Unis must stop just demanding funds and move with the times

‘The challenge for university lobbies is to explain why they need more money to do new things that deliver a return for taxpayers’. Artwork by Emilia Tortorella

Universities did not get everything on their red bike and pony wish list in the budget – but endless asks is the way they do business. When demand for their products drops, they call on the government to hand over more money so they can keep doing what they have always done pretty much in the ways they have always done it. Some get it isn’t working – many more need to.

Luke Sheehy from peak lobby Universities Australia made the standard case last week, when he called on government “to provide the full and proper support our universities need to deliver for the nation”.

“If we are to ever meet Australia’s future workforce needs, our universities will need to grow physically. We will need more classrooms and laboratories to educate a million extra students by 2050,” he said.

And he warned that international student revenue, which can cover “commonwealth funding gaps”, is under bipartisan attack, which rather ignores that there is more to migration policy than university revenue streams.

But there is something missing in such sells of what universities need – details of how they will deliver for the nation in changed times. Traditionally, universities base calls for more funding on research achievements but now they argue their people with their degrees drive productivity they have to make a wider case.

The assumption that public funding can and should insulate universities from change in their markets means business strategy is based on an endless Oliver Twist, always asking for more public money and government protection.

It worked while they controlled the means of education production, which is not now.

University managements have long assumed that their self-­accrediting control of courses and power to issue qualifications would see off competitors. Problem is that people who need a specific skill can now pick it up online, or in person for a fraction of the cost of a traditional course

There are MOOCS, massive open online courses, on absolutely everything available from low- or no-cost providers – generally taught by academics. Anybody inclined can create their own business or IT course from what is on the internet. And giant corporates of the Apple-Google-Cisco kind accredit their own courses.

Last week, TAFE got into the game, with the government announcing there can now be vocational degrees, with the same status as a university bachelor course. The new degree will be delivered in the BET sector, include apprenticeships, and teach “specialised knowledge and technical skills”.

Universities are also slowly expanding their own course ranges – when government makes them. When last in power, the Coalition pushed for micro-certificates, although accreditation is stalled. Labor has added undergraduate certificates to the formal range of courses on offer. Both are short and focused on specific skills crossing the spurious divide between education and training.

And then there is the way courses are taught. Enrolments in digital short courses on using GenAI are up 850 per cent in the last 12 months for online provider Coursera. But in universities plenty of people focus on AI not as a transformative teaching tool but a threat to the credibility of courses (students cheating).

This should be strange because academics are early adopters – the way they started teaching online as soon as Covid launched lockdowns was a credit to everybody who learned to fly the metaphoric education jet while building it. Flights were bumpy and students were soon sick of it (satisfaction scores for 2022 plummeted). Still, the system survived.

But online classes, let alone AI teaching support, do not fit with the preferred business model that still includes the 1000-year-old live lecture. And those with acres of expensive real estate want everybody on campus. Uni Melbourne ordered staff and students back before Covid was finally gone, because, as provost Nicola Phillips put it, “being part of campus life is how we can all play our part in creating a vibrant and ­supportive scholarly community, where students and staff thrive”.

Which sounds like corporate middle managers claiming staff who have to commute three hours a day are more creative in the CBD. The pandemic ended the office monopoly as the only place where interactive work can be done. Ditto for study.

University education is not going all online but the idea of undergraduates living their best lives learning on campus ended when study became something people fitted around work. Last year’s survey of starter students by the NSW Universities Admission Centre found what they expect on campus is free Wi-Fi (84 per cent), followed by 24/7 facilities, free or low-cost food, cheap gyms, communal space, and low-cost parking.

Universities don’t have a monopoly anymore on where people learn or the packages study comes in. But some, most, continue as if they do – wanting classes on campus with students studying multi-year degrees instead of them learning wherever and whenever suits their schedule. The general university response to change in demand is to cut the cost of doing what has always been done instead of creating new products.

Some universities get it. Victoria University has created the “block teaching model” with students completing a single unit with intensive teaching rather than studying a whole subject across a semester. It is a natural for a big VU market, first in family university students with little academic experience.

Federation University in regional Victoria was not in great enrolment shape with range of traditional degree traditionally taught. So it has adopted “the co-operative education model” to link students to employers throughout their courses.

RMIT has “degree apprenticeships” which provide what they say, combining classroom study and workplace application. It is one of six universities that teach voc-ed as well as training and is making the most of the opportunity to break down the increasingly artificial divide between the two systems.

In South Australia, Uni SA and Uni Adelaide are merging – the intention is create the scale to crack the international education market – but there is also a new course structure, including a common core of subjects including AI and entrepreneurship.

And as for the next election reducing international student numbers, some universities have always understood there is more than one way to make a motza. Uni Wollongong has had a campus in Dubai for 30 years. RMIT is big in Vietnam. It is brilliantly placed to profit (and there’s a word universities rarely use) from the government’s recent decision to expand access for international providers. Deakin University and Wollongong both invested time and money in India over decades. It has paid off with their being the first two overseas universities to be licensed to have their Indian campuses.

The challenge for university lobbies is to explain why they need more money to do new things that deliver a return for taxpayers and make them a better bet than all the other services people consume. It won’t be easy – the other week The Australian reported a Newspoll which found bipartisan majority support for increased government spending to help people with cost-of-living pressures. Presumably including Labor’s proposal to reduce graduates’ HECS debts by 20 per cent.

Universities have a choice: change in many different ways to suit the markets they want to compete in and do it fast; or do what they have always done and decline slowly but surely, most certainly surely.