How to educate underperforming Tasmania

Tasmania is last on almost all economic and social markers.

UTas students on campus. Picture: Chris Kapa

It’s a black rain-soaked Thursday evening in late July and Peter Rathjen is standing at a podium at a small civic reception in the northern Tasmania town of Burnie. Outside, Bass Strait waves crash into the town’s concrete port walls. Inside, 30 or so locals sip on beer and listen as Rathjen — black suit, white shirt, pink tie, dapper as a school captain — thanks them.

“In the spirit that we are doing something extraordinary, that we are doing something profoundly important for the future of this state, I would just like to say thank you,” says Rathjen, University of Tasmania vice-chancellor.

The locals nod, knowing their support has indeed contributed to something profoundly important to the future of the state.

Rathjen is almost evangelical, relentlessly selling an audacious plan that when fully realised, he says, will transform the Apple Isle. It’s a long-term, education-driven structural reform of this depressed and government-dependent state.

It will include the rollout of a new class of university degrees — called associate degrees — that are shorter, cheaper and more vocationally focused than full bachelor degrees. It also involves an $800 million infrastructure spend — making the university the biggest property developer in the state — that will draw students from outer suburban campuses and put them smack-bang in the middle of three cities: Hobart, Launceston and Burnie.

It’s also one of the biggest educational experiments undertaken in Australia, raising the interest of the OECD in how struggling regional economies across the Western world can be redeemed.

“The question is, where does Tasmania’s economic future lie?” asks Rathjen.

“It has to lie with higher-value industries, which can only come from a combination of innovation — new knowledge and new ways of using existing knowledge — and from human capital that is capable of using that knowledge.

“The great transformation that will take place will be as a result of the increases in education and innovation that this will make possible.”

Rathjen’s rationale is compelling; his persuasiveness undeniable. Indeed, during the recent federal election he garnered $150m from the federal Coalition — after Labor had already signed up to it. The Tasmanian state government will chip in $75m, which will be matched by the university.

He also has garnered the support of the Greens, Jacqui Lambie and Andrew Wilkie, and 16 of the state’s 29 notoriously parochial local councils. That’s no mean feat.

The need for revolutionary reform was spelled out in a 2013 Griffith Review article by former UTas professor Jonathan West: “Tasmania ranks at the bottom among Australian states on virtually every dimension of economic, social and cultural performance: highest unemployment, lowest incomes, languishing investment, lowest home prices, least educated, lowest literacy, most chronic disease, poorest longevity, most likely to smoke, greatest obesity, highest petty crime, worst domestic violence. It seems not to matter which measure is chosen, Tasmania will likely to finish last.

“The underlying problem is simple but intractable: Tasmania has developed a way of life, a mode of doing things, a demographic, a culture and associated economy, that reproduces underachievement, generation after generation.”

Tasmania has the poorest higher education rates in the country — lower even than the Northern Territory. Just 14 per cent of the population go to university, which sinks to mind-boggling depths the farther away from Hobart you travel. The federal electorate of Braddon, covering the west coast and northwestern tip of the state, has an innovation-crippling tertiary attainment rate of just 8 per cent. Compare that with the ACT’s rate of 40 per cent. Unsurprisingly, just 13 per cent of Tasmanians earn more than $80,000 a year.

As a result, Tasmania does not capitalise on its human potential. As Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell says on a recent episode of his Revisionist History podcast: “A society’s capitalisation rate is the percentage of people in any group who are able to reach their potential — to capitalise on their potential. A country’s capitalisation rate is the single best way we have to measure how successful and just a society is. If I know that number I know how well a country is doing, it’s more clear than knowing their GDP, or its growth rate, or its per capita income.”

Tasmania’s capitalisation rate is atrocious. The challenge is enormous. West, once again, says Tasmanians wear their lack of education like a badge of honour — “an important aspect of being a ‘true Tasmanian’ ”.

“Educated people were regarded as ‘less Tasmanian; and probably worse people, not the sort with one would want to enjoy a beer: full of themselves, stuck up and less reliable.”

On top of that, many parents are scared about providing their children with a proper education for fear of losing them to the mainland or, god forbid, overseas. For Rathjen, an acclaimed stem cell scientist before switching careers into university management, the first and most important challenge is changing the mindset of a population that doesn’t like change, doesn’t trust elites and is fearful of the unknown.

After parents, the next biggest challenge is changing the culture in schools — particularly among careers advisers — and starting in the primary years.

The message that a university education can be transformational must be made over and over again. And then again.

Unlike other states, Tasmania has separate schools, called col­leges, for the final two years of high school. Kids have to move away from home just to finish Year 12 — only half of them do so. University is just a stretch too far.

Because university is such an alien concept, Rathjen is moving his campuses out of the suburbs and into the city centres. Not only will it accustom the locals to the university branding but seamless borders and integrated civic and cultural activities will have them engaging with the university, even if they don’t know it. The new Launceston campus to be built in Inveresk is next door to a footy stadium that hosts the Hawthorn Hawks at least twice a year: fans will have to walk through the campus grounds to see their team play.

As Rathjen says, neither Launceston nor Burnie have seen a major infrastructure project in living memory, so the effects on the local economy will be immediate: the $300m building program is expected to generate 3100 jobs during the construction phase delivering $1.1 billion in economic impact. New buildings are not just changing the skyline; when up and running, the campuses will ­account for about 420 direct and indirect jobs, leading to $430m in annual economic output. An estimated $30m in additional economic activity will come from consumption by students.

“By bringing the campuses into the heart of the cities, we will add life, dynamism and economic ­opportunity,” says Rathjen.

“There we will see that student cohort that is both a consumer base and a workforce embedded in the heart of the cities where the growth of the university can create a much broader economic prosperity for the community.”

In these vibrant modern campuses, a new degree structure — which in many ways hark back to the colleges of advanced education of the 1970s and 80s — will attract up to 12,000 new students into the university during the coming decade.

Economist Saul Eslake, who is also a vice-chancellor’s fellow in UTas’s Institute for Social Change, says he is an interested and objective observer of the Rathjen plan.

“While higher levels of education participation and attainment will not solve every problem Tasmania has, it is the one thing that will do more to solve them than any other single thing,” says Eslake, who was grew up in tiny Smithton in the northwest of the state and is an alumnus of the university.

And he notes that the deeply rooted scepticism and wariness towards education and fear of young people leaving for another, better life across the ocean is writ large on islands across the globe.

“It’s common on islands. We can see it in Newfoundland, in Sardinia and Sicily. There are only three islands in the world that are people magnets for their respective populations: Manhattan, Java and Honshu. Young people want to see what’s on the other side of the trench and older people are worried they’ll leave and never come back,” says Eslake.

The inspiration for the Tasmanian plan comes not from an island but from the US, where Rathjen has closely followed the visionary work done at Arizona State University and the University of California, San Diego. Both universities have successfully funnelled socially disadvantaged students into their research-intensive institutions without compromising on quality or standards.

Like community colleges in the US, the new associate degrees — which in the initial stages at least will come at no cost to students — will align closely with industry needs, especially in emerging sectors. That will lead to a spectrum of job opportunities never before imagined, high-value jobs that help drive innovation that creates new jobs. It’s a virtuous circle.

And based on what he has seen in the US, Rathjen expects at least 40 per cent of students will pro­gress into a full degree — trading their two-year qualification for an extra year at university and a full bachelor degree.

Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman describes the plan as a “dramatic shift in how we will work together to improve educational, social and economic ­opportunities for Tasmanians”.

“We see the university as pivotal in revitalising our regional areas. Tasmania’s economy is transforming and this partnership and shared vision with the University of Tasmania is a game changer that will deliver clever, vibrant and invigorated cities and also a new generation of Tasmanians with enhanced skills and future job opportunities,” Hodgman says.

Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham also is full of praise for the visionary plan.

“The work and vision of local education leaders like the University of Tasmania will be critical to ensuring the state can build a ­highly skilled workforce and remain competitive and productive,” Birmingham says.

Meanwhile, a sceptical Eslake hopes the Coalition will honour its $150m commitment.

“The federal government gave its support before the election and I’d like to think the fact that the Coalition got such poor results in the two seats where they promised that support won’t mean that it’s now not forthcoming,” Eslake says.

“I do note in passing that PM Turnbull has not been unduly kind to Tasmania — he now leads the first government since 1939 that does not have a Tasmania member in the ministry and his GST proposal, if it takes effect, will hurt Tasmania more than anywhere with the exception of the NT.”

Another technicality that could affect the success of the plan falls firmly at the feet of Birmingham. For the plan to triumph it will need the government to extend student subsidies to the new degrees, which are not covered by the present demand-driven system model because they are not full bachelor degrees.

But Birmingham, who is reviewing the higher education policy landscape, refuses to say whether the subsidies will be forthcoming, instead blaming Labor — and the independents, including Lambie — for blocking a higher education reform program pitched by then education minister Christopher Pyne back in 2014.

That plan would have given universities unfettered ­access to subsidies for sub-bachelor programs, including associate degrees. But it also would have deregulated tuition fees and opened up the sector to private colleges — two measures that would have ravaged regional universities across Australia, and UTas in particular.

Rathjen’s plan will start to roll out next year — guaranteed subsidies or not. And it could be 10 years before we know whether it works.

But as Eslake says: “Entrenched attitudes in Tasmania have to be confronted. You can’t just tell people they have to finish school or go to university. You have to provide pathways that are meaningful and accessible.”