The Chancellor's column

May 2009

On being an alumnus

What does it mean to be an alumnus?

The first and most obvious answer is that you feel connected. I trust that all of you look back on your time at Monash with a certain degree of fondness and nostalgia.

The second answer is that as an alumnus or alumna you see the logic of putting something back into the University. Perhaps that will be financial, but equally likely it will be giving back by your enthusiasm and your participation in activities. Like me, you want to make sure that as much as you might have enjoyed your time at Monash the experience for the next generation will be even better.

The third answer is that you want to stay connected, you want to participate in an alumni organization that will keep you in touch with your colleagues and allow you to benefit from the educational and community offerings of the University.

All these reasons are powerful and traditional reasons for being involved. But there is a fourth, extremely important reason. And that is that you understand that universities as a class are a worthy recipient of your attention because they are institutions that can help to make the world a better place.

All around us we see global systems under stress – the environment is suffering from global warming and depletion of resources; the economies of virtually every country are collapsing – straining under the pressure of financial systems that have imploded; and culturally there are frictions between civilizations that threaten ever more serious breakouts of war and civil strife.

Why is it that there is so much that is going wrong all around us? To a large extent it is because community and government decisions are guided by ideology instead of by evidence.

For example, the major financial markets of the western world have been operating in an ever-more unregulated environment, in the belief that every player in the market is well informed and that the common goal of every player to increase his or her wealth will ultimately lead to more for all. The problem is that this ideological confidence in the long-term wisdom and mutual benefits of an unregulated market was never proven by evidence.

Will we learn from the experience of the financial markets? In environmental sustainability, we see ideological commitment in Australia and Europe to an emission trading scheme intended to stop the ever increasing levels of carbon dioxide emissions and to eventually reverse the trend with the goal of massively reducing the amount of carbon dioxide released.

The logic of the emission trading scheme is that if you put a price on every tonne of carbon dioxide emissions and step back, free-market mechanisms will kick in to develop substantial new technologies and improvements in behavioural practice. But there is no evidence that this will work on a massive scale. The underlying ideology shares much in common with the free-market mechanisms that have recently failed us in the financial world. We must do something to tackle the scourge of carbon dioxide emissions but for ideological reasons other solutions, such as the guiding hand of legislation facilitated by funds raised from a carbon tax, are not given consideration.

What’s the alternative? The alternative is evidence-based thinking. Where does evidence-based thinking thrive? In universities.

Monash University is a cauldron of fresh ideas and logical thinking. New ideas are proposed and tested, be they in economics, climate change, the arts, law or science. It is only by training younger generations in clear thinking, in evidence-based decision making, that new ideas for sustainability will be identified and supported so that our planet will survive.

Education is the driver of economic growth. For the bulk of us, education is a ticket to self improvement. Many studies have shown the increased earning potential of university graduates. The benefit of education is also visible in repeated examples of migrant communities landing penniless in a new country, and through a commitment to educating their children, within a generation becoming successful, financially secure communities.

To the extent that our universities can graduate alumni who understand how to think, who routinely look at the evidence before making a decision, our societies will be better off. Not only by the direct contribution that the graduates will make, but also because as evidence-based thinkers they will be able to vote for leaders who rely on evidence more than they rely on ideology.

Universities are worthy of your support, they are worthy of my support. If one has a vision of a better world, there is no better place to invest effort than in universities. Who else will do research into improving public health, developing better food grains, solving climate change and understanding human rights? Universities can truly make a difference to the human condition.

That goal, as it happens, is the Monash University vision.

Dr Alan Finkel AM (BE 1976, PhD 1981)
Chancellor
Monash University