ADFAT Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade AHEIA Australian Higher Education Industry Association AHELO Higher Education Learning Outcomes Assessment AIT Australian Institute of Technology. NBEET National Board for Employment, Education and Training NCIHE National Board of Inquiry into Higher Education NHMRC National Health and Medical Research Council NIE New Institutional Economics.
Introduction
Background
With the expansion and diversity of Australia's population due to high birth rates and post-World War II migration, and the aspirations of migrants for improved living standards, higher education was needed to respond to demands for skills. In response to accelerated expansion, diversification and competition, public spending on higher education has declined in real terms.
Research questions and aims
Australia adapted neoliberal policies to restructure and expand its higher education sector in the late 1980s/early 1990s. It was important to consider “the quality of the documents and evidence they contain, given the purpose and design of study" (p. 33).
Significance and contribution of the study
The study undertaken is seen as a precursor to future qualitative studies to provide insight into the experiences of staff in these roles. 2013) argued that: “Quality teaching is one of the factors necessary to make mass higher education a good investment, for students and taxpayers” (p. 6). They noted that “teaching experiences of academics are not well documented in the literature (Bennett, et al., 2018, p. 271), and this was particularly true for Go8s.
Limitations
It provided information on classifications for all academic staff, including Teaching Only staff, which include teaching specialists. Monash was the only exception, as it had never used this category when reporting its personnel data to the Commonwealth Government.
Thesis structure
This led to the creation of the Australian Qualifications Framework (DEET, 1995) and the Australian Quality Assurance Framework (Department of Education, 1985). It begins with a summary of the factors and motivations that have led to the adoption of education specialist positions by Go8 universities.
Developing a utilitarian system of Australian higher education
Introduction
The third phase in Australian higher education is about responding to inadequate education and infrastructure. The new Fraser Liberal Coalition government is forcing CAE mergers to deal with the rising costs of delivering mass higher education.
Australia’s first universities (1850 – 1938)
Commonwealth parliamentary debates in the early years of Federation indicated the importance of the work of universities in advising national policy and service delivery to the community. The bill to establish the University of Sydney in 1849 was spearheaded by William Wentworth, a native Australian, Cambridge student and leader of the Conservative Party in the NSW Legislative Council.
Australian universities during World War II and the post-war reconstruction period (1939 - 1965)
Dedman recognized the need for universities to provide services including: “(i) the investigation and research of specific problems related to the war effort (ii) the training of personnel with specific . Its main objectives were to offer training and research to “seek advantage. The report's social goals were to create “cultivated men and women” and to “transmit a common culture and common standards of citizenship” (Robbins, 1963, pp. 6–7).
But by removing some of the certificate and diploma courses from the CAEs, TAFE inadvertently contributed to the academic shift from CAEs to universities. One of the most important threats to the binary system occurred when conflict between Palestine and Israel led to a sharp rise in the price of oil in 1973 and 1979, often referred to as the oil crisis or oil shocks. Following the Whitlam government's agenda for Australian higher education, and the economic downturn of the 1970s and early 1980s, the Fraser Liberal Coalition20 government chose a conservative fiscal approach to the management of higher education.
The Unified National System
21Membership of the Purple Circle included Don Watts (VC, Bond University), Helen Hughes (Marketer, Australian National University), Don Aitken, (Chairman of the Australian Research Grants Committee, (later the Australian Research Council), Mal Logan (VC , Monash) University), Bob Smith (University of Western Australia), Brian Smith (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) and Jack Barker (Ballarat College of Advanced Education) (Forsyth, 2014, p115). He witnessed the devastation of the Great Depression and maintained that government intervention was "the only. The Report of the Steering Committee for Efficiency Studies in Universities (Jarratt Report) (CVVC22, 1985), published by the Thatcher government in the UK, .
Conclusion
This statement was accompanied by much eloquence regarding the universities' abilities to survive in the face of various adversities encountered over the centuries. The formation of 37 public universities and the addition of 3 private universities and 2 international private universities were the products of population growth, technological progress and competition brought about by a burgeoning global market. Such increasing participation and diversity was accommodated and driven largely through Australian government policy in response to global markets and scorecards published by organizations such as the ARWU23 and the OECD24 reporting on nations' educational and economic successes. This presented significant challenges to the teaching of academics and their ability to deliver favorable outcomes for student learning.
The global knowledge economy and its impact on academic work
Introduction
Globalisation
In the 1990s, authors argued that globalization was responsible for the reshaping of higher education and the redefinition of the role of universities and academic work. Ironically, the impetus for these collaborations was due to the rapid expansion of the higher education sector and the unwillingness of governments to adequately fund institutions (Clark, 1998). While the social returns of higher education were recognized (OECD, 2019), the overwhelming emphasis was on economic returns and the need for international competitiveness in a changing environment due to technological advances (Papadopoulos, 1994; Tomusk, 2002; Rizvi & Lingard, 2006 ).
Neoliberalism
Common strategies employed in neoliberal economic policies include: “the privatization of state assets, economic deregulation, and shifting public spending priorities to areas that deliver high economic returns. This led policymakers to adopt a privatization agenda by applying market rules to the financing of institutions (Shin & Harman noted that by the end of the 20th century, “the idea that education serves as a form of public good all but disappeared was out of the official policy discourse” (The result was a system that attempted to “humanize the market” by adopting “the key theoretical principles of neoliberalism regarding the distribution of income and the stability of capitalist economies” (Palley, 2004, p .9).
Knowledge economy
Clark (1998) believed that the underfunding of higher education will remain a constant because "knowledge exceeds resources. Henkel (2005) believed that research reputation is "the strongest academic currency in higher education" (p 164) and a strong determining factor in universities' marketing and funding Education has accelerated growth in international trade (McBurnie & Ziguras, 2007) with the three dominant exporters of higher education – the US, the UK and Australia benefiting.
The changing academy
A report by the National Commission of Inquiry into Higher Education (NCIHE), known as the Dearing Report, published in the UK in 1997, under the lead author Sir Ronald Dearing, Chancellor of the University of Nottingham, acknowledged the “inadequate recognition of teaching excellence” (NCIHE, 1997, p. 216). Shattock (2012) argued that "the voice of the academic community must be a key element in setting strategy" (p. 61) and advised that this should be balanced with a strong governing body and effective executive leadership to achieve good governance. Another result of the corporatization of universities was "the strengthening of the role of administrative staff at the expense of the academic community" (Rostan, 2010, p. S71).
Conclusion
Whether academics viewed the future of universities as one of optimism and opportunity or one in which teaching and learning were constrained by economic priorities, the value and role of universities was firmly rooted in their nation's blueprint for prosperity. The following chapter examines the ways in which Australian governments and universities have responded to external challenges and influences from the end of the Second World War to the establishment of the Unified National System. Higher education policy and initiatives are analyzed to understand how these affected teaching, prompting the emergence of teaching specialist positions in Australia's universities.
Policy, funding and quality assurance in Australia’s Unified National SystemNational System
Introduction
Australian Federal Government higher education policy
1998 Learning for Life Final Report: Review of Higher Education Financing and Policy (West Review) (West, 1998). 2001 Universities in Crisis: Reports on the capacity of public universities to meet Australia's higher education needs. 2008 Review of Australian Higher Education (Bradley Review) (Bradley, et al. Transforming Australia's higher education system (Australian Government, 2009).
Reviews of Australian higher education
The report argued that academic and general university staff are “a key resource of universities” and should be properly rewarded and managed as they are vital to institutional performance (Hoare, 195, p. 18). The higher education sector almost unanimously rejected the proposals of the reform package. Australian and Group of Eight universities have condemned the increase in the Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) student loan scheme and the lowering of the payment threshold (Knott, 2017; Thomson, 2017).
Funding Australian higher education
2015 The cash nexus: how education funds research in Australian higher education (Norton Cost of delivery of Higher Education: Final Report (DAE, 2016). 2017 Higher Education Support Legislation 2017 (Australian Government Review of the impact of the TEQSA Act on the higher education) education sector (DAE Review of the Australian Qualifications Framework Final Report (DET, 2019d). The changes raised questions about equality and led Marginson to note that FEE-HELP made the full fee market viable, making it “the most important piece of university policy since the abolition of tuition fees in 1974.” (Marginson, 2005, p. 16).
Quality assurance
1992 Quality in Higher Education: Draft Advice (NBEET, 1992b) 1992 Board for Quality Assurance in Higher Education. 2007 Promoting Excellence in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PELTHE) program (responsibility for this program and the Office for Learning and Teaching digital repository was transferred to Universities Australia on 1 January 2018). Higher Education Standards Framework 2011 (Threshold Standards) 2011 (Teqsa Learning and Teaching Office (replaced by the Australian Council for Learning and Teaching) 2012 MyUniversity website.
Conclusion
Whether these measures and previous government initiatives have produced the necessary strategies to achieve their intended outcomes will be a focus of Chapter 5. The changes in teaching in Australian Table A Provider universities which led to "the significant 'unbundling' of academic work" . Baird, 2013, p. 74), will be analyzed to assess whether the new pedagogical specialist positions can be expected to achieve parity with the educational researchers' professional status and working conditions.
The challenges for teaching in Australian universities
Introduction
Defining Australian universities
NTEU has therefore remained steadfast in its commitment to the link between research and teaching as the foundation of academic life in Australian higher education. The reviewers reported that: “Funding teaching-only institutions at the lower Commonwealth per student funding rate would contribute to the fiscal sustainability of a demand-driven higher education system (Kemp, 2014, p. 66). They felt that differentiation would better manage expenditure on higher education and that devolving responsibility for undergraduate learning solely to teaching staff would not disadvantage students.
The status of teaching
