Ch 3 Relevance, efficiency and the emerging marketplace (1980-1982)

Tertiary education staff were tainted with the same bad reputation that was becoming attached to bureaucracy and the public service generally[1], a reputation that was extended to graduates of arts (“bulldust”) degrees as well:

As the flood tide of these graduates washed over into the world of work, there was really only one place for them to go – into “the government”. Four years of indolence at tertiary institutions had fitted them well for a life of indolence in the public services of Australia.[2]

Universities, students and the types of workers graduates became, all found disfavour among vocal members of the public. Academics’ bad name impacted the reality of higher education, since governments prefer to fund items that have public support. The reputation of “layabout dons” meant that 1981 funding cuts were met with calls for increased efficiency in universities in particular (which were more expensive than colleges), described as needing “more scholar for the dollar”.[3]

Many academics protested reduced funding, diminishing staff morale was reported and students questioned the very meaning of academic efficiency (“53 concepts per hour is not good enough…”, said one student cartoon).[4] Others within the system – especially academics with administrative responsibilities – argued for enhanced efficiencies, criticising the system from within.[5] The position of the staff unions was to support the maintenance of full federal funding and to diligently publicise and criticise the complex and somewhat covert mechanisms by which the government reduced it.[6] But academic protests over university funding or, worse, over academic salaries had little impact on either public sentiment or policy, since it was seen as self-serving whining.[7]

The perception of inefficiencies in the university system was connected, in the pages of the Higher Education Supplement, to disincentives to good performance that many felt was inherent to the system of tenure, or the granting of academic employment for life. Tenure is seen in university traditions to be one of the pre-conditions to academic freedom in that only those who feel secure in their employment can in fact inquire freely.[8] This was one of the key distinctions between academic research and the production of other types of knowledge – academic research was free from a paymaster and therefore more likely to access “truth”.[9] This position had also enhanced the status of the knowledge produced by universities and the status of its knowers – but since their reputation was no longer good, their status was seen to be undeserved. Furthermore, in the early part of the 1980s, tenure was increasingly perceived as privileges of leisure granted to benefit some of Australia’s already privileged elites.[10] Opponents to tenure claimed that it did not support quality work, as (what seemed to be) old-fashioned ideas about academic freedom suggested, but rather supported laziness.[11] The “incentive” to “perform” in a secure employment situation was nil under this assumption. The “rational” choice, theoretically, was to do as little as possible, and many believed that this is what academics did.[12] Many – both in and out of universities – assumed that new employment structures, free of tenure, would encourage increased efficiencies.

Tenure was a “question” that investigations never seemed to be able to give a right answer to. A senate inquiry into academic tenure was launched in 1981[13] only two years after an inquiry had made (but not implemented) a range of recommendations regarding tenure.[14] The new inquiry heard, in 1982, that abolishing tenure would threaten academic freedom and would “not solve the problems of incompetent, lazy or disaffected staff”.[15] Despite this, such was the strength of the anti-tenure feeling that within one year of the inquiry’s conclusion, the question of tenure was re-opened again.[16] The staff unions continually maintained that tenure was related to academic freedom, while those opposed to it considered it to give too much power to old-fashioned and irrelevant layabouts. Knowledge would be better controlled by others, surely?

Government attempts to dictate tenure policy – interfering in the terms of employment granted by universities – was an issue that some saw as an attack on institutional autonomy.[17] This seemed to be a pattern. Universities were under considerable pressure from both Federal and State governments in other areas, too. In 1981, academics were “reeling”, according to one Supplement journalist, from the Queensland government’s attempts to gain more control over universities, even over course content.[18] In the previous year, Victorian universities had successfully avoided government removal of their self-accrediting privileges (granted under the rationale that if universities can’t identify and maintain knowledge, no one can).[19] The Liberal Fraser government’s “razor gangs”, which forced amalgamations of Colleges of Advanced Education to reduce the total number of higher education institutions, were seen to be further evidence of growing government interference and diminishing institutional autonomy.[20] The funding squeeze was perceived as the cause of the loss of autonomy – starving institutions could not easily defy their funding source. This led many within the higher education sector to assert the probability that diversifying sources of income would release universities from their dependence on – and therefore control by – governments,[21] for example:

A few pessimists did warn then [early 1970s, when higher education was made free] that universities would rue the day they relinquished fees, state grants, and the pursuit of private bequests. … The moral is that universities which wish to exercise their freedom must decrease their dependence on a single paymaster.[22]

State and Commonwealth Governments, by the 1980s, were using public funding to support a system with which the public was now clearly disenchanted. As a result, they not only sought economies (such as college amalgamations[23]) but also sought to compel the institutions to change. It was these attempts that put pressure on the universities and led them to protest against the undermining of autonomy. The types of changes governments were concerned about related to the public’s perception that universities (especially) were teaching and researching useless and irrelevant knowledge – resulting in attempts to control course content and accreditation by state governments.[24]

As well as increasing attempts by governments to influence the character of university-based knowledge, forces both external and internal to universities and colleges sought to shift knowledge to a model of “relevance” to the world beyond the cloister. “Respond to community needs, says principal,” read the headline, where one College of Advanced Education head said:

Colleges and universities run the risk of becoming obsolete unless they examine new ways of responding to legitimate community needs.[25]

In order to encourage research that might gain public approval, in 1981 the Federal Government sponsored the inauguration of Centres of Excellence based on an assessment of “value to the nation”.[26] Professional and industry bodies started to seek involvement in curriculum review to influence knowledge in ways that traditional academic approaches would neglect.[27] From 1980 to 1982, the potential for partnering with industry was seen as one way to ensure academics conduct more “relevant” research, though it did come attached to some fears for academic freedom.[28]

Things could hardly get worse. Poor public opinion, interference from governments, a reputation for bureaucratic waste, academic irrelevance and perceived elitism were added to declining funding. Neither institutional bank accounts nor public relations were improved, either, by a general decline in student numbers. Largely for demographic reasons, the early 1970s growth in student numbers reversed by the late 1970s in most OECD countries.[29] In Australia, universities saw declining enrolments through to (and including) 1982, which included a reduced percentage – from a smaller pool – of school leavers entering higher education.[30] This decline contributed to public opinion that higher education funding should decrease, since there were fewer people to teach. It also actually decreased funding, since a certain amount was allocated on a per student basis. Scarcity of students led, for the first time, to competition between the universities in attracting them:

The drive to enrol students took a new turn a couple of years back when the traditionally staid Sydney University began to sell itself in the marketplace.[31]

Warnings in 1980 that universities might damage their reputations if they were to treat themselves as a product to be sold “like soap powder” were not heeded.[32] By 1982, the Supplement described advertising to attract students as common practice.[33]

Commodification – that is, an emphasis on exchange rather than use value – is not a “natural” state for anything, just as no object is inherently a gift. Since it requires some consensus that exchange value is that which is valued, commodification is a fundamentally socially, as well as economically, constituted process.[34] Educational opportunity – places in undergraduate programs – are just one of higher education’s potentially saleable “products” (the others including education, degrees, academic labour, research services, the products of research and, less tangibly but nonetheless real, knowledge). When universities started to consider the value of education as exchange (conceived from an institutional perspective as student numbers – students who were gradually becoming consumers) all participants in higher education understood the act of advertising to be a commodifying event – Sydney University was “selling itself”.[35] In showing some consumer advantage to Sydney, it subtly repositioned educational opportunity as a purchasable product, despite the fact that no money changed hands directly. As soon as Sydney did this, it forced explicit competition with other institutions, compelling them to also treat their “product” as having exchange, rather than intrinsic, value.

Naturally, some were supportive of this move, while others felt it to reduce education to the status of “soap powder” (some may actually have considered soap powder to be an elevation of academics’ status, given their poor reputation at the time). Others undoubtedly felt that it was high time this unnecessarily privileged elite had their status reduced – a theme of some members of the incoming (1983 federal election) Labor government’s approach to higher education.[36] But what is significant is that once Sydney University started to “sell itself”, with this single act it turned the system into a marketplace, forcing the other universities to commence the commodification process as well.

What was missing from the exchange between student and university was money and there were many who felt that a financial exchange would improve both teaching and learning by increasing their (exchange) value in a tangible way. Fees held a symbolic as well as actual relationship to education and knowledge in the creation of a higher education “marketplace” and those who felt an educational marketplace would improve the situation (and reputation) for higher education, were keen to see fees in place. While discussion of fees was growing within the higher education sector, seen often as a means of potentially gaining some autonomy from interfering governments, commodification of education could commence without fees – for exchange value is not confined to money. And of course, from a university administration perspective, it matters only a little whether per-student income comes from the student or somewhere else. What is clear from the early part of the 1980s is that incentives were developing for both government and university administrators to seek reintroduction of a user-pays system. Additionally, the reputation of universities for irrelevant knowledge and the growing belief that building relationships with industry would address this problem, was a precondition to the next major commodifying event of the 1980s – research commercialisation.