TY - JOUR
T1 - The modern Australian university
T2 - surviving the politics of the Unified National System
AU - Simms, Marian
N1 - Funding Information:
The other two books are edited by a team of Melbourne-based educational researchers (The Dawkins Revolution, 25 Years On) and authored by a small team of historians with one educational researcher – also Melbourne based (No end of a lesson: Australia’s national system of higher education). These two books to varying degrees describe and discuss the main features of the Unified National System (UNS), which were: the mergers of many universities and colleges to meet the minimum criterion of 2,000 EFTSUs (Effective Full-time Student Units) to create a national system of teaching and research universities; the creation of a user-pays funding system (the Higher Education Contribution Scheme – HECS) to relieve the financial strain on government, while achieving a significant increase in graduate numbers; and significantly boosting funding to the government’s specialised research funding agency-the Australian Research Council (ARC), previously the Australian Research Grants Committee (ARGC). The funds for the ARGC and prior to that the ARGC were derived from the so-called ‘clawback’ from universities, which created angst amongst many vice-chancellors and staff, like the angst expressed by senior academics in the mid-1960s when the Large Research Grants Scheme was created in 1965 (see Stretton 1966). Overall governance of universities was to be managed directly through and by government departments, and not those ‘intermediary’ bodies that for 30 years had ‘buffered’ the federal government’s relations with universities (Harrold 1991). The enabling mechanism was through financial legislation.
Funding Information:
Marian is grateful for the suggestions made by Aynsley Kellow (UTAS), Jensen Sass (IGPA), Diane Stone (IGPA) and Glenn Withers (ANU, UNSW) on an earlier version of this article, which also benefitted from input from three contemporary insiders who wish to remain anonymous.
PY - 2019/4/3
Y1 - 2019/4/3
N2 - This review article discusses four recent books that discuss, amongst other matters, the nature and origins of the Australian Unified National System (UNS) of higher education in the 1980s. The UNS emerged from the Higher Education White Paper released by Minister John Dawkins in 1988 and has remained remarkably stable. The review uses three main lenses to interpret and critique these books: the applicability of a suite of policy models to the processes of emergence and stability in the governance of the Australian higher education and research space; the extent to which the books critically evaluate the successes and failures of the Dawkins’ reforms; and the role of political scientists in the emergence and governance of the UNS, as two of the authors (and practitioners) are well-known political scientists. Overall, the review argues that while deepening our understanding of the roots of the UNS some of the authors of and contributors to these volumes let their admiration for the political and policy skills of the responsible minister, John Dawkins, overshadow a fuller consideration of policy shortcomings and alternative scenarios. Glyn Davis book is an exception to this trend.
AB - This review article discusses four recent books that discuss, amongst other matters, the nature and origins of the Australian Unified National System (UNS) of higher education in the 1980s. The UNS emerged from the Higher Education White Paper released by Minister John Dawkins in 1988 and has remained remarkably stable. The review uses three main lenses to interpret and critique these books: the applicability of a suite of policy models to the processes of emergence and stability in the governance of the Australian higher education and research space; the extent to which the books critically evaluate the successes and failures of the Dawkins’ reforms; and the role of political scientists in the emergence and governance of the UNS, as two of the authors (and practitioners) are well-known political scientists. Overall, the review argues that while deepening our understanding of the roots of the UNS some of the authors of and contributors to these volumes let their admiration for the political and policy skills of the responsible minister, John Dawkins, overshadow a fuller consideration of policy shortcomings and alternative scenarios. Glyn Davis book is an exception to this trend.
KW - Higher education policy
KW - policy analysis
KW - political science as a discipline
KW - research policy
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85063128564&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/10361146.2019.1588225
DO - 10.1080/10361146.2019.1588225
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85063128564
SN - 1036-1146
VL - 54
SP - 288
EP - 300
JO - Australian Journal of Political Science
JF - Australian Journal of Political Science
IS - 2
ER -