Session Reviews

Day 1 | Day 2

6th Annual Higher Education Summit
Session synopses by Catherine Armitage, Former Higher Education Editor, The Australian

Day One Thursday April 3, 2008

9.00 Chairman’s opening remarks
Professor Daryl Le Grew, vice chancellor, University of Tasmania
Thinking about the Howard years under Coalition education ministers Brendan Nelson and Julie Bishop, it’s not clear whether universities have gone backwards, stayed in the same place or moved marginally forward. But certainly interim arrangements (to keep the funding under Backing Australia’s Ability) going for 2008-09 are needed. Universities’ potential contributions to the Rudd Government’s objectives of social inclusion and higher productivity are profound.

9.15 Can compacts deliver a diverse high quality tertiary education system?
Professor Alan Robson, AM, Vice Chancellor, University of Western Australia and Chair, Group of Eight

The Rudd government can go one of three ways on compacts (individual funding agreements with universities which Julia Gillard has said will be the new long term funding instruments for universities, to be negotiated in 2009 and implemented in 2010):: first, use them as the mechanism for translating government objectives into university plans, i.e. as a form of soft regulation; second, rely on student choice to expand access, give students loans and scholarships to spend at the institution of their choice and use compacts to support functions of universities not sustainable through market choice (as set out in Group of Eight “Seizing the Opportunities” paper) ; third, let them be negotiated trade-offs as in the US Virginia and California models, where governments provide the funding support and universities set prices etc. Second (Go8) option is preferable because central planning hasn’t been successful and is not consistent with microeconomic reform, and it is unlikely that public investment alone with be sufficient to sustain universities in the longer term.

Compacts have the potential to deliver funding more sensitively. There should be a combination of activity based funding and performance funding. Separate functions should have separate funding streams e.g. education, research and services to the community.

Thorny questions: 1) whether EFTSL measure can address equity component – it may need to be funded separately through third funding stream recognizing local needs and priorities, but difficulty getting a measure for value added teaching when the issue of how to measure exit standards has not been resolved 2) whether staff salaries currently funded through teaching component of relative funding model can be adjusted to take account of differences in research activity.

Clear guidelines for submission-based application process and a reliable objective measure of community engagement are needed to avoid special pleading.

Principles for compacts are autonomy, fit-for-purpose, accountability, simplicity, transparency and predictability. Compacts offer real potential for progress if they have clearly defined objectives, increase university operating flexibility and are adequately funded consistent with a student driven approach to higher education.

9.50 Establishing quality and uniqueness in a regional setting
Professor Sandra Harding, vice chancellor, James Cook University

Establishing quality and uniqueness is a challenge for all universities, not just regional universities. Universities are major assets in their regions, building enterprise, resilience and vibrancy. Their agenda is most likely to be effective where they work in collaboration with local industry and business in the context of facilitative government policy

Universities enjoy the “power of place”: they can be an instrument to leverage social and economic advantage for their communities, and this is particularly true in regions. They should be a transaction zone working with other scientific assets of the region to commercialise potentials and increase the vigour of the local economy.

Regional universities deliver human capital growth at a distance from the major metropolitan centres, informed by local labour market needs.

Paradoxically, at a time when global conditions are driving connectedness worldwide, and geographic location is less important than ever before, regional universities are particularly important (in connecting regions with their world). For example, James Cook is in a developed nation but lives in the tropical world, so its remit includes all issues for the tropics such as tropical disease, climate change, marine biology etc. Hence James Cook’s statement of strategic intent: “A brighter future for life in the tropics worldwide through graduates and discoveries that make a difference”.

10.55 Women taking the lead in post-compulsory education: opting for innovation
Professor Elizabeth Harman, Vice Chancellor, Victoria University

Progress of women in the workforce has stalled, in higher education and generally both here and overseas, after sharp upward trend in the 70s and 80s. But it is exactly the wrong time to give up – now is the time to galvanise.

It is no longer just a question of time: traditional approaches are not working. Circuit breakers are needed. Do we need a different diagnosis? It is turning out that it is more complex than just breaking the promotions barrier, we are dealing with not the glass ceiling but the labyrinth. Different approaches are needed such as appealing to values and handling career interruptions arising from not just child bearing but carer responsibilities for ageing parents, and personal health.

We need women to stay connected, confident and current. Management companies like McKinsey and Booz Allen Hamilton are working on ways of keeping women engaged all the way along e.g. Booz Allen Hamilton has 100 women in an adjunct program, working on specific projects where they negotiate pay, time and commitment.

Victoria Uni will rethink its approach:
- research womens’ value difference: work life balance, innovation and change
- design new policies for career interruptions for younger and older women
- ‘redesign boldly’ for recruitment and promotion and for women to stay connected while away, and be welcomed back.

11.35 The Learning and Teaching Performance Fund – The reliability of measuring performance data.
Professor Ian Scarman, School of Commerce, University of South Australia

There’s a saying that “if it gets measured, it gets done’’ but if the wrong thing gets measured, the wrong thing gets done repeatedly. Also its not always possible to measure the things we want to control, so surrogates are used. When it’s a multifaceted thing you are trying to measure, the assignment of weights is a real problem.

The LTPF uses the Course Experience Questionnaire, the Graduate Destination Survey, departmental data and student progress and retention rates. Criticisms include that
- it relies on surveys with low response rates and sample selection bias
- there is rorting, gamesmanship and a lack of transparency about the cut off score and what one needs to do to achieve it
- structural and standardizing issues such as a large number of complicated adjustments for disadvantage, ordinal ranking versus performance bands
- whole of institution measurement versus fields of education

Some of these problems are fatal in themselves, but there are more

- weighting system of the model
- are students and graduates sufficiently knowledgable about the areas of learning and teaching they are offering opinions on?
- are the outcomes of the activities supposedly being measured fully controllable by those being held responsible for them?
- considerable cost of the exercise

LTPF is based on a bad idea, that setting up a rankings competition for Federal teaching funding would lead to higher quality teaching and learning throughout the system. But it measures inputs that are too far removed from the major output objective to be an effective surrogate. And how are the people at the bottom going to get off the bottom without access to new teaching funds?

The word is that the new Federal government does not value to LTPF highly. The advice is that it should get a quiet but not too dignified burial.

12.15 Round table debate: should Australian universities work towards becoming specialist institutions?
Professor Sandra Harding, Vice Chancellor, James Cook University; Professor Gavin Brown, Vice Chancellor, the University of Sydney;; Julie Moss, National Chair, Australian Council for Private Education and Training; Professor Nigel Thrift, Vice Chancellor, University of Warwick, UK; Professor Ross Milbourne, Vice Chancellor, University of Technology, Sydney

UK universities are not different enough, funding pushes them all in the same direction. Need a funding model revolution but its not likely. Too much specialisation in an institution risks losing the benefits of interdisciplinarity. (Nigel Thrift)

Every university should be comprehensive in its teaching but no Australian uni is equipped to be truly comprehensive in its research, so each university should have research hot spots . System has been namby-pamby in setting a definition of research activeness, the hurdle is set so low that people can claim to be research active but in reality the university may be relying on only about 30 per cent of its staff to produce its research. (Gavin Brown)

Private providers have formed specialties in response to need in particular areas such as alternative therapies, art and design, public relations, tourism and hospitality. In some areas universities rather than trying to duplicate or compete are forming partnerships with private providers (Julie Moss)

There has been too much focus on specialization and diversity in the last 10-15 years but not enough thinking about why we want it. Specialisation can be discipline-based or mean specialization between research or teaching. But the teaching vs research debate is a furphy because if you have the policy settings right the debate goes away. Once you fund excellence wherever it is found you don’t have to argue whether it is funded in one pocket here or another pocket over there. Plus too much specialization reduces equity and access and social inclusion for people in the university’s area who want to study other things(Ross Milbourne)

2.00 Equity in the Education Revolution
Julia Gillard MP, Minister for Education, Employment and Training

When it comes to education, greater equity means greater success for this nation. But a frank assessment would lead to the conclusion that we have a major problem with equity. The participation rate of low SES groups in higher education remains low and fell in the five years to 2006 and has hardly changed in the past 40-50 years. If economic growth alone was going to address this problem we would expect to see the evidence now but it is not there; it is going to take something more. Changing the participation rate will take a huge effort across all levels of education and training.

We know the reasons students don’t make it to higher education usually have their roots far earlier in life. I confirm the government’s decision to establish national centre for student equity at the University of South Australia; its role will be to inform and lead the HE sector in demonstrating best practice to attract and retain students in target equity groups. There are innovative projects already including the Aspire program at the University of NSW and Access Melbourne at Melbourne University. The aim must be to reach a situation where academic ability, not socio-economic background is the sole criteria for entry into higher education. We genuinely want and need your ideas and energy.

2.35 A successful enterprise centre
Professor Eric Thomas, Vice Chancellor, University of Bristol, UK

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have committed millions of pounds to support enterprise activities in universities: the policy makers want a vibrant, innovative and competitive economy with better leveraging of UK research excellence. Industry wants open innovation and the chance to work with the best, they want to leverage their resources with public funding and want higher education institutions to be professional and easy to do business with.

Bristol’s response has been to take it on at the level of senior academic leadership: if leaders are not involved you won’t be able to persuade your academics that it’s important. We have enterprise and entrepreneurial development for students and staff, and a central pool of support professionals in project management, strategic relationship management, technology transfer, IP management and licensing, contracts management etc. The Bristol Enterprise Network assists knowledge transfer amongst over 1500 SMEs, amongst hi-tech, high growth industries.

Trust is critical – the sense of unis and businesses being on equal footing, as peers not just suppliers, is really important. Businesses are not just passive research funding donors but active participants helping to direct the research. Academic leadership needs to promote the dialogue, providing “engineered serendipity”. You need to use your local champions: Bristol “bought” half the time of senior academics in each faculty to champion enterprise. Enterprise must be seen as worthy, legitimate activity and be built into promotional/reward systems. But don’t do it for the money – in a few universities income from enterprise is 1-2 per cent. You do it because it lets you network with industry which brings innovation, it changes culture, and lets you create the graduates needed for the future. The most successful enterprise universities are also the most successful in getting research funding.

3.15 Rigour versus relevance in academic courses: does university engagement with business mean a ‘race to the bottom’ with homogenized and less intellectually rigorous course content?
Professor Roy Green, Dean, Macquarie Graduate School of Management

Debate within business schools about what kind of graduates they should be producing is fierce. What do businesses want from universities – do they want them to be enterprise powerhouses? A survey by the Industrial Performance Centre of MIT based on structured interviews in six countries suggested business want local innovative capability, educated people adding to the stock of codified knowledge, problem solving for industry and a private-public space to host meeting, seminars, conferences and alumni networks.

Unis are a long way down the list of sources of knowledge for companies: first is companies themselves, then suppliers, unis come in at about 16th. For uni-industry interaction that leads to innovation, informal contacts are rated most highly, followed by recruitment at first degree or masters level, then publications, conferences etc.
Critical thinking, communication and more than one language are the skills employers want from graduates and universities are quite good at producing them. Another question is whether businesses know what they want in ten years time, and to what extent unis should answer that question for them.

1.10 Employers round table: what do employers seek from universities
Kellie Sterling, head, recruitment and careers strategy, ANZ
Inta Heimanis, head, Careers Centre, University of Sydney
Cindy Tilbrook, executive director, Graduate Careers Australia
Ian Nettleton, senior human resources advisor, BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance

Recruitment outlook very tough – will be hard to provide the ANZ with a pipeline of leaders into the future. Bank is realizing it can’t be too picky in focusing on disciplines – looking at generic skills then training people on the job. (Kellie Sterling).

Students want training and development opportunities, work life balance and good people to work with. Most students won’t be doing the job they take straight out of uni for more than 3-5 years. Employers need to start thinking about that and the underlying core competencies they seek rather than disciplines. (Cindy Tilbrook)

Parents want to see a direct link between the student’s course and their job but increasingly, the link is not there. Best advice is for students to do what they feel most passionate about, to go with their strengths and talents. (Inta Meimanis)

Concern about students entering unis on low entrance scores. Most employers put graduates through a battery of tests by an independent testing firm, of verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, personal and abstract reasoning, have to do that because we can’t rely on the standard from some unis. (Ian Nettleton)

Despite the negative headlines in the media about employer groups such as BCA being unhappy with the quality of graduates, 83 per cent of employers surveyed by Graduate Careers Australia say graduates have good attributes. Mismatch between the media debate and perceptions on the ground? (Cindy Tilbrook)

Official Summit Dinner: Sustainability of International Student Market in Australian Higher Education Institutions.
Professor Paul Greenfield, Vice Chancellor, University of Queensland

Australian unis should be extremely proud of what they’ve achieved in the international student market, creating the nation’s third largest, $12.5 billion export industry, considered an exemplar in the US and UK. But nature tells us that sustainability is enhanced by diversity.

The deterioration in government funding of 20 per cent per student since the removal of full indexation for university grants has led to a drop in quality manifest in the decline in staff:student ratio from 13:1 to 20:1 in the past 12 years. Unis are left universities totally reliant on the transfer of surplus from international students to domestic undergraduates to sustain their operations. Over-dependence on this income makes us conservative and inhibits innovation and diversity of offerings.

We need to be more diverse in the models we use but that will not occur unless the pressures go off the need for returns from international students to cross subsidise the Australian undergraduate experience. We have something that is really, good, the competition is growing but to maintain that edge we need more degrees of freedom. We can’t have that freedom when financial imperative is constraining your thinking to the degree it is now.

For example we don’t focus on the PhD market because it doesn’t generate a short term return, yet there is evidence that attracting and retaining international PhDs and allowing them to play a role in the economic infrastructure of the country yields great dividends. Finances now are simply too tight; if we free it up, inventiveness and innovation will lead to a lot of diverse offerings and lead to a much healthier sector and a more sustainable one.

Day Two Friday April 4, 2008

8.50 Chairman’s opening remarks
Professor Richard Larkins AO, Vice Chancellor, Monash University

Relative neglect of universities since 1995 has resulted in funding shortfall of $1100 per student and a much higher student staff ratio than many of the universities we are competing with overseas. There is a real problem with research infrastructure: the more successful you are in wining competitive grants, the more disadvantaged you are in terms of the budget. Nothing much yet in the education revolution addresses these basic issues. As a minimum to ensure a competitive sector we need:

1. proper indexation of the competitive grants scheme from 2009
2. increased in the Higher Education Endowment Fund to $20 billion over 5-7 years
3. full funding of research infrastructure costs
4. creative use of “compacts” for industry engagement and community development
5. increased student support
6. a co-ordinated program to enhance indigenous students access and outcomes
None of us are holding our breath for this budget but we are hoping for full indexation and an increase in the HEEF from the budget surplus.

9.00 Research management: how to lift your reputation in research
Professor Nigel Thrift, Vice Chancellor, University of Warwick, UK

U. Warwick was one of 8 universities opened in the UK in the 60s, from the beginning it decided it didn’t want to be a pale shadow of Oxford or Cambridge so has always tried to be consciously different, a “professional outlier”.

In the beginning this meant concentrating on just a few departments and doing these well and in depth – so have only 28 departments, compared with most big British universities which have around 40.

The university also sought to be enterprising and outward looking – to match absolute academic excellence while being extremely relevant to industry.

It was very hard hit by funding cuts under Thatcher in the 1980s and decided it would never be in that position again. Now only 25 per cent of the income comes from government. We are home to 27 free standing companies, including a science park, retail outlets, a vacation conference business, internet shops business, hotel, retirement village, etc.

Kumar Bhattacharyya produced a model of an operation which is exactly half way between a university and a business. Called the Warwick Manufacturing Group, it sought out industry links way before other universities thought seriously about this.

Other reasons for success: the “Warwick gene’ whereby the university has a seriously large chip on its shoulder, a terrific culture that is quite resentful of the perceived advantages of other universities, the most important thing we can do is to keep that culture going.

We promote a culture of innovation so we provide the means by which staff can get their ideas to us fast and we can put those ideas into practice. There are no deans: no layer of management between the administration and the department.

We work hard to promote successful partnerships with funding bodies – we are always taking coach loads of academics down to the research councils so they know the people there. Plus we have made a big and determined push to the American trusts and foundations and Italian trusts (we have an operation in Venice which provides the base from which to do that).

U. Warwick has not spent a lot of time working with China, instead focus on India where links are already strong, and on building research collaborations with the US. There is remarkably little research collaboration between the US and the UK. Government ministers are obsessed with India and China which is bizarre given the historical ties between the US and the UK and the fact that the US is the major research driver in the world.

9.40 Research concentration: how can Australia maximize its return from investment in research?
Ian Young, Vice Chancellor, Swinburne University of Technology

The abandoned Research Quality Framework had negatives such as administrative overhead, time lag from assessment to the end of the funding cycle, and the potential for negative bias in peer review.

But positives were that it forced people to focus on research quality not quantity and to actively manage their research. The proposed Excellence in Research for Australia initiative needs to reduce the administrative overhead and shorten the time lag of assessments so it is dynamic, flexible and can support quality research as it evolves over time and across institutions. It should evaluate groups not individuals, to encourage research concentration. Peer review should be used to moderate metrics rather than in its own right.

But the ERA doesn’t allow the government to preferentially support national research priorities – this could be achieved through compacts.

There is merit in building research groups but is there merit in concentrating them in elite universities? A nation can concentrate resources on developing a few top level international athletes to win at the Olympics but that doesn’t make it a fit and healthy nation. Though Australia appears to perform extremely badly in the Shanghai Jiao Tong league table, performance in SHJT is strongly correlated with R and D spend. Mapping Australia’s performance against its R and D spend, you find it just about exactly where you would expect it to be given the level of research funding. The message is, if you want to enhance the performance, you enhance the funding.

Discussion: The Research Assessment Assessment exercise in the UK has been “absolutely poisonous” for research, has led to a concentration among a few institutions that would not have been strategically planned, and has made it very, very difficult for universities to collaborate with eachother (Nigel Thrift).

We don’t need to use other mechanisms to concentrate research funding in the ANU: the ERA will inevitably do that anyway. (Ian Young)

10.15 More than just osmosis: raising expectations for research leadership and management
Professor Shelda Debowski, President, Higher Education and Research Development Society of Australasia and director, Organisational and Staff Development Services, University of Western Australia

Research projects are the most complex form of project anyone can undertake, because they are non-linear, not entirely predictable, teams can be made up of novices through to irreplaceable experts with funding not contingent on performance, and not renewable.

Australian PhDs report they are ill-equipped to do the research required of them when they enter university employment with particular difficulty working in teams, interdisciplinary tasks, writing grants and so on. Universities know this but are not addressing it. This may be why we have only about 30 per cent of our research-potential staff actively doing research.

People don’t know about a university’s research strategy, they don’t understand how it operates, don’t know about research excellence exercises, induction is woefully inadequate, researchers work in isolation and end up incredibly remote from the community to which they belong.

For early career researchers, time and priority management is the most pressing thing. It’s a major concern that many of them trying to set up their careers are being used as fodder for all the administrative tasks at universities and don’t get time to develop their research. Programs can help researchers to be more assertive about their priorities. Some say they have lost four to five years of endeavour because they didn’t know how to work the system. Research leaders don’t go to leadership training because they don’t see it as relevant to them.

Every university has a management training system but they don’t use it well, as a positive management tool to enhance an individual’s growth and development.
The Group of Eight Research Leaders Program has a project management focus and blended learning approach. It has shown that people are really frustrated at being ignorant of ways in which they can improve their effectiveness.

11.00 Helping the wider community understand the significant contributions Australian universities make: being proactive.
Dr Glenn Withers, CEO, Universities Australia

Universities’ lack of community engagement in the past has cost us dearly in the willingness of taxpayers to fund us. We weren’t able to convince the government that we were recognising our need to more actively contribute to the community. We were doing a lot but intrinsic belief in our mission and its merit held us back from making the case for it.

But now universities are more consciously and proactively concerned to build their activities beyond basic degree instruction and research, community engagement/third stream activity has become deeply embedded in our activities. We are now seeking to consciously make the case for the contribution that we make to economic progress, ecological sustainability, understanding social issues, etc.

We have a quiet revolution on our hands that we need to proclaim more. People who went to universities in the 50s and 60s obviously don’t realize these changes have occurred. We should make our case for community engagement in partnership with stakeholders from government, business, community sectors, and the cultural world. Chancellors are natural champions of this activity and as business people, judges etc. carry a separate legitimacy.

Universities Australia’s three year strategic plan has as first priority using evidence based research to document how the sector contributes to national goals. We have neglected convincing treasury and finance officials that we can help them with their job: we need to show what we can do rather than keep asking someone else to help us. For example, what do universities do in the national budget to contribute to fiscal discipline and savings? The fact that our public universities have the highest share of private financing in the OECD contributes to national savings, because individuals have to save to pay their university fees (though this may have been taken too far). The Higher Education Endowment Fund is also a public savings initiative.

11.30 Community engagement: a case study looking at the evolution of the University of Adelaide’s experience
Professor James McWha, Vice Chancellor, University of Adelaide

A university is measured by its value to society. We have to ensure that society appreciates they are getting good value. In the end if we don’t meet expectations we will cease to exist.

When I joined the university, situated behind a heritage stone wall on a prominent street in inner city Adelaide, there was no signage directing visitors to it. When I asked why I was told “because everybody knows where we are”. Signage was installed and holes were knocked in the brick wall so the general public could see in, An attractive path and gardens area at the front of the university, which had been a car park, was created. Now thousands of members of the general public walk through there every day and we hope that by getting them in there and engaging them they may feel a little more inclined to put their hands in their pockets.

Adelaide Uni has also opened its open days to the general public rather than just school leavers, for example having discussion sessions on topical issues tapping expertise of the uni, and a short film competition. It has been highly successful, with 70 per cent of visitors saying they would come back for another open day. We also have Friday lunch time music concerts, and public lectures every month.

There are 1677 volunteers who assist with a range of tasks. Community engagement has also found its way into the curriculum with students going out into the community for research and interaction.

Staff promotions forms have a box in which staff are invited to detail their community engagement activities, and this is given proper recognition in promotions.

12.05 Two-step migration: growing competition for international students as high skilled migrants across OECD and APEC nations.
Lesleyanne Hawthorne, Associate Dean International, University of Melbourne

There is a worldwide shortage of skilled workers due to low fertility rates. Every government is formulating policies to boost high quality skilled migration to meet future workforce needs. They are identifying international students as an elite group of skilled migrants and take whatever competitive steps are necessary to attract them to the host country.

With the changes to its laws in 1999 facilitating migration of international students Australia is seen as aggressive and ahead of the curve in relation to international students. That program has been highly successful in attracting students: within four months applications had surged by 77 per cent and by 2004 onshore applications had become the dominant source of skilled migrants.

Because of tougher eligibility requirements from the outset, Australia has been more successful in selecting people far more likely to be accepted by employers, compared with Canada where employment outcomes have been catastrophic. Canada estimates that within 10 years, 100 per cent of net growth in every profession will be dependent on migration.

The UK has just changed its policy to give international students privileged access to skilled migration; its ambition is “to surpass competitors”. By late 2007 Condoleezza Rice had added advocacy for higher education in the US to her overseas trips. Just about every European country has changed its migration policies; Japan, overdependent on China, faces atrophy of its tertiary sector if it can’t find new sources of labour supply.

European countries have a huge fee advantage over us, e.g. Germany doesn’t charge fees, US gives scholarships to virtually any international students doing a higher degree. The shortage will impact on our ability to choose international students and on fee viability. Everything that we do is being closely monitored by our competitors and everything that works will be replicated.

1.45 Dual sector institutions
Professor David Battersby, Vice Chancellor, University of Ballarat

U Ballarat is one of four dual sector institutions in Victoria (also RMIT, Swinburne, Victoria University). There is a complex matrix of relationships between vocational and higher education. At Ballarat there is a 17 per cent flow of TAFE students to higher ed, and a five per cent flow in the opposite direction, although the flow from higher ed to TAFE is growing rapidly.

U Ballarat doesn’t engage heavily in applied research but focuses on knowledge transfer and innovation. TAFE was initially overlooked in this but that is changing and we have developed knowledge transfer metrics for TAFE like those for higher ed.

Dual sector institutions work extremely well in regional locations where they are the only provider and function as a one stop shop, with economies of scale. Opportunities for industry partnerships and collaborative opportunities are great.

On the downside, the reporting and funding regime requirements are very burdensome because you are dealing with two levels of government, state (TAFE) and Federal (higher ed). Industrial relations is difficult enough and will become a significant impediment if we can’t resolve the current impasse where TAFE employees are under one industrial agreement and higher ed employees are covered by a different one. Attempts to rectify it this year have been unsuccessful.

Under the Rudd government the rhetoric has shifted from talk about different pathways and articulation to “integration”, looking at the place of higher ed within the context of broader tertiary education. We anticipate this could lead to something more structured, more formal in agreements between vocational ed and higher ed than just credit arrangements and pathways. These ideas are being floated in Queensland and particularly in the regions where facilities exist close together. It seems likely that the Bradley review will float the possibility of more dual sector institutions.

2.20 Round table on medical programs: improving quality and attracting students to fill job-gaps.
Professor Lesleyanne Hawthorne, Associate Dean International and Director, Faculty International Unit, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne
Todd Walker, Associate Professor, Biomedial Science, University of Ballarat
Professor Nicholas Saunders, Vice Chancellor, University of Newcastle
Professor Eric Thomas, Vice Chancellor, University of Bristol, UK
Professor Peter Smith, Dean, Faculty of Medicine, University of NSW
Deborah Hyland, Director, Workforce Development and Leadership Branch, NSW Health

By 2012 the number of medical graduates will have doubled from 2012 last year to 3500 but it is questionable whether this will change the maldistribution of the medical workforce. Structural reform and difficult political decisions are needed to get new sorts of health care workers and new training positions located outside the capital cities. Medicare supply numbers could be tied to working in particular geographic areas, so you can only bill on Medicare if you work in those areas. We also need to invest in regional areas to make them more attractive to people, with better connectedness, education, IT etc. (Nicholas Saunders)

In the past decade the number of temporary foreign medical graduates brought into Australia has gone from 500 a year to 5,500 a year. We have developed a high degree of reliance on them to work in areas of undersupply. They are attractive to governments because they can be co-erced into practising particular types of medicine in particular locations as a condition of residency. They can bypass all the legal residential requirements except English language testing, and many of them do not attempt or pass the Australian Medical College exam. As the number of domestic medical graduates increases, foreign students will be completely displaced in the queue for clinical placements. (Lesleyanne Hawthorne)

The concern is, what is going to happen when this avalanche of medical students comes out of medical schools – how we will find accommodation and training places for them is a real issue. State governments are starting to require unis to sign contracts, and are slipping in a charge for clinical placements. The system of clinical placements is dysfunctional, each part is controlled by a different body and they don’t see eye to eye. (Peter Smith)

3.25 Australian universities: can they help the skills shortage?
Professor Steven Schwartz, Vice Chancellor, Macquarie University

The government has called for an education revolution to make Australia’s workforce the best skilled in the world; the problem is that graduates starting work today will retire in 50 years and we don’t know what the world will look like in 15 years let alone 50 years.

Recent business history is littered with examples of industries ambushed by disruptive technologies – the record/CD industry, videos and DVDs, encyclopedias, newspapers, scientific journals…It is very hard for big businesses to change their businesses, but we don’t want to be fighting the last war. The skills we have given our graduates are not the skills those industries need.

We need to teach foresight, constructive dissent and creativity. John McCain said genuine foresight is not really a hallmark of genius, it is more the result of painstaking inquiry to identify an unseen pattern of connections or developments.

Eric Ashby said constructive dissent is based on deep knowledge, careful observation and constructive thought. The constructive dissenter can “present an alternative explanation whose logic is so compelling that it convinces experts in the field to change their minds”.

Educators have to be careful not to stifle creativity: by the time they get to universities what many of our students most fear is appearing foolish. To try to infuse more creativity in our students, we need to empower teachers to do research. It is the commitment to research that makes the difference.

4.00 Round table on conceptualizing today’s image of the student from an institutional perspective

During the Howard era, the free-market view of the university student was developed and the view of “students” as consumers or clients of full-fee degrees began to develop. For example, with the decline of student unionism there was a reduction of the role of the student as a member of a collegial community and rather a turn towards the perception that students are buyers of student services.

The use of the term “active citizen” is perhaps a better conceptual term we should use to define a “student” and a more appropriate model from which higher education institutions should attempt to perceive and base their student-relationships upon.

The promotion of the student as a community member is possible through universities proactively helping to develop their social and community awareness through campus culture and accessibility to campus activities.

Universities need to take a more holistic approach to students and recognise that they are more than just clients/consumers.

4.40 Closing remarks from the chair

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