Picking mission winners

20 February 2014

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We’ve long argued here at The Scan that a fixation with the so-called  ”teaching-research nexus” as the defining characteristic of an Australian university limits diversity and access.  It’s long past the time for refining the concept of a university college to recognise a new university type with an explicit  teaching orientation.  La Trobe University vice-chancellor said much the same at the launch of Melbourne Polytechnic – a welcome addition to the tertiary landscape.  In this op-ed pieced for The Australian, Simon Marginson, formerly of Monash and Melbourne universities, now  professor of international higher education at the Institute of Education, University of London, renews his own call for greater mission diversity.

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Like his predecessors, federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne has called for greater mission diversity in higher education. He’s referred specifically to research-focused and teaching universities.

Everyone wants diversity. The question is what kind of diversity and how to achieve it.

And how to overcome all the pressures that point in the opposite direction, towards a single-mission template – the large-scale teaching and research university, comprehensive of the disciplines and a potential global powerhouse.

If the minister is serious, policymakers will need to think laterally.

After 25 years of competition in the national system we know market forces spontaneously foster conformity with the single template, not deeper diversity. Some still argue that when more deregulation and competition are introduced, this will trigger diversity. This claim is looking tired.

Global rankings, which reinforce competition, have entrenched the template. So have the economics of scale and the focus on university-as-corporation, brands and the pulling power of degrees. Every university is competing for the status of a leading or emerging research university. This is essential for recruiting international students and attracting talent at home.

The system is arranged in a steep vertical hierarchy where, moving downwards, each university is a weaker copy of the Group of Eight. At a global level all Australian comprehensive universities appear in deficit to Harvard and MIT. There is already actual diversity between research-focused and largely teaching universities – global research output in the bottom tier universities is modest – but no one admits it.

Thus, despite good intentions, Mr Pyne’s version of diversity is a post-hoc rationalisation of the existing single-mission hierarchy. More open and honest, to be sure, but not enabling genuinely different kinds of institution. Let me illustrate the problem and a possible solution with an anecdote.

On February 5, the director of the London-based Institute of Education, where I work, announced the institute was in merger talks with its Bloomsbury-based neighbour, University College London. UCL is world top 25 in reputation and research, one of England’s big four along with Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial College. UCL lacks a school of education and is attracted to the IoE’s strong performance in British research assessments.

For its part the IoE is finding it more difficult to stand alone. Part of the University of London network, it is autonomous in governance, administration and identity with its own degree-awarding powers. This makes it vulnerable to sudden changes in policy, such as the recent withdrawal of public funding from non-STEM disciplines. It is also outside rankings and the Russell group. The lack of a global university brand is becoming difficult to explain.

Specialist discipline-based institutions ought to be a valuable form of diversity, in which disciplinary teaching and research contents are uppermost.

The potential is obvious in the arts, music, humanities, media and film training, medicine and business education; even in social sciences, as shown by LSE. When well run, open and nimble on the ground, specialist institutions can be especially effective in fostering particular professional cultures, contributions, clienteles and funding.

This potential contracts when the discipline shifts to a comprehensive university. Yet specialist colleges have largely disappeared in Australia and are under pressure elsewhere.

Unless government intervenes to modify market competition, perhaps only the leading medical and business schools are strong enough to go it alone. Significantly, most opt for comprehensive university brands, while negotiating considerable autonomy.

How can specialist institutions be encouraged? Mr Pyne could stop funding all institutions on a uniform formula (small colleges have diseconomies of scale), and foster academic development and research, donor tax breaks and start-up facilities.

Specialist institutions need visible government backing to compensate for being unranked.

Is the political will there? It would take courage to find the money, more courage to break with one-size-fits-all. This formula is favoured by the bureaucracy less because it is fair than because it minimises conflict.

But we pick winners in research. We must. Why not when funding missions?
 

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