Education examined

19 May 2005

Universities across Australia, including Monash, are undergoing massive change. Leading education commentator Professor Simon Marginson explains what these changes mean.

Photography: Greg Ford

The transformation taking place in Australian higher education is the greatest seen since the Australian Labor Party reforms of the late 1980s -- perhaps even since mass higher education was established in the1960s.

Professor Simon Marginson: "The main game for universities now is to build their research reputation and use this to attract higher-calibre domestic and foreign students, raise prices and expand full-fee revenues."

The reforms introduced by then federal Education minister Mr John Dawkins encouraged universities to be all things to all people -- to expand their range of roles and sites in conglomerate fashion and use the growth of high-volume teaching, for domestic students and internationals, to pull themselves up.

It meant Monash was lifted from a medium-sized research university in Clayton, 20 kilometres from the central business district, to a multi-campus institution that is Australia's largest university and its greatest provider of international education.

But under the current Minister for Education, Dr Brendan Nelson, universities adopting the Dawkins expansion principles now run the risk of dissipating their research capacity and consigning themselves to the bargain basement.

The Nelson reforms mean the following:

• Universities now set the level of HECS themselves, up to 25 per cent above previous maximum levels.
• Universities can enrol up to 35 per cent of the students in each course on a full-fee basis. There is no ceiling on fee levels.
• Students paying fees can draw on FEE-HELP, a student loans system that makes it easier for students to carry the cost of full fees. Debts are carried forward: there is no interest rate, though debts are adjusted for inflation. Repayments begin when annual earnings reach $35,000.
• FEE-HELP has been extended to fees for accredited private higher education institutions, including small private institutions such as those specialising in management training or the arts.

It is possible that in time, the government will lift the cap on maximum HECS, abolish all limits on full-fee places and FEE-HELP debt, and reconfigure the public subsidy of the HECS places as scholarships for meritorious students. This will give Australia a unified full-fee market.

Over time, the combined effect of full fees and the possible introduction of a system that distributes research funding to universities on the basis of past research performance will create greater differences between Australian universities in status, resources, missions and global roles (not to mention price).

In competitive terms, the main game for universities now is to build their research reputation and to use this to attract higher- calibre domestic and foreign students, raise prices and expand full-fee revenues.

Because the Nelson reforms mean domestic students are now providing a source of direct revenue, there is no longer the same imperative to build high-volume international enrolments. For some universities such as Monash, the Australian National University and the University of NSW, a strong international focus will remain at the core of their identity.

The global market will also remain essential to those newer Australian universities that have little prospect of domestic fee revenues and therefore remain dependent on mass international enrolments.

However, these newer universities will face difficulties because the number of international students coming to Australia has dropped this year for the first time since the 1980s.

The drop in international enrolments intensifies quality-based competition in the on-shore market and might mean that other forms of internationalisation -- such as branch campuses in South-East Asia and China, twinning partnerships and exchange with Asian universities and distance-based e-learning -- grow in importance.

Will the Nelson changes strengthen or weaken the international standing of Australian universities? Probably both. Leading research universities will build their research and, if all goes well, teaching, and become more internationally attractive. Some weaker public universities will cut quality to sustain numbers and will struggle. Emerging private universities will focus mostly on teaching rather than research.

A key challenge for Monash is to reconcile its role as a provider of quality higher education on three continents with the Nelson system imperatives, which push open access down to the lower echelons of the university league table, place a high price on quality, and pressure universities to specialise and reduce their range of missions.

While in the Dawkins system the main source of competitive advantage lay in business acumen and organisation -- which has served Monash well -- in future it will be academic quality. Entrepreneurial flair, the capacity for fast response, and thinking ahead will all continue to be vital.

* Professor Simon Marginson is director of the Monash Centre for Research in International Education.

Action: Visit the Monash Centre for Research in International Education website.

Largest Australian providers of international educaton, 2003

*More than 40 per cent of international enrollments offshore
Source: Department of Education, Science and Training

A text description of this graph is also available.