What the best universities can contribute to society in the 21st century

Address to the Melbourne Business Awards Breakfast
by Professor Edward Byrne AO, Vice-Chancellor and President, Monash University
Friday 24th July 2009

Ms Denise Langford, Chairperson of the Melbourne Business Awards
The Hon. Jenny Lindell, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly
Mr Mark Dreyfus, Federal Member for Isaacs
Cr Geoff Lake, President, Australian Local Government Association and Local Government representative on the Council of Australian Governments (COAG)
Ladies and Gentlemen:

Jonathan Swift has a lot to answer for. In Gulliver's Travels he describes to his readers 'a visit to the Grand Academy of Lagado', where Gulliver encounters an academic "with sooty Hands and Face, his Hair and Beard long, ragged and singed in several Places," who at the time of the visit, "had been Eight Years upon a Project for extracting Sun-Beams out of Cucumbers," and, "did not doubt in Eight Years more he should be able to supply the Governors Gardens with Sun-shine at a reasonable Rate."

Swift's satire, which reflected both on his contempt for the Royal Academy of Dublin and his disbelief that humans were rational creatures, is an image of academic life that we are all familiar with the disengaged professor in an ivory tower. It has remained a popular stereotype up to today, even if we would hope that academics' standards of personal hygiene have improved somewhat.

Of course in Swift's time there may have been a ring of truth to the image. For many centuries the pinnacle of academic life had been located in the field of theology. Although they made some concessions to occupational training, universities were seen as places of religious instruction, reflecting the roots of Universities such as Oxford and Cambridge as communities of theologians who had little interaction with the outside world.

This model received a major overhaul in 1810, with the innovations of Wilhelm von Humboldt and the establishment of the University of Berlin. It was von Humboldt's view that, "science is a problem that is never completely solved," which meant that in addition to teaching, university instructors should also be engaged in constant research. This shift brought with it the accompanying ideals of academic freedom and institutional autonomy, and the emergence universities as powerhouses of intellectual energy all over the world. Universities also became the custodians of national culture, and this is still evident today in many parts of the world – consider the central place of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (whose main campus is a world heritage site) in that country's history and culture, or the role that universities.

The model of higher education put forward by Humboldt and his contemporaries remains at the core of universities' mission. It is equally true, however, that universities have had to adapt and innovate to keep up with social change. Today we live in an era of mass education in which universities compete globally for the best staff and students. There are new responsibilities: to carry out the education of our youth to as high a level as possible, with the government aiming at 40 per cent of young Australians having a university qualification by 2025; and to act as a driver for innovation so that research can have a positive impact throughout our society and around the world. The internationalisation and 'mass-ification' of higher education have put universities firmly on the agenda of policy makers and business, who recognise the place that world-class higher education institutions have in providing the skilled workers, critical thinkers and cutting-edge research that collectively underpin successful knowledge-intensive societies.

Thus for universities to continue to be effective in their mission to advance the human condition in today's world, they need to be attuned to the needs of the communities that they serve. This means recognizing the vital contribution that universities can play as agents for societal progress – by providing graduates that are leaders in business and the community, by generating new ideas and solutions to the pressing problems of the 21st century. In Australia, it should be noted, universities also make a direct contribution to the economy as our third largest export industry, and in the case of Victoria, the largest.

However, we do still run into problems when we try to define the central term here: Just what is a world-class university? As one commentator has noted, "everybody wants one, but nobody knows what one is."(1)

To address this question, many instinctively turn to the touchstones of US higher education like Harvard, MIT and Stanford. It is true that these institutions have thrived, due to their ability to concentrate tremendous pools of intellectual capital (not to mention their enormous financial resources – per student funding in the US is on average triple that at European and Australian universities).(2) What is often less appreciated, however, is that these universities have built their success on a clearly differentiated mission, and on their ability to effectively translate these strengths via linkages with the outside community. Elite institutions need not do everything – one need only point to Princeton's law school, famously popular in surveys of students' perceptions despite the fact that it does not exist. (3) But what they choose to do, they do well. In the case of Stanford, one need only think of the University's role as an incubator for many of the individuals and ideas that later fuelled the emergence of Silicon Valley. This is a product of a specific set of circumstances rather than a one-size-fits-all model. We should pay attention then, not to the specific form of elite institutions, but to the processes by which they embed relevance and responsiveness at an institutional level. This is as much an attribute of a next-generation institution such as Arizona State University – which has sought to enshrine a vision of excellence based on inclusiveness rather than exclusiveness – as it is of the institutions mentioned earlier.

How well has Australia fared in responding to the challenge of building such a university sector for the 21st century?

Well, the Commonwealth Government's recent Review of Higher Education concluded that we are at a critical moment. We have lost ground on our competitors, in rates of participation in higher education and in the resources made available to our students. Internationalisation has taken place through a massive influx of foreign students, but engagement has often been shallow and we do not attract the same proportion of research students as the USA or UK. In research, a steady attrition in the rate of public support was accompanied by a collapse since the mid-1990s in the rate of business investment in R&D. As the recent Government white paper on the innovation system highlighted, Australia's knowledge economy as a whole has been spinning its wheels for some time now, despite the success of individual enterprises such as Cochlear (full disclosure, I am on the board there), Biota, and Google Maps, which was developed in Sydney.(4)

All in all, sobering stuff.

Things appear to be changing, however.

The recent Commonwealth Budget signalled a gradual increase in support for domestic university places, and a relaxation of some regulations that had constrained our ability to respond to the needs of our students and the community. It is hoped that this will help us meet the new targets for participation in the longer term.

Research funding is expected to rise over coming years so that universities are not penalised for their success in attracting research grants. New indexation formula will reward universities for attracting external funding, and initiatives such as the Commonwealth Commercialisation Institute will hopefully make engagement between universities and businesses easier, especially for small and medium enterprises. The introduction of 'compacts' – basically individual contracts between the federal government and each university – will encourage universities to play to their strengths.

This is a great start.

But the challenges remain. The resources required to support a major research university are considerable. There is only a handful in the UK, where I have spent the last few years leading health and medical research at University College London, ranked in the top ten universities worldwide and as the leading medical university in Europe. Only by relentlessly supporting excellence in funding policies we will be able to establish universities that are internationally competitive to this standard.

For Australia's higher education sector to excel will also require some differentiation of mission on the part of institutions. I do not support teaching-only universities but all universities should concentrate their research efforts in fields where they have real strengths. For smaller universities it may not be possible, or even desirable, to be research intensive in all fields in which they teach. I believe they should focus on what they can do best.

What remains is for all of us – government, businesses and universities – to unlock the tremendous potential that lies in collaboration. This also means that in addition to their funding compacts with government, each of our universities should establish a broader compact concerning what they can contribute to society in the twenty-first century. And as a new Vice-Chancellor, I am incredibly optimistic about Monash University's capacity to do just that.

Monash has never really fit the old mould anyway. The University was created in the late 1950s in the face of new demographic pressures, and our campus was centred at Clayton in recognition of expected population growth in the area. The reality has borne out these predictions: from an outpost planted amidst market gardens when our first 357 students entered in 1961, we have grown into a world-class centre for innovation with over 56,000 students that is surrounded by 40 percent of Australia's light-manufacturing industry.

Along the way Monash has pioneered new technologies and ways of thinking. We were a pioneer in medical breakthroughs such as in-vitro fertilisation, led great improvements in transport and workplace safety through our Accident Research Centre, and were amongst the first Australian universities to specialise in fields such as stem cell science and nanotechnology, which are now central to our efforts to deliver to society the practical benefits born of innovation. These efforts are complemented by a strong profile of social science and humanities research that maps the social, economic and cultural dynamics that bear on our individual and collective futures.

Our willingness to try new things in an academic sense has been reflected in the growth of the university to encompass campuses in regional Victoria, Malaysia – at a time when establishing off-shore campuses was considered radical – and later South Africa. Each of these steps in the Monash story has brought new challenges, but more importantly, new capacities. We have just opened a joint research training academy with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, which has been ranked alongside MIT in engineering expertise and we operate a centre in Prato, Italy, which gives us a physical presence on four continents that is unmatched by any other Australian institution.

Upon this base, Monash is evolving a vision for a new type of Australian university. Sir Francis Bacon said that, "A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds," and Monash University is in the business of making opportunities. It is a university that is truly engaged with the communities in which it is located – and for Monash that means the entire world.

In the case of our Clayton campus, it is at the core of an emerging Clayton Innovation Precinct, which will act as a driver for a new generation of business innovation. Monash brings to the table its world-class capacity in fields such as biotechnology, materials science and chemical engineering, along with new core research infrastructure such as the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, Monash Antibody Technologies Facility, and Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy. I could list many more. These resources are literally next door to the largest CSIRO site, which includes its flagships in Future Manufacturing, Light Metals and Food Futures and the paradigm-shifting Australian Synchrotron, a facility which will soon be joined by the Melbourne Institute for Nanofabrication. Surrounding all of this is a network of small and medium enterprises that are at the heart of Victoria's current industrial output and future prosperity. Monash has recently received funding for a New Horizons centre which will bring together in the same building Monash researchers, CSIRO scientists and local businesses. This precinct promises to develop into a centre for innovation that can compete with existing centres of high-technology development in Europe and the USA, and emerging centres in Singapore, China and India.

And the engagement with business goes deeper. As well as building the industries of the future, Monash wants to help businesses grow today through service innovation. For example, we have partnered with the Australian company Constraint Technologies International to develop new systems for transport and logistics optimisation that use artificial intelligence, operations research and other techniques to achieve new efficiencies for business and government – from the scheduling of deliveries through to staff rostering systems. All of you will appreciate the tangible difference such behind-the-scenes innovations make to an organisation's effectiveness and bottom-line.

So the future might be looking brighter.

The kind of approach Monash is pioneering, which allies with business and government to address pressing social issues, has the potential to make a great difference right across the community.

For example, Monash is pioneering new systems that will allow cities to harvest and utilise stormwater that currently goes to waste. It is estimated that these technologies, which utilise cutting-edge biofiltration methods, would allow Melbourne to harvest its entire annual water needs from the rain that falls within its own borders. Trials of the technology are currently underway in Clayton and Tel Aviv. As importantly, Monash researchers are also developing the governance strategies and policy platforms that will be necessary for the transition to water-sensitive cities.

On another hot topic, obesity, Monash is making advances. Our researchers have established an inter-disciplinary network of natural and social scientists that are examining everything from the physiological bases for obesity, the causal linkages with associated illnesses such as diabetes, through to which techniques are most effective in educating our young people about healthy eating and physical fitness. Monash through the Monash Obesity Research Institute and Monash Sport, is in the process of finalising a strategic alliance with an AFL football team to develop an obesity educational program for school age children in the community with plans to roll out the initiative with the club throughout Victoria. Watch this space.

Of course, the fruits of research will go to waste if our economy lacks the kinds of workers who know what to do with it. As the Commonwealth Government takes the first steps on its education revolution in our primary and secondary schools, the overhaul of university education is of vital importance. Without it, the gains made in earlier years will be for naught.

At Monash, our approach to education – the Monash Passport – is as outward-looking, engaged and cutting-edge as our research. We have introduced a suite of next-generation learning spaces that have transformed the university experience for many of our students. Our first year geoscience graduates, for example, are not introduced to the discipline with a traditional format of lecture, OHPs and hand outs. Instead, their laboratory is fitted out with a bank of interactive displays that are networked to an up-to-the-second stream of data on earthquakes, natural resource deposits and other geoscientific information that they can manipulate in real time. Thus, they are familiarised with the practice of geoscience professionals from the moment they commence their degree. Similarly, in Gippsland our graduate medical students are able to make use of purpose-built teaching labs that mimic hospital conditions and use robots to replicate medical conditions and patients' responses to treatment.

In the humanities, our Chinese language students have set aside the memorisation cards and arduous tape-recorder-based drills to take up their studies in virtual reality. Monash University has created a 'Chinese Island' in Second Life, which allows students to immerse themselves in a Chinese environment and hone their skills in realistic settings, from a clinic to a traditional teahouse. I'm sure that our Prime Minister is not the only one who can appreciate the head start this gives our students in developing their cultural literacy, or the importance of such skills to those doing business in our region.

The engagement goes beyond the virtual. As part of the Monash Passport students are encouraged to – and can often claim credit for –
internships, volunteering and community work. This year a Monash student Thom Woodroofe was named Young Victorian of the Year on the back of such an effort.

Our students are also encouraged to develop a vision that, like Monash, is global in its scope. They can make use of travel scholarships to study at our international campuses or with partners in fields such as international law and global health, amongst many others. This gives our young people the foothold they need to make their start in international business, science or civil society. They leave the university with a degree that is recognised internationally and become part of a network of over 225,000 alumni around the world. As the only university of its calibre in the world which operates international campuses both in Africa and Asia, Monash is able to make a unique contribution. The South African campus, for example, is as a unique vehicle for interaction between Australia and South Africa that has developed research and educational capacity across a range of pressing issues facing the people, governments, ecology and economies of Africa.

Across all of our campuses we are pursuing a new vision of what university education can be.

I began today by considering the history of universities, both in fact and fiction. We have clearly come a long way – so far that idea of sunlight from cucumbers ridiculed by Jonathan Swift seems slightly less far-fetched in an age of bio-fuels and alternative energy.

Monash remains committed to the traditional benefits delivered by universities and which are critical to their distinctiveness and effectiveness as institutions, namely, independent research and the cultivation of critical thinking on the part of our graduates. But as a new type of university, we also want to unlock those other capacities that have lain dormant. We realise that the answers to the challenges of our era are not divided neatly between business, government or universities; they have to be tackled using all of the resources and ideas distributed across the community.
Monash is poised to make a central contribution to the social, economic and educational advancement of all of the communities of which it is a part in metropolitan and regional Victoria, and around the world, through:

• research with partners in Australia and abroad that addresses the most pressing problems facing our societies, such as health, sustainability, new industries and social cohesion. We integrate resources from across our campuses and beyond to build interdisciplinary teams that can produce coherent and comprehensive solutions – an example is the Monash Sustainability Institute, which has brought together biologists, social scientists, climatologists, hydrologists and others to address Victoria's, Australia's and the world's environmental challenges;
• cultivating alliances with industry and government through incubators and other partnerships to realise the economic potential of new and emerging industries. The New Horizons centre will power a new era of collaboration with business at our Clayton campus, and further afield we are working closely with partners like the University of Warwick, recognised as the leader in building business and community linkages in the UK. We want to develop new partnerships relating to our national and regional priorities and gear up for a much greater level of engagement with business, government and the community;
• the education of a new generation of graduates that can meet the demands of their era, both through their readiness for the workforce or research and their engagement with the world around them. The Monash Passport experience delivers graduates with greater team building, communication and leadership skills by giving students experience beyond the classroom. This is what you have said you want; it is better for the student and better for you; and,
• a tailored approach to education, research and engagement activities that is engaged with and responsive to the needs of the diverse communities in which we operate. This unlocks the knowledge and energy distributed throughout the community and opens up new opportunities for our students and researchers to have a positive impact for the benefit of all;

This is Monash's compact with the community. This is what makes Monash a new university for a new century. I am sure that every person in this room has the capacity to join with us to make it work.

That most erudite of English leaders, Lord Beaconsfield, or Benjamin Disraeli to those in the know, famously said that universities are, "places of light and learning". For the best universities this remains a central tenet but a great university has the potential to be so much more: a vital element in innovation that creates jobs, an engine for solutions to the problems of the modern world and a provider of education that equips young and old for the complex knowledge environment in which we live and establishes a model for life-long learning. Most of the great cities of the world have one or more outstanding universities. Melbourne is well-equipped in this regard.

Thank you for your attention.

Footnotes

1. Philip G. Altbach, quoted in Jamil Salmi, The Challenge of Establishing World Class Universities. Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2009, p.15
2. Ibid., p. 24; Review of Australian Higher Education, Canberra: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, 2008, p. 143
3. Simon Marginson, "Global University Rankings: Implications in general and for Australia", Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 29, 2 (July 2007): 131 – 142
4. Powering Ideas: An innovation agenda for the 21st century, Canberra: Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, 2009.