NEWSLETTER 2023-3 FROM LEE DUFFIELD – MEMBER OF UQ SENATE ELECTED BY GRADUATES OF THE UNIVERSITY

Please forward to other graduates of UQ.

The federal government and Higher Education - Universities Accord

The changes announced on Wednesday 19 July by the federal Education Minister, Julian Clare, have the makings of another great impact like the Dawkins changes in the 1980. These changes saw an expansion of enrolments and consolidation of many colleges into new universities – like CQU, USQ and QUT.

The project this time puts together the Labor Party objective of making tertiary education more widely available, and a drive to meet expected demand for many more graduates in the future economy. The supporting research is said to indicate that to meet this demand, the percentage of the workforce with a degree will go up from 36% at present to 55% in 2050.

As was widely reported Julian Clare released an Interim Report on the government’s universities Accord process, and told the National Press Club he would make an early start on five recommendations coming through:

1.    Establish up to 20 additional Regional University Study Hubs (formerly Regional University Centres), building on the 34 existing Regional University Study Hubs currently operating across the country, and establish up to 14 Suburban University Study Hubs.

2.    Abolish the 50 % pass rule, introduced as part of the Job-ready Graduates Scheme, seen as having a disproportionately negative impact on students from poor backgrounds and from the regions, and require increased reporting on student progress.

3.    Extend demand driven funding to all First Nations students who are eligible for the course they apply for. Currently this only applies to First Nations students in regional and remote Australia.

4.    Extend the Higher Education Continuity Guarantee for a further two years to provide funding certainty to universities as the Accord process rolls out, and as part of this, require universities to invest any remaining funding from their grant each year on additional academic and learning support for students from poor backgrounds, from the regions and from other under-represented groups.

5.    Work with State and Territory governments to improve university governance. This includes university governing bodies having more people with expertise in the business of universities, and a focus on student and staff safety and making sure universities are good employers.

Comment:

I have some individual talking points on the above which may be of interest, (as always not an official response by the University of Queensland).

While UQ has a long history of being a leader in the development of cultural life and the professions in Queensland society, drawing elite status, it has always been an opportunity provider as well. Its “Queensland Commitment” program is providing outreach to rural and regional communities, and should be well positioned to build hubs, as far as it might want to be part of that. Whether the government should, or would try to be prescriptive about what gets taught in these hubs, and how, could be a source of trouble: disputes over autonomy of the universities in curriculum matters; whether research might be de-prioritised; whether it is social engineering. Putting the social justice aspect first is highlighted in the five points, for example in the reasoning given at point two for relaxing the rule on fails.

Point three is in line with many existing programs for advancing Indigenous engagement in Higher Education, and especially, Indigenous leaders have been saying that specialist organisational units in some universities including UQ have achieved good success. Point four looks like more funding and tied funding.

Point five needs detailing on the profile that the government wants for university governing bodies like the UQ Senate. At this time these bodies have appointed members, mainly from the corporate sector, and elected, representational ones from alumni, staff and student bodies. There has been a lobbying of government, nationally, starting circa 2010, from corporate sources, mixed in with neo-liberal politics, to get the elected representatives removed, so the Senates become small boards, as in ordinary companies. The pitch has been that it would make the boards “expertise based”.

To my observation over a long period, including more than five years on two of these bodies, to give proper oversight you do need expertise there in higher education, as well as the business skills like financial management. So far, the government’s idea of ensuring “staff safety and making sure universities are good employers” is unclear, but may bring in expertise from the unions, which would broaden the field. Anecdotally, once in the past when board members were asked to suggest names for a vacancy on the board, I wrote proposing two names from the then leadership of the Teachers’ Union -- letter ignored.

While the Senates and Councils are formed under State government legislation, the Commonwealth puts up the main money, which should help it making its case.

Voice referendum – UQ supporting the Uluru Statement

UQ has joined the long list of institutions supporting the Voice to Parliament, like the Aboriginal Land Councils, the AFL, NRL and Women’s World Cup, and several other universities. The Senate began discussions on the referendum last year resulting in this consensual statement published in May:

'UQ’s Senate reaffirms its support for the Uluru Statement from the Heart and its call for Indigenous people to have a Voice. On this basis, UQ’s Senate welcomes the 2023 referendum to enshrine a Voice in the Constitution.

'As an institution of higher education and learning, we are committed to playing our role in ensuring the community is well-informed about the referendum and what enshrining a Voice in the Constitution, in the form proposed, means. We will do this in a way that aligns with our commitment to public dialogue and respectful debate and freedom of expression, enabling individuals to express their views through the referendum. At the same time, we reaffirm our commitment to the broader project of reconciliation through the many priorities outlined in our Reconciliation Action Plan.'

The first sentence affirms a yes vote on the Voice, with the statement also providing space to accommodate arguments going on, under the principle of freedom of expression.

The university already has a systematic reconciliation program saying much the same as a yes vote, indicated by substantial increases in Indigenous staff and student numbers and several cultural projects. See the Reconciliation Action Plan – built on the idea of the university working for the public good.

Stone the crows?

Comment. Here is my article in Independent Australia on these lines: The continent was occupied up to 1788 by a viable civilisation you could call Indigenous Australia. The inevitable arrival of “modernity” with settlers took the form of a campaign of destruction the same as the Ukraine invasion last year. You can imagine that instead, there might have been an accord and treaty, and matching of the systems of government in some way, which is being proposed now, with great forbearance, by the Aboriginal and Islander communities ... A “no” campaign has been giving talking points, telling people they can vote no without being racist.  But that vote must give comfort and impetus to aberrant groups promoting racial prejudice - and might cause some private discomfit. As would be said by Bjelke Petersen, former conservative Premier, “If you fly with the crows you get stoned with the crows.”

Indigenous Australia – looking ahead

At one of the recent graduation ceremonies attended by me (13.6.23), the university conferred an Honorary Doctorate on the philosopher Auntie Mary Graham, currently a UQ Adjunct Associate Professor, and Wakka Wakka and Kombumerri community Elder. She was active over many years in work that included the founding of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, service as a member of the Queensland Corrective Services Commission and as a prime mover in Aboriginal and Islander child care.

She told the graduation audience that after 60000 years of Indigenous life in Australia it was time for philosophical discussion about the idea of citizenship, over the next year or so. “But there is enough time, don’t worry too much about it”, she said. “We are planning now for the next 10000 years, looking at many questions, like the law of obligation, or collective responsibility.”

Artificial Intelligence – permission and transparency

Naturally, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been under discussion, especially in relation to regulating its use in teaching – and there is a reference paper here good for all to look at.

At this time the two protocols generally applied to AI are permission and transparency, a start, not enough on its own. A note on AI posted to students says: “If you use AI in your assessment without permission or appropriate acknowledgment it may be considered misconduct.” There is a roll-out of protective software, also not enough on its own.

Another option getting into the public debate is to include wet-ware solutions, relying on academics to evaluate their students’ performance. That would mean restoring power and trust to academics, systematically undermined over decades of corporatisation, academics remaining the main resource of universities – so long as they are in the business of developing human potential.

I have asked that the problem of technology-aided cheating be on the agenda each time, not so necessary to ask for as it keeps forcing its own way to the forefront.

Conclusions from my article on this last September in Independent Australia:

'“Digital knowledge” is such a credible new body of extremely well-remembered, accessible information, we might not strictly need any “old” knowledge. So the learner who cheats can go on through life buying whatever “chunks” of knowledge that they want to “know”. Cheating may find a natural home in such a system, where there will be narrowly-specified outcomes and transactions, where a dull rationality can be partnered with moral neutrality.

'On the other hand, organic knowledge, “old” knowledge, advanced “wetware”, obtained through study, cooperation and experience, is tied up with personal development and amongst other things, adaptability and moral choice. It has an ally in creativity. It is to do with thinking in abstract. It can be foundational for such skills as good time management, a skill missing from the lives of so many students today, half-enslaved in the “gig economy”.'

The advent of AI has been worked on and anticipated for a long time; it is opportune for the future, and clearly the negatives need hawk-eyed management. Please see this highly useful article prepared by Professor Jason Tangen in the School of Psychology on the intersection between AI and education.

Comment: Adapting to this massive change stirs up memories of the advent of personal computers on a mass scale in the 1980s, a similar feat of mass-adjustment. Families wanted them urgently so as not to miss out and employees were demanding training and digital equipment. The calculus since has been to simultaneously deal with much expansion brought about by this technology, can’t do without them, and the cancerous threats to culture and society accompanying it.

Funding and finances

Adverse economic conditions especially inflation as already reported in this newsletter series have put a brake on activities of the university like building and construction on campus.

The Queensland State Budget on 13 June allocated $44-million to one new building, and institution, the Paralympic Centre of Excellence. That funding together with federal support will enable the university to open the centre in two to three years, well ahead of the 2032 Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games. 

Otherwise the State had no direct increases for the universities, set against priorities including other Olympics needs, housing and homelessness, women’s strategy initiatives, youth justice programs, the energy and jobs plan and critical minerals and batteries development.

The economic pinch at UQ has seen a slowing in revenue from other sources, like the gifting program, though on historical measures that is expected to pick up later.

A stark indicator is that International Higher Degree Research Scholarships are set to go on hold next year due to budgetary constraints – causing concern about attracting high quality PhD students.

Vale Peter Wertheim

Peter Wertheim a leading figure in campus life during the university reform movement in the 1960s and after, died in Brisbane on 26 June aged 94. He came to prominence with Dan O’Neill when as tutors they told an audience of first-year students in 1967 the university and its programs were over-structured; moderate statements that set off a kind of moral panic in the media of the day, and struck a chord with large numbers of students and staff wanting political and cultural change.

Both became regular speakers at the forum in the Union precinct, where votes were taken on actions, such as launching the famous march for civil liberties in September 1967. Peter Wertheim was arrested that day for his non-violent protest and gaoled after refusing to pay a fine. He was back speaking at the forum in 2019, opposing a plan to bulldoze the area and remove it from control by the student Union, that plan since dropped in favour of consultations on developing the area.

Dan O’Neill told a memorial service on 15 July Wertheim represented a movement that was “taking seriously the role of the university both in abstract terms of what an intellectual community should be, but also in terms of the university being shaped more and more as a servant of capitalism …” In later years he was heavily engaged befriending and supporting Aboriginal activists. Teaching philosophy, he was a satirist, writing songs for university revues, and in one commentary outlining concern, not only for those physically or intellectually challenged, but “metaphysically challenged”. He spoke of a man “fighting on behalf of people who like himself did not exist.” He was “not any kind of saint or guru”, said O’Neill, but had motivations with Ancient references, as to Socrates, who “constantly engaged people in dialogue and made people think in ways they were not willing to think.”