A MEMORY OF ELEPHANTS ON THE MODERN CAMPUS

Indicative assumptions underlying higher education policy in Australia

1945-1985-2015: academic, statist & market perspectives

Michael Gallagher, Honorary Senior Fellow, LH Martin Institute, The University of Melbourne

In the contemporary policy debates on higher education in Australia there is more than one elephant in the room –

obvious truths that are not being recognised and addressed. Perhaps there is a score of them; or to prefer the more

colourful collective noun, a ‘memory’ (rather than a random ‘herd’ or showy ‘parade’) of elephants on the modern

campus. And, with apologies to Oscar Wilde: to forget one is unfortunate; to deny many may be careless.ii

Current debate on higher education policy in Australia, principally regarding the deregulation of tuition prices for

domestic undergraduate education and the related matter of structural diversity of supply, has brought attention to

several areas where different participants appear to be working from different assumptions, some of which seem to be

at odds with actual practices, policy trends and changing circumstances. Similarly, in respect of university research

there are increasingly diverging perspectives of its role and worth.

In seeking to understand the nature of these different assumptions, this paper seeks to outline the dimensions of

change and continuity in Australian higher education policy and practice. The analysis is exploratory, as some of the

underpinning assumptions have not been made explicit and need to be inferred, and some of the more recent changes

are still unfolding and have not yet either taken full shape or passed all tests of endurance. While much of the content

material is not new this overview synthesises shifts across some twenty domains over the mere lifetime of the current

baby-boom generation (1945-2015). Clearly many of the changes within one domain interact with changes in other

domains, albeit not necessarily in synchrony or harmony.

The paper draws on two classic contributions to higher education policy analysis: the three forms of higher education

expansion outlined by Trow: ‘elite’, ‘mass’ and ‘universal’ (Trow 1974; Trow 2006), and the three forces of influence on

higher education organisation identified by Clark: ‘academic oligarchy’, ‘state authority’, and market (Clark, 1983). They

can be seen to coalesce as ‘academic-elite’, ‘state-mass’ and ‘market-universal’ orientations respectively dominating at

sequential periods in Australia. These ‘ideal types’ are presented in summary form as three phases: the first phase

starting after the Second World War; the second phase starting in the neo-liberal mid-1980s; and the third phase

starting around the turn of the twenty-first century circa 2005, although the commencement points of these phases do

not align on all domains precisely in any given year. The first phase can be seen as one in which the Australian nation

state pulled institutions away from traditional academic orientations and the second phase as one in which the state

pushed towards stronger market orientations (Gallagher, 2000). The third phase is one in which market influences are

shaping the system and challenging a number of the premises on which it was based and progressed over much of the

twentieth century. This latter phase may be depicted as one that is shifting from a process of ‘nationalisation’ to one of

‘privatisation’, although, as Peter Scott has observed in respect of the UK so in Australia by dint of the increasingly

intrusive regulatory regimen that has been put in place, the push on universities by the state to move to market models

renders “privatisation rather to be a higher form of nationalisation not its reversal” (Scott, 2007). Additionally, the third.

THE DISCOVERY