Mass education changes face of university

AUSTRALIA'S tertiary institutions are grappling with their very different role in contemporary society.

Andrew Coles

IT'S a Saturday night at a Chinese restaurant in Sydney's Kingsford and the boys from the University of NSW rugby union Colts are having fun. Harried waiters try to calm a room full of testosterone and beer.

Among the boozed-up boys is Andrew Coles, 18. The Colts' fly-half, Colesy, as his mates call him, is one of 16,000 students to be offered a place to study business at university this year.

With an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank of 67, Coles took up an offer at Australian Catholic University, across town from UNSW. Why? "Because they accepted me," he says.

Coles is one of a record number of students to enter university this year. Under new rules, universities can now enrol as many students as qualify. In January and February, 222,000 offers went out, an increase of 5.5 per cent on last year.

But what "qualify" means varies greatly from one institution and discipline to the next, depending on status and demand.

Coles's institution of choice, ACU, has been one of the most aggressive in attracting new students, doubling in size since 2007. It now has 14,500 students enrolled and, given recent real estate investments, looks like staying the expansion course.

ACU vice-chancellor Greg Craven is among the strongest supporters of the uncapping of places. It's designed so universities can reach government targets to increase the proportion of 25 to 34-year-olds with a bachelor's degree by 2025. The government also wants the proportion of people in the bottom wealth quartile -- under-represented in universities -- who hold a degree to increase to 20 per cent by 2020.

"The market in student places means more people will go to university, and every statistic on offer tells us that as a result they will lead more fulfilled and productive lives, creating a better and more productive country," Craven recently co-wrote in The Australian with University of Melbourne boss Glyn Davis. "And in choosing their education, these students will have a range of opportunities fit to test even the legendary pickiness of gen Y."

AUSTRALIA is not alone in expanding its higher education system. Nations across the world see universities as central to providing the human capital essential to being competitive in a globalised and changing environment.

But the issues confronting our universities are unique to Australia, thanks to a mix of history, politics, student incentives, economic imperatives and social change.

Davis, in his 2009 Boyer Lectures, noted that while the population has "less than tripled since the 1960s, the domestic university population has increased 26-fold".

The opening of the gates to the ivory towers has political bipartisan support.

The rumblings are not about why, but if. What if too many under-prepared students crammed into crowded lecture theatres drag down standards? What if universities opt for quantity over quality? What if graduates end up with empty credentials?

While the Coalition has kept mum on its higher education policies, other than to say quality is critical, opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne went off script when he told a gathering in Brisbane last December: "The tradition of learning for its own sake, the gaining of knowledge as opposed to training, will form the centrepiece of the Coalition's policy in relation to places of higher learning in the years ahead.

"We run a risk of universities becoming merely a set of narrow vocational training programs unless we maintain standards that enable universities to develop attention to research, higher learning and scholarship," Pyne said.

It's not a new idea. In 1942, Robert Menzies, in his famous speech The Forgotten People, said: "Are the universities mere technical schools, or have they as one of their functions the preservation of pure learning, bringing in its train not merely riches for the imagination but a comparative sense for the mind, and leading to what we need so badly -- the recognition of values which are other than pecuniary?"

In academe the agnostics lie low and say little, publicly at least. David Corkindale, professor of marketing management at the University of South Australia, says the issues of expansion revolve around a fundamental issue: what is the purpose of universities?

"Is it to provide the community and employers with workers or is it to educate for education's sake? I don't think those of us in universities are clear on that," he says. "We are supposed to research and contribute to knowledge. And we are supposed to teach based on our research. That's a million miles away from training and employment skills. Maybe that is what TAFE should do."

Melbourne University, under Davis, embraced the notion of broad undergraduate study followed by professional postgraduate study when it overhauled its curriculum and internal structures in 2008. The University of Western Australia has followed suit. But the only truly liberal arts undergraduate college in Australia, along the lines of US colleges, is tiny Jesuit Campion College in western Sydney.

The liberal arts agenda, ironically, may find its feet under the new student demand-driven system. Victoria University has floated the idea of introducing a second tier of broad undergraduate degrees open to all-comers, no matter what their ATAR. Just months into the demand-driven system, VU is on struggle street, having lost its traditional student cohort to offers from more elite institutions, such as Melbourne, Monash and RMIT. Richard James, pro vice-chancellor at Melbourne University, is a supporter of broad degrees particularly for low-achieving school-leavers.

"Less academically prepared students probably need a more general education, at least before they start any sort of professional specialisation," James says. "But the problem with that is the recruitment hook for many universities is not offering a general undergraduate degree but offering something very focused and highly careers specific."

IT'S second semester and Coles says he's settling in and even enjoying his studies. He hadn't known what to expect and chose business because "it seemed to offer options". Despite the bog-standard first-year subjects -- accounting, business communications, information systems and HR -- Coles is enjoying the lifestyle and the relative freedom after years at a Catholic high school.

He still has no idea where his degree will lead him. But the outlook is good. A recent report, Beyond Graduation 2011, which looked at career outcomes five years after finishing university, suggests in his field of study he has a 95 per cent chance of being in full-time work and a 75 per cent chance of working in a business-related field.

But, increasingly, graduates work in areas unrelated to their studies. Only half of law graduates will work as lawyers. Just 2 per cent of teaching graduates in NSW each year are directly offered a position in the state school system. About 4750 students are enrolled in journalism schools, but with 100 entry-level positions in mainstream media, many will struggle to get off the starting block.

Corkindale says: "Does the community, including school-leavers and their parents, need to be made more aware that going to study at a university for a lot of students is, it seems, for 'education's sake', not training for a particular job, profession or career?"

And should universities and government be more upfront about career prospects, particularly in narrow vocational fields? Or is it a case of caveat emptor?

The experts say a university education develops intangible skills and ways of thinking.

"Most graduates gain general skills which apply to all jobs. So while it's deemed a waste if you are not working in the area for which you have been trained, you have learned how to think and ask questions," says Mike Dockery, a labour economics expert from Curtin University.

"Also, being able to complete a university course is a strong signal to an employer that you have what it takes to succeed."

Beyond Graduation 2011 found significant variation across disciplines, with graduates in education, health, architecture and building and engineering the likeliest to be employed in a job related to their qualification, while science and creative arts graduates were "by a considerable margin" the least likely to feel their qualification was important to their job.

Three decades ago, nurses, journalists, engineers and countless other jobs did not require a university degree. Now you can major in surf science. And while there have always been successful people whose occupation is outside their qualification, the likelihood of landing a job in your profession of choice will only get tougher as universities churn out more graduates.

An increasing number of people try to claim an advantage with a postgraduate degree.

In 1980, just 6.7 per cent of university students were enrolled in a postgraduate degree. Between 1990 and 2000 it doubled from 7.5 per cent to 14 per cent and jumped to 26.8 per cent in 2010.

Masters coursework programs, in particular, have boomed since the early 90s, and universities love them as students pay full fees.

ONE of the early and predictable consequences of the expansion agenda has been a fall in the ATARs of students being accepted into university. As The Australian has revealed previously, students with ATARs of under 50 are on the rise. Many with ATARs in the 40s and 30s have been offered university places. These are students who would not have been offered a place in the past.

"The main issue relating to ATAR points is identifying the extent to which a decline in scores is likely to compromise quality," a report from the Australian Council for Education Research said.

That opinion is backed by higher education policy expert Simon Marginson, from Melbourne University. He says unless the government provides significant additional funding directed at teaching, "growth in the system must force a trade-off between quantity and quality, and a fall in teaching standards overall".

But the counter-argument is this: there is no correlation between a low ATAR and success at university. Poor schooling, difficult family life and lack of expectation about academic success are more likely behind the ATAR than a low IQ.

As Craven wrote in response to the series of articles in The Australian: "Apparently, without an ATAR that would have shamed Einstein, Australia's universities will become gulags of mediocrity.

"There is no necessary correlation between a Year 12 score, a course's difficulty or the required quality for students in that course. In an expanding system, the effect is obvious. ATARs typically fall."

James puts it this way: "What we know is that students with an ATAR in the 90s will do well at university. But once you go below 80, then the relationship between ATAR and success at university is much more uncertain. Once you go below 60, ATAR is starting to become a meaningless measure."

James points to the fact we all know people who were hopeless at school but "who turned out to be excellent university students and prime citizens. School does not suit everyone."

But he says universities that accept low-ATAR students should use ancillary measures, such as interviews or portfolios, to check on the readiness and aptitude of these students.

"Recruiter universities . . . have an educational obligation to clearly show why they identify students for particular programs instead of just opening the gates. It's also about expectation. Once you start interviewing or requesting a portfolio, then you start to build up a set of expectations."

THE rationale behind the recent expansion -- which comes with a $5.2 billion price tag -- is that demand for people with degrees is expected to increase through time. The 2008 Bradley review found that even though 130,000 people would graduate in 2018, there would be a shortfall of 22,000. Skills Australia has estimated by 2025 one-third of jobs will require a bachelor's degree.

"We want a knowledge economy, not a resources-based economy," says Kostas Mavromaras, director of the National Institute of Labour Studies at Flinders University. "It's not just that we are having more education, it's that we have far more complex jobs and people need to know more to carry out their jobs. University is not empty knowledge."

Or as Tertiary Education Minister Chris Evans puts it: "It is an economic imperative that we meet these targets. If we don't, we will consign ourselves to low economic growth and will not be able to compete in the future economy."

Worryingly, a recent list of the 20 fastest growing occupations between 2010 and 2020, from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, names just six professions that require a degree.

Certainly, the economy has undergone massive reform since the 80s as technology has replaced clerical and manual jobs and the services sector has blossomed on the back of diminishing manufacturing and agricultural sectors.

"The economy has changed and subsequently the skills mix has moved towards cognitive skills and even more towards people skills," Curtin's Dockery says.

Experts point to increased wages -- common wisdom holds that a degree is worth $1 million more in a lifetime than just completing Year 12 -- saying that even though the proportion of the population with a degree increased from 15.6 per cent in 1997 to 23 per cent in 2010, the earnings premium held up. They say graduates have better long-term health outcomes, make better parents, are more community minded, less likely to engage in criminal behaviour, and pay a whole lot more tax.

But the agnostics want to know what comes first: the people with knowledge (degrees) or the knowledge economy? That is unclear.

As Australian National University vice-chancellor Ian Young asked a roomful of academics last year: "To what end are we developing a more educated society? Where are the jobs and industries to satisfy such a well-educated population? Without basic structural reform of our economy, we could end up with the best educated shop assistants in the world."

Thus far, we have quasi-structural reform of higher education, but not of the next stage of economic reform.

And a demand-driven system, it increasingly appears, may not be enough. As Davis said in his Boyer Lectures: "In an era of mass education, (we) need to re-imagine the prevailing archetype of the university, opening up to new types of institutions, new ways of thinking about higher education."

The idea has been echoed far and wide. Peter Rathjen, vice-chancellor of the University of Tasmania, says the present system, designed around the notion that teaching is informed by research and low student-to-staff ratios, is unsustainable.

"I'm not convinced that 40 per cent of students are necessarily going to benefit from an education that was designed for a very small number of people. There might be a different kind of education that they might benefit more from."

As Corkindale notes, status is the main driver of higher education and an open-door policy runs counter to that. "All vice-chancellors want a high-status university. But what we need is teaching-only institutions, but no one wants to be associated with them," he says. "At the moment, with a few exceptions, all universities are trying to be the same. But is that in the students' interests? Very few people are asking that question. How will things end up? Is competition a common good for education?"