Populist slurs about universities contain ‘kernel of truth’

Australian universities have lobbied for political support by enlisting consultancy companies that “know which side of their bread is buttered”, while ignoring widely held stereotypes that contain “a kernel of truth”, a Brisbane conference has heard.

Former public service chief Peter Shergold offered a scathing assessment of the sector’s efforts to sell itself to a sceptical public and body politic. He said universities had allowed themselves to be “boxed into a perceived political position” by being pigeonholed as hotbeds of “woke” cancel culture and trigger warnings.

“Universities which through history have been the democratic bastions of freedom of thought…now bizarrely find themselves being regulated by governments that believe universities have become a threat to the philosophical traditions and values they’ve sustained for 1,000 years,” Professor Shergold told the National Conference on University Governance.

While this was largely a conservative perception, other negative views were “gloriously bipartisan”. Public universities were considered “elite, wealthy and privileged” institutions where leaders were overpaid, cheating was rife and students admitted into teaching courses were “substandard, illiterate or innumerate”.

“Politicians across the political spectrum – some quietly, some loudly – now believe that the quality of university education is declining,” said Professor Shergold, who is chancellor of Western Sydney University. “They argue – some actually think – that too many international students have undermined the quality of education for domestic students.

“Too many young people are being suckered into taking out income-contingent loans to pay for their fees, only to find themselves confined to relatively low-paid jobs which will burden them with repayments for the rest of their working lives. And when they finally die in despair, they will then leave their increasing burden of bad debts to government. The problem for us, if we are courageous enough to admit it, is each of those perceptions has an element of truth.”

Professor Shergold said the sector’s lobbying relied on consultants’ reports about its economic contribution, “which tend to overestimate net benefits”, and surveys suggesting that most people “love universities”.

“Such surveys forget that there is only one real question which influences politicians: namely, will electors’ views of universities be front of mind when they go to vote? That survey would show an entirely different result, because the truth is that university education – unlike school education – rarely influences people at the ballot box.”

An economist and political scientist by training, Professor Shergold became Australia’s most senior civil servant during a two-decade public service career. He said politicians shared the blame for dysfunction in the relationship with universities by making it harder for departmental heads to be “frank and fearless”.

Freedom of information legislation had fostered an environment where ministers did not want advice in writing, and ministerial advisers created networks of “plausible deniability”. Government agencies exacerbated matters by resisting innovation and developing policy without the sector’s input, he said.

Fellow former top public servant Terry Moran, now chancellor of Federation University Australia, said the traditional approach to solving such problems was to establish a “somewhat independent” statutory authority. “Invariably, the department fights to take the role back,” he told the conference. “It doesn’t work very well.”

Charles Sturt University vice-chancellor Renée Leon, another former public service leader, said universities needed to recognise the “interests and the priorities of government of the day”. But she said governments also had a responsibility to work through policy questions methodically before delving into the “dark arts of politics”.

“Sadly, when I came to the sector, it seemed to me that the fundamental policy questions hadn’t actually been asked for a long time. Really, only the politics had been played.”

Australian National University chancellor Julie Bishop, a long-serving former minister, said governments “from either side of the political spectrum” took a very dim view “when a sector is perceived to be barracking politically for a particular outcome at an election”.

“It’s not a fine line,” she told the conference. “It’s quite obvious to those in government.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com