Academy of Social Sciences in Australia
Submission by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia
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April 2005
The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia welcomes the opportunity to comment on the Australian Government's Issues Paper, Building University Diversity. We confine our remarks to three points. First, a meeting of the full Academy in November 2004 supported without dissent the following statement: The Academy affirms the importance of research and teaching informed by research as defining features of a university. It believes that all academics must have the opportunity to pursue research and urges governments and universities to sustain this essential link between the activity of research and the provision of higher learning.
The Academy is firmly of the view that it is a central feature of university-level teaching that the teachers are expected and resourced to maintain an active engagement with their disciplines. This includes staying at or close to the frontiers of their fields, and reflecting critically on what they teach. Ideally, it also includes the discovery or synthesis of new knowledge or other creative activity. The pace of development of new knowledge is so rapid that university teachers must continually refresh their knowledge in order to be able to provide quality teaching. This engagement with scholarship and frontier knowledge is unlikely to occur in an environment in which teachers have no opportunity to contribute to knowledge in their discipline. For this reason, while it is possible for people to be excellent teachers without pursuing scholarship and research, it is unlikely that educational institutions that have no commitment to research would be able consistently to maintain teaching at a quality that is appropriate for a university-level education.
If teaching-only, degree-granting institutions are created under revised protocols, there is a risk that a government intent on economizing on higher education expenditure would be tempted to fund these institutions at a reduced rate per student. This would have two deleterious consequences. One is that they would not then be able to provide for the essential time that staff require for the refreshment of knowledge, exploration of ideas and critical reflection that underpins their capacity to provide true higher education. The other is that these lower teaching cost levels might then be used as a basis for eroding the funding of the teaching activities of all universities. We note that original research in the social sciences can in some cases be undertaken with little more than access to a library, the internet and staff time - the last being fundamental. No university academic staff member should be told that they ought not to do research or denied the time to do it.
Second, we agree that there is scope for a wider range of institutions, including private ones, to offer a variety of forms of post-school instruction and qualifications. Such instruction could properly vary in its quality, duration, price and the demands that it makes on its students. The essential requirement in a diverse system is that potential students are able to know in advance the type and quality of teaching and qualification that they will receive. They (and their subsequent employers) need accurate and honest labelling, that calls things what they actually are. There is a strong pressure, in access to public funds and in marketing, to call instruction 'university-level' when in fact it is not very intellectually demanding and is being taught by staff who do not have a deep understanding of or continuing engagement with their disciplines. Education is a complex service to 'buy'. It is difficult for students to see what they are going to get and to judge its quality in advance. If it turns out to be inferior to what they were led to expect in either content or quality, it is not possible to take it back and get a refund.
The introduction of a greater diversity of providers would need to be accompanied by the development of mechanisms for the certification of the type and quality of educational offerings by appropriately disinterested authorities and for the application of clear and accurate nomenclature. At present we authorize accredited educational institutions to use the title 'university' and to award degrees. The expectation is that each university then ensures that the quality and type of awards that it offers accord with the meaning understood by the public of the terms 'higher education' and 'degree'. Here, reputation becomes an important safeguard of quality. We recognize that this is not a flawless process, and there is a relentless pressure to reduce the quality (hence the cost) of teaching, while retaining the status and marketing advantages of these familiar terms. The AUQA process is intended to ensure that these pressures, among others, are resisted.
Quality assurance mechanisms must be sufficiently robust that they could and would deny accreditation of particular offerings if they were judged to be of inadequate quality. Quality assurance mechanisms must also be capable of dealing with profit-seeking institutions that intend to take advantage of the marketing edge offered by terms such as 'university' and 'degree', but do not intend actually to teach at the level currently inherent in these terms. The power of reputation will work as some sort of safeguard against such behaviour only if the institution in question is committed to a long term presence in Australia.
Our third point relates to research higher degrees. The link between engagement
in serious research, participation in an active research culture and the capacity to provide high quality supervision to students doing higher degrees by research is direct and compelling. It is the view of the Academy that only higher educational institutions (or parts thereof) that are actively engaged in ongoing research should be entitled to offer higher degrees by research, especially the PhD. It is not sufficient that an institution have one or two members of staff who are active researchers. It is essential to be able to sustain the necessary research environment over the duration of any given student's candidature, and hence it is inappropriate to rely on the continued presence of one or two individuals who are capable of providing effective supervision, especially if there is inadequate complementary research infrastructure. We note that the diverse US model of post-school education does make this distinction between universities that award PhDs and other types of educational institutions - some of which are also called universities - that are not entitled to do so.
The Academy does not believe that it is essential for a higher education institution to offer a comprehensive range of courses before it is entitled to be called a university. The important criteria are the research and teaching performances of the institution. In the social sciences, the London School of Economics and Political Science, even if it were detached from the University of London (as is proposed from time to time), would still have an unanswerable claim to university status.
In sum, the Academy supports a post-school education system in Australia that is diverse in size, ownership, level and focus. In this system, the term 'university' should be reserved for institutions in which academic staff are expected and supported to teach in an environment of active research and scholarship. It supports a system of accreditation and course description that provides accurate information to the public about the quality and level of the diverse courses on offer. It contends that only higher education institutions and parts thereof that are actively engaged in discovery research should be entitled to offer higher degrees by research.
Sue Richardson
President, on behalf of the Academy of the Social Sciences
April 2005
Last modified: 2 November 2009.