Broadening the Higher Education Conversation

Since it began in 2010 I have been an avid reader of the Conversation, and over that time it has published many excellent articles on a range of topics. I have written occasionally for it; articles on the history of Australian higher education, the problem of self-interest in the economic modelling industry, and the economics of social impact bonds. But its coverage of higher education has been disappointing.

Imagine if you described to one of the smart and worldly Conversation editors a new online publication funded by almost all the large corporations in an industry, for which only their employees can write, and tried convincing this editor that the new publication’s coverage of the industry would be broad-ranging and critical in the best sense. I think you would have great difficulty convincing them. But this imaginary situation is exactly that of the Conversation in relation to higher education.

I’m picking the Conversation as an example because it publishes more writing on Australian higher education than any other outlet, but similar issues apply to other higher education publications, including those funded largely by job and other advertising placed by universities.

This essay was first published in 2022.
It is reprised because, two years on, not much has changed.
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Recent writing on higher education at the Conversation and elsewhere seems to me to display an increasing groupthink: more money for public universities, less competition and scrutiny for universities, and definitely no God. It seems more and more to be writing for like-minded insiders rather than connecting with the wider public. It certainly isn’t connecting with government.

Why might this groupthink emerge? I do not believe authors or editors are consciously pushing the agenda of their public university paymasters, even with Australian university management’s increasing concern with public relations and restriction of academics’ freedom to comment publicly on their institutions. But the interests of public university authors and editors must unconsciously play into their writing and editing. Articles that reflect poorly on public universities, or question the benefits to students of enrolling in their universities, or question the value of more public money for universities, would mean fewer jobs for the academics writing articles, and probably reduced funding for the Conversation, which would mean fewer editorial jobs. The articles critical of public universities that get published tend to be generalised complaints about managerialism, or calls for attention by university managers to some neglected issue which usually does not touch the way the university or the higher education system operates.

The main factor behind this groupthink is not self-interest but the ignorance of most public university academics of the world outside their institutions.

Let me share my own experience. I worked for about twenty years in public universities, initially tutoring at the University of Sydney, where I did my PhD in economics, then positions at the University of New South Wales and the Australian Catholic University where I was Professor of Economics.

A bit over ten years ago I joined friends at the Pentecostal college Alphacrucis who had a dream of creating Australia’s first non-Catholic comprehensive Christian university. My role was to start the Faculty of Business, and later when Alphacrucis won PhD accreditation I was the inaugural PhD program director. In my previous life comfortably ensconced in a senior tenured position at a public university I had been completely ignorant of institutions like Alphacrucis. Beyond the world of public universities: “there be dragons”—perhaps some shady colleges staffed by Dickensian characters, preying on international students, with no academic standards or worthwhile research.

Joining Alphacrucis and meeting many excellent colleagues and students messed with my preconceptions, though as with any institution, especially a rapidly growing institution, there are lots of problems along with the good things. There is a completely different culture from that of a public university, much less bureaucratic, more entrepreneurial, and deeply engaged with its industry (in this case Christian churches and not-for-profit agencies). There is more concern for students than I’d seen in public universities.

The greatest shock as an economist, however, was realising how unlevel the playing field was between the public universities and their competitors. Running the new PhD program at Alphacrucis, we were competing with universities that received approximately $50,000 for a PhD completion. Their students were eligible for government fee exemption and approximately $25,000 per annum tax-free living allowance scholarships, whereas we and our students received none of these—even though our PhD program was accredited according to the same rules by the same accrediting agency, TEQSA, as the PhD programs of the public universities. And on top of this our students had to pay an iniquitous 25 per cent loading on their FEE-HELP debts. The Australian Research Council Act also denies institutions like ours access to grants, for reasons that nobody has been able to explain satisfactorily.

These anti-competitive features of the Australian higher education market seem to stem from a combination of historical factors and the lobbying power of the incumbent public universities. There really isn’t a lot of difference between the governance structures of so-called “private” and “public” institutions, at least for the majority of “private” institutions that are not-for-profit. The main difference is that the “public” universities’ councils include political appointments stemming from their founding in acts of parliament. “Public” and “private” institutions all sit under the same TEQSA regulatory umbrella.

One aspect of my pre-Alphacrucis experience was unusual for a public university academic. Undertaking a BD through the Melbourne College of Divinity (now University of Divinity) meant I knew something of theological colleges that for historical reasons have been separate from our universities. Australia’s oldest universities were founded in the mid-nineteenth century when intense debates were going on in England about the place of Protestant dissenters and Catholics in their universities. The colony had large numbers of Presbyterians and Catholics alongside the established Anglicans so the pragmatic decision was made by the mostly religious founders of our oldest universities not to have chapels or theological faculties, as these would bring endless disputes between the religious denominations. Theological study was consigned to church colleges which prepared ministers for their respective denominations. This meant that the typical Australian academic ended up pretty ignorant of theology and religion, especially after the sharp decline of churchgoing and general religious literacy from the 1960s. For the typical Australian academic, theology is a haunt of fanatics, snake handlers, obscurantists and paedophiles, certainly not a subject worthy of serious discussion—a strange situation indeed for the subject that led to the foundation of universities in Europe in the twelfth century.

If the experience of editors and authors is anything like my pre-Alphacrucis mixture of ignorance and prejudice about the world beyond public universities, then the topics and slant of recent writing on higher education make more sense.

What is to be done? The best way to broaden the higher education conversation would be for editors and authors to get out a bit more. Get out beyond the public-university bubble and visit a few private not-for-profit colleges and talk to their staff and students. Many of the students are the first in their families to attend university. They are much more diverse—religiously, ethnically, politically—than students in the public universities. Some have great stories to tell. Perhaps editors could even seek out new writers among their staff and students, asking them to write on what they think are the important issues rather than the increasingly narrow and predictable list of topics that dominate our current higher education journalism.

We need new thinking about the future of Australian higher education if the general public (and perhaps even governments) is to be re-engaged in the higher education conversation.

Paul Oslington is Professor of Economics and Theology at Alphacrucis College, Sydney.