History
By Cool on 2:12 AM
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To World War II
The first university established in Australia was the University of Sydney in 1850, followed in 1853 by the University of Melbourne. Prior to federation in 1901 two more universities were established: University of Adelaide (1874), University of Tasmania (1890). At the time of federation, Australia's population was 3,788,100 and there were fewer than 2,652 university students. Two other universities were established soon after federation: University of Queensland (1909) and the University of Western Australia (1911). All of these universities were controlled by State governments and were largely modeled on the traditional British university system and adopted both architectural and educational features in line with the (then) strongly influential ‘mother’ country. In his paper Higher Education in Australia: Structure, Policy and DebateJim Breem observed that in 1914 only 3,300 students (or 0.1% of the Australian population) were enrolled in Universities. In 1920 the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee (AVCC) was formed to represent the interests of these six universities.
The ‘non-university’ institutions originally issued only trade/technical certificates, diplomas and professional Bachelor’s degrees. Although universities were differentiated from technical colleges and institutes of technology through their participation in research, Australian universities were initially not established with research as a significant component of their overall activities. For this reason, the Australian Government established the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in 1926 as a backbone for Australian scientific research. The CSIRO still exists today as a legacy, despite the fact that it essentially duplicates the role now undertaken by Australian universities.
Two university colleges and no new universities were established before World War II. On the eve of the War, Australia's population reached seven million. The university participation level was relatively low. Australia had six universities and two university colleges with combined student numbers of 14,236. 10,354 were degree students (including only 81 higher degree students) and almost 4,000 sub-degree or non-award students.
World War II to 1972
In 1942, the Universities Commission was created to regulate university enrolments and the implementation of the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme (CRTS).
After the war, in recognition of the increased demand for teachers for the "baby boom" generation and the importance of higher education in national economic growth, the Commonwealth Government took an increased role in the financing of higher education from the States. In 1946 the Australian National University was created by an Act of Federal Parliament as a national research only institution (research and postgraduate research training for national purposes). By 1948 there were 32,000 students enrolled, under the impetus of CRTS.
In 1949 the University of New South Wales was established.
During the 1950s enrollments increased by 30,000 and participation rates doubled.
In 1950 the Mills Committee Inquiry into university finances, focusing on short-term rather than long-term issues, resulted in the State Grants (Universities) Act 1951 being enacted (retrospective to 1 July 1950). It was a short-term scheme under which the Commonwealth contributed one quarter of the recurrent costs of "State" universities.
In 1954 the University of New England was established. In that year, Prime Minister the Robert Menzies established the Committee on Australian Universities. The Murray Committee Inquiry of 1957 found that financial stringency was the root cause of the shortcomings across universities: short staffing, poor infrastructure, high failure rates, weak honours and postgraduate schools. It also accepted the financial recommendations in full which led to increased funds to the sector and establishment of Australian Universities Commission (AUC) and that the Commonwealth Government should accepted greater responsibility for the States’ universities.
In 1958 Monash University was established. States Grants (Universities) Act 1958 allocated funding to States for capital and recurrent expenditure in universities for the triennial 1958 to 1960. In 1959 the Australian Universities Commission Act 1959 established the AUC as a statutory body to advise the Commonwealth Government on university matters. Between 1958 and 1960 there was more than a 13% annual increase in university enrollments. By 1960 there were 53,000 students in ten universities. There was a spate of universities established in the 1960s and 70s: Macquarie University (1964), La Trobe University (1964), the University of Newcastle (1965), Flinders University (1966), James Cook University (1970), Griffith University (1971), Deakin University (1974), Murdoch University (1975), University of Wollongong (1975).
By 1960, the number of students enrolled in Australian Universities had reached 53,000. By 1975 there were 148,000 students in 19 universities.
After 1972
Until 1973 university tuition was funded either through Commonwealth scholarships which were based on merit or through fees. Tertiary education in Australia was structured into three sectors:
- Universities
- Institutes of Technology (a hybrid between a university and a technical college).
- Technical Colleges.
During the early 1970s, there was a significant push to make tertiary education in Australia more accessible to working and middle class Australians. In 1973, the Whitlam Labor Government abolished university fees. This decision did not greatly change the socio-economic backgrounds of students attending universities because only 20 to 25 percent of students paid fees as most had Commonwealth scholarships. Another reason for the lack of change was because low high school retention rates had resulted in many young people from disadvantaged backgrounds not completing secondary education and therefore never having the opportunity to choose to attend university. Nevertheless there was an increase in the university participation rate.
In 1974 the Commonwealth assumed full responsibility for funding higher education (universities and CAEs) and established the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission (CTEC) which had an advisory role and responsibility for allocating government funding among universities. But in 1975, in the context of federal political crisis and economic recession, triennial funding of universities was suspended. Demand remained with growth directed to CAEs and State-controlled TAFE colleges.
1980s
By the mid 1980s, however, it became the consensus of both major parties that the concept of ‘free’ tertiary education in Australia was untenable due to the increasing participation rate.
Ironically, a subsequent Labor Government (the Bob Hawke/Paul Keating Government) was responsible for gradually re-introducing fees for University study. In a relatively innovative move, however, the method by which fees were re-introduced proved to be a system accepted by both Federal political parties and consequently is still in place today. The system is known as the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) and enables students to defer payment of fees until after they commence professional employment, and after their income exceeds a threshold level – at that point, the fees are automatically deducted through income tax. Students also have the option of paying up-front for their education and receiving a discount commensurate with the interest rate saving associated with non-deferral.
By the late 1980s, the Australian tertiary education system was still a three-tier system, composed of:
- Traditional universities (largely the original group plus a few 20th Century additions, such as Monash University)
- A collection of institutes of technology (such as the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT))
- A collection of colleges of Technical and Further Education (TAFE).
However, by this point, the roles of the universities, institutes of technology and the CSIRO had also become blurred. Institutes of technology had moved from their traditional role of undergraduate teaching and industry-consulting towards conducting pure and applied research – they also had the ability to award degrees through to Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) level.
For a number of reasons, including clarifying the role of institutes of technology, the Federal Minister for Education of the time (John Dawkins) created the unified national system, which compressed the former three-tier tertiary education system into a two-tier system. This required a number of amalgamations and mergers between smaller tertiary institutions, and the option for institutes of technology to become universities. As a result of these reforms, institutes of technology disappeared and were replaced by a collection of new universities. By the early 1990s, the two-tier tertiary education was in place in Australia – university education and Technical and Further Education (TAFE). By the early years of the new millennium, even TAFE colleges were permitted to offer degrees up to Bachelor’s level.
1990s
For the most part, up until the 1990s, the traditional Australian universities had focused upon pure/fundamental/basic research rather than industry/applied research – a proportion of which had been well supported by the CSIRO which had been set up for this function. Australians had performed well internationally in pure research, having scored almost a dozen Nobel Prizes as a result of their participation in pure research.
In the 1990s, the Hawke/Keating Federal Government sought to redress the shortcoming in applied research by creating a cultural shift in the national research profile. This was achieved by introducing university scholarships and research grants for postgraduate research in collaboration with industry, and by introducing a national system of Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs). These new centres were focused on a narrow band of research themes (e.g., photonics, cast metals, etc.) and were intended to foster cooperation between universities and industry. A typical CRC would be composed of a number of industry partners, university partners and CSIRO. Each CRC would be funded by the Federal Government for an initial period of several years. The total budget of a CRC, composed of the Federal Government monies combined with industry and university funds, was used to fund industry-driven projects with a high potential for commercialization. It was perceived that this would lead to CRCs becoming self-sustaining (self funding) entities in the long-term, although this has not eventuated. Most Australian universities have some involvement as partners in CRCs, and CSIRO is also significantly represented across the spectrum of these centres. This has led to a further blurring of the role of CSIRO and how it fits in with research in Australian universities.
2000s
The transition from a three-tier tertiary education system to a two-tier system was not altogether successful. Fundamentally, the problem with moving from eight research intensive traditional universities to a collection of nearly 40 new/traditional universities was that there were insufficient high-calibre research academics to sustain the new structure- previously, academics at institutes of technology had focused on teaching rather than research. Moreover, there was insufficient Federal research funding to sustain almost 40 universities undertaking research at an international level, when a similar level of funding had previously only sustained eight.
By 2006, it became apparent that the long term problem for the unified national system was that newer universities could not build up critical mass in their nominated research areas- at the same time, their increase in research level deprived traditional universities of high calibre research-oriented academics. These issues were highlighted in the Melbourne Institute Discipline Ratings for Australian Universities published in 2006 (discussed below). The money that was available, was spread across all universities and even the traditional universities had a diminished capacity to maintain critical mass. The Melbourne Institute figures, based upon Government (DEST) data and publications citations from Thomson Scientificrevealed that many of the newer universities were scoring "zeros" (on a scale of 0 - 100) in their chosen research fields (i.e., were unable to achieve the threshold level of activity required).
Criticism
In the 1990s, during the early years of the unified national system, the solution to future sustainability, as perceived by Australia’s (then) vice chancellors, was to get more money into the system, rather than to rationalize the system itself. The Australian Vice Chancellors Committee argued on a number of occasions about the level of funding provided to Australian Universities relative to those in other OECD countries.
Another problem with the unified national system was that the major source of university funding (the Federal Government, through the Department of Education Science and Training) was performance-based (calculated via a performance formula) and, because the total funding was fixed, represented a zero-sum-game. In other words (arithmetically), if all universities simultaneously boosted their performance by expending more money then, in practice, they were financially disadvantaged. If all universities simultaneously decreased their performance by reducing their expenditure on staffing then, in practice, they were all potentially in a better financial position.
