To rebuild public trust, step out of ivory tower and work for community
“Whether it’s perception or reality makes little difference now – the point of no return has been crossed,” Deakin vice-chancellor Iain Martin told a conference for the Future Campus website last week. “Perception and reality are essentially the same – and we have a problem,” he said.
But while universities appear disconnected from the real and personal problems families face, there are ways they can fix it by using their vast resources to demonstrate they exist to help. The Wicking Centre at the University of Tasmania that in large part is philanthropically funded certainly does, providing practical advice and information on dreadful diseases that randomly afflict families everywhere – dementia, Parkinson’s disease, traumatic brain injury and multiple sclerosis.
Wicking provides massive open online courses on the diseases and so far the ones on dementia have helped 500,000 Australians, plus another 230,000 subscribers from around the world. And when the Wicking Centre says these courses are open, it means that literally: these research-based, treatment-inspire and professionally produced self-paced courses are free.
The work of Wicking does not generate the sort of research that pushes its university up the international rankings and it attracts surprisingly limited media attention, but if every university had a research resource like it, communicating science to people who need to know it, the university system would have a response to the big problem Martin pointed to.
“Despite the self-confidence of the sector, our value isn’t universally recognised. Universities are often respected individually but mistrusted or criticised collectively,” he warned last week.
Bang on cue, a Senate committee inquiry on Friday produced a scathing report on university governance, adding what ought not need stating: that members of their governing boards “should be equipped with knowledge of the university sector and their role as public institutions established for the public good”.
Scathing stuff, making Martin’s point that “universities exist not only to advance knowledge”.
Martin set out in great detail the challenges universities face to secure their “social licence”, which earns them the willingness of taxpayers to fund their teaching and research, but this isn’t always about course quality. Certainly, there is an avalanche of anecdotal evidence about irrelevant subjects badly taught to not work-ready students. Yet last week’s national student satisfaction survey for 2024 reports an 80 per cent positive rating for teaching quality and engagement. And recent graduates generally report satisfaction with study across courses. (Nursing is worst, agriculture best.)
The big image issue for universities extends across the community, including people who have no contact with new graduates and wonder what universities do that is of any benefit for them. And the standing of the system as a whole depends in each institution pulling its reputational weight. University comms people get this. The ABC would have a lot of dead air without endless stories from universities about research achievements and satisfied students. The problem is they are often about whatever academics want funded, pitched as a community good, rather than responses to what resonates with the rest of us. There is a convention that research articles should conclude, no matter how specific the subject, “more research is needed”.
It is not just a problem for individual universities. The Australian Research Council, which hands out $1bn a year in research funding, does not excel in explaining what grants will achieve. The legally required national interest statement included in each grant is regularly a triumph of obscurity plus sometimes implausible, regularly inexplicable, assertions of what is in it for taxpayers.
As Martin puts it: “Ideas only matter if people understand them. Clarity isn’t dumbing down; it’s respecting those we aim to inform. When our language is open and accessible, our work becomes meaningful and impactful.”
And for all the community-facing work universities do, community outreach isn’t valued like research for other researchers that builds careers and wins funding. The ARC Engagement and Impact case study based performance review on “how well researchers engage with end-users of research” ran only twice before being cancelled in 2023.
But there is another university product that can make plain to the community what is in funding universities for us – service.
Regional universities that depend on community support, translating into local MPs that protect their funding, have to be good at this. During the pandemic the University of New England, had a vaccination team touring the region with free jabs. UNE presented a public debate on vaccination for kids in May – it is a big local issue. On the adjacent NSW north coast, neighbouring Southern Cross University was a huge resource for rescue and recovery in the 2022 floods.
But this is not enough for universities with national reputations to build. Like Flinders University, which ran a national consumer survey last year on the “wicked problems” (no single solutions, winners and losers for every answer) Australians want fixed. The top three of a long list are cost of living, housing affordability and crime/safety. The plan is to run interdisciplinary research and engage students in ways to work on them.
This isn’t about marketing; universities sponsor sports teams to build their brand. They all have programs for disadvantaged students. And they all promote academics who research and campaign (“more funding is needed”) on social and mainly medical problems, which also positions them as caring corporates.
But they do not always demonstrate evidence they exist to help ordinary Australians the way Wicking does. Director James Vickers points to Wicking’s federally funded online short course for anybody, families and workers in the industry both, who needs to know about aged care. Wicking also teaches formal qualifications across its research and community-facing focus.
It is a model the National Disability Insurance Service should expand for its 700,000 participants and their families who want information. Swinburne University is on to this with a MOOC on autism, “to help people take care of your loved one”. Plus staff – the 2023 NDIS review recommended short courses “to progress careers”. It is a natural for every university (and vocational education college) that teaches social work and nursing.
“If we want to rebuild public trust, we must start with a simple question: how does our research serve the nation?” Martin asks. Serve is the operative term – and in ways that Australians all over recognise and value.
Beware revolt of overeducated and underemployed
A third of Australians do not trust universities and two in five agree university managers “are more focused on revenue than quality”, according to Deakin University polling.