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Our global position and future potential The challenges facing Australian higher education. Simon Marginson Centre for the Study of Higher Education The University of Melbourne ATEM Branch Conference, South Australia Glenelg, 26 July 2006. coverage today.
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Our global position and future potential The challenges facing Australian higher education Simon Marginson Centre for the Study of Higher Education The University of Melbourne ATEM Branch Conference, South Australia Glenelg, 26 July 2006
coverage today • Australia’s current standing in the global setting, including research, and the market in cross-border degrees • Factors affecting Australia’s current position and global potential: history, geography, organisational cultures, public and private investment and composition effects, system stratification, government and Labor policies • Five possible futures, given different assumptions about public/private sector balance, public and private funding at varying levels, and the extent of mission specialisation
Positioned but also position-taking: Factors determining global potential • Institutions, and national systems, are both ‘positioned’ and ‘position-taking’ in the global field of higher education (Bourdieu). They have some control but not total control over their potential and opportunities. Those with stronger resources and reputations have more room to move than do others • Positionaffects the capacity to operate globally, which is unevenly distributed between nations and institutions on the basis of history, geography, size, resources, language of use, etc. • Nations and universities have a greater range of position-takingoptions in the global setting than national/local setting. The global setting is more open, less path-bound, with more possibilities for securing position via policy moves, cultures of responsiveness, executive strategies, novel teaching and research initiatives, etc.
Elements of global effectiveness • The key is to be fully engaged globally while maintaining a grounded, evolving national/local identity. A spirit of global engagement, grounded in national/local identity, while at the same time fostering an active, informed curiosity about other cultures. Openness plus a strong sense of own project. • Long term solid national government support is crucial • Institutional autonomy and academic freedom to operate • Research capacity and outputs are crucial to universities • Vocational education that is cutting edged, properly resourced • Communications power: both in (1) IT and (2) languages • Executive steering capacity based on professional managers • Staff and student movement inwards and outwards • Timing: take the opportunities when they are there!
Australia in the global setting: • An upper middle ranking higher education system • Key advantages: (1) being English-speaking, (2) relatively safe and tolerant social setting, (3) location SE of the Asian continent, (4) responsive and enterprising university cultures • Compared to other English-speaking nations, stronger in international education, in the sale of degrees especially in Asia, than in research. Academic capacity has been de-emphasized • 1.6% of GDP spent on tertiary education (2002) USA 2.6% • Relatively high dependence on private income as is USA • None of the top 20 research universities, two of top 100, 14 of top 500 (Shanghai Jiao Tong, 2005) USA has 53 of top 100, 17 of top 20 • 2% of world scientific papers (2001) USA 31% • 97 ISI ‘HighCI’ researchers 3568 in the USA, 409 in UK, 161 in Canada, 16 in NZ • 8000 foreign doctoral students USA 102,000 • 9% of the cross-border market in degrees (2003) USA 28%
Global markets, global competition There are two tier global markets in tertiary education: • The ‘super-league’ of leading research universities in USA/UK that dominate research and doctoral training. A status competition not a commercial market: relationships are conducted (and dominance exercised) as much via academic collaboration and exchange of public knowledge goods, as by competitive relations and private good production; • The market in commercial vocational training, produced by both non-profit and for-profit institutions, in both university and polytechnic/VET sectors. Australian institutions sit here 98% of students are educated at home. But in many nations global markets and the ‘super-league’ now overshadow once unchallenged leading institutions; and ‘rising star’ institutions can leverage global activity to lift themselves at home
Top 100 research universities 2005 from Shanghai Jiao Tong University Institute of Higher Education Others: Israel, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Norway, Russia, Italy each 1.
Peaks of the global education market: the top 20 research universities 2005 from Shanghai Jiao Tong University data
Australians in the top 500, 2005from Shanghai Jiao Tong University data
Research rankings fully expose Australia to global competition Universities are widely judged by research performance which is foundational to reputation, and operates as a proxy for degree power and even teaching quality. Now Shanghai Jiao Tong has provided a credible set of data on research performance, and this is feeding into the market in cross-border degrees Marketing (‘we are world-class’, ‘one of the finest’, ‘a research university’ etc.) is no longer enough - the data must confirm it! Governments/nations now want super-league universities. Implies greater concentration of research activity, greater stratification of universities, selective investment increases Every university (except Harvard) wants to lift its rankings, every university in the top 500 wants to hire more high citation (HiCi) researchers. This competition is generating price effects
Australians in the top 200, 2005according to the Times Higher
2. Factors affecting Australia’s global position and potential
Investment in tertiary education as a proportion of GDP (2002)
Australian investment in tertiary education is high relative to the OECD norm but the composition of investment has changed dramatically. In the last two decades the public share of funding has fallen from 85% to 40%. Incentives have been transformed. The pattern of activity has altered. • ‘It is notable that the rises in private educational expenditure have not generally been accompanied by cuts in public expenditure on tertiary education. On the contrary, public investment has increased in most of the OECD countries for which 1995-2002 data are available, regardless of changes in private spending. In fact, many OECD countries with the highest growth in private spending have also shown the highest increase in public funding… The main exception is Australia, where the shift towards private expenditure at tertiary level has been accompanied by a fall in the level of public expenditure in real terms’. - OECD, Education at a Glance, 2005, p. 193. The decline in public spending 1995- 2002 is 8 per cent in total (p. 187) and about 30 per cent on a per student basis (p. 175) .
Total university revenues have not declined. Public funding per student is down, private funding per student is up, the effects seem to cancel out. But on the private income side, what matters is not total income but surplus. In many universities international student marketing provides additional cash flow but does not generate net surplus. The new revenues have been largely or wholly absorbed by the new functions needed to raise them: marketing, off-shore activity, special services, etc. The old public income, the gift of government that cost little to ‘raise’, is not replaced. • And in some cases where international marketing does generate significant surplus, quality is suffering. • This is why in the midst of the export bonanza, universities are impoverished, and quality and value are in question. • In sum, with the shift to market-based incomes, universities spend more on revenue raising functions and less on the ‘core businesses’ of teaching and research. Yet it is these core businesses from which business draws value. The incentives are wrong. Universities are spending more on reproducing themselves, and less on producing valuable products.
Australia in the global market inmobile doctoral studentsPercentage (%) of all international students enrolled in research degreesOECD data for 2003 except USA is 2003-2004
Where will public institutions raise the new money they need? • Limited scope for HECS increases given faltering participation and fact most institutions are at maximum • No sign of serious increase in targeted research money to support RQF, or ANU-style funds to other institutions • Full fees a bonanza to emetging private sector institutions but choked by red-tape in public sector, e.g. uniform caps by program: no bonanza for sandstones,others not competitive • Serious increases in industry and philanthropic money dependant on tax changes • Limited potential for further cranking up foreign students
Intensified global salary competition 2000-2004 data, various sources, Purchasing Power Parity
Private and public sectors • The main impact of the Nelson reforms is the fostering of the private higher education sector, now about 10% of enrolments • Here the federal government is creating a pro-coalition constituency akin to the newer private schools; like them some are communities of faith • The change to the national protocols permitting specialist universities (originally triggered by Carnegie Mellon in SA?) is a decisive innovation, with the potential to radically remake the map of provision in the longer term • The private zector has become the main site of growth and innovation while the public sector has little growth potential • However there are signs of a new trend to mission specialisation in the public sector, notably at Melbourne
Stratification • Slow evolution into steeper market, not dramatic change • The sandstones have not taken flight - limits of undergraduate full fees, no RQF yet, and anyway the RQF is unlikely to deliver major shifts in research funding • Elite private sector yet to emerge (but watch this space) • Spate of new medical faculties strengthens some contenders • Middle level institutions under new pressure to merge, and with or without this face difficulties in cost management • Volume maximisers with weaker research face declining reputations and possibly, declining fee-based incomes • Serious money for regionals yet to appear. A hard time
Some worrying signs • We have lived off a strong research reputation accumulated on the basis of public investment in the 1960-1985 period, but • Jiao Tong rankings now make research reputation a function of measured performance, not history or marketing • They also emphasise the need for top 40 universities • Downward pressures on quality of teaching (doubling of staff student ratios) and research (funding cuts hurt basic research) • We are weak in comparisons with the UK and Canada • Our international market share and revenues are vulnerable, e.g. import replacement and export competition in China, Singapore • We lack a national approach to standards • Fiscal policy is locked up, seems to be downward flexibility only • Global capacity? National policy is ‘leave it to the universities’
Student flows in the global education environment EUROPE ASIA-PACIFIC (demand for foreign study In China, India, Korea, etc.) UNITED STATES UK Canada JAPAN AUSTRALIA NZ
