REFLEXIONANDO SOBRE LA PRÁCTICA PEDAGÓGICA

Global economic pressures in the late 1980s led to the Hawke Labor government undertaking major structural and economic reforms. Education was targeted as one mechanism to make Australia more internationally competitive. Bessant (1992) argues that education had failed the nation and therefore needs to be more accountable to students, parents and the local community. From 1983 to 1996 the Hawke Labor government implemented a raft of higher education policy reforms that resulted in the federal government moving from a position of influencing decisions about the nature of education, to one of controlling, under financial duress, the content of higher education (Smyth 1991). As a consequence, higher education underwent major transformation in an attempt to more closely align with national priorities.

Between 1987 and 1992 the then Minister for Education, Employment and Training, John Dawkins introduced a range of policy reforms. These reforms included the abolition of the binary system comprising universities and Colleges of Advanced Education (CAEs). Minister Dawkins in ‘consolidating institutions’ required CAEs to

either amalgamate with universities or, in some cases, be redesignated as universities (Mahony 1993). In addition, Dawkins increased student placements, increased the focus on science and technology and directed research funding to areas of national priority (Long 2010). The Hawke Labor government reintroduced tuition fees, previously abolished under the former Whitlam Labor government, thereby shifting some of the costs for higher education back to individuals. Universities were encouraged to contribute to economic growth by considering growing international student numbers as well as developing commercial links with industry (Long 2010). Dawkins’ policies aimed at facilitating growth in the sector, ensuring economic relevance of courses, providing greater equity and access and ensuring greater efficiency without affecting academic quality, flexibility or autonomy. Hence the government wanted ‘more for less government money’ (De Angelis 1992 p. 37).

Dawkins’ proposals were widely criticised in academia. Some viewed them as ‘vulgar economism’ (Huppauf 2002) that reduced the function of education to one of economic utility (Bessant 1992). Others felt that education was no longer education for ‘public good’, that it was now being used for the ‘private good’ (Marginson 1990; Smyth 1991). Concern was also raised that, for the first time, the Minister had the power to direct universities with regard to what to teach and research (Stretton 1989). Criticism was also levelled at the introduction of terms such as ‘efficiency’, ‘productivity’ and ‘accountability’, replacing academic criteria when allocating resources and developing institutional practices (Buckbinder & Newson 1991). Concern was also raised that research and development would be linked more to the development of marketable knowledge rather than social knowledge (Buckbinder 1992). As a consequence, research could be compromised and run the risk of ethical problems emerging (Buckbinder & Newson 1990; Cichy 1990). There was also considerable criticism that Dawkins’ proposals were neither fair nor equitable (Blackmore & Kenway 1988; Marginson 1990). Criticisms were also levelled at the gender-biased nature of the documents (Blackmore and Kenway 1988). And as Lauder (1987) argued, the conflicting desires to save money and, at the same time, promote equality would see the bottom line ‘invariably win.’ Other critics of these reforms argued that the introduction of full fees for some courses would result in small groups capturing significant occupational areas (Marginson 1990), and this would lead to inequity, rather than flexibility (Marginson

1990; Smyth 1991). In addition, the inclusion of ‘equity’ into the proposals was seen as an afterthought (Blackmore & Kenway, 1988).

There were those however who supported Dawkins’ desires to make universities more accountable and responsive to national priorities (Penington 1991; Marshall 1995). Citing the Murray Committee report, Taylor (1989, p. 74.) noted that, ‘Australian universities have an inescapable responsibility to contribute to the general pool of scholarship and discovery [and] university research is recognised as indispensible to the welfare of the state.’

Smart (1991) argues that many universities were distracted from engaging in the debate over policy, as they sought merger partners in an attempt to gain funding, thus preventing any unified opposition to Dawkins’ proposals. Also, Dawkins’ decision to involve a group of seven senior academics to help shape his reforms further divided academia (Kelly 1987; Barlow 1989b) and, as Mahony (1990) notes, many of the CAEs might have perceived benefits accruing from Dawkins’ blueprint in the form of research funding, and increased student population and were therefore unlikely to resist.

Dawkins’ proposals changed the academic landscape. For the first time universities were expected to run like corporate entities and research was now ‘skewed’ towards national priorities, leading to great concern about the quality of higher education, the nature of which was difficult to define or indeed measure (Long 2010). Higher education is a complex concept that is perceived differently by different stakeholders (Harvey & Green 1993). However, because ‘quality’ was linked to cost effectiveness, this resulted in greater analysis of ‘quality’ in higher education (Harvey & Green 1993). Nevertheless Dawkins and successive Ministers have embraced the desire to improve quality in higher education because, ‘quality matters’ (Harvey & Green 1993 p. 9).

The change of federal government in 1996 saw the Howard Liberal/National Coalition Government (1996–2007) implement a second wave of reforms ‘driven by aggressive use of financial levers, quantitative measures of performance and close monitoring’

(Quiddington 2008, p.6). While it could be argued that the Coalition government worked with situations evident in the Labor years, Marginson (2008) argues that their response

Government pushed institutional diversification and performance-based funding in universities (Long 2010). Under the Howard Government students progressively paid more for their education and a greater focus was placed on teaching and teaching quality (Long 2010) with the government devolving responsibility to universities (Marginson 2008). Research funding during the Howard years in government was increased only once and basic research funding declined, while commercial research and development products increased (Marginson 2008). The Research Quality Framework (RQF) was introduced in an attempt to provide qualitative evaluations of publications in nominated areas, and while admirable in principle, Goldsworthy (2008 p. 23) argues that in reality, it was going to be ‘convoluted, time consuming and expensive.’

The Howard Government also introduced a range of micro-management reforms. Such reforms were seen by many as political meddling and a restriction to academic freedom (Quiddington 2008). Quiddington (2008) also noted the raft of legislation directed at universities in an attempt to regulate and control them. He identified 11 Acts related directly to higher education with seven of them introduced since 1997. One such legislation was the introduction of the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements (HEWRR) in 2005, under the Commonwealth Grants Scheme (Appendix K). HEWRR mandated that all universities that did not have their fourth round enterprise bargaining agreement in place had until November 2005 to conclude a HEWRR-compliant agreement in order to receive additional funding (Rosewarne, 2005). This compliance required universities to include five criteria in their enterprise agreements, namely 1. choice in agreement making, 2. direct relationships with employees, 3. workplace flexibility, 4. productivity and performance clauses and 5. freedom of association (Rosewarne 2005). There was fierce resistance to the introduction of HEWRR by both university management and the NTEU (Holden 2003), with management rejecting the idea that government should directly mandate their employment practices, working conditions and industrial relations (McCulloch 2004).

Julie Bishop, then Federal Minister for Education, Science and Training, in a speech to the AHEIA, invoked universities to take up the opportunity presented to them by government. She suggested that ‘HEWRR’s provided universities with an increased ability to attract retain and reward high quality staff by allowing for performance-based

the full impact of HEWRR’s could be determined, there was, yet again, another change in government.

The election of the Rudd Labor government in 2007 saw a re-affirmation of the value of education to the Australian economy with its commitment to the ‘education revolution’. This commitment was introduced in response to the under funding of education of the Howard Government, compared to other OECD countries (Marginson 2008). In 2008 the new government introduced the Excellence in Research for Australia initiative (ERA) to replace the previous government’s Research Quality Framework (RQF). While the RQF was seen as having major flaws, the introduction of ERA was also problematic as the use of metrics to assess academics work runs counter to traditional mechanisms used to measure quality in academia (Cooper & Poletti 2011). In addition, the use of audit mechanisms to quantify quality raises the question of what is meant by research quality and how the variables relate to this quality (Butler 2007). As Marginson (2008 p.11) argues, while many of the incentives offered to higher education under the Howard Government still remain, it will take some time to ‘unpick this framework’ and replace it with something else.

Since the higher education reforms introduced by Minister Dawkins in the late 1980s, successive governments have, through the use of policy reforms, sought to harness universities to government priorities. As a result, higher education has, according to Patience (2000), lost its relative autonomy and is now a pawn in micro-economic policy. Long (2010) contends that universities today have a profit-oriented corporate focus that calls for them to be accountable for a range of reasons, not the least of which is the amount of money spent on the sector. However, the growth in accountability has not had a corresponding growth in quality, in fact, ‘performance decreases as accountability increases’ (Long 2010 p. 462).