Universities and the federal government need a buffer body

Monash Uni chief Margaret Gardner calls for more distance between universities and government.

Group of Eight chair and Monash University vice-chancellor Margaret Gardner. Picture: David Geraghty

Universities and governments need a new “buffer” body to facilitate long-term planning and funding and to protect higher education from the vagaries of changing political pressures.

Margaret Gardner, one of the sector’s most senior leaders, who is Monash University vice-chancellor and chairwoman of the Group of Eight research-intensive universities, has called for the return of an intermediary body similar to the Commonwealth Ter­tiary Education Commission that was swept away in the Dawkins restructuring of the 1980s.

“The notion of a body that provides expert advice to the minister and puts the minister, if you like, at arm’s length from a number of operational matters is quite common across higher education systems … for very good reason,” Professor Gardner said in proposing the new governance model.

“We’re dealing with a very significant sector – ironically more significant now than it was when those bodies were set up.”

With a federal election looming, she said she would be raising the matter: “I will go forward and continue to say these things and by saying them I will be attempting to bring them to attention.”

Professor Gardner said institutions such as universities had long-term impact, and therefore long-term planning horizons and detailed consultation were required to ensure education and research settings were right.

Higher education was a “significant piece of infrastructure” and it was important to “build the strength and contribution of what is a significant asset for the economy, for the long term”.

“We’ve got very significant issues for a sector that is vital to the future shape of this nation,” she said. “And we need to be engaged in serious long-term discussion, planning, setting things up. You don’t want it to be subject to short-term, political cycles.”

The Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission was abolished when former Labor education minister John Dawkins restructured higher education in the late ’80s, triggering a slew of mergers and amalgamations of institutes of technology and colleges of advanced education. At least one other intermediary body was set up subsequently, but nothing of that kind remained.

“Instead of the minister getting the advice independently and then making decisions against it … you got the unmediated relationship between the minister and the department and the universities,” Professor Gardner said of the arrangements that pertained thereafter. “And I don’t think it helped.

“We need a sensible discussion about sustainable funding base to the universities for the future, not piecemeal interventions that are going on at present.”

Issues that could have been considered by a buffer body included the Job-ready Graduates Package legislated last year under former education minister Dan Tehan, which slashed fees for STEM courses the government wanted school-leavers to choose while significantly boosting those for humanities. It had been introduced with “no real consultation of depth”, she said.

“It has changed some very fundamental features of education funding and has split research funding from it, raising the question of what is the sustainable base of research funding for universities?” she said. “We’re still waiting for an answer.”

Professor Gardner said the challenges in preparing the country for the future would make universities “more important to their communities and more central to them, not less”.

“It’s not that the universities will be just about generating graduates, just about commercialisation, but in fact, they have become more important to the readiness for the future through research and education,” she said. “And I think the role will expand and they will be more embedded in creating new spin and start-ups in the ecosystems around them.”

Professor Gardner said a 2018 report from her university’s independent think tank, the Monash Commission, had recommended establishing a statutory agency for post-compulsory education and training that would advise federal and state governments, devise strategic development plans and distribute funding.