Strength in differences

In a recent speech to business leaders, new Monash University Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Edward Byrne asked what made a modern university successful. This is an extract of his address.

Jonathan Swift certainly has a lot to answer for. In his description in Gulliver's Travels of "a visit to the Grand Academy of Lagado" he describes an academic, "with sooty Hands and Face, his Hair and Beard long, ragged and singed in several Places," who, "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 may well have been accurate at the time in 1726, but is an elite, 'ivory tower' stereotype that is still applied by the community to the university sector both in Australia and across the world.

Over time universities have quite rightly adapted and innovated to keep up with social change. Today we live in an era of mass education where universities compete globally for the best staff and students.

There are also new responsibilities: to educate more of our young people to tertiary level; ensure more people from disadvantaged and rural areas are university educated; and act as a driver for innovation so research can have a positive impact throughout society.

The internationalisation and 'mass-ification' of higher education have put universities firmly on the agenda of policy makers and business leaders, both of whom recognise the role world-class higher educational 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 more attuned to the needs of the communities they serve - and to deliver real solutions to the challenges they face.

This means recognising the vital contribution universities can play as agents for societal progress - by providing graduates that are leaders in business and the community, and 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 Jamil Salmi has noted, "everybody wants one, but nobody knows what one is".

To address this question, many instinctively turn to the touchstones of higher education in the United States - Harvard, MIT and Stanford. It is true these institutions have thrived, due to their ability to concentrate tremendous pools of intellectual capital, not to mention their enormous financial resources with per student funding in the US on average triple that at European and Australian universities.

What is often less appreciated, however, is 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 - but in what they undertake, they must excel.

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 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 a feature of those institutions mentioned earlier.

But the challenges remain. The resources required to support a major research university are considerable. There is only a handful in the United Kingdom (where I have spent the last few years leading health and medical research at University College London) ranked in the top ten universities worldwide.

Only by relentlessly supporting excellence in funding policies will we be better able to establish universities that are internationally competitive.

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 I do think 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 partnerships harbour.

This also means that in addition to their funding compacts with government, our universities need to establish a broader compact concerning what they can contribute to society in the 21st century.

It is this kind of partnership, which allies with business and government to address pressing social issues, that Monash is pioneering and has the potential to make a great difference across our community.

We have clearly come a long way since the days of Johnathan Swift, so far that the sunlight from cucumbers proposal seems slightly less ridiculous in an age of bio-fuels and alternative energy.

Monash remains committed to the traditional benefits delivered by universities that are critical to their distinctiveness and effectiveness, namely, independent research and the cultivation of critical thinking on the part of our graduates.

But as a new type of university, we must also unlock those other capacities that until recently have been dormant. The answers to the challenges of our era do not lie neatly within the sector of business, government or universities. They have to be tackled using partnerships, knowledge and resources distributed right across the community. This is Monash University's compact with the community.

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 truly great university has the potential to be so much more: a vital element in innovation that creates jobs; an engine room of solutions for the problems facing our world; and a provider of education that equips young and old for the complex knowledge environment in which we live while also inspiring a thirst and capacity for life-long learning.

That is the challenge facing Monash and every other Australian university.