by CLAIRE FIELD
With the vice chancellors of Monash and Melbourne universities plus RMIT not participating at last week’s CEDA lunch, it was a chance for the Victorian VC ‘newbies’ to shine – as well as La Trobe’s John Dewar.
Their discussion elegantly captured the tensions the sector is currently grappling with.
Take, for example, research commercialisation/industry engagement. Swinburne’s Pascale Quester reasoned that although businesses had previously seen research as a “freebie”, they would invest in it now where they saw value in it.
Other VCs were more cautious. Professor Dewar argued that while more industry engagement was a positive for universities, it was not a solution to the decline in international student revenue and the associated impact on research funding. Iain Martin from Deakin U pointed out that no university anywhere in the world had built a sustainable funding stream from the commercialisation of IP.
Dewar also made the case that Australian universities potentially need to specialise. Interestingly, earlier in the discussion other VCs had spontaneously spoken of their universities’ points of difference/specialisations.
Adam Shoemaker from Victoria University highlighted the benefits of running a law school in the Melbourne court district, including sub-leasing floors in their vertical campus to law firms – with lawyers becoming adjunct professors and VU students undertaking internships in the firms.
Professor Quester highlighted Swinburne’s intention to include a work-based component in all (or almost all) courses as a key differentiator. And Duncan Bentley from Federation University spoke about their hi-tech precinct, noting that IBM has been co-located with the university for more than 20 years and Morwell is being reborn as an innovation hub.
The other areas of creative tension related to on-line education and international students.
Professor Bentley spoke of on-line programme management companies readily creating and delivering engaging and personalised on-line learning in ways most universities struggle to do. He also commented that Fed U is looking seriously at OPMs, although in later comments he singled out other commercial university partners for making hundreds of millions delivering services universities used to deliver themselves
Both Martin and Quester reflected on having been well advanced with online learning pre-COVID, as well as the importance of more personalised learning at scale – another area of tension given the Minister wants students back in university lecture theatres.
And then there was the discussion on international education – some of that’s already been covered and the rest will need to wait for next week.
Claire Field is an adviser to the tertiary education sector