes across the university sector in recent decades.
Australian universities have undergone a profound transformation over the past 30 years. Many of our major universities are in the top 200 globally, which is extraordinary for a country of just 27 million people. This transformation has been driven by Australian universities realising that they have a valuable commodity: the international student, and the capability of delivering quality education.
The shift in student revenue has forced universities to be more like businesses, reshaping not only funding structures but also institutional priorities. Most of the big universities now have a bigger revenue stream outside of what the government gives them, and it’s given them a degree of independence.
Universities have grown into multibillion dollar institutions, with thousands of people within them. They’re straddling the line between public institutions and corporate entities. Compliance demands have grown, and institutions face criticism over issues like vice chancellors’ salaries, which are higher than the public service but much lower than the commercial world of a business of the same scale.
The new revenue streams have enabled a significant investment in research and the development of research-focused institutes within the university. It’s allowed universities to grow to the point where they’re now doing almost 80% of Australia’s public sector research.
The University of Queensland provides an excellent example where, seeded by philanthropic money and government support, the institution was able to build a number of focused institutes. It completely transformed the ranking of this university on the world stage. That focus on research, sustained largely on the back of international student revenue, has provided a tremendous boost to research capability.
The increase in international student numbers and the increased research intensity in these institutions has provided a challenge to the traditional academic employment model. In particular, the discipline profile of teaching the extra load is not the same profile as the research intensive areas.
As a consequence, the old “40/40/20” profile of an academic where there was an expectation of 40% of one’s time spent on teaching and 40% on research is no longer able to be sustained for the majority of the academic workforce. A solution, which is non-optimal was to create research only positions, which have no particular pathway to continuing appointment, and to create a casual teaching workforce where job security is even more tenuous. While many institutions are moving to provide greater security of employment for teaching staff, the discipline mismatch remains an ongoing problem.
Universities are similarly challenged by the concept of academic tenure which makes it extremely difficult for universities to change the academic profile in either the teaching or research domains! The situation is not parallel to the public service wherein staff can be redeployed much more readily.
The government and the community don’t fully appreciate these changes in the university environment, or indeed the value of universities to Australia. They still believe that universities must be public institutions completely beholden to what the government might want to do, but the harsh truth is that they are much more complex. Debates are looming over cuts and caps on the international student market. So it’s crucial that the government – and the public – recognise this positive story of how international students have shaped Australian higher education and research over the past 30 years.
Written by Professor Aidan Byrne, Emeritus Professor, School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Queensland
