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Quality of Teaching in Australia's Universities- or lack there of
Much controversy of late has been made surrounding the new strategies of the Australian federal government's push to privatise the nations education system by stealth. Plans are afoot to divide institutions into classes such as 'research university', 'teaching university' and the failures to become 'community colleges' or similar. While at the same time brining in US Universities to set up full fee paying campus in Australia, to compete directly with the previously government supported institutions (Carnegie Mellon will be establishing in Adelaide with he help of 20 million AUD of tax payers funds – while the existing 3 universities in the city are having funds withdrawn). In response to the ‘Divide et impera’ strategy of the federal government, most of the institutions are madly running around trying to fit into the research category as this is the one that provides the most prestige. However, many will fail at this. Some are being pragmatic and solidifying their quality teaching status. Others still are trying to be jacks of all trades. It would seem that of the 'group of eight' most will aim for research status and be successful, given their long standing reputation as research institutions. This may be at the expense of teaching... which would seem to be borne out in some of the figures below. Of the institutions outside the group of eight there is a gamble as to go for broke and aim for research status, some will, with no doubt make it, while neglecting teaching. Again you can see the results of this in the figures below.
Learning and Teaching Fund 2006 - Ranking and total scores by Institution
Rank, Uni, State, Total score
1, University of Wollongong, Vic, 3424
2, Australian Maritime College, Tas, 3079
3, The University of Melbourne, Vic, 2993
4, Swinburne University of Technology, Vic, 2933
5, The University of Queensland, Qld, 2873
6, The Australian National University, ACT, 2695
7, The University of New England, NSW, 2556
8, University of Canberra, ACT, 2425
9, University of Ballarat, Vic, 2408
10, The University of Sydney, NSW, 2393
11, Murdoch University, WA, 2349
12, The University of Western Australia, WA, 2342
13, Australian Catholic University, ACT, Qld, NSW, Vic , 2273
14, Monash University, Vic, 2216
15, Macquarie University, NSW, 1996
16, La Trobe University, Vic, 1983
17, Charles Sturt University, NSW, 1944
18, University of Technology, Sydney, NSW, 1872
19, Victoria University of Technology, Vic, 1865
20, University of the Sunshine Coast, Qld, 1844
21, Deakin University, Vic, 1835
22, Griffith University, Qld, 1825
23, Edith Cowan University, WA, 1791
24, Curtin University of Technology, WA, 1745
25, The University of Newcastle, NSW, 1631
26, The Flinders University of South Australia, SA, 1602
27, University of Southern Queensland, Qld, 1539
28, Southern Cross University, Qld, NSW , 1483
29, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Vic, 1449
30, James Cook University, Qld, 1417
31, Queensland University of Technology, Qld, 1367
32, The University of New South Wales, NSW, 1356
33, University of Western Sydney, NSW, 1285
34, University of Tasmania, Tas, 1200
35, Central Queensland University, Qld, 1149
36, The University of Adelaide, SA, 1054
37, University of South Australia, SA, 1011
38, Charles Darwin University, NT, 905
Other Universities not included in the above rankings:
Bond University, Qld
The University of Notre Dame Australia, WA
Australian Defence Force Academy, ACT
Australian Graduate School of Management (U.NSW and U.Sydney)
A tale of woe in South Australia
From the promising beginnings and high hopes held for one such large South Australian university comes a tale of woe that would seem to describe the death throws of a public institution. In dealing with the challenges put forward by the federal government’s changes the university seemed to have been aiming for research status. But to such an extent that their traditional focus on teaching had been totally sidelined. Although form the insider information gained by this commentator much may be contributed to extremely draconian treatment of its staff by senior and middle management – kicked off by the unfortunate leadership style of its hard-to-get-rid-of V.C. It is well known within the institution of the high level of distain held by the V.C and her management team towards her academic staff - an unfortunate attitude that has permeated all levels of administration over the 10 or so years of her leadership. Add to this the miss allocation of funds towards the V.C's pet projects and largely unneeded building construction in the CBD - while a campus sits idle in the suburbs. Some contradictory messages are coming out of that institution. One story has it that the institution is racking up interest debts on the new buildings while the other story has it that the V.C has the middle management running around like chickens with their heads cut of trying to meet impossibly high cost cutting targets in an environment where the university supposedly has 30+ million in the bank. The business faculty has been told to cut its casual teaching budget by 50%, with equivalent demands being made in other areas of the university. Although given the opacity of the University's budgeting and allocation systems it is hard to verify.
Further stories of the planned removal of up to 100 teaching staff by way of ‘performance management’ are also circulating. The rumour has it that the V.C has stated that the last round of redundancies were ‘too expensive’ and that ‘we were not going to do that again’. So the strategy this time will be to encourage staff to quit by making their lives miserable and thus avoid the redundancy payments. It would seem that the attitude employed by most heads of departments -but not all- involve ‘yes mam, how high shall I jump?’ at the expense of long serving and competent academic staff. This is particularly true for the ‘ambitious’ ones that have their eyes on becoming the next faculty P.V.C. It was not always this way, as longer term staff have observed the heads of departments that were sympathetic to the needs of their academic staff gradually removed in favour of those more in liking to the ‘command and control’ style of the senior administration. Further pressure on resources at the coal face have been bought about by the ‘artificial accounting practices’ employed in the internal funding re-distribution system which leads to extremely high 'taxing' of teaching units while administrative ones make handsome profits. This is akin to a car factory starving finds and resources from the production line in favour of refurbishing the head office meeting room. Several staff of the institution have commented that they have lost count how many used Chancellory suites the university now has. The factory metaphor works well in the case of this university as it appears its staff are treated like factory workers on a production line. Starvation of the 'shop floor' so that the senior management can look good on the budget might seem like a practice harking back to the beginning of the industrial revolution, but it is also a practice alive and thriving in some Australian universities. All of this of course leads to a lessening in quality of teaching as powerless staff are pushed harder and harder and allocated less and less time in their workload to complete each given task. Where previously permeant teaching staff would develop and lead a couple of courses per year and employ a number of casual teaching staff to assist with tutorials and marking duties, they now must undertake all these duties themselves. This move was made possible by the ‘adjustment’ and ‘interpretation’ of enterprise bargaining agreements pertaining to workload models where the maximum allocation of teaching hours were being interpreted as minimums, coupled with the allocation of time for each given task being reduced significantly. This of course means that less time is spent of keeping up-to-date, proof reading materials, cooperating with other staff, conducting research etc. Essentially the ‘academia’ is being ripped out of the academic departments. Yet all of this doesn’t stop management later coming back and abusing them for not meeting targets for quality of teaching and as well as research output targets –as will no doubt occur as a result of the figures highlighted below.
Rsults of a large South Australian university
Indicator, Technical Note 2 Data, Ordinal Rank Number, Indicator Weight %, Weighted Indicator Result
Student Satisfaction
CEQ Generic Skills, 70.74, 11, 17.91, 197
CEQ Good Teaching, 40.77, 4, 18.52, 74
CEQ Overall Satisfaction, 64.11, 5, 18.90, 95
Sub Total, -, -,55, 366
Outcomes
GDS Full-time Employment, 73.49, 11, 11.48, 126
GDS Further Full-time Study, 14.51, 13, 10.29, 134
Sub Total, -, -,22, 260
Success
Student Attrition Inversion - Commencing, 83.56, 27, 10.65, 288
Student Progress - Commencing, 84.40, 8, 12.26, 98
Sub Total, -, -,23, 386
Total, -, -,100.01, 1011
Notes: To derive higher education providers' weighted results for each indicator, the model:
1. takes the indicator data published in Technical Note 2 tor all Table A providers and produces an ordinal rank number for each provider within that indicator. The ordinal number of 38 is assigned to the provider with the highest reported result and the ordinal number zero is assigned to the provider with the lowest result. Providers with equal results are assigned identical ordinal rank numbers; then.
2. multiplies the ordinal rank by the weight for that indicator to produce a weighted result for the provider.
All figures are from the Australian Government, Department of Education, Science and Training, Canberra, Australia. See DEST.
The commentator prefers to remain anonymous lest the lawyers of the institutions mentioned here attempt to silence the free speech.
