The University of Otago saga rolls on or perhaps down, and we haven’t reached the bottom yet.
The acting vice-chancellor suggests that staff should avoid the Otago Daily Times and that students need fewer choices, which might reduce levels of anxiety. Students confront the Prime Minister demanding instant resolution and more money.
The PM replies that he’s just given universities a whole lot of money and universities reply that it doesn’t make up for all the years they didn’t get a whole lot of money.
And if the PM says that he is not going to interfere with whatever decisions universities might wish, or need, to make with the resources they have, he has a point.
On the one hand, they should be as independent from government as possible (this is not Florida) and on the other, there is hardly an organisation in the country that isn’t demanding more money.
One can understand why, given floods, cyclones, plagues, tax cuts, teachers, nurses ... universities might not be a priority.
However, as the top tier of our public education cake, they are obviously not altogether independent.
Government provides the resources and the environment in which they have the freedom, ideally, to fulfil their proper function in the scheme of things. The question then is, what’s that?
It might seem odd that in 2023, when we have had universities since Bologna opened its doors in 1088, we can ask the question and not have a ready answer; or perhaps a whole lot of different answers.
Over time there have been many notions about what these institutions are and what those who inhabit them actually do. These notions tend to be affected by the prevailing winds of politics, economics and philosophy at any particular time. The contemporary breeze is a pervasive, if rather narrow brand of utilitarianism that moves each individual to go forth and, like the dandelion seed, choose a spot, pay the fee, take root and prosper.
The consequence of this, of course, is the primacy of the market, that Shangri-La where every individual gets to choose on the basis of perfect knowledge and transactions result in universal happiness.
An example, which might suggest a limitation or two in this mode of thought in the context of education.
Back in the 1990s an eager policy analyst somewhere in Wellington noticed that we have only one dental school. Outrageous. Without an alternative to choose from, the self-interested inmates of this school could be serving up any old rubbish to students who have paid good money. How can standards be maintained without competition? It’s up to the customer to keep the provider in line.
There are some flaws in this view. You might ask how a student, yet to be introduced to the mysteries of dentistry, can make a qualitative judgement between competing professionals. Price might be one distinction our student could make, but they are in no position to know whether it’s value for money.
All this when the University of Otago Faculty of Dentistry, in the eyes of its international peers, had a world-class reputation.
Fortunately this particular analyst’s dream did not come to pass. But the pervasive commodification of tertiary education has. Students are both products and customers, who wander through this glittering market-place making choices about which well-remunerated future they are going to buy.
I can no longer hide the fact that I have a different view.
The core of academia is the discipline. The function of the academic is to maintain and develop the discipline, firstly, through scholarship and research — they are not necessarily the same thing — and secondly, through teaching.
But why should taxpayers fund this?
In a developed society like ours there is not a living soul whose life is not touched upon, directly or indirectly, by the activities of university graduates. The quality of that contact obviously depends on the quality of the disciplines they profess.
Sir David Skegg’s attempt to boost the university’s morale (ODT 7.6.23) makes some interesting points, though it might be said that positive rhetoric won’t change the financial numbers. His point that since 2011 there has been a net increase of 15 academic and 333 non-academic staff is revealing. He might refer his successors to a report by Prof John Smillie into the question of burgeoning administration, a hot topic even 20 years ago. Sir David commissioned the report, which subsequently disappeared. His point that Otago’s drop in student numbers is small compared with Victoria’s suggests other causes of financial strife. The sponsorship of a professional rugby team and a comms section bigger than most academic departments are only the start.
The problem goes way beyond Otago and needs a government prepared and able to fund universities appropriately; that is, appropriate quantity through an appropriate mechanism that recognises their true nature and function. Will any government have the courage to give itself the means to do so?
— Dr Harry Love is a former Otago branch president of the Association of University Staff (1993) and sometime honorary fellow in classics at the University of Otago.
