Let us develop this marvellous asset which we alone command
And which, it may subsequently transpire, will be worth as much as the Rand.
Let us approach this pivotal fact in a humble yet hopeful mood—
We have had no end of a lesson, it will do us no end of good!
Kipling, ‘The Lesson’
Rudyard Kipling was writing of the unexpected reverses suffered by the British Empire in its war against the Boer republics. Seeking control of the gold reefs of Witwatersrand, the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain persuaded the Cabinet to dispatch troops to South Africa. The government expected to crush the opposition when fighting began in 1899 and was poorly prepared for a costly conflict that dragged on for two and a half years. Kipling, an ardent imperialist, called on his compatriots to learn from the chastening experience with a heightened resolve.
Half a century later, an assistant minister for foreign affairs resigned in protest when, to retain control of the Suez Canal, the British Government led by Anthony Eden joined France in an invasion of Egypt. This military venture ended in ignominy after the United States forced withdrawal, and it marked the end of Britain as a world power. Anthony Nutting, the dissident minister, used Kipling’s phrase ‘no end of a lesson’ as the title of the book he wrote subsequently on the Suez Crisis, the lesson being the folly of overreach.
In 1987 John Dawkins instigated an assault on Australian higher education as audacious as those of Joseph Chamberlain and Anthony Eden. He too encountered stubborn resistance, and his capture of this marvellous asset took longer than he expected. It proved no end of a lesson for all involved: those who were responsible for the country’s universities and colleges, and those who worked and studied in them; the government that insisted higher education had to play its part in national reconstruction; and the business and union leaders who wanted it to serve their interests. But there is still no agreement what that lesson was.
The changes the Minister imposed can be summarised briefly. He abolished the distinction between universities and colleges to form a single Unified National System of higher education, and consolidated the existing providers to create a smaller number of much larger institutions. He increased the number of enrolments, especially in fields of study seen to as crucial for economic growth, and shifted some of the cost to students. He directed more research funds to areas deemed of national importance. He removed the body that provided advice and allocated public funds to make institutions directly accountable to government. And he introduced changes to their decision-making and management, requiring them to operate in a more business-like fashion and take greater responsibility for their fortunes.
Some have praised Dawkins for rescuing higher education from neglect, and others have accused him of betraying it. Some welcomed his Unified National System for enlarging higher education and making it more inclusive; others condemned the unification of universities and colleges for creating a uniform mediocrity. Some accepted that users should contribute to the cost of their education, and others believed this compromised a vital principle; some grasped the new opportunities for research, and others saw them as imperilling the research that mattered most. Some agreed that higher education had to be run more efficiently, others lamented the imposition of top-down management; some embraced the more responsive, entrepreneurial orientation, others felt it threatened academic values. Some felt the Unified National System liberated the university, others that it imposed a straitjacket.
The debate that accompanied the far-reaching changes announced at the end of the 1980s was marked by such polarities. The tone was set in the Minister’s statement of intentions in September 1987, shortly after he assumed responsibility for higher education. It portrayed higher education as overdue for reform, incapable of setting its affairs in order. He allowed no consultation in the preparation of the Green Paper released at the end of the year. Entitled Higher Education: A Policy Discussion Paper, it was a gauntlet thrown down at the feet of the universities, a peremptory statement of bellicose intent to which they responded in kind. Naturally combative, John Dawkins took every opportunity to castigate his critics. They in turn expressed their criticism in alarmist terms, accusing him of an unprecedented assault and denouncing him as a wilful, peremptory and power-hungry politician.
The argument was conducted in policy statements and press releases, at forums and public meetings that spilled into the media and erupted in campus protest as the Minister toured the country to promote his plans. It died down after May 1990 when Dawkins, having established his Unified National System, passed this part of his portfolio to a more conciliatory colleague. But the argument over what it meant continued as universities adapted themselves to imperatives of the new order. Few who lived through the events with which this book is concerned lack opinions on the changes that resulted. If they are not familiar with the origins of the Unified National System, those who came later are still wrestling with its consequences. One purpose of this book is to provide an account of these changes and to explain their enduring effects.
Changes of such magnitude are commonly attributed to their architect, so these ones are described as the ‘Dawkins reforms’ or the ‘Dawkins revolution’. That is understandable given his strong imprint on the design and execution of the Unified National System, but he drew on developments that were already under way when he took charge, and on policy principles that were in use elsewhere. Most countries embarked on a reorganisation of their higher education and research system at this time, with similar aims and expectations. But none worked with a free hand. The design had to accommodate national circumstances and institutional structures; the execution relied on the balance of political forces. We shall find that many of the changes Dawkins announced in 1987 were not realised—and that he did not even insist on some of the conditions he had set as a condition of membership of the Unified National System. The task is to see how new systems cut from the same cloth took different shapes, and to explain the nips and tucks in the Australian creation.
Universities are steeped in tradition but they live in the present. The introduction of the Unified National System generated shelves of policy documents from the Department of Employment, Education and Training, an advisory National Board and its specialist councils, along with responses and proposals from state governments, the universities, staff unions and student organisations. Yet even the major inquiries into higher education worked with an attenuated historical perspective. Their task was to appraise the existing arrangements in order to suggest improvement. While the best of them—and none between 1986 and 2008 met this standard—paid attention to changing circumstances and examined longitudinal trends, they looked forward rather than backwards. In the plethora of official and commissioned reports on university finance, management, staffing, teaching and research that appeared in the 1990s, it was rare to cast back any further than the preceding one. This account draws heavily on the information contained in these documents, but it treats them also as products of the events with which it is concerned.
Australia is well served by specialists on higher education. The work of such scholars as Gay Baldwin, Ian Dobson, Leo Goedegebuure, Grant Harman, Richard James, Richard Johnson, Russell Linke, Craig McInnis, Vin Massaro, Lynn Meek, Ingrid Moses, Paul Ramsden and Fiona Wood provides an invaluable resource for this present study. Steeped in the operation of the university, the inquiries they conducted were attentive to differences within the Unified National System and mindful of the national context. They were also aware of approaches taken elsewhere; some of their most revealing investigations were comparative and attracted international attention to Australian arrangements. The study of higher education draws on a number of disciplinary methodologies: psychology, sociology, economics, politics and public policy. Much of the literature is based on surveys, psychometric and statistical analysis conducted in a bounded field to establish, for example, how academic morale was affected by the Unified National System or the response of students to the changed circumstances. Economists have examined the distribution of resources, political scientists the determination of policy. These specialist studies provide an invaluable resource.
Broader consideration of the forces operating on the university across a longer time period is rare. Don Anderson has sketched the distinctive features of the Australian university in essays of power and elegance; Simon Marginson has subjected the transformation effected over the past forty years to a sustained critique grounded in political economy. To these can be added the criticisms and commentaries of leading participants in the sector such as Peter Karmel, Ken McKinnon, David Penington and Bruce Williams. And there are more popular books that sought to explain what happened.
The examination conducted here occupies the middle ground between the close specialist works and the overviews. It is conducted as an historical inquiry into a period of intense change, using methods of historical interpretation. It seeks to understand the circumstances that produced the Unified National System and the chain of events that led to its introduction. There is particular attention to policy development and decision-making by government and among the universities, drawing on Cabinet and departmental records as well as those of the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee. The narrative related in the first half of the book emphasises the multiplicity of actors with different purposes and dwells on the role played by leading figures in determining outcomes.
A close examination of the process of amalgamation that led to the Unified National System reveals some highly unlikely outcomes that had lasting consequences. Similarly, implementation of the changes that the Minister imposed proved uneven, resistance bringing significant modifications. The second half of the book turns to the consequences for management and finance, teaching, research and the lived experience of university life. These outcomes are brought together in a final chapter on the Unified National System as it was by 1996, the year in which the Labor government that created it lost office. A conclusion indicates how its successor changed the settings without altering the architecture, and offers a final assessment.