From the Vice-Chancellor: Going for gold

Vice-Chancellor

As a nation, Australia was collectively appalled by its performance at the 1976 Montreal Olympics when it achieved no gold medals.

The Fraser Government created the Australian Institute of Sport and successive governments have invested heavily in sporting development and facilities. Consequently, this country constantly punches above its weight in sporting endeavour and it was not too long ago when, almost simultaneously, Australia held the world titles for cricket, rugby league, rugby union, netball, the men's no. 1 tennis ranking, numerous swimming world records and so on.

Sport is clearly a national priority. When the will exists, we can become the best. We've made a judgement about what we could be good at, and we've invested accordingly.

But what of universities?

On the world stage, investment is focused squarely on the development of higher education systems that are responsive to the challenges of the 21st century.

Across the world, governments are acknowledging the need for rapid and major diversification if universities are to be truly competitive. But in Australia, after years of crippling under-funding, and a clear indication that the higher education system is losing ground, government policy must not just favour specialisation, but must actively drive it, if Australia is to attain the highest levels of excellence on the world stage.

In France, the Operation Campus program announced last year sees investment of e5 billion in the creation of centres of excellence, some of which will include confederations of existing universities but others, significantly, will be new. Germany has increased its R&D funding by a third in three years, with nearly e2 billion alone for improvements in university-based research and innovation in the five years to 2011. The Canadian Research Chairs program, established in 2000 to fund 2000 research chairs over seven years, has now been permanently established, with competitive annual funding of CA$300 million.

In China, the Project 211 infrastructure program has seen something like US$15 billion invested in infrastructure since 1995; or Project 985, which has funded an initial group of 9 universities to the tune of US$1 billion each, and now includes around 40 universities, each of which receive tens and in some cases hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding in an explicit investment in the future of the nation.

Last year India announced a 21% funding increase to double the number of top-tier institutions in the short to medium term. Indeed, there is speculation that some 1500 new universities will need to be created in the next 5-10 years. The funding needed to support an expansion of this kind will be unprecedented.

And what of Australia? Most of our mainland capitals have several universities. Many of them duplicate programs, service and infrastructure, and there is much that the Government could do to drive reform where the benefits are obvious, like facilitating the transfer or exchange of disciplines, rationalising campus sites (or providing new ones), and even assistance with mergers. Through creating more rational concentrations we can move to more effective specialised institutions or centres of excellence.

I'm not proposing a sort of Stalinist rationalisation here. I'm talking about clear policy incentives to enable our universities to position themselves profitably in the increasingly free market. And we must ensure that, competitive though we will be, there is enough room in our market place for most to thrive.

University funding should follow the strategic choices we make to promote excellence. The system must provide the mechanisms for supporting that goal, unconstrained by methodologies that dilute resources and talent through institutional equalisation. While I don't discount the importance of Olympic Gold medals, perhaps in a rankings list that included both academic stars and sports stars, the former should rightly lead the field.

This has been edited from the Vice-Chancellor's presentation to the Higher Education Summit in Melbourne in April.

PROFESSOR JAMES A. McWHA
Vice-Chancellor and President