I recently ran into a very interesting article by Glyn Davis, Vice Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, entitled The rising phoenix of competition: what futures for Australia’s public universities? It appeared in the Autumn 2006 edition of the Griffith Review. Davis is a very thoughtful higher education leader who tries to peer into the future of higher education in Australia. A number of his other presentations can be found on the University of Melbourne "Speeches" site
In this article, Davis gives a very nice sketch of the history and present organization and status of higher education in Australia. He describes government policies that have tended to force all of Australian higher education (both public and private) into a Humboltian model of the research university. He also explains how government funding policies have pushed Australian universities to aggressively search out international students. Then, backing off to take a more global (literally) view, he describes the internal and external forces that are making this model unsustainable.
His perspective is particularly worthwhile since Australia has been perhaps the most aggressive country in reaching out to international students both at home and abroad- what might be seen as the first stage of globalization of higher education. Davis's concerns focus on the effects of increasing competition and educational innovation that globalization will bring to bear on the Australian model as globalization of higher education moves on to the next stage.
Davis notes, as do many, that the research university is one of the most expensive ways to provide education. Australian government funding for education has not kept pace with student numbers, with the consequence that public universities have become increasingly dependent on funds from other sources to balance budgets. Predictable conflicts arise between the government and public universities behaving in an entrepreneurial fashion. All of this is familiar to those in the US, but Davis emphasizes a critical difference: the US higher education system has a wide variety of players - public and private, profit and non-profit, college and university - while the Australian side has very little diversity. The educational solution set available to the nation is thereby greatly limited.
Externally, international institutions ranging from the University of Phoenix to traditional colleges and universities in other countries are pressing to move into the Australian market. Internally, lucrative educational export markets are leading domestic private providers to challenge the prohibitions against teaching-only universities. Government aid policies actually support the growth of a private sector, but government regulations prevent the public institutions from evolving to meet the needs being met by the private sector.
Davis calls for increased diversity in the public sector. He suggests that government’s principal interest is to regulate quality, not to constrain choice of mission. In brief, he suggests that public universities should be allowed to pay more attention to market demands and conditions. Only through increased diversity of approach can Australian higher education meet the challenges of the growing globalization of higher education.
In this position, he would find considerable support from the results Suzanne Berger describes in How we compete (post Many pathways to globalization, April 21, 2006). Diversity does seem to be key in finding institutional niches in the increasingly competitive global world. Davis uses the University of Phoenix as a "model" for innovations that could threaten the Australian model. Doug Becker, CEO of Laureate Education has some interesting insights on attributes of for-profit higher education institutions that will make them strong competitors (post For profit and/or not profit future? Feb.20, 2006). Finally, I have an overly-long treatise on ways in which rising competition can challenge research universities generally (post Competitive higher education, March 3, 2006).
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