Dawkins changed tertiary trajectory

MASSIVE changes to the country’s higher education system have been undertaken during the past 30-plus years. In July 1988, under the leadership of the then employment, education and training minister John Dawkins, the federal government unleashed a blueprint that radically altered the face of Australia’s higher-education landscape.

Many believe the rollout of the so-called Dawkins reforms is largely responsible for the shape of today’s universities sector.

In July 1987, when Bob Hawke’s Labor government was re-elected for a second term, the prime minister announced major changes to ministerial structures.

As part of the restructure, Mr Dawkins – who had been trade minister during the government’s first three-year term – was also handed responsibility for education.

Just months after his appointment, Mr Dawkins issued a ministerial statement entitled ‘The Challenge for Higher Education’, which outlined his ideas for reforming higher education.

Issues to be addressed included the future growth of higher education, the resources needed to achieve that growth, and higher-education productivity. By December 1987, a green paper ‘Higher Education:A Policy Discussion Paper’ was released for community consultation and comment.

This was followed by the white paper ‘Higher Education: A Policy Statement’, which was released in July 1988 to outline the government’s plan for the sector.

This policy refresh sparked a flood of high-impact reforms, including three controversial ones that continue to affect the higher education landscape today. Perhaps most controversial was the move to replace Australia’s two-tier system of higher education.

In its place came the Unified National System (UNS), which triggered a series of mergers between universities, institutes of technology and colleges of advanced education.

Through a process of amalgamations and mergers over a period of just three years, 71 universities and colleges of advanced education were consolidated into about 35 higher education institutions, most of them universities.

The shift to the UNS sparked bitter opposition from academics and university administrators, who claimed Mr Dawkins had muddied the waters between universities that were focused on scholarship and more vocationally oriented institutions.

At the time, some accused Mr Dawkins of educational vandalism, while others labelled the reforms an attack on an intelligent culture. In Western Australia, the switch to the UNS resulted in the Western Australian College of Advanced Education becoming Perth’s fourth public university (January 1991) and the formation of Edith Cowan University.

WACE was formed prior to the Dawkins reforms, when the Claremont Teachers College, Nedlands College of Advanced Education, Mount Lawley College of Advanced Education and Churchlands College of Advanced Education amalgamated.

The Western Australian Institute of Technology’s transformation to Curtin University of Technology has often, erroneously, been cited as another example of the impact of the Dawkins reforms, even though Curtin accepted its first students in 1987.

Since the Dawkins reforms more than three decades ago, most attempts to merge or amalgamate institutions in the higher education sector have failed to get off the ground.

Just as controversial as Mr Dawkins’ push for amalgamations was his second main reform: the reintroduction of student fees.

Higher education fees had been abolished by Gough Whitlam’s Labor government in 1974 but were reintroduced by the Dawkins reforms.

To soften the blow of having to pay upfront fees, Mr Dawkins introduced the Higher Education Contribution loan scheme, or HECS as it became known.

From 1989, a $1,800 fee was levied at all university students as a contribution towards their higher education costs, while the federal government paid the balance.

A student could defer payment of this HECS amount (in which case it was called a HECS debt) and repay it through the tax system when their income exceeded a clearly defined threshold. Although the HECS model has been amended several times over the past 30 years – with much-larger student contributions now required to reflect the long-term earnings power of a student’s chosen qualification – the essence of the student contribution model remains intact.

A third component of the Dawkins reforms also proved controversial, with universities given the green light to open their doors to international students and charge them full tuition fees.

While much of the international student engagement prior to the Dawkins reforms had been based on scholarships and exchange programs, full-fee-paying international students enrolled in Australian universities from 1990 and created a new and lucrative education export market for the country.

It also provided a much-needed source of finance for universities, which were able to retain those tuition fees. The importance of, if not overreliance on, full-fee-paying international students to aid the bottom line of many universities became clear during the pandemic.

The border closures sparked by COVID-19 resulted in a major decline in this form of discretionary income following many years of strong growth and created severe financial challenges for many institutions.

Alongside these three main initiatives, the Dawkins reforms committed to: increasing accountability in the sector; the introduction of a range of efficiency measures; the provision of a place for private providers within the overall framework of higher education; the widening of research and the establishment of an Australian Research Council; and the growth of participation in higher education.

It is more than 30 years since the Dawkins reforms transformed the face of Australian higher education.

So controversial were the reforms that some critics continued to speak adversely of Mr Dawkins’ leadership long after the changes were implemented. In August 2012, historian and commentator Don Watson penned an opinion piece in The Monthly magazine that accused Mr Dawkins of turning “universities into massive revenue-chasing enterprises, academics into administrators, students into customers and managers into royalty”.

Mr Watson also blamed the former minister for “the dumbing down of university” and lumping all institutions into one system despite their vastly different academic profiles.

Even today, some critics continue to argue that the Dawkins reforms led o a decline in academic standards, as universities were placed in the unenviable situation of being forced to compete with each other for funding and students.

Nonetheless, even Mr Dawkins’ worst critics marvel at the speed at which he was able to bring such change to the sector and, in particular, how he was able to transform universities from being places for a privileged few to institutions of mass education.

Regardless of the many criticisms levelled at Mr Dawkins, his reforms are recognised by many as having transformed Australian’s higher education sector into a more accessible, diverse and internationally competitive system.

As Business News celebrates its 30th birthday, a second wave of comprehensive change to the sector is on the agenda, one that might rival the Dawkins reforms of three decades ago.

The Albanese government’s Australian Universities Accord is being promoted as a review of higher education’s modern-day purpose and the type of policy settings required to achieve that purpose.

Announcing the review late last year, Education Minister Jason Clare said it was an: “Opportunity to look at everything from funding and access to affordability, transparency, regulation, employment conditions and how higher education and vocational education and training can and should work together.”

Mr Clare added that the review’s terms of reference would extend to examining how higher education could best meet Australia’s knowledge and skills needs and boost enrolments for Indigenous people, people with disability and rural and regional students.

Other issues under the microscope would include student fees and government contributions, workplace relations settings within universities, the impact of COVID-19 on higher education, and the role of international students in Australia.

A thorough probe of the country’s research system, which will mesh with an existing review of the Australian Research Council, is also anticipated.

Regardless of the intent, whether the Albanese government’s accord achieves what it sets out to do will only really become clear when Business News celebrates its 40th anniversary.

• Professor Gary Martin is chief executive officer of the Australian Institute of Management WA