Harry Love examines university governance and says, if universities are to be maintained as a resource for developing cultural and intellectual capital they need to be protected from overuse and quick returns.
In the ODT of October 5 there appeared two quotations. The first, attributed to Louis Brandeis, observed that, ''The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.''
The second was from Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce concluding an item on the University of Otago's position in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. The ranking, said the minister, ''reflected the increased competitiveness of the international university market''.
After further observing that the Government had increased university funding by 16.5% over the past four years, he went on: ''New Zealand universities had to be able to respond more quickly and effectively to the competitive challenges set against them. This included attracting more international students, expanding research links and investing more in disciplines where they had a competitive advantage.''
All this comes in the context of the minister's recent announcement of plans to slim down university governance, to transform councils into boards of directors, slim-lined, nimble decision-making machines, which will enable their institutions to respond quickly to ever-growing competitive pressures. The question is, how valid are the assumptions underlying the minister's assertions?
This is hardly the first time such assumptions have been questioned, nor is it the first time universities and what they do have been challenged by utilitarian zealots. What is relatively new, however, is the degree to which a managerial ethos has insinuated itself within our institutions, so neutering their ability to defend publicly the values and functions they were created to uphold. If such values are now irrelevant then, by all means, narrow the function of these expensive institutions to that of any other business with a product to sell. But let us at least be honest about it.
I will briefly address three issues that arise out of the present controversy.
Firstly, Mr Joyce has justified his push to streamline governance by asserting the need for universities to respond more quickly and effectively to ''competitive challenges''. It would be helpful if he could give examples of decisions that have been too slow and have adversely affected any particular university. And he might outline more clearly what he considers these challenges to be - are they financial, academic, and how do the two relate to each other?
Do we, for example, respond instantly to fluctuations in demand for certain disciplines, cutting the teaching force when it's low and increasing it when demand picks up? It would clearly be useful for teaching staff all to be on one-year, or one-semester, contracts to achieve maximum flexibility. This might be a management dream, but it would damage any university's standing and inhibit its ability to attract staff or students.
The suspicion is that what the minister really means by ''quicker and more effective decision-making'' is that universities should be less independent and more compliant with the short-term thinking of a managerial government and the similarly short-term interests of business. Business is important and has a role to play in what universities do - but whether it should be a dominant role is surely a matter of debate.
Secondly, if universities are businesses supplying ''products'', it might be worth asking what the products are, who the customers are and how the market works. Let us assume for the moment that students are customers and that the product they buy is a degree.
The market relationship runs rapidly into difficulty. In no other ''market'' could you take a customer's money, test them on their understanding of the product and even withhold it if you considered their grasp of its constituent parts (the parcels of knowledge and/or skills that make up a degree) to be inadequate. Then again, perhaps, students are the products. Who, then, should pay for their manufacture?
Lastly, there is the question of the university as a resource.
Recently, a spokesman for the Otago Chamber of Commerce asserted the city had the capacity to accommodate double the number of students we host at present. He knows not what he says. Has he any idea of the infrastructure, not merely physical, but academic, that would be required to service such an expansion?
The most likely outcome, for both the University of Otago and Otago Polytechnic, who would be the providers for the vast majority of such students, would be yet greater distance between research and the mass-production of qualifications, to the detriment of all involved.
If a university is to be maintained as a resource for the development of cultural and intellectual capital, it needs to be protected from overuse and quick returns, just as sensitive ecological sites need to be protected from overuse by tourists, or fish stocks from overfishing. There is a reason why the University of Otago once had a cap of 10% on the number of overseas students - which the minister seems not to understand.
It would be encouraging to see the universities themselves address some of these questions, rather than, as they seem to do, adopt supine attitudes towards zealots with other agendas, however well-meaning.
It would be encouraging if university administrations could acknowledge and articulate the necessity for the academy to maintain and develop its constituent disciplines as a first priority, so they can support meaningful teaching and research. It would be encouraging if universities could open themselves up to the wider public who, through the agency of Mr Joyce and his colleagues, have apparently increased their funding of universities by 16.5% over the last four years.
- Dr Love is an honorary fellow in the department of classics at the University of Otago.