New voice for academics

A new higher education lobby group has entered the fray, offering different views on how to reinvigorate our troubled university sector.

Public Universities Australia, or PUA, emerged late last year as a voice to counter higher education advocacy groups such as Universities Australia, the Group of Eight, Innovation Universities Australia and the Australian Technology Network of Universities (ATN), which mostly represent the views of university executives.

PUA promises to highlight the views of those who sit outside the university management arena, such as scholars, students, staff and alumni.

This new lobby is an alliance of three groups: the Australian Association of University Professors (AAUP), Academics for Public Universities (APU), and the Council for Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA).

The decision to launch PUA is perhaps best explained by examining the views of two of its founder organisations.

APU’s view is that universities are in crisis and need fixing, a predicament that “has been starkly revealed (although not caused) by the impact of COVID-19”.

The APU website paints a grim picture of the sector by claiming key crisis indicators include: “Ever-larger class sizes, declining teaching standards, less substantive content in academic coursework, less rigorous research, massive job losses, massive casualisation of teaching staff, unsustainable executive salary packages (and) unsustainable over-spending on non-teaching and non-research activities.”

APU also claims: “[A] lack of accountability and financial transparency, student fees that do not reflect the cost of actual education (and are far in excess of what comparable tertiary sectors worldwide require students to pay), increasing decline of academic autonomy and, ultimately, the absence of any accepted understanding of what a public university is or ought to be”.

For the new lobby’s second partner, the AAUP, the focus appears less about whether there is a crisis in our universities but rather that senior academics are rarely consulted in addressing key issues.

The AAUP website claims: “It is a worrying trend that the opinions of senior academics in Australia are rarely consulted in public debates about these policies, and especially at a time of crisis, so there is an urgent need for such consultation now”.

In an endeavour to halt what many would regard as regressive trends in our higher education landscape, PUA advocates what some would say are controversial – and others would describe as innovative – views on what ought to be done to fix the sector.

PUA argues that governing bodies or boards of universities must be composed of a majority of those with experience in the higher education sector, something many believe is far from the current situation in most public universities.

And while most chancellors, who are the corporate equivalent of the board chair, are drawn from industry, PUA advocates that the position of chancellor should be reserved for a distinguished academic, and only after wide consultation with members of the university community.

It is not just the governance of public universities that is being scrutinised by the new lobby group.

The PUA website makes it clear the university community should have more say in the appointment of vice-chancellors (CEOs) and that their salaries must be aligned with leaders in other public institutions; that is, capped at twice a professorial salary or around $400,000 per year.

With some vice-chancellors being paid more than $1 million annually, such a salary cap would represent a significant reduction for those leading our universities.

However, PUA claims such cuts are justified on the grounds that inflated salaries often attract those who are unsuited to university management.

PUA also calls for much tighter caps on casual academic appointments, continued opportunities for academics to undertake both research and teaching, and for greater transparency when it comes to all university finances and salaries (including all bonuses).

Despite the many and varied differences of opinion about what we need to do to reinvigorate the higher education sector, it is hard to argue against PUA’s call for increased transparency, more effective governance, and greater collegiality in universities as key pillars in creating better universities.

• Professor Gary Martin is chief executive officer of the Australian Institute of Management WA