A Class of its Own

A C l a s s of it s O wn

QUT

and Its Predecessor Institutions

College of Nursing Aust.

(Queensland) 1960

Brisbane School of Arts

1849

Brisbane Technical College

(BTC}

1882

Central Technical College

(CTC}

1908

Queensland Institute of Technology

L

¹⁹⁷⁸

(QIT}

1965

Queensland University of Technology

(QUT}

1989

Brisbane Kindergarten Training College

1911

Brisbane Kindergarten Teachers' College

(BKTC}

1965

Queensland Teachers' Training College

1914

Kelvin Grove Teachers' College

(KGTC) 1961

Kelvin Grove CAE (KG CAE)

1975

Brisbane CAE (BCAE) inc Mt Gravatt

1982

QUT

1990 -

Kedron Park Teachers'

College (KPTC}

1961

North Brisbane CAE inc Carseldine

1974

A Class of its Own

A History of

Queensland University ofTechnology

Noeline Kyle

Catherine Manathunga Joanne Scott

HHLf

& IHffiOnGU

--

in association with

QUT

© QUT, 1 999

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism, review , or as otherwise pe rmitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher.

Typeset by DOCUPRO

Level 1, 92 Chandos St, St Leonards, NSW 20 1 5 Printed and bound by

Colorcraft, Hong Kong For the publisher

Hale & Iremonger Pty Ltd

PO B ox 205, Alexandria , NSW 20 1 5 National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Kyle, Noel ine, 1 940-.

A class of its own : a history of Queensland University of Technology.

Bibliography.

Includes index.

I SBN 0 86806 659 1 (hbk) . ISBN 0 86806 64 1 9 (pbk) .

1 . Queensland University of Technology - History. 2 . Universities and colleges - Queensland - History. I Manathunga, Cather ine. II Scott, Joanne, 1 966 ^- III. Title.

37 8 . 9432

C ontents

Foreword 6 7 From 'B inna-Burra ' to Br isbane

Preface 8 Co llege of Advanced Educat ion

(1 972-1989 ) 1 27

I: The Beginning

8 Convergence and Conso lidation:

1 A Univers ity for the Rea l Wor ld 13 The Ama lgamat ion of BCAE and

II: Pioneers and Predecessors: Technical QUT (1989-1 990 ) 1 47

Education and 1eaching IV Queensland University of 2 Or ig ins ofTechn ica l Education in Technology (199o- 1999)

Queens land: The Schoo l of Arts and 9 Cu ltivation of the New: Research

Br isbane Techn ica l Co llege at QUT 1 70

(1 849-1908 ) 27

Un ivers ity of the Year: Teaching and 1 0

3 'As Long as the State Lasts': Centra l Learn ing 188

Techn ica l Co llege (1 909-1 965 ) 46

1 1 Management and M ission: QUT in

4 'A Go lden Opportun ity': A Teachers' the Un ified Nat iona l System 202 Co llege for Queens land (1 9 1 4-1972 ) 64

Abbreviat ions 2 1 6

5 Service and C itizenship: Br isbane

Notes 2 1 8

Kindergarten Training Co llege

(191 1 -1972 ) 8 3 B ib liography 233

Ill: Advanced Education to Amalgamation Index 239

6 'A C lass of its Own': Queens land

Institute ofTechno logy (1 965-1988 ) 1 04

F orew ord

6

T

he story that this book tells is important both to the people who make up the QUT c ommunity, and to the larger community of those involved, either now or in the past, in p o s t -secondary education in Queensland. While as a university we value the story of the surprisingly large range of institutions that constitute our past, this com­

plex history is also a large part of the story of p ost-secondary education in the State.

As the authors rightly p oint out, the educational traditions that dominated Q UT's predecessor institutions - technical and voca­

tional education outside the university system - were also the dominant traditions in Queensland post-secondary education as a whole in the second half of the nineteenth and for most of the twentieth century. With the radical changes to higher education in Australia in the late 1 980s, QUT was the institution in Brisbane that brought these traditions into the univer­

sity system. Simultaneously, other new univer­

sities were performing similar functions in other States - particularly the four universities in the other mainland capitals that together with QUT form the Australian Technology N e twork. B u t , as the authors argue,

Queensland's distinctive system of p ost­

sec ondary edu cation, c entred aro und the institutions described in this book, meant that for many years most of the State's professionals were educated outside the relatively small university sector.

Q UT is immensely pro u d of b oth its achievements in its relatively short time as a university and of its links to a much broader history of p o st-s e c o ndary educ ation in Queensland. These twin themes are nicely embodied in the slogan for this anniversary year ^-' 1 0 years of Q UT, 1 50 years of service '.

While no one institution has endured for anything like the 1 50 years that this book covers, there i s a real sense of continuity in the stories of these various institutions that all pur­

sued pragmatic and vocational education, and maintained close links with the business and professional communities they served. It is a story of qualified success and halting progress, and it contains many sub-plots that may not obviously relate to the main narrative. Yet I hope that it is a story that, apart from its great intrinsic interest, can also help us in today's Q UT to formulate the particular values and

7

FOREWORD

qualities that we bring to Australian higher education .

The short part of the history that belongs to Q UT proper is of course the one in which I have been most intimately involved. It is important to remember that for 'new' univer­

sities like Q UT, the ' Dawkins' changes of a decade ago involved forging a whole new cul­

ture and not merely rep ackaging exist ing organisational units. For those of us involved in the creation of Q UT, these were exciting chal­

lenges: the challenge of bringing new disci­

plines and professions into the university curriculum, the challenge of creating a research culture, the challenge of moving away from the highly regulated world of the college sector to a new model of governance, and the chal­

lenge of amalgamating separate institutions and campuses into a cohesive whole. I am delighted to see the history of Q UT's birth told so well in this book. It is, I trust, not the least inter­

esting of the many stories that this book so engagingly tells.

Professor Dennis Gibson Vice-Chancellor, QUT

Prefac e

T

his history of QUT began as a simple idea to retrieve and preserve the surviving records of Queensland higher education, but finally grew into a much larger proj ect: to write a history of Q UT and all of its prede­

cessor institutions. Collecting remained a sig­

nificant part of the proj ect however and over the four years of our research and writing we have collected new documents as well as copied others from various sources. We were dealing with thirteen predecessor institutions and 1 50 years of higher educational history and we did not know until we neared the end of our writ­

ing just how much of it we would actually use.

So we collected everything, like bower birds, hoping that even if we did not use it specifi ­ cally, that we could keep it for other researchers in the future. We continue to hope that our col­

lection will provide a substantive b ase for a future QUT archive and for other histories that are yet to be written.

The three writers wanted the writing task to be an interactive and s hared process.

Although in most instances we chose to write draft chapters individually we stayed with a collaborative writing format and were able to maintain a shared writing and editing process at

8

crucial times in the construction of the history.

We believe it is unusual to find three women writing the history of a university: most other university histories have been written by men or have senior authors that are male. Our approach to the construction of the history is therefore coloured by our gender. We chose a policy-and -people approach to the writing. We sought to illustrate gender differences, how stu­

dents experienced the changes from college to university, and to highlight the history of administrative as well as of academic staff. This approach will not suit all readers. For those readers we commend to you the research ma­

terial of the history of Q UT and hope that other histories encompassing more broadly the administrative, legislative and p olitical frame­

works will be written and that other stories will be told, recorded and published to add to the range of perspectives on our past.

Although we set out to conduct oral inter­

views with as many and as wide a range of staff/students and ex-staff/students as possible, this publication never aimed to be a substan­

tive oral history. This is not to deny the importance of o ral memory, b u t i t is to acknowledge that this present history is, first

and foremost, a history based on documentary sources. Our oral history interviews have been archived at Q UT and we hope that future researchers will conduct further interviews and continue to keep this oral tradition alive. We were always keen to include oral interviews and did gather valuable, interesting data in this way. At the same time, the richness of the doc­

umentary sources for all of the predecessor institutions meant that we were able to cross­

reference and triangulate on most issues across a range of sources, except perhaps for the ear ­ liest institutions. There were, at the same time, significant gaps almost always pertaining to stu­

dents and general staff. With more time and more funding to carry out detailed research we could have closed these gaps. However, within the constraints of the generality of our history and its vast coverage and the deadline set to finalise the manuscript for publication in 1 999 we have, we believe, provided the most com­

prehensive history of Q UT possible at this time.

All history is selective. Some of the earlier draft chapters we have archived recognising that future researchers would have some interest in both the detail we had to excise as we met the word limit of our publisher and also the way in which we selected some material and not others. Thus, in the archives can now be found the original documents we worked from, the earlier drafts and the final manuscript. We hope these documents which map our j ourney through the writing of this history of Q UT will endure and provide a more detailed record of the past.

With a work such as this we have many individuals and institutions to thank. Our thanks to the Vice-C hanc ellor, Professor De nnis Gibson for the Q UT initiative grant which provided the research assistance to collect the major part of the material we needed to write our history. We thank Professor Alan Cumming who was unfailingly supportive in providing a home for the proj ect and technological support

9

PREFACE

of a substantive kind. We need to thank our interviewees who all gave freely of their time and were generous with their memories. Jan Nixon deserves very special thanks for compil­

ing a history of the Australian Centre for Strate­

gic Management for our proj ect. Maree Parker found missing editions of the QIT handbook.

Rhonda Allison and Fay Elliott from Central Registry, Q UT, were invariably patient and consistently helpful with our many and varied queries. Eddie Clarke and Rosemary Mammino sorted out our c onfu sion and led us easily through the maze of the records of the History Unit, Education Queensland. We are grateful for the help of archivists and librarians at the Queensland State Archives, the John Oxley Library, the Brisbane City Council Archives, Creche and Kindergarten Association Records, and Q UT Library. We wish to thank the Direc­

tor- General of Education for permission to access education files within the 30-year period at the Queensland State Archives. Some indi­

viduals lent us special historical material, includ­

ing photographs: Bill Mason, Audrey Pontin, Frank Stevenson, Paul Inglis, Paul Wright, John Whitta, Judy M c Donnell, Allan Yarrow, Clare Glazebrook, Lynne Woollard, Barbara Hose­

good, Kerrie B ell, Scott Johnston, Maj orie Eldred and Marion Hay were all generous in this respect. Q UT Publications lent us back c opies of Inside QUT, Pro Vice-Chancellor Information Tom Cochrane shared a folder of information about the library at QIT and Di Lewis provided substantia l materia l on QIT and kindly lent us the manuscript of a history of

QIT written by her late husband Trevor Lewis.

Mr F.A Pitt and Mr Cec Anstey wrote to us with memories of CTC. Nan Durrans and Desley Malone wrote to us with important data on Kelvin Grove Teachers College and Kathleen Shillam and Verlie Just shared with us memo­

ries of the Art Branch at the Central Technical C ollege. The Development Office deserves our thanks for their untiring efforts to link us to the

A CLASS OF ITS OWN

alumni of the many predecessor institutions of QUT. Gaynor Austin, the Q UT Librarian made our research and w riting so much mo re effec­

tive with he r support fo r ou r resea rch. Stephen Rainbi rd, Q UT A rt Curator, was unfailingly courteous as he steered us th rough both the history and the a rt of selecting the colour plates for this book from the Q UT Art Collection.

Leanne Cutler guided us through the archives of the Academy of the Arts, selecting colour illust rations to represent the perfo rming and expressive arts. We owe particular thanks to the photographers who contributed to this book:

Janice Crawford and Lynn M c Grode r who copied many of the difficult illust rations from annual reports, newspape rs and journals ; Briand Hand, Jon Haigh, Ian Poole and Sonja de Sterke who copied the artwo rks for the colou r inse rt;

Q UT photog raphers Suzanne Plestwidge and Tony Phillips for thei r research and photogra­

phy from Inside QIT and Inside QUT; and the unknown photog raphers from the early pe riod who thought that educational matters we re impo rtant enough to be photograp hed so often and so well. A s well, Tony Phillips and Suzanne Plestwidge provided useful informa­

tion on the collection of photographs held by Q UT ; and thei r expert advice aided both our selection and plac ement of illustrations th roughout the book.

The re a re other individuals we need to thank: Arnold Reuther, Ron Goward, Betty

10

Q u elhurst, Ruth Kerr, Peter Hinton, Phil Candy, Rob ert Hardingham, and Ian Ginns were supportive and helpful to ou r research. We were ve ry lucky to b e located within the School of Cultural and Policy Studies whe re educational history and sociology continue as impo rtant pursuits. Mr Peter Meadmo re was a mine of information about the histo ry of Queensland education and we a re grateful for his gene rosity and tole rance as we tapped him on the shoulder to ask yet anothe r question about the history of education in Queensland.

Associate Professor Lime rick, Head of School, was inva riably supportive of our work.

We need also to thank Dr Tom Watson, Dr Geoffrey Swan and o ther membe rs of the Queensland History of Education Society who were unfailingly helpful with advice and info r­

mation about educational histo ry in Queens­

land . We owe a g reat debt to the many researche rs and w rite rs who understood the importance of history in higher education and who ca refully compiled and published histories of the Queensland institutions in Q UT's past.

We have drawn liberally on these works and acknowledge here their great worth both to our resea rch and to Queensland educational history. We a re grateful to the t ranscribe rs who worked on our oral interviews. Finally, we owe a special debt to our edito r Heather Cam who has done such exceptional work on the final editing of our manusc ript.

art I

THE BE GINNIN G

__

1_2-tl-

A CLASS O F ITS OWN

Gardens Point campus

Kelvin Grove campus

Carseldine campus

1

A Univers ity f or the Real World

T

he Act of Parliament that provided for a fourth university in Queensland was passed in November 1 988 by the Ahern National Party government. This new university was to amalgamate with Brisbane College of Advanced Education (BCAE ) in 1 989, barely twelve months later, to set Queensland Uni­

versity of Technology (Q UT ) on the pathway to becoming one of the largest universities in Australia. By 1 996 only the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne, and Monash Uni­

versity were enrolling more students.

O perating from January 1 990, the Queens­

land University ofTechnology had a well-estab­

lished research and consultancy profile and four-year degree programs in place, some of which had been offered since the mid 1 970s.

These had been established by its forerunner Queensland I nstitute of Technology (QI T ), which had been a college of advanced educa­

tion since 1 965. With its strong consultancies and research background and the capacity to develop and teach degree programs , Q UT brought to the merger with BCAE substantial Australian Research Council (ARC), National H o s pital and M e di c al Research C ouncil (NHMRC ) and other com petitive grants, con­

tacts with industry and business, plus a long e ducational tradition stretching back to the mid-nineteenth century. In its last five years of

___

14_,1f-

A CLASS O F ITS OWN

operation QIT had expanded its mission well beyond the restrictive and narrow conce pt of technical education that had dominated its early years as a college of advanced education and that of its predecessor Central Technical College.

However, the events of amalgamation, which established one of the largest modern universities in Australia, is only one part of the story to be told about the foundation of Q UT.

The post-1 987 reforms in Australian higher education policy have tended to overshadow and obscure the complexity of the history of Q UT (and QIT ) and BCAE. It is not sur prising that with amalgamation and, since the late 1 980s, the development of a national unified system of tertiary education in Australia the new universities thus created would be highly focused on devel o ping their organisational structures, research profiles, and postgraduate cohorts, and hurrying to situate themselves as credible, c ompeti tive universities for the looming 1 990s.

The complex historical pathways which map out the educational traditions, organisational changes and policy decisions of the thirteen predecessor institutions (see Appendix) of the amalgamated Q UT are described in detail over the following chapters. The three post-secondary educational traditions central to this past (tech­

nical education, training for primary and secondary teaching, and the kindergarten move­

ment) resulted in a unique post-compulsory education system for Q ueensland. Their philoso phy, pedagogy, goals and vocational professional training dominated the nineteenth century entirely in a State where university edu­

cation was debated but only grudgingly allowed.

During the twentieth century and until the 1 960s, technical education and teacher training continued to train most of the professions in Queensland. Although such post-secondary edu­

cation was always seen as separate to and second to the universit y, it was to remain a significant tertiary model for the State.

There is much to be found in the rich technical educational history of QIT and its predecessor institutions which sheds light on the policy decisions and the value placed on courses offered at technical colleges: policy decisions and value j udgements made, in the main, by university personnel eager to downplay the probl ematic b oundaries b etween late nineteenth-century and twentieth-century tech­

nical colleges and the universit y, and politicians willing to cut educational s pending to the bone.

With amalgamation in late 1 9 89 with the BCAE , the new Q UT incor porated another significant educational tradition: teacher training that could trace its origins to the same building at Gardens Point that had housed technical education and the later university classes.

Formal teacher training (primary, secondary and kindergarten ) had a slow start in Queensland with the pu pil-teacher system of

training remaining in place until the 1 930s, whereas in other States such as New South Wales it had been abolished by 1 905. In the 1 960s Queensland secondary teachers had the lowest pro portion of graduates in the service (20 %) with the highest pupil-teacher ratio.1 In a State where distance was clearly a major force shaping lives, Queensland was much slower than o ther States to introduce c orre s pondence schooling and the much publicised Schools of the Air did not make their a ppearance until the 1 920s. Therefore, the Queensland Teacher Training College established in 1 9 1 4 and the Brisbane Kindergarten Training College estab­

lished in 1 9 1 1 were important signposts for change in formal training for the professions in Queensland.

There is little doubt that education policy has emerged as an essential economic as well as educational policy tool in strategies for macro­

and micro-economic reform for Australian governments in recent decades. Policy changes in relation to higher education, schools, and Tech­

nical and Further Education (TAFE ) have been

far-reaching and arguably more significant than at any other time in Australian educational, social, political and economic history. Yet, as the following chapters outline, policy change in higher education has always been significant in Australian society especially with regard to college and university, but also concerning the relationship of school to work and the growth of knowledge in science and technology and its a pplication to business, industry and the com­

munity. The range, number and variation of post-secondary institutions and their points of intersection through amalgamation , their increasingly multifaceted organisational struc­

tures and aims, the gendered character of post­

secondary learning and the different policies, practices and outcomes envisioned and then realised over the decades alert us to a rich and complex historical task for ma pping the foun­

dations of QUT and its predecessor institutions.

Before 1 960, c olleges and universities in Australia were very separate entities thought to complement each other and to offer quite dis­

similar learning experiences to different groups.

However, the binar.r system emerging out of the Martin Re port- brought into existence a vibrant and quite different advanced education sector which increasingly and aggressively sought more o perational funding, recognition for its degree courses and the o pportunity to gain greater access to research dollars. The emergence of the modern, some might argue, postmodern university from this history can be charted roughly using Peter Scott's typology moving from the elite university-dominated model of the pre-1 960s through to a stratifi ed higher education system in the 1 990s. Although the term 'unified national system' was coined to describe the system put in place by the Dawkins' reforms of the late 1 980s in Australia and is used to define similar reforms in the United Kingdom, Scott argues that stratification is the most recent outcome as the system, although maintaining a c ommon external

A u N 1 v E R s 1 rv F o R r H E R E A L w o R L o

Its

framework, is highly differentiated internally either because of political action or through the operation of the market.3

More recently in Australia the Group of Eight (Go8

/

universities argued in their sub­

mission to the West Review that such stratifi­

cation be furthered with a new binary; one that would see their universities much more highly funded as research institutions and the post-1 987 universities less well funded and thus skewed toward a different future as teaching universities. The c ounter argument has been put by the Australian Technology Network (ATN ), a group of five Australian universities of technology. While defending the traditional c oncerns of a commitment to quality research and teaching issues, within the ATN issues of equity, ethnicity, and closer links to business and industry are cited as complex and strategi­

cally important markers for the future, and all constitute areas of particular concern for higher education policy in the future. 5

This was light years away from the small elite university of the pre- 1 960s organised within the context of old assum ptions of cul­

ture and class and the AVC C Report of 1 952 and the Murray Committee of 1 9576 which delivered their recommendations and advice in the context of a small number of university enrolments Australia-wide. Queensland had one university which, by 1 940, had only 1 7 1 0 enrol­

ments. Most post-com pulsory education in Queensland was found in the technical col­

leges and in teacher training. This was not to c hange until the 1 97 0 s when c olleges of advanced education and two new universities, James Cook and Griffi th, were established.

These latter developments arose out of the rec­

ommendations of the Martin Committee and the subsequent work of the Wark Committee and were to result in significant policy change to higher education for Queensland.

The binary system of higher education, which began with the establishment of QIT

_

___;1:..:6-+1-

A C L A S S 0 F I T S 0 W N

and ended with the final amalgamations of 1 98 9 -90 is the most signi ficant pe riod of expansion in post-compulsory education for twentieth-century Queensland . In the south­

ern States the universities of Monash, Flinders, La Trobe, Macquarie, New England and New South Wales had all emerged by 1967. But, in the north, technical education, teacher training and advanced education constituted the most wides pread and complex band of post-com­

pulsory education and training for the nine­

teenth and then the twentieth century in Queensland. All of the important education re ports for this modern period of Queensland history generally ignore university education and are more concerned with teacher education and/ or primary and secondary schooling. This focus on technical education and teacher train­

ing and then advanced education forms the background to a history of Q UT and to the beginning of a national unified system of higher education in Queensland. The preference for a non-university pathway to professional train­

ing was thus well established. The predecessor institutions such as Central Technical College, the Teacher Training College and Q IT offered real opportunity for post-compulsory educa­

tion to large numbers of Queensland students unable to gain access to the elite and restricted university sector. In addition, these institutions had set in train the range of programs forming the fundamental basis of later university courses at QUT, especially in the fields of engineering, science, education, business and law.

The boundaries which mark the transition from a college of advanced education to a uni­

versity are not located neatly at one point in history however, since the new universities cre­

ated from 1 988 by the Dawkins' reforms were most often negotiated in the context of com­

peting interests and complex negotiations which changed almost daily. The final outcomes were not neatly drawn or quickly resolved. The first shift to university status occurred in 1 989 as

Q UT began the process of advertising for foun­

dation professors for its schools and consoli­

dated the roles of its Council, the Vice-Chancellor, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and other senior s taff. The amalgamation with BCAE from 1 990 required further modification in organisation and structure. An interim Coun­

cil, debate on a fi nal structure, and the further a ppointment of senior staff followed.

The starting date for the amalgamated Q UT was 1 May 1 990 following the drafting and passing of a bill by the Queensland Parlia­

ment based on the terms of the Memorandum of Agreement b etween Q UT and B CAE Councils. 7 With the amalgamation b etween Q UT and B CAE agreed, the first Q UT Coun­

cil became an interim University Council for the new Q UT with membership b eing ' an amalgam' of BCAE 's Academic B oard and Q UT's Academic Committee. The Consolida ­ tion Implementation Committee, set u p in res ponse to the amalgamation with a brief t o develop academic and non-academic structures, had membership drawn equally from Q UT and BCAE. It was to meet regularly to provide rec ­ ommendations to the interim Council on b oth administrative and academic matters for the newly amalgamated university. At the time it was still a possibility that Queensland Conser­

vatorium of Music (QCM ) would also amalga­

mate with Q UT, but Q C M subsequently negotiated to merge with Griffith University.

The organisational models posed for the new Q UT were considered further by Council at the May 1 990 meeting in the light of general organisational and administrative policy. The Consolidation Im plementation Committee met over the following months of 1 990, with Coun ­ cil approval of the final structures made at the 24 October meeting.8

In their discussions during this time Coun­

cil were clearly concerned with a broad range of political and policy issues. The influence of contem porary debate on management of the

A UN IVERSITY FOR T H E REAL WORLD

111

CHANCELLOR DR CHERRELL HIRST WITH QUT'S EXECUTIVE TEAM: Mr Ken Baumber, Registrar; Professor Dennis Gibson, Vice-Chancellor; Mr Tom Cochrane, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Information Services); Dr Cherrell Hirst, Chancellor; Professor David Gardiner, Pro Vice-Chancellor ( Planning and Resources); Mr Lionel Ledlie, Deputy Chancellor (effective 1998); Professor John Corderoy, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and Advancement); Professor Peter Coaldrake, Deputy Vice-Chancellor. (Absent-Ms Annabelle Chaplain, Deputy Chancellor 1997) (QUT)

tertiary sector was evident as they discussed the ' soundness' of having senior academic staff members also in substantive roles as senior administrators; whether fixed terms of ofiice were a ppro priate for senior managers ; the extent of external involvement in QUT affairs and the ' c ompromises' to freedom and/ or benefits that might accrue; equality of repre­

sentation of faculties in decision making and whether chairpersons of Academic Committee and faculty b oards should be elected o r appointed. The Council considered numerous submissions from faculties, divisions and indi­

viduals from the two amalgamating institutions.

It was a lengthy, c omplicated and diffi cult

process. Not all stakeholders were pleased with the final outcomes, although it is generally considered that this was an amalgamation that proceeded with a fair amount of goodwill and a minimum of resentment from both sides.

The a ppointment of Professor D ennis Gibson as Vice-Chancellor signalled continuity from the strengths QUT brought to the amal­

gamation as well as the promise of new chal­

lenges from an academic leader with extensive overseas and Australian experience in intellec­

tual and administrative matters. Born during World War I I , Gibson s pent his childhood in a small mining village in Northumb erland, England. Educated at Gosforth Grammar School,

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=-:lS'--11 -

A CLASS 0 F ITS 0 W N

he gained a Northumberland County Exhibi­

tion to attend Hull University where he obtained first-class honours in Mathematics and was awarded the university prize for Mathemat­

ics in 1 963. He was by then just twenty-one.

Although Vice-Chancellor Professor Gibson's major academic work focused on industrial mathematics with his initial research into blast furnaces for British Steel, he has always returned to pure mathematics for his philosophical under­

pinnings for policy and planning and for his intellectual and practical ideas.

Leaving Hull University, Dennis Gibson trained in hydrodynamics at University of Newcastle-u pon-Tyne where he studied for his Masters and then gained his doctorate in mag­

netohydrodynamics. When he arrived in Aus­

tralia in 1 982 to take up the position of De puty Director at Q IT he came from five years expe­

rience as head of the Department (later School ) of Mathematics, Statistics and Com puting at Newcastle-u pon-Tyne Polytechnic. He recalls this as an important turning point in his acad­

emic career as he steered what was a diverse group of academics toward a common and dis­

ciplined future.9 A ppointed a professor in 1 979 at the young age of thirty-seven, Gibson had both a scholarly gaze firmly embedded in a traditional science as well as commitment to strengthening the links higher education could make to business and industry.

When taking u p his first Australian appoint­

ment of De puty Director, Dennis Gibson was unab le to retain the tit le of professor and had to wait seven years until 1 989 to regain the professorial rank he lost with his career change from England to Australia. As the Courier Mail noted in a feature on the Queensland Vice­

Chancellors in August 1 996, Dennis Gibson would be the most senior Vice-Chancellor in the State, but he misses out on this distin­

guished honour because QUT was not offi ­ cially a university until 1 989.10 Yet, his role as Director of QIT was in practice more that of

a Vice-Chancellor than that of a Director of an I nstitute, as the 1 980s moved to a close. Vice­

Chancellor Dennis Gibson was not ham pered by any attachment to outdated or ineffective styles of management. He favoured a small executive, a lean and efficient organisation and was well known to be firmly committed to quality, excellence and what he was later to call 'customer service.' 1 1 But, his was also a democratic and collaborative style of leader­

shi p and his view of how this was to work in practice was to shape and steer the events of the 1 990 amalgamation between QUT and B CAE and final outcomes.

Arriving at QIT in A pril 1 98 2 , Gibson found a college of advanced education (CAE) located on a city campus (Gardens Point ) where students and staff had a strong attachment to the institute and its future. I ndeed, when the idea was first floated that the institute amalga­

mate with various other institutions to become a university in line with Dawkins' imperatives, Council was adamant that QIT should not do so. This was an institute that had been success­

ful in gaining a strong research and develop­

ment profile as a college of advanced education.

At the same time QIT continued to meet its obligations in teaching, consultancy, professional work and, to establish strong links to business, industry and the community. There was, it was thought at the time, no pressing need to see radical change to what a ppeared to be working well already. A similar hesitation was ex pressed when early statements were released about an amalgamation between QUT and B CAE, espe­

cially in the context of the image of B CAE as narrowly centred on teacher education. But of course B CAE had also changed dramatically over the years. Such change could be charted in the greater range of courses offered by this time. These included commercial and business studies, a pplied science, humanities, perform­

ing and visual arts, social science, as well as teacher education. 1 2 The mission, goals and

overall ethos of B CAE had changed and like most CAEs it had b egun to aim for semi­

university status and greater autonomy. It was already b eginning the process of construct­

ing a different future to that originally envis­

aged by the architects of the b inary system, which had domina t e d Australian higher education.

The following cha pters describe in more detail the events of amalgamation. It is enough for now to note that Dennis Gibson moved very quickly in his role as the first Vice-Chan­

cellor of the new QUT in 1 989 and 1 990. The a ppointment of foundati on professors, the develo pment of a structure for the I nterim Council, the a ppointment of a Chancellor, course development and consolidation, the need to restructure the university's academic and administrative units, the a ppointment of lead­

ership at Pro Vice-Chancellor and Registrar level and the inevitable race to garner funds in a com petitive higher education sector occu­

pied him continuously during this time. All of these factors would impinge on and under pin how successful QUT would be as a newly amalgamated university and its potential to stand alone as a modern university in the 1 990s.

Decisive and effective leadership was crucial, as was a sound knowledge of the communities QUT would be serving in the longer term as higher education policy took on a sharper more cutting edge in the mid to late 1 990s.

Vice-Chancellor Dennis Gibson took the lead with one of his first public pronounce­

ments to staff at the newly amalgamated QUT in 1 989 when he noted that one of the maj or forces likely to im pact on the future would be market forces. Almost a decade later the Vice­

Chancellor's planning guidelines for 1 998 make these earlier pronouncements even more telling given recent events under the federal Liberal government. C iting the unc ertainties with which the university sector is o perating in the context of higher education policy he writes,

A U N I V E R S I T Y F 0 R T H E R E A L W 0 R L D

119

Whatever the outcome of the West Review or gov­

ernment policy decisions, QUT's future will depend on its ability to compete in a market environment, both for students and for research funds.t3

These broader concerns about the changing role of the university were to be central to higher education in all Australian States as the federal Labor Keating government and, latterly, the Coalition Howard government have begun the process of clawing back funds and chang­

ing their funding policies for higher education, cutting and changing the access and availabil­

ity students now have to the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS ), and forcing uni­

versities to re-examine their priorities in terms of courses that would run, those that would be cut and how best to meet and satisfy student and community demands within a shrinking funding base.

The traditional universities in Australia would also find change difli.cult. Using history and tradition to gain a lead in the academic race, they would nonetheless have to recon­

struct themselves as corporate entities, position themselves as global businesses, and face the prospect of savage cuts to operating budgets. As Kerr has noted in his assessment of how the modern university has c o ped with policy change in the Western world:

A lesson from the history of higher education in the Western world over the past eight centuries is that heritage is a great force in the life of individual institutions. It gives away reluctantly; although it does give way. Consequently, change comes more easily through the creation of new institutions. It is easier to change systems of higher education than to change individual institutions within higher educa­

tion.14

Dawkins had echoed this dictum in his Green and White pa pers in the 1 980s, arguing that change, if it were to eventuate, would do so in a new set of institutions. Not surprisingly newly

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A CLASS O F ITS OWN

amalgamated univers 1t 1es like QUT, Curtin University of Technology, Royal Melbourne I nstitute of Technology (RMI T ) and those established in the 1 960s and the 1 970s -such as University of Te chnology Sydney (UTS ), Monash, Macquarie and Wollongong-were more likely to relish the challenge of such change. They had, of course, in most cases to overcome problems inherent in management of large, newly established institutions and lacked the research base and established scholarship of the older, traditional universities. On the other hand, the newer institutions could choose to shape and imagine their own futures and QUT, with its rich educational traditions drawn from technological education, teacher training and the CAEs was rapidly to begin the new and exciting process of c onstructing itself as a

modern university. QUT was also a city uni­

versity. If town and gown were once thought to be a dangerous combination where not every city wanted 'unruly students' in close proxim­

i ty to s h o pkee pers or the sites of political administration, such was not now the case. The modern university is not only welcome in the city, it has become the sine qua non of how connected trade, education, technology and cul­

ture ideally might be. QUT had b oth heritage and place on its side at its Gardens Point and Kelvin Grove campuses and was to continue to build important relationships within and about the cityscape and heart of South East Queens­

land and the city of Brisbane.

There were other im portant futures to be imagined as well. If a market-driven philosophy of higher education policy was being grafted

QUT LIFE FELLOWS REMEMBER OLD DAYS: Jack Parkinson (Chair of QIT Council, 1974-83), lan Cameron (Chair of QIT Council, 1983-87) and Vic Pullar (Chair of QIT Council 1987-88 and foundation Chancellor of QUT until his retirement in 1994) take time out to discuss old times at a special function in May 1995 (QUT)

onto universities, willing or not, QUT had also to develop strengths in research and scholarship, build on existing strengths in teaching and learning, and ensure that equity and access poli­

cies reflected the broad-based community from which QUT drew its students. As early as 1 989, QUT began the process of laying the founda­

tions of a strong research base with the devel­

opment of centres of research excellence that were aimed at both consolidating resources and, as well, supporting doctoral study and the scholarship of staff. Q UT was already aiming to be a 'university of the real world' with a strong commitment to applied as well as pure research and a mission to collaborate with and support, through its research and teaching, industry, commerce and business and the broader com­

munity. Also it was concerned to have a stronger commitment to an intellectual and scholarly ethos more appropriate to a modern university. 1 5

The inauguration o f the QUT established in 1 989 was symbolised by the installation of Vic Pullar as the first Chancellor in October of that year and his support was crucial to the initial vision Vice-Chancellor Dennis Gibson held for QU T A consultant engineer, Vic Pullar had been chair of Q IT council since 1 98 7. His working life had been spent with McDonald Wagner and he was a maj or archi tect of the design, construction and management of the Gateway B ridge, Brisbane, and o ther maj or engineering works in central Queensland. A scholarship boy at Brisbane Grammar School, he obtained a cadetship in engineering from the Brisbane City Council and completed his stud­

ies part-time at the university when it was sit­

uated on the same campus as QI T Pullar was an honours graduate and external member of the University of Queensland Faculty of Engi­

neering Academic Board before taking up his appointment with QI T. He began his lifelong interest in the development of postgraduate education in that p osition working with Peter

A U N IVERS I TY F 0 R T H E REA L W 0 R L D

121

Swannell then in the University of Queens­

land Engineering Faculty, and now Vice -Chan­

c ellor of the University of S outhern Queensland.16 When first appointed to chair Q I T C ouncil in 1 98 7 , Pullar was keen to advance teaching and learning, but also he saw the need to place greater emphasis on research and postgraduate study as did the then Direc­

tor Dennis Gibson.

Vic P ullar had taken a leading role in putting the formal case for QIT to become a university to the Minister (Littleproud ) on 16 May 1 988. He travelled to the USA in Sep­

tember 1 988 to look at university models espe­

cially in relation to their involvement with industry and the professions. Thus, QIT was anxious to retain its already well-established links to industry and to marry this with a new vision of a technological university of the future. This was not to be any easy task given the further complicating factor of an amalga­

mation with B CAE and the concomitant increase in size, the change to a multi-campus organisational stru C"ture, and the other complex academic and organisational shifts this entailed.

Professor Tom Dixon was appointed Deputy Vice-Chancellor of QUT in November 1 990 after serving in that capacity during the interim organisation from mid 1 98 9 . Deputy Vice­

Chancellor Tom Dixon had been a lecturer at QIT from 1 967 in what was then known as ' General Studies' within the Department of Management. He had been with QIT as it grew from a small institute focused p rimarily on engineering and business and saw the changes as the institute grew in numbers and diversity and as it began to offer a broader range of pro­

fessional education and training. As a s taff member in the new institute, Dixon had been keen to introduce changes where the learning experiences would encourage what he termed 'a verbal' as distinct from a narrow instrumen­

tal or 'mathematical' pathway to business.17 Pre­

viously a high-school principal and small school

22

J

A CLASS O F ITS OWN

teacher in outback Queensland, having trained at Kelvin Grove Teacher Training College in 1 95 1 , Dixon went to Rensselaer Polytechnic, New York, in 1 976 to study for his doctorate.

Armed with a doctorate in communications he returned to QIT as head of a newly created Department of Communication to begin the task of introducing degree programs. He took up the position of Deputy Director in 1 983 and worked with the Director Dennis Gibson from then to introduce the shift at the institute toward a greater emphasis on research and con­

sultancy, postgraduate study and degree pro­

grams that would lead ultimately to its rapid march toward university status in 1 989.

The Registrar appointed for the new uni­

versity was Brian Waters. A widely liked, per­

sonable long-standing senior manager from the institute, Waters brought to the new university a vision that his role should have a strong stu­

dent-centre d focus: a s tyle he maintained throughout his long career, although the posi­

tion did change as QUT expanded and he became more involved in policy and planning and thus more removed from the daily life of students. 18 The two new appointments of Pro Vice-Chancellor Academic and Pro Vice-Chan­

cellor Research and Advancement were to be the first women to occupy a place on the QUT executive. Professor Millicent Poole who was appointed to the Pro Vice-Chancellor Research and Advancement p osition was also the first female Pro Vice-Chancellor appointment to be made in an Australian university. Professor Mil­

licent Poole had come from Monash University where she had been head of the School of Social, Administrative, Comparative and Policy Studies. With a long career in the fields of life­

span development, life choices for women, lan­

guage and c ognition, and p olicy researc h , Professor Poole was an outstanding scholar in the field of education. Professor Janice Reid, since appointed Vice -Chancellor to the Uni­

versity ofWestern Sydney in 1 997, also brought

to the university a distinguished academic back ­ ground. One of the first Australians to study the impact of Western medical systems on indige­

nous health issues, Professor Reid became a special adviser to the Commonwealth Govern­

ment in 1 978 for the Committee on Aborigi­

nal Affairs. As Pro Vice-Chancellor Academic, Professor Reid's responsibility for academic affairs, equity, academic staff development, the Oodgeroo Aboriginal Unit, and teaching and learning was a huge and c omplex task. She came to that task, however, with a great deal of optimism and a large amount of experience in both the advanced education and university sector having worked across the two sectors in the amalgamation of the University of Sydney and Cumberland College of Health Sciences before her arrival at QUT.

The first university professorial appoint­

ments had been approved in mid 1 989, before amalgamation with BCAE, with fifteen full pro­

fessors and twenty ass ociate professors appointed. One woman, Associate Professor Gillian Palmer, made the list. Most of those appointed in this first round were already in substantive appointments . These app ointees were people who would lead the university into the future and the Vice-Chancellor argued that it was important to retain the integrity and the value of the professoriate to ensure the university's capacity to retain quality staff and attract top applicants in the future.19 The first professorial app ointments from among staff from B CAE were made in 1 99 1 . These appoint­

ments included Emeritus Professor Alan Cum­

ming who had arrived at B CAE in January 1 990 as Head of School and who was later to be Assistant Director. Emeritus Professor Cum­

ming came from the University of New Eng­

land where he had been Head of the Department of Social and Cultural Studies. A distinguished history scholar trained at the Uni­

versities of Auckland, Otago and London, Pro­

fessor Cumming co-authore d the first

A UN IVERS ITY FOR T H E REAL WORLD

Orientation Day at QUT, 1998 (QUTJ

---'2=-4=--!1- A CLASS OF ITS OWN

comprehensive history of New Zealand educa­

tion and has maintained a scholarly career in the history of Australian and New Zealand edu­

cation. He and Professor Paul Thomas led the initial negotiations which culminated in the successful Heads of Agreement between QUT and BCAE. Professor Cumming held the p osi­

tion of Acting Pro Vice-Chancellor Academic during the implementation year of 1 990 and was appointed Dean of E ducation in 1 99 1 . Emeritus Professor Cumming continues to lead one of the largest and most successful faculties of Education in Australia at QUT.

The final organisational structure of the new QUT reflected the changing nature of authority and management being experienced in the national unified system of higher edu­

cation in Australia and overseas. Peter Scott explains mu c h of what happened t o the post- 1 987 university sector in the Western world as encapsulated by the twin themes of mission and management. He argues the mis­

sion and management of universities have moved radically from a traditional civic, don­

nish and pseudo-democratic set of ideals to a p ostmodern phase of what might be loosely c alled corporate managerialism. It is argu ed that the c o mplexity o f universities, their larger and more heterogenous student b ody, coupled as these have been with savage cuts by governments to tertiary budgets, had led inex­

orably to a managerial culture of efficiency reviews, a reconfiguring of disciplines and departments, and a weakening of the com­

monality or collegiality once thought to be reflected across the university campus. ²⁰

In traditional terms, the mission of a uni-

versity was to pro duce an educated citizen or in the words of Cardinal N ewman it was essentially about liberal learning: a liberal learn­

ing that was an end in itself and the mission expressed as an ultimate or essential goal of that learning. On the other hand, the post­

modern university has a mission statement and set of strategic plans that are as complex and as difficult to read as that of any large business or industry. At the time QUT was founded, learning in the higher education sector had become corporatised worldwide. QUT, along with other modern universities, has had to act within the context of two countervailing major forces: with nationalism pulling the curriculum toward a closer link with economic p olicy, industry and business at home; while interna­

tionalism, globalisation and global p olitics placed them squarely outside that home space.

Universities now have to meet new local and national demands and, at the same time, meet global obligations in relation to trade, diplo­

macy and the exchange of culture, education and language. This was light years away from the first years of QUT's predecessor institu­

tions. The dominant issues facing the early founders of technical and vocational training in Queensland were how to convince successive governments to provide adequate funding for often temporary classrooms, to support upgraded and better quality curriculum for students in colleges, and to take more seri­

ously the notion that Queensland should pro­

vide a more diverse and community-centred higher education sector in keeping with the needs of a modern and rapidly changing State.

P I O NE E R S A N D P R E D E C E S S O R S :

TE C HNI C A L E D U C A TI O N

A N D TE A C HIN G

H

istories of higher education are not new.

The intellectual traditions associated with learning have long been the subject of the historians' pen. ¹ Histories of western intel­

lectual thought generally trace the origins of higher education via ancient Greece and Rome to the present day through the works of tradi­

tional philosophy and the writings of such thinkers as Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Augustine, Aquinas, Erasmus, Comenius, Rousseau, Huxley and the many other men who are singled out as having had special significance for learning, the development of university curriculum and scholarly enterprise. The pre-modern university which evolved over this time was an elite insti­

tution where aristocratic men2 were educated for the professions of law, medicine and the clergy and for public careers.

The first university traced from ancient Greece and Rome to around the time of the Reformation was :

however perfect or imperfect . . . the cosmopolitan university whether in the Greek or Muslim or Catholic or other civilisations, not bound to the single nation-state, and with the wandering scholar and with places where students from all parts were received.3

Kerr describes the concept of the 'wandering scholar' at home in many different learning environments in different countries a ' conver­

gence' model of higher learning; it existed from the time of the ' academy of Luther '. In this long past the university was not a place of research per se, at least not as we know it today, but had a 'scholarly function to teach' .4 Kerr's divergence model of learning began in the eighteenth century with the French Revolu­

tion, nationalism and the rise of nation-states,

and a decline in church authority. Divergence in higher education learning occurred with a shift away from 'universalism in learning . . . to nationalism in education'. Wittrock argues that the modern ' research-oriented' university emerged in the nation-states of Germany and other parts of c ontinental Europe in the mid-1 700s. These universities became 'key insti­

tutions both for knowledge production and for strengthening a sense of national and cultural identity.'5 It is this modern university which has accompanied the birth of other higher edu­

cation provision and the development of insti­

tutions such as the teachers colleges, technical education, the kindergarten movement and institutes of technology.

The pioneers and predecessor institutions to QUT documented in this section were some of the most significant higher educational institu­

tions established in nineteenth-century Queens­

land. The organisational, management, leadership and intellectual issues faced by these fledgling tertiary institutions, some of which continue today under new guises, were charac­

terised by difficulties of funding, curriculum development, consolidation and amalgamation, competition with the university sector, inde­

pendence and autonomy, the impact of two world wars, social and economic change, regi­

mented government controls, gender and cul­

tural differentiation, and increasing complexity of State and national policy developments in higher education. How individual institutions dealt with these issues was often idiosyncratic, but none could escape entirely the long tendrils of the State. All were ultimately captive to gov­

ernment controls of a specific kind and the final shape and strength of p ost-compulsory education owe much to the pioneering staff, students and leadership able to insert their resis­

tance, their hopes and dreams and their visions of how Queenslanders should experience higher education and training in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

2

O ri g i ns of Tec h ni c al E d u c ati on i n

Q u eens l and :

T he S c hool of A rts and B ris b ane

Tec h ni c a l C ol leg e

( 1 8 4 9 - 1 9 0 8 ) W

illiam Augustine Duncan, staunch

advocate for national education in Queensland, gave the inaugural lecture to the School of Arts and Sciences in Brisbane in N ovember 1 849. Titled ' The Connection between Science and Commerce', the speech was published and distributed widely through­

out Australia . 1 The School of Arts c ounted among its members some of the city's most prominent citizens and, in its first decades, served primarily as a place of genteel recreation, with a library, public debates and lectures. As Carole Inkster notes, ' The subscribers to the schools of arts in Queensland were trying to preserve the literature and lifestyle they had known before emigrating',2 as did subscribers to similar institutions in other Australian States.

From about 1 870, however, the management c ommittee of the Brisbane School of Arts attempted, with mixed success, to develop a stronger educational focus. In a State where the dominant public debates centred on eco­

nomic and political issues, however, rather than on educational or intellectual concerns, the development of both secondary and technical education was slow. ³

The passing of the Education Act and the Grammar Schools Act of 1 860 established the first national schools in Queensland. Although secondary education of a more comprehensive

__

2_8 _, ,1-

A CLASS O F ITS OWN

William Augustine Duncan ^(JOL)

kind had to wait for another o ne hundred years, there was from this time onwards access to a universal system of elementary schooling for Queensland children and to some post-pri­

mary schooling supported by the State. It was in this c ontext that the committee of the School of Arts turned its attention toward tech­

nical education classes. By the mid 1 860s the School of Arts was generously subsidised by the government and had been funded for a new building which Governor Bowen opened in 1 866. With architecture in the ' Italian style', it was located on the corner of Queen and Creek streets, Brisbane, and was an imposing structure housing a large lecture hall and a library of 4000 b ooks, with s everal shops located on the Queen Street frontage built to provide revenue for the school. By the late 1 860s the committee was reporting a trouble­

some financial position as well as limited success

in its attempts to form technical classes of a more substantial kind. The new building was sold due to debts and the School of Arts moved to cheaper quarters in the Servants' Home in Ann Street. 4

I n 1 8 7 1 , the committee noted that i ts ' efforts for the formation of classes have not b een succ essful ' . 5 One year later, another attempt was made after Charles Lilley, in his role as the retiring president of the School of Arts, recommended that the association become

the b asis of a 'tec hnological sch ool ' . 6 The renewed push was probably an attempt to counter criticisms that the School of Arts did not meet any educational needs and therefore did not deserve its government subsidy. In March 1 872 the Queenslander asserted that such subsidies ' ought not be granted under false pre­

tences' .7 By late April, the School of Arts had announced the formation of classes in algebra and trigonometry, Latin, writing, geometry, drawing and chemistry. As a result, the Queens­

lander praised the School's accession 'to its proper rank as one of the educational institu­

tions of the city' ^.8 Its congratulations were pre­

mature. The geometry class did not attract any members, whilst the other five classes recorded a combined total of only thirty students. Plans to repeat the subj ects in 1 873 failed. The lack of interest reflected, at least in part, a require­

ment that intending students should subscribe to the School of Arts . Like its counterparts in other Australian colonies, the School was largely middle class in membership and orientation, with limited relevance to the working classes. 9

During the remainder of the 1 870s, the School of Arts provided rooms for individual teachers of various subjects upon request, but did not itself initiate any classes. In 1 87 5 , the Queenslander regretted that ' In this colony, as education is at present imparted, it is impossi­

ble for any youth to take up the practice of any art or manufacture' ^{. 1 0} In that year, the Education Act provided for free, compulsory and secular