THREAD ON HIGHER ED: This wonderful article by Lynda Ng is a must read for anyone working in (or interested in) higher education in Australia. It exposes the fundamental misconceptions that have plauged the corporatisation of our Universites.
overland.org.au/2020/09/where-…
The basic problem is that the corporate drive to increase profitability fundamentally does not work given the not-for-profit nature of the sector.
More money flowed in, but that money cannot really go anywhere - except new buildings and increased executive pay 2/-
Under the corporate accounting model, building are assets. This is despite their limited capacity to generate income
In contrast, the true assets of the sector - the people - are, in an accounting sense, treated as an liability
This leads to a perverse outcome where, despite increasing profitability, academic staff are placed under increasing pressure to find 'efficiency gains'.
(Those of us in working in the sector will be accustomed to being 'benchmarked' to within a in of our lives, while we watch the ever growing expansion of Chancellorly and central (non-teaching/research units)..
This is not a critique of any given institution, but of a corpoatised system that incentivised Administrations to act in this way)
As Ng goes on to note, this corporatisation is itself one of the reasons for the exclusion of the industry from JobKeeper:
The tertiary sector has - in pursuit of corporate goals - become increasingly dependent upon casuals for the core business of teaching. Casual aren't a liability, and are cheap. Many prestigious unis are delivering 70%+ of teaching via casuals
Unfortunately this has also lead to widespread wage theft:
abc.net.au/news/2020-08-0…
To be clear, the trend towards casuals and 'teaching only' staff is nothing to do with quality, but rather cost savings. Quality goes down but profitability goes up.
And as long as the international students keep flowing in, this Faustian bargain makes sense.
COVID-19 has smashed this old status quo. And let's be honest, this old normal is not coming back.
The old funding model is gone.
It is not clear though, corporatised Administrations have really grappled with this yet.
I am hearing many stories of staff being told that the international market will return - but that Brazil will be the next China (Previously it was India, but that never materialised). Not only does this appear delusional, it ignores the profound shifts COVID is inflicting
Perhaps the worst example of this pervasive corpoatised administration I have heard involved new workload models be imposed. Staff at one Uni had - in an act of solidarity- voted to accept substantial pay cuts to help minimise redundancies.
Just days later they were informed of a new workload model that increased research expectations by 40%. More for less. Profits, not people. The perfect example of this pervasive culture.
As Ng notes, however, the solution to this is not to double down on the corporate model, but to reassert - once more - the core ideal that animates our public universities
The social value of our Universites depends upon their ability to critically reflect upon our society, institutions, laws and norms, and to engage in ideas and research the market cannot/will not support
Our Universites are terrible consultants. They are not here to provide a 'service' of research to commercial players. They are not about generating export profits.
Universities exist to create and share knowledge for the public good. They teach to open minds, not to make 'job-ready'. They enrich our society through the teaching/research nexus that enhances both.
This ideal is not - ultimately - compatible with the corporate administration model.
That model has been a creeping disease slowly rotting away these great institutions.
However, COVID-19 has shattered the illusions of that old model, and the profits that masked its rotting features have been ripped asunder. They are not coming back.
A reckoning is coming.
But with luck - and our willing fight - we will be left with a richer, fairer and healthier system afterwards. The idea of the Public University is, ultimately, a powerful one. It is an idea worth fighting for.
And, at the end of the day, these are OUR Universites. We the people own them. The corporate model is incompatible with their core not-for-profit nature as a public good.
It is time to reclaim our Universites.
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