5.1 Introduction
Chapter 4 discussed the rapid expansion of Australian higher education and changes to the funding and management of universities following the introduction of the Unified National System (UNS). Whilst these changes entailed some unique characteristics (e.g. Australia’s student loans scheme - the Higher Education Contribution Scheme), Australian higher education strongly reflected global trends.
With the creation of the knowledge economy, Australian governments continually reviewed the roles of universities and academic work to determine the most cost-effective strategies to fund the expansion of the higher education sector. This chapter examines attempts by governments to re-define universities, often through industrial means, in order to control the composition of academic work to improve its quality and the student experience. This chapter addresses changes to teaching in Australian universities. These changes included issues of status, measurement of teaching quality, segmentation of teaching functions, including the establishment of teaching specialist positions, and working conditions and support for teaching staff.
5.2 Defining Australian universities
Australia was somewhat unique in requiring all universities undertake both research and teaching. It was mandatory for admission to the Council of Australian University Presidents, and to satisfy Protocol 1 Criteria and Processes for Recognition of Universities, National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes (MCEETYA61, 2000). The teaching-research nexus
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was further reinforced through the Higher Education Threshold Standards (TEQSA, 2011, 2015). The Provider Category Standards (PCS) underpinned the quality framework and TEQSA’s obligation to safeguard the quality of Australia’s higher education and provide protections for all students, but especially the rights of international students.
The definition of Australian universities, and their adherence to the teaching-research nexus, was however challenged in the decades following the 1990s. When the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) investigated future workforce requirements, it questioned whether it was realistic to expect all academics to be equally effective in teaching and research (OECD, 1987). Chapter 4 discussed how the Howard Coalition Government openly contested the link between teaching and research in university work, through its industrial legislation to introduce new workplace agreements62, which the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) feared could “water down the accreditation of universities which would permit the establishment of teaching-only institutions” (Rosewarne, 2005, p 2) and a subsequent drop in status and conditions for academic staff who worked in them. The NTEU therefore remained steadfast in its commitment to the research-teaching nexus as the bedrock of academic life in Australian higher education.
Despite the Rudd Labor Government rescinding this legislation in 1998, more pressure was applied to academic work when the Minister for Education, Christopher Pyne (2013-2015) in the Turnbull Coalition Government, commissioned the Kemp-Norton Review on university funding (Kemp, 2014). The reviewers reported that: “Funding teaching-only institutions at a lower per-student Commonwealth-funding rate would contribute to the fiscal sustainability of the demand driven higher education system (Kemp, 2014, p 66). Pyne did not hesitate to show his
62 e.g. Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements (HEWRRs) (Australian Government, 2005) and
Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) (Australian Government, 2006).
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support for this idea (AAP63, 2014). Although the Review considered teaching-only institutions from a funding perspective, it focused primarily on private providers and whether funding them at a lower rate would ensure competitiveness within the sector. However, due to the diversity of providers and the complexity in establishing a funding formula, it was decided not to proceed with a recommendation on the matter.
The Lomax-Smith Review (Lomax-Smith et al., 2011), which earlier was commissioned by the Gillard Labor Government, noted that most other countries had teaching-only institutions, which were funded at a lower rate than research universities. Both sides of Australian politics regarded the tying of teaching to research an impediment to the funding of universities.
Unravelling the complexities, however, still proved a challenge.
The Commonwealth Government’s Productivity Commission identified “tensions between universities’ research and teaching functions” and believed that teaching “play[ed]
second fiddle to research” (Productivity Commission, 2017, p 2). The Commission believed that this was to the detriment of teaching quality, student experience and outcomes. It proposed that more attention be given to establishing appropriate measurements for teaching quality, with financial incentives to encourage best practice in teaching and penalties applied for poor teaching. It challenged the long-held belief that the teaching-research nexus was essential for teaching quality in order to “justify cross-subsidies from teaching to research” (Productivity Commission, 2017, p 2).
The Commission argued that critical thinking and research skills could be taught by non- research academics, as there was no available data to indicate that research academics made better teachers. The Commission even suggested that in striving to achieve both functions,
“universities (and their staff) [might] lose focus and do neither teaching nor research as well as
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they could” (Productivity Commission, 2017, p 41). The Commission did qualify that this applied more to undergraduate teaching, as it acknowledged that postgraduate students would benefit from mentoring by research academics.
What was significant about the Commission’s approach to teaching arrangements, was its support for the Government’s preference to introduce teaching-only universities to the sector. It maintained that there was “no compelling policy rationale for requiring high-quality providers to conduct research in order to be able to label themselves as a ‘university’” (Productivity
Commission, 2017, p 109).
The link between teaching and research was also questioned by many writers, who believed that their perceived mutual dependence on each other relied on assumed rather than empirical knowledge (Hattie & Marsh, 1996; Marsh & Hattie, 2002; Jenkins, 2004; Barnett, 2005; Coates, et al., 2009; de Weert, 2009; Enders & de Weert, 2009; Henkel, 2009;
Cherastidtham, et al., 2013; Norton, et al., 2013).
The US, France, Germany and the Netherlands chose to establish separate research institutes and graduate schools. Managerial practices in some European universities led to a division within academic roles creating a hierarchy, with those who taught undergraduate students occupying low status occupations. The separation of bachelor and master’s students led to questioning the efficacy of research in an undergraduate environment (Musselin, 2007).
Moses (2004) anticipated that the Government’s intention to fund research and teaching differentially, might lead to “a clear hierarchy of universities on research and teaching
excellence” with the potential for “teaching-only undergraduate universities.” (p 11). Probert (2014b) predicted the likelihood of teaching-only universities remaining on the policy agenda, and Norton & Cherastidtham (2015), anticipated different levels of funding for institutions once
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research and teaching were separately assessed. They believed that the differentiation would better manage higher education expenditure, and that giving the responsibility for undergraduate learning solely to teaching-only staff, would not disadvantage students.
The rationale for merging institutions into larger universities when the UNS was first introduced, was based on economies of scale, to accommodate larger numbers of students
without placing additional financial strain on the Federal Budget (Dawkins, 1988). Thus, whilst, the UNS was deemed necessary to fund a mass system of higher education in the twenty first century, the debate changed to whether the sector was adequately resourced to fund a universal system of higher education (Trow, 1999).
In 2019, the Commonwealth Government endorsed Recommendation 5 in What’s in a Name? Review of the Higher Education Provider Category Standards – Final Report
(Coaldrake, 2019), and “supported the principle that both teaching and research should remain a defining feature of the ‘Australian University’ category” (DET64, 2019d, p 2). However, there would be stricter criteria governing what constituted research and the amount that universities would be required to produce. For those institutions who were unable to “to build the required research capacity to meet the new requirements” (DET, 2019a, pp 8, 9), a new provider category, National Institute of Higher Education, was added to the Provider Category Standards. This category was designed to accommodate the “highest performing higher education providers which [were] not universities” and would allow them to have “a significant measure of self- accrediting authority status” (DET, 2019a, p 6).
By doing this, the Government effectively circumvented another confrontation with the NTEU. Ultimately, funding became the primary motivator for change, given that maintaining
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