BY VIV MILEY
With more allegations emerging of full fee-paying students receiving preferential treatment and soft marking and universities accepting bribes, Australia's tertiary education system appears to be in a state of serious decay.
The allegations were first raised in preliminary findings in a research paper by the Australia Institute. Next to come out were revelations from the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and academics themselves, the most outspoken being Wollongong University's Ted Steele.
Then, when the university's vice-chancellor, Gerald Sutton, dismissed his claims, Steele upped the ante by signing a statutory declaration on January 15 detailing two cases in which theses he had marked and failed had been altered to passes. His department hastily conceded there was a problem and began "crisis" talks with him.
Sutton wasn't the only university administrator to be put in an awkward position, however. Since the allegations were first aired, the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee has been wriggling on a hook.
Its first reaction was to rush into print, claiming that the allegations were unsubstantiated and should be dealt with by the universities themselves.
In a press release made after the allegations came out, the AVCC claimed "conscientious, hard-working Australian university staff are being maligned". The allegations centred on marks being changed upwards not by other academics, however, but by university administrators.
Universities have done little as yet to investigate the allegations — other than reaffirm the AVCC code of practice, which states that academic performance is the only criterion to be considered in assessing any student.
Their further failure to guarantee protection for whistle-blowers also makes it likely that an upcoming senate inquiry into higher education will be unable to do much more than hear the allegations.
The AVCC has tried more sophisticated tactics as well, however. It has blamed declining academic standards on the substantial decreases in public funding for education — a view supported by the Australia Institute, the NTEU and the National Union of Students (NUS).
In a December discussion paper titled Our Universities: Our Future, the AVCC called for an additional $1 billion to be allocated to higher education while rejecting voucher-based funding models and top-up fees for students.
Even here, though, the AVCC has betrayed its equivocal position and its desire to avoid major changes to the way it runs its institutions. Its discussion paper also calls for further fee deregulation. Both the NTEU and NUS rejected the call, NUS president David Henderson saying "At the very moment that major concerns regarding academic standards and freedom are being raised in relation to full fee-paying places, the AVCC is calling for more of the same."
What has been lost in talks about university funding between the AVCC and the government is the fact that universities are public assets and that the community should be able to decide how universities are funded. The same goes for mark fixing allegations: they highlight the enormous lack of transparency and democracy in how educational institutions are managed, especially since the deregulation of fees.
The shadow cast by the recent allegations ensures that education will become a major issue in the upcoming election — and both Labor and the Coalition have started making noises.
While concrete policies, or even outlines, haven't yet emerged, it seems likely that the Coalition will reverse some of its own funding cuts which, while not restoring funding to its previous and needed levels, will at least make it look like the government is putting more money in.
Labor leader Kim Beazley, having already pledged in his last, failed election campaign that he would turn Australia into a "knowledge nation", has promised that it will create 100,000 additional university places by 2010, in part by establishing an online university. Beazley has also made a very vague statement that he would abolish up-front fees.
Neither party, however, has made a commitment to restore government funding to previous levels — the single biggest issue in the university crisis.
Neither party, either, has made any firm commitment to education equity by abolishing up-front fees, let alone the HECS graduate tax.
Until they do, however, the burden of funding the university system will fall more and more heavily on the student and away from such other government revenue sources as company profits.
As more and more evidence emerges of the depth of the crisis in Australia's universities, however, and as more and more students, university staff and members of the community begin to question the sector's current direction, the government, the opposition and university administrators will find themselves backed into a corner.