AUR 62 02

vol. 62, no. 2, 2020 Published by NTEU

ISSN 0818–8068

AUR

Australian Universities’Review

AUR

Australian Universities’ Review

Editor

Editorial Board

Dr Ian R. Dobson, Monash University

Dr Alison Barnes, NTEU National President

Production

Professor Timo Aarrevaara, University of Lapland Professor Jamie Doughney, Victoria University

Design & layout: Paul Clifton

Professor Leo Goedegebuure, University of Melbourne

Editorial Assistance: Anastasia Kotaidis Cover photograph: The Sybil Centre, The Women’s College, University of Sydney, NSW. Photograph

by Peter Miller. Printed with permission.

AUR is available online as an e-book and PDF download.

Visit aur.org.au for details.

Professor Jeff Goldsworthy, Monash University Dr Mary Leahy, University of Melbourne

In accordance with NTEU policy to reduce our impact on the natural environment, this magazine is printed using vegetable-based inks with alcohol-free printing initiatives on FSC® certified paper by Printgraphics under ISO 14001 Environmental Certification.

Professor Kristen Lyons, University of Queensland

Contact

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Australian Universities’ Review, c/- NTEU National Office, PO Box 1323, South Melbourne VIC 3205 Australia

Dr Alex Millmow, Federation University Australia

Matthew McGowan, NTEU General Secretary Dr Neil Mudford, University of Queensland

Phone: +613 9254 1910

Jeannie Rea, Victoria University

Email: editor@aur.org.au

Professor Paul Rodan, Swinburne University of Technology

Website: www.aur.org.au

Cathy Rytmeister, Macquarie University

Post packaging is degradable biowrap.

Romana-Rea Begicevic, CAPA National President

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Australian Universities’ Review (AUR, formerly Vestes) is published by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) to encourage debate and discussion about issues in higher education and its contribution to Australian public life, with an emphasis on those matters of concern to NTEU members.

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Brisbane: UQ Press.

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Australian Universities’ Review 2

Letter to the editor

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Letter from the editor Ian R Dobson

ARTICLES 5

The challenge for law schools of satisfying multiple masters Margaret Thornton

Law schools have long been unsure whether they were free to teach and research in the same way as the humanities or whether they were constrained by the presuppositions of legal practice.

More recently, this tension has been overshadowed by the impact of the neoliberal turn and government disinvestment.

14 Behind voluntary redundancy in universities: The stories behind the story Martin Andrew

Why did academics really take redundancy packages? How voluntary were these ‘voluntary’ redundancy packages?

25 ‘We got a different way of learning’: A message to the sector from Aboriginal students living and studying in remote communities Judith Wilks, Anna Dwyer, Sandra Wooltorton & John Guenther

Research conducted in remote and very remote Australia with Aboriginal higher education students and educators enquired after their learning and teaching needs, and how the sector could support them in their journey into and through university.

39 Student experience at international branch campuses Stephen Wilkins

International branch campuses rely on the reputation of the parent institution and home country higher education system.

Institutions typically claim that the student experience at the offshore campus replicates the onshore home campus experience. Does it?

47 Barriers and Facilitators for Women Academics seeking promotion: Perspectives from the Inside Lyn Francis & Virginia Stulz

Thoughts from within. Barriers to promotion continue to be workloads and huge expectations, the multi-pronged promotion process, competition, not being valued, juggling family life and not wanting to risk happiness. These are offset to some extent by facilitators such as mentoring and collaborative nurturing, giving back to others including the university, and flexibility.

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61 Is mindfulness a useful next trend in doctoral supervision?

Nicolette Buirski

Doctoral supervisors have been extensively investigated in some regards, but what dispositional qualities of mind and character might enable a supervisor to develop a strong intellectual and emotional rapport with a candidate? Perhaps the rising trend of mindfulness in positive psychology could help!

69 Change and continuity in Australian doctoral education: PhD completion rates and times (2005-2018) Marc Torka

In this study, it is shown that completion rates and times by PhD students have changed only slightly over time, and there are differences based on student characteristics, disciplines and institutions.

OPINION 83 A program for writing Brian Martin

Improved research productivity can emanate from good writing habits derived from a regular writing program. Insights into the benefits and challenges in supporting a new writing habit are presented.

87 Ways to improve your research profile David S Waller

Becoming ‘famous’ in your academic area will make you an authority in the field. Through research and writings, you could become known in your school, at other universities and overseas.

90 The elusive siloed subjects: Sacrificing humanities to Techno-Tehan Jim Daly

What does the Australian education minister mean by ‘siloed subjects’? This bizarre concept is examined in this paper.

98 The degrading of university education: the failure from within Tim Moore

The Government and its motivations for future university funding are wrong, but we should also look at at our universities, particularly the ‘administrators’ that have evolved in recent decades. continued overpage...

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105 Post-COVID Australian universities: The need for a new teaching and research vision

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Letter to the Editor

Bob Birrell

COVID-19 has undermined the business model that has evolved in Australian universities. A new strategy based on the universities’ contribution to making Australian industry more self-reliant is required.

REVIEWS 112 On a slow boat to China China in the World: An Anthropology of Confucius Institutes, Soft Power, and Globalization by Jennifer Hubbert Reviewed by Joanne Barker

114 Has the moon lost her memory? She is smiling alone. (Cats, the musical) Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies – Orality, Memory and the Transmission of Culture, by Lynne Kelly.

The Memory Code: The Traditional Aboriginal Memory Technique That Unlocks the Secrets of Stonehenge, Easter Island and Ancient Monuments the World Over,

by Lynne Kelly Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory Using the Most Powerful Methods and Tools from Around the World, by Lynne Kelly Reviewed by Neil Mudford

Dear Editor, I refer to Thomas Klikauer’s informative and entertaining review of Bullshit Jobs (David Graeber, 2019) in Australian Universities’ Review 62:1.

Few readers would argue with Klikauer’s trenchant criticism of the inflated managerial ranks in universities, but it struck me that these ranks are often peopled with graduates of departments/schools in fields such as management, HR, marketing etc. Moreover, did not the wretched neoliberalism essentially have its origins in such faculties and schools?

That being the case, it seems to me that given Graeber’s definition of bullshit jobs, it would be at least arguable that since the overpaid managers in bullshit jobs often come to them with academic credentials in management, HR, marketing etc, the academics who prepared them for their bullshit jobs (with the appropriate bullshit jargon) must be, at least in part, in bullshit jobs themselves. Might it not follow that preparing people for bullshit jobs is a bullshit job?

Of course, it could come down to an oft-made comment by that Emeritus Professor of Espionage, Maxwell Smart, who once observed: ‘If only he had used his HR degree for goodness instead of evil.’

Adjunct Professor Paul Rodan, Swinburne University of Technology.

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Letter from the editor Ian R Dobson

How quickly things can change! Suddenly, we have a world pandemic and a federal government intent on ‘reforming’ Australia’s universities.

Looking at the pandemic, in some ways, the Australian Government’s reaction via a national cabinet has been refreshingly effective for much of the time. Sensibly, some of the neoliberal excesses of recent years have had to be wound back. Of course, we haven’t forgotten the sports rorts, Robodebt or the Banking Royal Commission that we apparently didn’t need to have!

Regarding universities, the Australian Government seems not to understand the difference between ‘education’ and ‘training’. Many in right-wing politics do not have a clue about history, philosophy or ethics, and they probably weren’t listening during their economics classes. Why would you decide to double fees in the humanities and creative arts, knowing that two-thirds of the students are women? Still, should we be surprised about our Lib/Nat rulers’ gender bias, when they can only manage a 26 per cent female representation in the Commonwealth Parliament (with only 19 per cent in the House of Representatives)? (By comparison, 47 per cent of Labor MPs are women). Further, even if training teachers is one of the Minister’s foci, don’t more than half of our teachers teach the humanities and creative arts? Now they will pay even more to become a teacher.

But let us move on! This issue might be described as a ‘bumper’ one, comprising scholarly refereed papers, opinion pieces and book reviews. First up, we have a piece from Margaret Thornton, Professor Emerita from the Australian National University, covering law as teaching and research, and law as legal practice. In what has become quite common, there is less money from the Government, but it demands increased control over teaching standards and research productivity.

Next up, Martin Andrew from Otago Polytechnic (in that COVID-19-free country across the ‘dutch’) considers ‘voluntary’ redundancy. He asked 12 mid-career academics why they accepted a redundancy package. Are these packages really taken voluntarily?

Judith Wilks and her colleagues present a paper on Aboriginal students from remote areas, asking about their vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

learning needs. How can universities better support these students? Universities need to design operations and learning experiences so that they embrace these students’ strengths!

In a pre-pandemic study, Stephen Wilkins, a British scholar based in the Middle East, examines the student experience at offshore campuses. He finds that the offshore experience may be comparable, particularly at the larger off-shore campuses, even if ‘claims of replicability between on-shore and off-shore student experience may be somewhat fanciful…’.

Lyn Francis and Virginia Stulz found ‘multiple barriers and facilitators still exist... for women applying for promotion’.

They know this because they asked four focus groups of female academics. As always, among others, the barriers include workloads, expectations, competition, and the process. Collaborative nurturing and mentoring are among the facilitators.

Then we move onto two papers related to the PhD in Australia. First, Nicolette Buirski considers an underexamined aspect of PhD supervision: the mindfulness traits that enable a supervisor ‘…to develop a strong intellectual and emotional rapport with a candidate…’. Meanwhile, Marc Torka has used statistical data obtained from the federal education department to look at doctoral completion times to see if students have become more time efficient. Even if there have been trends in Australia demanding more PhD graduates more quickly, Torka shows that these have improved only slightly over time. Future reform, he says, should be based on evidence rather than normative expectations.

This issue’s ‘opinion’ comes from Wollongong’s Brian Martin, David Waller from University of Technology, Sydney, Jim Daly of Monash, Tim Moore of Swinburne, and Bob Birrell from The Australian Population Research Institute.

Brian Martin reports on a writing program based on brief regular writing sessions after ten years’ experience with the practice and considers the benefits and challenges in supporting a new writing habit. Continuing the ‘get published’ theme, after years of working in academia and publishing Letter from the editor Ian R Dobson

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David Waller shares with us ten points to help raise a research profile. We need to make the right choices and make the right connections!

Jim Daly has reacted to the so-called ‘reform’ announced recently by the Australian Minister of Education. Mr Tehan used the term ‘siloed’ to describe humanities degrees, as part of a justification for a major change of funding priorities for university education. Daly takes the Minister to task.

Similarly, Tim Moore examines the nonsense of the so-called ‘reforms’ by the Minister, but he also takes the leaders of our universities to task. As he notes, ‘…there has been little defence by our “institutional leaders” of the broader educational mission of universities, leaving them seriously exposed to the anti-academic, anti-democratic policies now being imposed.’

Meanwhile, Bob Birrell notes that COVID-19 has undermined the business model whereby Australian universities have used the revenue from overseas student fees to enhance their international research standing. We need a new strategy, based on the universities making Australian industry more self-reliant.

On to the book reviews. AUR Editorial Board stalwart Neil Mudford took on the daunting task of reviewing three

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books about memory. Neil clearly enjoyed the books, but I can’t remember why. I’ll read his reviews again! We also have a review of a recent book on Confucius Institutes, by Joanne Barnes of RMIT University. Even though the book is American, Joanne has situated her review within the Australian context.

Almost finally, many of you will have enjoyed Arthur O’Neill’s whimsical observations about our sector over the years. Last issue we had such a piece, about the University of Central Tasmania ‘building its narrative’. The bad news is that three editorial amendments failed to get through to the published hard copy version. The good news is that these corrections have been included in the revised version of this paper on the AUR website, www.aur.org.au. Download it now and be amused a second time!

Finally, many thanks are due to the production and editorial team that work so hard to put AUR together. Thank you to everyone, especially in these times when we all have lots of other stuff on our plates.

Until next time!

Ian R Dobson is Editor of AUR, and an Adjunct member of the Professional Staff at Monash University, Australia.

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The challenge for law schools of satisfying multiple masters Margaret Thornton Australian National University

University law schools have been beset with a sense of schizophrenia ever since first established in the 19th century. They were unsure as to whether they were free to teach and research in the same way as the humanities or whether they were constrained by the presuppositions of legal practice. More recently, this tension has been overshadowed by the impact of the neoliberal turn and disinvestment by the state in higher education. Ironically, as government has provided less money to universities, it has arrogated to itself increased control over teaching standards and research productivity. At the same time, the mastery of the legal profession continues to be exercised through the specification of 11 subjects required for admission to legal practice, known as the ‘Priestley 11’. Drawing on Foucault’s idea of the self as a kind of enterprise, it is argued that law students have also assumed an element of mastery over what is taught and how it is taught. It is suggested that all elements of mastery are imbricated with one another so as to reify enterprise and capital accumulation within the neoliberal economy.

Keywords: Universities, legal education, teaching, research, neoliberalism

Introduction Ever since law schools were incorporated into universities in the 19th century, the discipline of law has been haunted by a sense of dystopia. While Roman law, legal history and jurisprudence had an ancient lineage within the great universities of Europe (Wieruszowski, 1966), the training of lawyers was regarded as the responsibility of the profession – through the Inns of Court in London and apprenticeships elsewhere. The establishment of university law schools set up a tension between the university and the legal profession. The debate concerning the establishment of Sydney Law School in the latter part of the 19th century, for example, lasted for more than 40 years (Martin, 1986; Chesterman & Weisbrot, 1987).

The discipline of law is still somewhat schizophrenic about whether it should prioritise academic or professional norms (Webber, 2004). The deference by law schools to a set of professional presuppositions regarding the nature of legal knowledge distinguishes it from other social sciences and vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

humanities disciplines that are more receptive to the plurality of knowledge and critique. This problem has been accentuated in Australia because of the close links between legal education and the legal profession (Chesterman & Weisbrot, 1987).

While professional disciplines, such as engineering, accept predetermined epistemological standpoints, they do not appear to be beset by the same degree of angst as law.

The hope of enlightened jurisprudes has long been that a balance between scholarship and practice might be effected, but such a balance may be unattainable because of the inherent tension between the presuppositions underpinning applied legal knowledge and the academic critique of them. The metaphor of the pendulum may be trite, but it captures a sense of the perennial movement between scholarship and practice.

When the pendulum swings too close to scholarship, there is agitation from the practising profession for the injection of more applied knowledge into the curriculum, while a swing towards practice impels a plea for a more scholarly stance.

Needless to say, the oscillation of the pendulum is inevitably affected by the play of politics and power at any particular

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time, which engenders resentment on the part of those who feel that their power has been attenuated (Brown, 1995).

I suggest that a constellation of factors arising from the neoliberal turn has complicated the simple metaphor of the pendulum swing between the law school and the legal profession as to who has mastery over legal education. This is not to deny the prominent roles that both entities continue to exercise, but disinvestment in higher education by the state in the late 20th century disturbed any notion of balance between them.

While judges and senior members of the profession continue to play a key role in ensuring that the law curriculum is geared to serving legal practice through admission requirements, as will be discussed, disinvestment has been accompanied by a more interventionist and prescriptive role on the part of the state. Indeed, I suggest that the Australian federal government has assumed an influential role behind the scenes in respect of higher education policy, including with regard to teaching and research that might be likened to that of puppet master.

Furthermore, legal education has come to be regarded not only as a source of capital accumulation for government, but also as a source of human capital for student/consumers, a role that has endowed them too with an enhanced element of mastery over what is taught and how it is taught.

Government as puppet master Despite the orchestrated transition from an élite to a mass system of higher education that emerged from the Dawkins reforms in 1988 (Dawkins, 1988; Croucher et al., 2013), there was not a commensurate increase in the funding of Australian public universities. As the privatisation of public goods was a key imperative of neoliberalism (Urciuoli, 2010), a shift from free higher education to a system of user-pays occurred. Hayek (1976; 1960) and Friedman (1962), the gurus of neoliberalism, had propounded the view that students in professional schools should assume responsibility for the cost of their education themselves in the belief that they would be the beneficiaries of high incomes (Friedman & Friedman, 1980). This philosophy underpinned the transformation of higher education from a public to a quasi-private good across disciplines (Thornton, 2012). The radical reform was effected relatively smoothly due to the introduction of the income-contingent Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS), now FEE-HELP (Chapman & Nicholls, 2013). While the user-pays regime ostensibly privileged private benefit over public good, the state was able to slough off responsibility for a significant proportion of the cost of higher education and profit from its commodification. Indeed, enterprise became the ‘third mission’ of the university, along with teaching and research (Shore & McLauchlan, 2012). The income now generated by this former public good is phenomenal, for it added approximately A$140 billion per annum to the Australian economy in 2018 and elevated higher education to the third

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largest export ‘industry’ behind coal and iron (Universities Australia, 2019). To be sustainable, however, the new ‘industry’ had to be closely regulated, despite the free market rhetoric of neoliberalism. ‘Moscow on the Molonglo’ is the witty phrase devised by economist, Max Corden (2005), with ‘Moscow’ signifying the former Soviet central planning system and ‘Molonglo’, the small river in Canberra signifying the Australian federal government. Nevertheless, government mastery has been maintained not so much through punitive Kremlin-like edicts but by financial inducements (Corden, 2005).

The Pearce Report (Pearce, Campbell & Harding, 1987), a detailed overview of the discipline of law, had been authorised by the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission (CTEC), but this body was a casualty of the Dawkins reforms. Its disbandment meant that there was no longer a single regulatory body charged with disciplinary oversight of higher education.

The Pearce Committee had suggested that there might be one more Australian law school, preferably in Queensland (Pearce ibid.), but the radical shift in regulation led to a dramatic expansion of legal education. Moscow on the Molonglo made no endeavour to restrict the number of law schools in the new regime, as the choice of discipline (apart from medicine) was left to universities themselves. Vice-chancellors (VCs) of the new universities, many of which were former ‘teaching only’ colleges of advanced education, were keen to have law schools as law was regarded as a prestigious professional discipline, although VCs believed it could be taught ‘on the cheap’ through the large lecture format in order to subsidise the more resource-intensive parts of the university (cf. Tamanaha, 2012, p. 127).

The virtually unstoppable demand for law places has resulted in the number of law schools more than tripling – from 12 to 40 in 30 years – which includes Australia’s first for-profit law school (Sydney City School of Law at TOP Education Institute, established in 2016). The number of law graduates in established schools has also increased exponentially as universities have endeavoured to survive ongoing cuts to their operating grants.

The corporatisation of universities nevertheless proved to be so lucrative that tuition fees were soon ratcheted up with law in the highest band, culminating in the Coalition Government proposing in 2014 that university fees be deregulated. However, the electorate baulked at the idea of $100,000 undergraduate degrees, and deregulation was shelved. Had the initiative proceeded, each university would have been able to set its own fees according to whatever the market could bear, a situation that would inevitably have exacerbated competition between universities to the advantage of established metropolitan law schools and the disadvantage of new and regional universities.

Equity, however, is accorded short shrift in a regime contingent on competition.

The marketised environment that universities now inhabit nevertheless brings with it risk and uncertainty (Beck, 1992).

To counteract that risk, everything and everyone is subject to

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audit and accountability (Power, 1997). As a dimension of ‘new public management’ (NPM), which took hold of the public sector as a corollary of neoliberalism, government needs to be assured that any investment of public funds is put to good use. While ‘management’ is concerned with the conversion of resources into productive outputs, ‘managerialism’ is an ideology that distorts the primary function of management by promoting the view that consultation, collegiality and even academic expertise are unnecessary for solving problems ( Joseph, 2015). Instead, the measurement of key performance indicators through frequent auditing is regarded as the best way of evaluating risk. Academics can no longer be trusted to deliver courses to the appropriate standard unaided, but must be told what to do and how to do it. Hence, senior managers, or the ‘manageriat’ (to invoke Rob Watts’ (2017) evocative term) have replaced the professoriate as the university élite and are often paid very substantial salaries to reflect the inversion of status. Directed by government as puppet master in a way that was unknown prior to the Dawkins Reforms, the manageriat now plays a major role in orchestrating teaching and research in order to benefit what is believed to be the national interest, as I proceed to show.

Managerial mastery: Teaching Managerialism encourages standardisation of both curricula and pedagogy through a range of technologies orchestrated by government. Uniformity of product is designed to reassure prospective student/consumers of the quality of a proposed degree as the aim is to maximise income, particularly from fullfee and international students. One of the most pronounced technologies is the quality regime that enables oversight of degree standards through the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) (2013), which, in the case of higher education, is administered by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA). TEQSA has adopted the Threshold Learning Outcomes (TLOs) for law programs endorsed by the Council of Australian Law Deans (CALD).

The primary regulation of the quality of legal education has therefore become the preserve of government even though government contributes only around 15 per cent of a government-funded law place and nothing to international and full-fee domestic places.

TEQSA standards are not discipline-specific but apply to learning outcomes for degrees at the same level. The LLB falls under Level 7, the purpose of which is to equip graduates with ‘a broad and coherent body of knowledge…to undertake professional work’ (AQF, 2013, p. 16). The Juris Doctor ( JD), the graduate degree that replaced the LLB as the basic law degree in the US 50 years ago, was introduced in Australia to circumvent the former prohibition on charging full fees for undergraduate courses (Cooper et al., 2011). Now a popular offering in Australia, the JD falls under Level 9, the Master’s vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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Degree (Extended) category, the outcomes of which are specified as ‘specialised knowledge and skills for research and/ or professional practice and/or further learning’ (AQF, 2013, p. 13). The LLB (Hons) occupies a position between the LLB and the JD at Level 8.

Although TEQSA was developed after Corden coined ‘Moscow on the Molonglo’, the establishment of this agency is a dramatic manifestation of government mastery that undermines the autonomy of law schools and legal academics in respect of how they teach and deliver programs. Indeed, TEQSA is widely resented for its intrusiveness and lack of detailed knowledge. A former TEQSA employee said it was disrespectful of universities’ roles and histories. ‘You have a bunch of predominantly bachelor-educated people, who have not set foot in a university for 20 years, telling them they have to tick this box or that one’ (Ross & Trounson, 2013, p.

29). Although auditing of this kind inevitably fosters a lowest common denominator approach, universities are anxious to comply to avoid adverse repercussions. Financialisation is the key to government mastery, not only in respect of direct contributions to university operating grants, but also in specifying student contributions (fees) according to discipline.

While Moscow on the Molonglo does not prescribe how teaching is to be carried out, ‘massification’ has meant that small-group teaching is no longer economically viable for most law schools, even though it involves a superior pedagogy that encourages interactive learning and a critical approach towards orthodox knowledge. To cut costs, there has been a widespread reversion to the outdated and pedagogically questionable large-lecture format (Le Brun & Johnstone, 1994), which favours the transmission of applied knowledge, or knowledge as information. This nevertheless comports with the government aim of producing ‘job ready’ graduates to serve the new knowledge economy. Money saved from utilising the cheaper large-lecture format in preference to the more labour-intensive small group teaching can then be expended on research, to which I turn.

Managerial mastery: Research Despite sustained attempts to professionalise teaching through standardisation, accreditation and awards for excellence, research far outstrips teaching in the academic prestige stakes, a gap that is widening and accentuating the tension within law schools. The typical legal academic was formerly something of a dilettante when it came to research but, as with other aspects of education in the corporatised academy, the commodification of research has totally transformed the academic job description. This has occurred in two distinct ways: first, through the direct commercialisation of research and, secondly, through the pressure to produce legal scholarship, preferably of ‘world class’ standard or above.

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When we turn to the first aim, the commercialisation of research, it is perhaps unsurprising that law fares poorly compared with the technosciences. The ideal academic is expected to be what Jane Kenway et al. (2006, p. 42) refer to as a ‘technopreneur’, whom they define as one who combines ‘techno-scientific knowledge…with business acumen’. In a marketised environment, academics who pursue knowledge for its own sake à la Newman (1976) have become anachronistic.

The neoliberal economy demands that the production of knowledge has direct value for business, society and the economy (Larkins & Croucher, 2013). Scientists, technicians and businesspeople are preferred over social scientists and humanities scholars, which include legal academics (Shore & McLauchlan, 2012).

The pressure on legal academics to satisfy the second aim, that is, the production of scholarship of ‘world class’ standard to enhance the status of their university is also problematic for legal scholars as it does not sit easily with the imperative to transmit orthodox legal knowledge to students. While legal academics may not receive star billing as winners of Nobel Prizes, they are nevertheless subject to constant pressure to enhance their research productivity through publication, as well as to generate research income through competitive grants – whether necessary for their research or not. The desire by universities for reputational and positional goods flowing from research and scholarly publications is a corollary of the competition policy that underpins neoliberalism. For a law school’s research to be ranked ‘below world standard’ could lead to its collapse and closure.

In order that the benefits of research might be harnessed by government to justify investment in schemes such as those under the auspices of the Australian Research Council (ARC) (2020), productivity is rendered calculable through national systems of audit such as the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA). The requirement that grant applicants satisfy a National Interest Test (NIT) underscores the insidious way that managerial mastery by the state operates.

If the Minister does not believe that an applicant has satisfied the NIT, a grant can be denied, despite having been highly rated by experts in the field.

The assessment of research quality takes account of reputational and impact factors, including competitive grants and fellowships, journal standing and citation indices. The ranking of journals is particularly contentious for law as most branches of legal knowledge are likely to have municipal or domestic, rather than global or universal significance, unlike engineering and other science and technology subjects.

Echoing the imperialism that pervades the economy of knowledge more generally (Connell, 2019), journals emanating from the northern hemisphere are invariably held in higher regard than those from Australia, as well as those from the global South more generally. The desire to enhance

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an institution’s ranking on international league tables has led some Australian law school deans to insist that academics publish only in northern hemisphere (‘international’) journals. The effect has contributed to a downgrading of Australian legal scholarship, just when it had sloughed off its imperial ties and sought to establish its autonomy.

The auditing of research enshrines competition between individuals, disciplines, institutions and countries, and has been entrenched internationally by a plethora of international league tables, such as the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). League tables are another recent manifestation of competition policy that has emerged as a corollary of the corporatisation of universities. Rankings methodology is invariably flawed as it focuses on standard criteria at the expense of distinctiveness, which means that the achievements of regional and relatively young Australian universities with a commitment to, say, community engagement, must be compared with elite northern hemisphere universities renowned for their research. Like numerical rankings in a football league, metricisation encourages superficial comparisons with no allowance for differences in culture, wealth and positional goods.

This includes the time – possibly centuries – over which substantial endowments might have been acquired, such as in the case of Oxbridge and the Ivy League. Despite the obvious flaws, league tables nevertheless exercise a seductive allure for law deans and university managers (Sauder & Espeland, 2009), as well as being likely to influence government funding policies.

The inversion of the ranking of teaching and research has resulted in a propensity for legal academics to buy out the teaching component of their workload, preferably through competitive research fellowships. Casual teachers are then likely to be engaged to undertake teaching in their stead but are not required to be research active. Universities accord scant attention to the fact that a sizable proportion of the academic workforce is trapped in a succession of exploitative contracts (May et al., 2013; Clohesy, 2019). Indeed, it points to the way that collegiality and equity are likely to be discarded in favour of managerialism and competition in a corporatised context.

Although TEQSA and ARC are both government regulatory agencies, no cognisance is taken of the fact that they are at odds with each other as to the relative significance of teaching and research. While the failure to produce excellent outcomes can result in financial penalties in both domains, the prominence of international league tables and citation indices make clear that research excellence is held in higher regard than teaching, a factor that carries little weight with the legal profession, which continues to exercise a central role in the mastery of university law schools, as I now demonstrate.

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Professional mastery Following the Dawkins reforms and the proliferation of new law schools, uniform requirements for admission to legal practice were developed in 1992 by the Law Admissions Consultative Committee (LACC). Comprising 11 areas of knowledge, they came to be known as the ‘Priestley 11’ or, more colloquially, ‘the Priestleys’, after Justice Priestley, the Chair of LACC. Focusing on doctrinal and technical competence with a commercial bias, these ‘core’ areas of knowledge comprise approximately two-thirds of the curriculum. They are often supplemented by ‘advanced’ core-related electives, for which students may agitate in the belief that such subjects will enhance their employability in a competitive legal labour market ( James, 2004).

It is notable that the Priestley 11 ignored the broadening of the curriculum that had been occurring with the modernisation of the teaching of law and the embrace of social liberalism from the 1970s onwards (Thornton, 2001), particularly after the Pearce Report (McInnis & Marginson, 1994). Second generation law schools, such as Monash, the University of NSW and Macquarie, were interested in the study of law in its social context and law as an instrument of social justice (James, 2000); they were particularly keen to break away from the ‘trade school’ image of the past. However, these trends exerted no discernible effect on the LACC. Even non-doctrinal subjects with a long tradition of having been taught in universities, such as jurisprudence and legal history, did not appear in the Priestley 11. The expectation that the primary role of the law curriculum was to prepare students for private practice lingered on (Keyes & Johnstone, 2004, p. 557).

Nickolas James (2000) has noted that a critical legal education is likely to be viewed with suspicion by the profession because it is ‘“more theoretical” and “less practical”’ than what is thought desirable for legal practice. The profession remains conservatively focused on what makes a ‘good lawyer’, evincing an antipathy towards law schools that have dared to be different. Macquarie Law School, for example, embraced theory and critique as essential dimensions of an intellectually robust legal education from its inception in the 1970s.

However, Macquarie was criticised for not teaching ‘law’ (Pearce et al., 1987) which reveals just how difficult it is to resist the mastery of the profession.

Even the reform of legal practice itself that occurred soon after promulgation of the Priestley 11 was not enough to alter the perspective of the LACC. The millennial turn saw initiatives such as the incorporation of law firms, listing on the stock exchange and globalisation. The effect of these reforms was to ratchet up competition with the aim of maximising profits and hastening the shift from legal professionalism to ‘law as business’ (Bagust, 2013). In conjunction with the changes to lawyering, a range of initiatives, such as the creation vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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of companies specialising in document review, discovery and predictive coding were established to undertake work more cheaply that was traditionally performed by legal associates (Henderson, 2013). This inevitably began to have an effect on the legal labour market to the disadvantage of those graduates who expected to obtain a position in practice.

The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) saw the legal profession embrace technological innovation, which raises provocative questions about AI and the role of non-lawyers in undertaking legal work. While such issues have resulted in the emergence of the ‘poly-technical legal entrepreneur’ (Galloway et al., 2019), they have received scant attention from the admitting authorities, although some law societies have begun to address them (Law Society of NSW, 2017; Law Society of WA, 2017).

Despite ‘disruptive innovations’ (Christensen, 2001) over more than two decades in both legal education and legal practice, a review of the Priestley 11 was very slow in eventuating. It was only in 2019 that a revision was concluded by the LACC, almost 30 years after the first iteration (LACC, 2019). However, the specified areas of knowledge in the revised version do not differ markedly from the initial version. The 11 doctrinally-oriented, largely commercial areas of knowledge that were specified in 1992 reappeared in 2019 and were reaffirmed as ‘fundamental areas of legal knowledge’ for both the LLB and the JD. Most significantly, the revolutionary developments in technology, including AI, which Susskind argues are likely to make lawyers redundant (Susskind & Susskind, 2015; Susskind, 2013), were accorded short shrift. AI has already made significant inroads into the routine legal tasks on which new lawyers have traditionally cut their teeth and is undoubtedly contributing to the steady decline in demand for young solicitors (Urbis Pty. Ltd., 2018).

The issue of generational renewal does not appear to have been a matter of concern for the admitting authorities.

While the ‘teaching of new developments in the relevant law’ is not precluded (LACC, 2019), the revised Priestley 11 does not envisage a more imaginative, diverse and critical approach to the compulsory areas of knowledge appropriate for the 21st century, let alone the idea that routine aspects of professional legal knowledge might become redundant as a result of technological change (Susskind & Susskind, 2015; Webley et al., 2019). Even if a broader approach is adopted, any innovation is bounded by doctrinal imperatives, as Galloway et al. (2019) point out.

Although the marked changes in the practice of law exerted little effect on the Priestley 11, one might have thought that the proliferation of new law schools since 1992 would have encouraged the LACC to consider broadening its approach.

What is the point of multiple law schools all being pale copies of one another? In any case, the overwhelming majority of law graduates do not embark on careers in traditional legal practice but pursue a diverse range of careers in the public service,

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the community sector, the international arena, non-profit and business organisations, as well as research and teaching.

However, the legal profession has chosen to retain its mastery over law schools by means of standardising the curriculum. The Priestley 11 remains a powerful symbol of the assumption that the primary role of legal education is to serve the legal profession, regardless of the reality. As with the unifying propensity that emerges from ‘the state as homogeniser’ in its mastery over the corporatised university (Marginson & Considine, 2000, p.

176), the admitting authorities have sought to apply the same propensity through the Priestley 11. The admitting authorities’ endorsement of the original Priestley 11 almost 30 years after its first iteration has all the appearances of a rear-guard action designed to retain its mastery over law schools in the face of disruption and diversity.

The student as master: Inverting the norm Conventionally, the student is expected to be docile, that is teachable (from the Latin docere to teach). Foucault (1995) defined the docile body as one that may be ‘subjected, used, transformed and improved’. However, docility, or teachability, is not the only quality that might be applied to the contemporary law student. In subsequently translated work, The Birth of Biopolitics, Foucault (2008) describes the neoliberal subject in more active terms, conceptualising the self as a kind of enterprise in which individuals are responsible for producing their own capital by making meaningful choices and decisions. This understanding aptly encapsulates the characteristics of the contemporary fee-paying law student.

A user-pays system indirectly emphasises credentialism and vocationalism because student customers/consumers are necessarily concerned about a return on their investment.

Consumerism has been a crucial factor in not only inducing a swing away from theory and critique in favour of applied knowledge in higher education, or from ‘know what’ to ‘know how’ (OECD, 1996), but also in vesting students with a significant degree of power over the content of the curriculum and modes of pedagogy. Foucault’s thesis of the self as enterprise is not only clearly evident in the case of the contemporary law student, but it is also supported by my argument of government as puppet master. That is, the imposition of fees places pressure on students to prioritise vocationalism over professionalism (James, 2017). In a neoliberal climate, the aim of government is not to produce critically aware graduates but a pool of job-ready skilled human capital to enhance international competitiveness (Purcell, 2008).

Student consumers are able to influence modes of delivery, as well as the substance of what is taught in order to accommodate the fact that they are time-poor; attaining a law degree no longer commands their full attention. Whether as a paralegal or in some other capacity, an increasing proportion

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of law students are engaged in paid employment for a substantial number of hours per week, increasingly in a fulltime capacity. In accordance with the consumerist mentality of neoliberalism, they ‘need’ consumer goods, such as the latest iPhone, although the struggle to survive and meet the high cost of living for many students is not denied. More particularly, a job as a paralegal, or even an unpaid intern, will assist in quick starting the student’s career in a highly competitive legal labour market.

The trend of expending more time on paid work has significantly impacted class attendance and the opportunity to interrogate and debate the presuppositions of law. Students expect lectures to be recorded and all resources to be readily available online; flexible delivery is claimed to be their right as consumers in order to accommodate the competing aspects of their lives. A large empirical study conducted at the UWA Law School in 2019 established a 38 per cent rate of attendance over a semester (Skead & Elphick, 2019). The recording of lectures was noted as the most significant factor for non-attendance by both staff and students, although there was a marked discrepancy between them, with a staff estimate of 60 per cent and a student figure of 17 per cent. Individual students gave a range of reasons for non-attendance, including work commitments and timetabling, but those in focus groups placed a more constructive spin on non-attendance, explaining that recordings allowed them to learn at their own pace. This justified their desire for flexible delivery and the reason why lectures were passé. As is generally the case, students were more likely to attend classes when their participation was assessed.

The prevalence of consumerism, or the student as enterprise, has resulted in law schools making courses easier and more palatable (Thornton, 2012). Anti-intellectualism and short cuts have become the order of the day because of the increased focus on credentialism. The demand by enterprising students that the law course be made easier for them is graphically illustrated by an incident reported to me, in which students formally complained because the lecturer set an assignment involving independent case analysis that the students deemed to be ‘too hard’. The gist of the complaint was that the lecturer expected them to read whole cases, not merely the digests that they preferred. Here is a telling excerpt from the lecturer’s communication following a meeting with the students that is a graphic illustration of Foucault’s thesis of the self as enterprise: Students said that if they did need to find a case and its principles, they would quickly do an on-line search, use a word-search function to locate the particular word or phrase mentioned in the lecture and simply cut-and-paste the extract into their notes. They did not read the balance of the case or attempt to understand it. Several students said they did this because they had attempted to read a case, but it had taken them almost two hours to understand it; and ‘no-one has that

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kind of time to waste’ – hence the reliance on quick short-cuts [my italics] (Personal correspondence, 2019).

The students went on to say that during the semester, they were often so time-poor due to work, social and sporting commitments, they had to be strategic in their use of time.

Commonly, they bought ready-made summaries, such as those available from LawSkool.com or from previous students.

Student mastery may also impact the future career prospects of lecturers, which has been indirectly authorised by government. In 2018, the Australian Government imposed an ‘efficiency dividend’ on the Commonwealth Grant Scheme based on a university’s rates of completion, attrition and student satisfaction. Through the element of student satisfaction, students are able to influence not only what they are taught and how they are taught, but also by whom they are taught, as surveys may be taken into account in promotion applications, a practice held to be illegal by a Canadian arbitrator (Ryerson, 2018). In addition, satisfaction surveys may contribute to grade inflation when a student complains to a lecturer about an assessment exercise: ‘It is your fault that I didn’t get a High Distinction, because I wasn’t taught well enough and I propose to appeal’. In the face of such threats, a law school might capitulate to avoid a complaint being lodged with an ombudsman or other external body that could damage the brand name of the school. In this way, incremental creep can deleteriously affect the calibre of both curriculum and pedagogy to the advantage of students in such a way as to support the idea of the self as enterprise.

The Foucauldian thesis can also be discerned in the way students are deterred from enrolling in subjects regarded as intellectually demanding in terms of content, mode of assessment or teaching style. Students may feel inclined to turn away from more theoretical subjects, such as jurisprudence, legal history or feminist legal theory, on account of their perceived lack of use value in the market.

Declining demand may cause the more theoretical and critical courses to disappear from the curriculum in favour of applied knowledge. The student as enterprise has little interest in a liberal education, that is, an approach that is critical, theoretical, interdisciplinary, comparative or sociolegal, even though a liberal legal education may better equip him or her for a broader range of occupations. Law students usually have a form of traditional metrocentric legal practice in mind for when they graduate, suggesting a misallocation in terms of their aspirations and where they might make a useful contribution (Menkel-Meadow, 2012). In any case, as mentioned, what is required by the state for job-readiness is technically skilled human capital, ‘not educated participants in public life’ (Brown, 2015, p. 177). The student as enterprise underpins and supports the broader aim of capital accumulation that is a corollary of the corporatisation of universities. While a critical approach to the Priestley 11 is not formally precluded by the vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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LACC’s 2019 revision, it is not exactly encouraged either.

Rote learning and regurgitation are more likely to satisfy job readiness over deep learning because of its short-term functionality and its ability to satisfy credentialism.

What is important to the student is the prevailing discourse of ‘relevance’, which tends to be evaluated in market terms (Shore & McLauchlan, 2012). Through the shaping of the curriculum, we see how the individual aims of the student as enterprise dovetail with those of the neoliberal state in the privileging of ‘know how’ over ‘know what’ in the new knowledge economy (OECD, 1996).

Conclusion: Deferring to multiple masters In considering the impact on legal education of multiple masters, I began by adverting to the schizophrenic relationship between the academy and the legal profession but argued that this traditional tension was disrupted by the neoliberal turn.

Until the Dawkins reforms, the state played a key role in the funding of public universities but adopted a hands-off approach to their governance and internal operations (Jackson, 1999).

Ironically, this changed with disinvestment, when higher education began to be regarded as a source of enterprise and capital accumulation rather than a public good but, instead of continuing to respect the autonomy of universities, government assumed a role of mastery over them. I suggested that Corden’s metaphor of ‘Moscow on the Molonglo’ aptly encapsulated the contradiction of government providing less financial support for higher education while simultaneously increasing the extent of its oversight and regulation in respect of internal matters, such as teaching standards and research policies.

The historic mastery of the legal profession over legal education did not weaken in the post-Dawkins era. Indeed, it was partly in response to the proliferation of new law schools that the LACC developed uniform admission requirements.

Once instantiated, the profession was resistant to updating the Priestley 11, despite the tranche of modernising reforms effected in the profession itself around the millennial turn, as well as the fact that most law graduates no longer entered traditional legal practice. There was no suggestion that there might be variable categories of admission to satisfy different forms of law-related employment. When the LACC eventually undertook a revision of the requirements for admission in 2019, it produced a virtual replica of the 1992 Priestley 11. A measure of the conventional mastery of the legal profession was that all law schools deferentially accepted and incorporated the Priestley 11 into their requirements for the award of the LLB, and subsequently the JD, regardless of whether students intended to be admitted to legal practice or not.

Finally, with recourse to the Foucauldian thesis of the self as enterprise, I argued that law students themselves were able to exercise a degree of mastery over law school curricula and

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pedagogy. Having been transmuted into consumer/customers, students believed that they were entitled to complain about the substance, pedagogy and mode of assessment of their law courses. This augmented their power and played a role in directing legal education down an applied path in a way that accorded not only with their own vocational aims but with those of the state to ensure that universities’ primary role was to serve the new knowledge economy by producing technically skilled human capital rather than a critically educated citizenry.

While many legal academics are doing their best to inspire students to become critically engaged citizens through a liberal legal education, they are constrained by the pressure to be deferential to multiple masters. Their universities require them to teach ever larger cohorts of students, particularly full-fee and international students, in order to maximise income. They are compelled to teach the compulsory ‘core’ of the curriculum, preferably from a doctrinal perspective, as prescribed by the admitting authorities and legitimated by TEQSA. The manageriat also expects them to teach mainly through the cheaper lecture method, for which students reward them by staying away. While legal academics are enjoined to be research active, the subjects of their scholarly research tend to be cordoned off from what they are permitted to teach. Although they may be able to offer an optional subject based on their research from time to time, the centripetal pull of the Priestley 11 may deter students from enrolling in it, and small enrolments could mean the kiss of death. This may induce legal academics to turn away from teaching and focus on research, for which the rewards are greater. Like students, academics are also neoliberal subjects interested in producing their own capital.

The dystopian effect of having to satisfy multiple masters in the contemporary law school is apparent when a light is shone upon the phenomenon, as I have sought to do. The constituents are imbricated with one another so as to reify enterprise, capital accumulation and promotion of the self within the neoliberal economy and are reflected and normalised within the corporatised university. Multiple mastery confirms that the uni-versity has indeed become a multi-versity.

Acknowledgements This article was first presented as a keynote address at ‘Satisfying Many Masters: Teaching into Professional Degrees in Law and Engineering in the 21st Century’, University of Southern Queensland, 30 September 2019. The author thanks the University of Southern Queensland and Professor Pauline Collins for their hospitality.

Margaret Thornton is an Emerita Professor in the ANU College of Law at The Australian National University, ACT. Contact: Margaret.thornton@anu.edu.au

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The challenge for law schools of satisfying multiple masters Margaret Thornton

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Behind voluntary redundancy in universities The stories behind the story Martin Andrew Otago Polytechnic

At a time when universities internationally participate in continual processes of restructuring, repositioning and reprioritising, calls for ‘voluntary’ redundancy among teaching and learning staff become frequent events. Australian and New Zealand academics, whose stories inform this study, have, particularly, been made subject to severance, voluntary or otherwise, at a time when the modernised university has become the managed, neoliberalised university and, over time, the ‘ruined’ or ‘toxic’ university. This study is a narrative enquiry aiming to capture, re-present and examine the stories of mid- and late-career higher education teaching professionals during this unsettling period of disturbance and flux. In the light of studies on ‘voluntary’ redundancy and scholarship critiquing the mechanisms of power and repression of the corporatised university, this researcher asked 12 mid-career academics why they really took redundancy packages with a view to exposing the experienced truth behind the official institutional story that academic professionals ‘chose’ voluntary redundancy packages.

Keywords: academic identity, narrative enquiry, neoliberalism, toxicity, voluntary redundancy, Max Weber

Introduction and framework This study brings forward possible and likely truths that lie behind tenured academics’ decisions to take voluntary redundancies despite their jobs involving edifying, rewarding and ‘passion’ work. In other words, the legality of the severance agreement stresses a voluntary motivation, a choice; but the actuality behind the decision points to a range of histories, of backstories. This researcher asked 12 mid-career academics why they really took redundancy packages. Their stories reveal a raft of themes now commonplace in the literature of the ‘ruined university’. This paper aims to develop the theory that what appears at an institutional level to be voluntary is in fact as far from a choice as imaginable.

It is risky to speak of ‘truths’ when my methodology is that of an interpretivist narrative enquiry into individuals’ decisions to leave tenured positions via ‘voluntary’

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redundancy. I will speak more explicitly about the epistemological and ethical components shortly. My reference to ‘truths’ needs contextualisation. It comes from my reflections on the methodological anti-positivism and resolute interpretivism of the anti-capitalist sociologist, Max Weber (1864-1920). I was drawn, particularly, to his 1915 description (in The Methodology of Social Sciences, trans.

1949, p.176) of ‘the skeletal structure of causal attributions and truths’ (das feste Skelett der kausale Zurechnung). Such ‘attributions’, he maintained, lie behind the ‘facade’ of narrative history and their presence differentiates a work of knowing from a fiction.

This led me to wonder how these fabrications, based on the superficial story (the facade), become the official stories.

In other words – and it is not possible to paraphrase without calling Foucault to mind – official history is fabricated by the legalistic stories of the powerful. This historical process vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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leaves behind the potent versions of truth embodied in the stories of the disempowered. Foucault (1980) argued that knowledge and understanding are constituted and socially constructed under conditions of power. The production of knowledge reproduces particular discursive practices, such as those of compliance and performativity in universities, which become indicative of individuals’ various alignments with social groups, including those of, variously, the powerful and the resistant.

These reflections on Weber are relevant because those of us recording stories of what happened, in my case the backstories to voluntary redundancies in higher educational contexts in Australia and New Zealand in the late 2010s and early 2020s, strive to write in the spaces of history while it is still raw. Weber believed we can understand the occluded but true stories by interpreting the actions of ‘ideal types’, figures who represent the many or the collective. This study retells the stories of ideal types, typical personages marginalised in the larger story of the neoliberal occupation of higher education.

The stories foreground the accidental, irrational, emotional and socio-political factors absent from the powerful masternarratives. Weber might suggest these are the kind of factors that might truthfully contribute to a reconstruction of the human narratives behind historic events. These are the stories behind ‘the story’.

The stories, alongside the metanarrative of this article that curates them, throw light on the reflective strategies enacted by those leaving academic positions. This study fleshes out the skeletons, a metaphor for naked truth, within the stories. Tearing away the facade, we discover the story that these redundancies were voluntary is in fact the official master-narrative maintaining that people chose to exit. The truth is that people certainly made decisions but they did not have the choices the concept of ‘voluntariness’ suggests.

I mentioned 12 mid-career academics, and 12 contributed written or verbal data. My method was based on principles of reflectivity: write or speak about the following question, Why did you take voluntary redundancy from your university position? I wanted to understand underlying thinking and motivations, push and pull factors, processes of reasoning and strategies for survival. I wanted to know what informed their decisions. The 12 academics created texts, either a page of text or an equivalent voice recording. However, the process of remembering and, hence, reliving, led half my participants to texts they knew had to be withdrawn. Their words were ‘too close to the bone’, ‘bringing back ghosts’, ‘best to let bygones be bygones’ and ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ – and I had permission to use those quotes in lieu of narratives. I now have six texts. I retell their reconfigured stories after surveying relevant literature and clarifying the methodology. vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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Literature The ruined university Writings about leaving ruined universities are omnipresent.

Studies are plentiful (Joseph, 2015; Bottrell & Manathunga, 2019). Some book titles are The Ruined University (Readings, 1996), The Toxic University (Smyth, 2017) and Whakademia (Hil, 2012). Barcan (2013; 2019) investigated why academics leave; she identified the generation most at risk of lose-lose: those in their late ‘40s to ‘50s. In studies of the academic identity, loss is a huge theme (Smith et al., 2016). The umbrella socio-political terms in the literature of ‘the ruined university’ are rationalisation, intensification, privatisation, marketisation, metricisation (Barker, 2017) – and responsibilisation. Unfurling since the 1980s, ‘academic capitalism’, interested primarily in brand management, world ranking and competitive market share, has long been disenfranchising educators of integrity.

The master-discourse of the marketplace has laid waste to the halcyon language of researching, teaching, learning and service.

Readings (1996, p.188) warned the university would become ‘an autonomous collective subject who is authorised to say ‘we’ and to terrorise those who do not, or cannot, speak in that “we”’.

We can now see that the powerful royal ‘we’ of the masternarrative has terrorised the ‘we’ who speak in my narratives into voluntary redundancy.

Scholars concur that business model jargon imported includes ‘compliance’, ‘performance measurement’, ‘performativity’, ‘productivity’, ‘transparency’, ‘accountability’, ‘engagement’, ‘audit’ and ‘metrics’ (even ‘qualimetrics’).

Further, key weasel nouns of the master-discourse include ‘efficiency’ (countable ‘efficiencies’), ‘excellence’, ‘merit’, ‘quality’ (as in ‘quality assured), ‘impact factor’ and ‘ratings’, along with the institutionally-required warrior qualities: ‘resilience’, ‘flexibility’, ‘agility’. Lorenz (2012) believes that ‘new public management’ ‘parasitises the everyday meanings of (its) concepts ... and simultaneously perverts all their original meanings’ (Lorenz, 2012, p.600). The weasel words of the ‘official’ discourse, while unmoral, still become the dominant discourse in faculty meetings and other sites of Foucauldian control. Our increasingly ephemeral work is defined in relation to managerialist master-discourse terms such as: ‘business model’, ‘best practice’, ‘innovation’, ‘renewal’, ‘restructure’, ‘benchmarking’, ‘output’, ‘operational plan’, ‘grant capture’, ‘commitment’, ‘change management’, ‘viability’ and, in an impure form, ‘sustainability’. If you feel bombarded by jargon, the effect is purely intentional. (Faculty Meeting Bingo cards may now be downloaded as a ‘sanity saver’).

With these words, the institutional story of voluntary redundancy is told. ‘The bullshitter’, Lorenz (2012) tells us, ‘is only interested in effects and does not necessarily believe in what he states himself ’ (p.560). Those who embrace this lexicon became, Giroux (2002) wrote, ‘competitive Behind voluntary redundancy in universities Martin Andrew

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self-interested individuals vying for their own material and ideological gain’ (p.429). Those whose consciences could not endure the hidden truth behind this ‘facade’ language became sick, engaged in acts of resistance, or left, either ‘voluntarily’ or of their own freewill. To use the metaphors of the scholarship, they become the ‘ideal types’ of ‘ninjas’, ‘zombies’ or ‘nervous wrecks’ (Barker, 2016; Ryan, 2012), the latter suffering survivor guilt (Sutton, 2019). Foucault would see the ninjas as compliant but self-regulated individuals, leveraging power by embracing the entrepreneurial possibilities of corporate organisational cultures. The zombies are co-opted subjects, surviving repression by a sacrifice of integrity but unable to do otherwise as they are captured by academic capitalism. The nervous wrecks recognise that they have been both branded and repressed. Survivor guilt comes from the self-knowledge that they may have betrayed themselves and embraced repression, while others have regained power through exit.

Although nervous wrecks are ethically torn, their choice to remain perpetuates the systems of repression.

Voluntary redundancy Studies of voluntary redundancy (VR) as a phenomenon are still rare, apart from several in Australia. Those that exist belong to Industrial Relations. Turnbull (1988, p.32), for instance, identified the fact that VR was seldom voluntary: ‘the voluntary element refers only to the process whereby those to be dismissed for redundancy are selected, rather than the decision on the need for redundancy’. He adds parenthetically, ‘the latter remains the cornerstone of managerial prerogative’.

This is prophetic because in Australia in 2015 law changes gave employers freedom in how they dealt with VR ( Joseph, 2015), and it is this freedom, coupled with the imperatives of managerialism, that provides the analytic contexts for this narrative.

During the more neutral period of the 2000s when the discourse revolved around ‘retrenchment’ and ‘downsizing’, Clarke (2007) presents voices of both ‘victims’ and ‘survivors’ in themes, the first of which is ‘Just how voluntary?’ One participant ironically notes, ‘I love the way they’ve labelled it voluntary redundancy. It just seems to be a nice name to put on the fact that they’re booting someone out and they don’t really have a choice’ (p.81). Here we see the facade (‘nice name’) of voluntariness in the official narrative contrasted with the experienced truth: lack of choice and displacement.

In Clarke’s study, regret, income loss and low morale emerged as themes. His study sees VR as attractive in contrast to other forms of retrenchment – so long as it is managed strategically.

Two studies focus on the university ( Joseph, 2015; Watson, 2011). Watson examines how ‘dominant discourses are operationalised in the university through everyday communications, which serve to construct an institutional identity, and how, in turn, this impacts on the development of

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academic identities’ (p.957). These discourses, represented in the jargon above, obfuscate transparency, foster unsustainable untruths about excellence and accountability and choreograph a logic of marketisation. This is important because it also suggests institutions have a master-narrative, circulated and normalised discursively ‘the story’ of my title. The danger of ‘the story’ is that ‘the rhetoric of managerialism can change the way academics see themselves’ ( Joseph, 2015, p.158), leading them away from self-belief and self-care. Sowing seeds of self-doubt is a key strategy of managerialism (Vaillancourt, 2020); so, too, is the imposition of imposter syndrome. Joseph (2015, p.139) demonstrates that the costs of management imposing their will to ‘win at all costs’ consist in a corrosion of valuable aspects of academic work: collegiality, relational networking, trust and information-sharing. Instead are toxic fear and hyper-competitiveness. Within the discourse of VR, individuals were still targeted. The game of bad faith involved ‘cheating’ and was a ‘sham’ (p.158). The stories I provide in this paper offer instances of these phenomena.

The slippery concept of voluntariness deserves scrutiny, though its legal and philosophical subtleties can only be acknowledged here. Like the jargon italicised above, voluntary is a word that was migrated from its pastoral, ethical and philosophical associations of good work, care, absence of coercion and freewill to become a term of moral ambiguity as in such collocations as ‘voluntary committal’, ‘voluntary euthanasia’, ‘voluntary liquidation’ or ‘voluntary severance’; where, in each case, the degree of voluntariness differs and the position of agency in the backstory changes. In such cases, as Clarke’s (2007) critique stressed, the imperative of financial incentive creates an appearance of democracy (it’s offered to all) and kindness (money’s good, right?) not found in compulsory severance and enables a time for reflection. An offer of voluntary redundancy is also not the same in all contexts or at all stages of life. This may be why impacts are greater on mid-career professionals in universities (Barcan, 2013; 2019). This study excludes those who took an early retirement option or novice academics leaving believing the grass is still green. However, in the ruined university, for those mid-career folk impacted, offers of ‘voluntary’ severance appear to result either in a healthprioritising decision or a moral decision to draw a line under a vocation which has changed so much that it has become morally and psychologically unbearable. To stay, like the three ideal types described above, is, in fact, the Faustian bargain Ball (2003) described: you become the self-promotional ‘ninja’, the subject completely and willingly colonised by Neoliberalism; or you live on (an aspect of the ‘zombie’) or wring your hands in guilt (Ryan, 2012).

As Watson (2011) and Joseph (2015) argued, ‘voluntary’ in ‘voluntary redundancies’ is a sham because its message is brutal, coming from the standpoint of the business model despite pretence to user-friendliness (Clarke, 2007). The vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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process begins with a rationale about ‘the size and efficient use interpret facets of the study, including the experiential and of staffing required to meet objectives or financial constraints’, human components. This interpretivist nature appears in my to quote Oxford University’s (typical) Redundancy procedure interest in such social constructions as language, consciousness (2019, online). The next stage, identifying the redundancy and the question of invested, privileged power perspectives in pool, is where problems lurk because metrics are used and what pretends to be shared discourse about academic work. metrics are never neutral. Rather, they are fraught with power This work is transactional since I have experience of the games, nepotism, favouritism and post-truth politics. Next, phenomenon of voluntary redundancy among mid-career because this rationale demands a quantity of severances, that academics, both personally and as an observer. These factors quantity will be met, ‘voluntarily’ or not, and the university validate the study because of the trustworthiness and honesty begins a new game: ‘Fair’ selection of staff for redundancy, of the data as well as the participatory nature of the study, and, with ‘fairness’ based on more metrics manufactured and interestingly, the ‘not-data’ is also functional, as described interpreted by somebody powerful; i.e. not fair after all. In an above. The approach is naturalistic as it relates both to its issue of Queensland Nurse (Anonymous, 2012, p.30) we read: selection of participants from the world of the enquiry and its ‘Emails from departing health workers saying their goodbyes initial method of data collection, in this case a single-question to colleagues tell the real story behind the so-called ‘voluntary interview elicited either as a written piece or a spoken word redundancy’. Accessing emails offers an ethical and logistic document for transcription. This choice of modes relates challenge to researchers; here I to how participants might access similar backstories from prefer to reflect on, access and These discourses ... obfuscate transparency, elicited narratives. The article record stories of their recent foster unsustainable untruths about continues: ‘Many clearly feel history which may still contain they have been backed into embedded trauma. excellence and accountability and a corner and have no better This work draws on work choreograph a logic of marketisation. option – hardly “voluntary”’ in narrative enquiry and (p.30); the stories retold here ethnography in that its ‘truth’ also follow this trajectory. comes from the authentic stories of lived experience of those Voluntary redundancies are, Academics Anonymous (2018) close to the phenomenon over time, understanding how the wrote, ‘in reality compulsory redundancies with a severance individual and the cultural are interconnected (Clandinin & package’ (online). Academics Anonymous are a community of Connelly, 1994). The social reality of the narrator becomes practice in Australia meeting underground outside the surveying the object of enquiry. Narratives, Clandinin (2013) argued, eye of the Foucauldian panopticon. Sutton (2019) reports that start in and resume in the middle of experience and need to David Hunter was made redundant from Flinders University foreground participants’ temporality, sociality and places. My (Adelaide) because a restructure left no teaching specialist stories can be regarded as a data set, since their stories address position in his field: ‘The redundancy is not voluntary in the my enquiry, and also align with Bruner’s (1985) ‘narrative actual sense of the word’. He reapplied in a related discipline knowing’. This means, as Polkinghorne (1995) echoes, that but was rejected: ‘It’s voluntary in the sense that if somebody these stories, presented as narrative analysis – that is, the puts a gun to your head and says, ‘give me all your money’, it’s stories themselves as data – reflect, or sometimes refract, a a voluntary choice to do so rather than get shot by a gun’. In knowable reality, set within a framework of my curation. what is arguably the definitive modern philosophical critique The 12 participants came forward voluntarily as the result of freedom and voluntariness, Pink (2016) argues voluntariness of a call at an international education conference in Australia, is a power of the will or of motivation to get us to act as willed. where attendees were given fliers. This act of purposeful Importantly, ‘will’ has a non-voluntary component. This is sampling limited the respondents to some extent to those important because this motivation to get people to act as willed linked to education, yet three participants came from divergent points to the lack of choice in ‘voluntary’ redundancies among disciplines. There was an equal spread of genders, and their academic professionals; those cited above and those whose age range corresponded with the information in the call, and stories follow. ended up being 47-63, with all participants having been in higher education for at least a decade, and all but two for 20 Methodology years or more. There were no participants who identified as Indigenous, and I acknowledge this as a limitation.

This study functions as a broadly constructivist narrative The six participants, who agreed that I could use edited enquiry written in alignment with an interest in Weber’s versions of their stories, are attributed here with pseudonyms subjectivist methodological individualism. It is interpretivist and identifying details have been fictionalised or substituted because, as the creator of this metanarrative you read, I with lacunae or critical incidents from my own story. These vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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six retold stories are, hence, valid representations of their experiences, and as the researcher, I can state that similar tales were told in the six suppressed stories and in those of colleagues not part of the study whose stories mirror those retold here.

The six participants who withdrew did so for reasons of health and safety, but they did not need the counsellor I had made available. Rosenwald (1992, p.275) observed, “not only does the past live in the present, but it also appears different at every new turn we take’. Mine is a topic where ghosts and their ancestors still have their mark.

I now (re)present the stories of ‘ideal types’, whose language foregrounds the power struggle between the ‘skeleton’ and the ‘facade’. I ask the reader to discover reasons behind participants’ voluntary redundancy, in the process considering what may or may not be ‘voluntary’ about their decisions.

1. Diana (59), Former Dean of Research (Suburban Australian dual-sector university) This was the fifth restructure in six years, and my team in the research and development area had dwindled from 12 to 4.

The fifth restructure brought with it the dread of the voluntary redundancy, for which we had to apply as an ‘opportunity’. As a senior academic, I had been accustomed to being consulted during times of change, but I had lost, last round, three key colleagues in arms. They fell on their dignified swords in an early retirement option. These colleagues had esteemed me and my lifelong work, and I was left in a division suffering from cultural amnesia. No-one was left to acknowledge the decades of recognised excellence and experience I had in supporting graduate students through their increasingly complex and bureaucratic candidatures. The work I had done in uniting eclectic staff and creating professional development programs and curating conferences was forgotten and irrelevant.

The crunch came when I was told to apply for my own job as Dean of Research, this time with ‘Executive’ in front.

As a well-published professor with a strong on-campus and national reputation, I felt indignant, insulted, affronted.

The position description had changed. Its freight was heavily managerialist and quantitative outcomes-focused: numbers of completions, revenue for completions, budget management for the centralisation of postgraduate outputs. The list of KPIs caused anxieties I thought my hardened experience would have protected me from: six committees; accountability for stricter timeliness and for reducing leaves of absence; responsibility for ensuring annual quality reports and supervisory audits, managing candidature milestones, which had doubled in number and paperwork. I had to break it to staff that research supervision was now effectively ‘by committee’ with feedback coming primarily from milestone feedback from assessors who had played no role in the personal learning journeys of students, and that research supervision was increasingly less of

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a pedagogical negotiation with mentors. The number of hours shared by supervisory cohorts had been slashed to what I knew was an impossible number of hours, fewer than 50. The words ‘student’ or ‘learner’ were absent. The insights from a national grant-funded research program I had overseen and which were to have been implemented were ignored. There were ‘accountabilities’, expected outcomes, performance indicators and matrices for how these would be evaluated, and new software to ‘facilitate’ everything, for which there would be compulsory training sessions.

I had loved working closely with postgraduate students and they were grateful for the support. My passion came from my direct work with learners, as an enabler, facilitator, experienced supervisor-in-chief. I brokered those ‘a-ha’ moments where students experienced the removal of a blockage or made a realisation that made a difference. It was clear that none of these activities played any part in what my position had become. I set aside the document to reread in the evening after or during a wine. By the time I had finished my second reading, I knew instantly that the person specified was certainly not me. The travail of the three months until the redundancy was to become active is a ‘hero’s journey’ story of its own, and I just might get around to writing it.

2. Carl (56), Former Senior Academic (leading urban New Zealand university) I write an experience-based reflective piece describing the backstory of my, and, unavoidably, my colleagues’, voluntary redundancies. In my experience, 1986 was the year neoliberalist reforms began what we now experience in 2020 as a process of devastation, ruination. It was also the year my university work began, and my grades, passion and ‘habitus’ as a scholar promised a great career. In 2018, I watched distinguished academics get hand-picked for redundancy in music and humanities at two local universities. In 2016, I’d observed a more negotiated, but agonising, process of academic-redundancy-making at another university within the same disciplines, and in 2018-19 administrative staff faced rationalisation. Earlier in 2013 and 2015, I’d witnessed acts of obscenity and bullying masquerading as change plans at a major local university, first for administrators and then for academics. In 2011, I’d watched the rationale behind turning a multi-campus cross-regional university into a centralised one with a linear marketing strategy involving going online.

Much has been written on the battles against social sciences, languages and humanities; liberal, fine and educational arts, wrought by interest bodies within the wider institutions applying, misapplying, artificial, indeed invalid, measures that fail to capture the fineness and criticality of such forms of endeavour. They speak of margins and viability, numeral factors that may show a few years hence, yet we believe vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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education is a life-long process. No-one ever considers the impacts on learners and their learning processes when universities undergo multiple consecutive restructurings.

Negotiations on behalf of areas such as my own always begin with a fight and with hope but end with despair. The clear message? Neither you, your life experience, your researchinformed talent, your community engagement, nor your subject are relevant here in the modernised university. You lose us money.

I have to paint the story of my experience in an abstract way.

The stories created by universities are never what they are made to appear; there is much spin, propaganda, false good news. But the stories of individuals heard and shared reveal the intrigues, manipulations, briberies, agendas and multiple forms of bullying that ultimately are silenced by contracts of redundancy.

Those overseeing change, restructurings, rebrandings, curriculum renewals, re-anythings, create opportunities for consultancy that are not heard, e-discussion boards that go unread, preacher-style meetings where critical debate has no possibility. They hire puppets with the good news agenda of helping people through change; but then those puppets report back to management, and suddenly you are faced in a meeting with a revelation given in confidence. Consultation is a pretence, a sham. If you dare to speak, let alone propound a point, you are ‘vexatious’. True debate is shut down.

Management’s many faits accomplis offer no reply and even reject findings from independent internal reviews that don’t accord with their agenda and line up with what has already been decided.

They create a bastard language that spoils perfectly good words, especially, ‘leadership’, now a psychopath’s or a narcissist’s term of self-aggrandisement that almost never does as it claims. You’re not ‘flexible’ if you baulk when your position is unsustainable, and you’re not ‘resilient’ when you don’t trust market forces to resituate yourself. There is no doubt that ruined universities target individuals like hunters lining up ducks for a kill and pretend it is random. This is not a natural Darwinian process where the slowest antelope becomes dinner.

It is, in fact, a set of deliberate frame-ups. A number of heads must roll, so the torture instruments are rolled out, and the instruments of efficiency, accountability and transparency find ways to make excellent people appear mediocre and quality work appear unimportant. ‘Toxic’ doesn’t cut it. This process of sustained alienation exemplifies the trajectory that leads people, such as myself, to take redundancy, and it is as far from voluntary as murder is from euthanasia.

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an invitation to become management. It had become clear, in this climate of change for change’s sake, that the only way to ensure promotion and a degree of stability was by becoming management. Academic promotion processes virtually demanded management experience, regardless of your teaching record, acts of community engagement and your list of quality assured publications with 50 citations each according to Google Scholar. I went and joined them.

I attended in-house training sessions, ranging from the banal (running budgets, explaining the new travel policy) to the faintly inhuman (enacting student and staff discipline and complaint processes, keeping explicit audit and evidence trails). Sent as a manager to training on bullying policy (or did they call it anti-bullying?), I was taught how far you can push people before it’s considered bullying. I was told to monitor, survey, watch, slow process down, record. I had access to data about how long people were signed into Outlook or the LMS [Learning Management System] and how long it took them to respond to internal emails. I was taught never to use ‘dear’ in emails; that continually cancelling meetings keeps people in their place. I had been effectively taught how to bully.

Before I ‘joined’ them I had watched the progress of peers, working their way up the ladder to higher ground and becoming favourites at the throne. I envied their ascension.

First, three co-workers had attained the rank of Associate Professor (AP) following their emigration to management.

They now performance-managed former peers, and I now see that they had become privy to their aspirations and vulnerabilities. In time, they would use this knowledge, shared in deep confidence, against them. At the time of the interviews with their ‘reports’, they cast themselves as supportive, charting courses of appropriate professional development. I’d watch underlings flock around them.

Second, a prominent member of the union had become a high-level manager and was thriving. I viewed him as a case study. Could I have a career trajectory like his? Inwardly, I wondered how someone so ‘left’ could turn so ‘right’ and, as time went by, I came to wonder how he could live with himself. He had gone from fighting for the downtrodden to representing those I call ‘the down-treaders’. This, too, had happened to the APs, and I wondered why it seemed true that, to cite Sir John Dalberg-Acton, ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. I kept an open mind; but realised that I had been invited to the dark side. In a nightmare recollection of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I saw that a pod had been prepared for me; all I had to do was fall asleep.

At this point, as a trusted manager, I was given the authority to tell my ‘reports’ that there was to be a further redundancy round to accommodate a new, improved modular delivery model. Last year there had been a plea for dead wood to self-identify and take early retirement, or for those who had enjoyed long careers to heroically pass the baton. Early Behind voluntary redundancy in universities Martin Andrew

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retirement packages were available to those 55 years or above.

There was an element of let the younger ones have a chance.

This year there was no cut off point; it was open to all.

Attractive packages. Apply at your convenience.

This announcement led to an atmosphere of toxicity.

Corridor conversations suggested that some individuals were targeted and named as redundancy victims. I recalled my managerialist training: how far you can push people before it’s bullying?, and also the vulnerabilities and areas for future learning that ‘reports’ (colleagues) had shared in confidence with performance managers. It became clear that the rumour mill was effectively coercing individuals to volunteer for redundancy by circulating people’s vulnerabilities. Then I learned that my role was to go. It had been a glass cliff all along.

Bullying is insidious, and you often only realise you’ve been bullied only when you reflect; when you’re living it, it feels like due process and you deserve it. I now see myself as suffering from a Stockholm Syndrome inside another Stockholm Syndrome. I was so captured and captivated by becoming management that I could not see that I was a hostage. To add insult to injury, we all received beautifully printed letters on high-grade paper telling us that our applications had been successful.

4. Marta (51), Academic (Mid-range Urban Australian university) I was, for two decades, a lecturer at a mid-range urban university. There came a time when I was no longer an educator and educationalist; I had turned into a glorified administrator. Keeping marks was burden number one. I had to maintain assessment records in three forms: one on various LMS; another in an online institutional aggregator that ‘talked to’ the central system, and once on the designated Excel spreadsheet that had always been set up with the incorrect weightings, requiring repeat work. Moderation processes led to burden number two. For every internal assessment activity, I kept a paper trail of a pre-event moderation process; evidence of peer-level input into the assessment activity itself, and a detailed set of papers examining post-event moderation procedures, so that we could improve the assessment for the next delivery. This was called a culture of continual improvement; it felt like a culture of endless paperwork.

I could list many more burdens and try to excuse myself from not having time to generate research, grant applications, promotion applications, award applications or even to keep my CV up to date. I’m going to bullet-point some of the other irksome things that made me realise that I had lost my passion and my soul. From my perspective, it seemed that management...

• Changed the instruments of measurement of research

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output and quality so stealthily, often and obscurely that it became impossible to follow.

• Surreptitiously created criteria to eliminate the researchwork of some individuals from ‘what counted’ in terms of gaining credit towards conference travel and gaining points in the university’s research activity measure without rationale or explanation.

• Generated multiple new and revised policies and principles, claimed they were openly available but ensured they were only accessible in the most inaccessible servers guarded by triple firewalls.

• Implemented the annual strategy of raising the minimum number of seat-bums that can make your class viable: 15, 17, 23, 30, infinity.

• Annually number-crunched your weekly fulltime teaching hours: 12, 17, 23, 27; declined your applications to attend a conference, even with a paper accepted, because your track record is not good enough.

• Regarded you with suspicion if you are a member of a SIG (Special Interest Group), a community of practice or a union and forced collective activity underground.

• Reminded you continually to stick to ‘core’ business, which you thought was teaching and learning, but investing in this function gets you nowhere.

• Told you year after year that no matter how high your learners achieved or how excellent your evaluations were, you were not ready for promotion. I had been a Lecturer B for 20 years.

• They insisted that you took your professional development in in-house sessions related to new and improved software necessary for managing lectures recording technology, recording and reporting student attendance, ensuring consistency of assessment processes, self-evaluation as a component of performance management, recording and evidencing expenses and travel claims, learning what is different in the latest versions of Word, Excel and Outlook.

I craved the opportunity to develop my thinking and pedagogy in my own area.

When I heard that another redundancy round was imminent, I realised that this is what I had to do. It was time to end it all.

5. Mira (57), Former Academic (Urban Australian and UK universities) I entered university life in 1992 as a junior, blissful to have been granted entry into the academic community. For the next decade, university life was good. Teaching workloads and class sizes were designed for the benefit of students and staff; research allocation was inclusive and more-or-less equally distributed; progression through the ranks was transparent, and departments were collegial. vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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But now, 28 years later, I despair at what being an academic entails and at the state of the ‘Academy’. I have left, via VR, early, without the benefit of being financially secure into old age. I left early, mourning for a part of my life I had loved.

Did I tire due to my age, simply bored with a profession that no longer carried the challenges I embraced as a neophyte?

No. I left early in a state of despair because the job of an academic bears no resemblance to the one I entered. Granted, all jobs change over time. But over the last decade or so the work and work conditions within universities have become so increasingly degraded that the job of being an academic is barely recognisable. I can say universities in the plural, since I’ve worked at seven universities including three in xxxx and four in yyyy. I kept leaving one university for another, thinking the issues I was observing and experiencing were located in each individual institution I had chosen.

On reflection, there is one clear theme: The Commodification of Education. The rhetoric within government and university management revolves around the language of students as consumers. Students are seen as customers and higher education institutions as ’education product’ providers.

Universities are part of an economic supply chain geared not to encourage the flourishing and production of an educated, well-rounded society, but to advance the interests of industry.

The neoliberal agenda rears its foul head. It is against this background that problems emerge.

Since a failed student is not a satisfied customer, especially a foreign failed student paying full fees, how and why students are awarded marks becomes an issue. I strongly feel that the covert downward slide of what once were considered acceptable university-level submissions render academics mere stooges in the awarding of degrees. The discretion of academics to award marks according to the true quality of work and evidence of a student’s critical knowledge acquisition has been eroded.

The management-espoused emphasis on ‘the student experience’ is a farce. Now following a business model, universities are competing for students while (stupidly) being in cost reduction mode. Student classes are everexpanding while universities are cutting staff, resources, career progression opportunities, and salaries. The squeeze on staff is at odds with the production of a conducive environment in which ‘customer service’ can be provided. Academics are bearing the brunt of such shit poor management. Stress levels are soaring; burnout is rampant. University management responds by having ‘Staff Wellness Days’ where nothing actually happens to fix the toxic level of work intensification.

Universities are also in the game of reducing the time allocated for research activity. Research is now largely something academics are expected to do in their own time, since the week time is for the provision of continuous quality ‘customer service’. It is not enough to research (on vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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weekends) and to publish in credible journals. We must now publish in journals deemed to be prestigious by external bodies. Anything less is a waste of time. Further, many of the ‘prestigious’ journals are a closed shop, where members of the editorial boards publish each other’s work.

The saddest thing is that academic departments are no longer collegial. Academics now work behind closed office doors (unless they’ve been shunted into an open office setting), they are pitted against each other for the scarce resources of research time, sabbaticals, conference allowances and promotion. Collegiality is nearly completely dead.

As academics, our hard work spent in accumulating the knowledge of our discipline is no longer regarded as of value.

Our ‘knowledge labour’ has been replaced by the emotional labour characteristic of basic customer service environments.

It is an altogether different burden.

And so, I have fled. I mourn having felt the need to flee. I mourn my dead profession. I mourn the loss of what I once regarded as my true vocation and purpose, and I mourn my loss of identity. But even though I have fled and am in mourning, I know that what I have done is the right thing for me.

6. Helena (52), Senior Academic (Multiple urban and suburban Australian universities) The same year I was promoted to professor, I accepted a voluntary redundancy package. While I admit I had personal push factors, the push factors were extraordinary, exemplifying managerialism gone feral.

At the heart of the issue was tall poppy syndrome. I was a highly published author, in demand as a plenary speaker, and I had accepted a job at a low-ranked university whose research culture needed a shake-up. However, my body of work was deemed to be too radical and grounded in wicked problemsolving. Although in my interview it was a given that I would sit on, or even chair, the faculty research committee, I was ultimately not given a place and had to fight to get one. The battle for inclusion had begun. It was clear that I was a threat both in terms of the rigour of my work and its implications.

It was clear that they had hired an activist, and a person who fought for her own rights and those of others. My short tenure is a sad tale of how they tried to rectify their error of judgement.

It quickly became apparent that the job I accepted was not the job I got. Researcher development was to have been my job and my core reason for accepting the position, but a restructure saw that plan scuttled and the faculty divided into so-called Discipline Groups, which turned out more to be about conveying information about processes and administrivia, about change propagandising, than about researcher or professional development of any kind. These groups were not special interest groups or communities of Behind voluntary redundancy in universities Martin Andrew

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practice; they were Discipline Groups (capitals intended).

The emphasis on ‘discipline’ was not lost on those of us with a Foucauldian bent.

Despite the managerialist agenda, our group elected to become a critical discussion group, critiquing real issues in our overlapping disciplines. However, within the group were spies, powerful because they had the ear of the powerful.

Members of the group were constantly rejected for personal and study leave, conferences, opportunities to submit grants and promotions. Their research outputs were recoded to seem aligned with different groups, and no credits were given to the researchers as a result. The theses they supervised to completion were also coded to appear as if they had been the fruit of another group. These strategies of theft turned out to be just two of many ploys to render active researchers research inactive. It seemed to the group that they had become a target.

During the next year’s restructuring, the number of groups was reduced and mine eliminated. I felt like the victim of a toxic McCarthyist witch-hunt. Self-care was needed.

I took a year of absence to work on research and extended the time away with multiple conferences. This was immeasurably valuable, and set me in a safe place for my return, when I, together with my colleagues, faced voluntary redundancy. Resuming our community of practice ‘illegally’ and ‘underground’, my group of scholars planned conferences and outputs about their experiences of being bullied in multiple ways due to their perceived political alignment as Communists. Instead of writing war stories, they chose to produce stories of hope and resistance.

My fatal flaw was my trust in democracy. Comments in an email addressed to and intended for the group were leaked to management leading to disciplinary action against me, forcing me into a vexatious and stacked kangaroo court. It was a strategy to wear me down. My email history was seized, and I was tried as a witch. Many of my colleagues had decided on redundancy, some with an ironic ‘take the money and run’ approach, but, at the time of my writing this, few of them have recovered their careers because they were disenfranchised and disillusioned. A stolen generation. It was their collective despair that led me to know that the only dignified ending was voluntary redundancy, though deep down I feared that this meant that they had won. The lunatics had finally claimed the asylum.

Data analysis as discussion I presented the six stories as narrative analysis (Polkinghorne, 1995) so that the stories could speak to the reader for themselves in light of my introductory material. Stories, Polkinghorne maintained, pull varieties of events and actions that occur in human lives into thematic patterns and narratives. Yet the demands of writing a discussion

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necessitate analysis of narrative (Polkinghorne, 1995); that is, to pull out the themes signalled in the early parts of the article. As Ryan and Bernard (2003, p.88) state, ‘themes come both from the data (an inductive approach) and from the investigator’s prior theoretical understanding of the phenomenon under study (an a priori approach)’. My trust in the reader assumes the a priori approach. This approach is appropriate because each story has a different main writer, from the business-like Marta to the metaphorical Helena, and different strategies are used to narrate still-painful topics, as in David’s conscious lacuna (...), Marta’s bullets or Carl’s abstraction. Thus, by making narrators’ thought processes explicit, I ‘think narratively’ about the phenomenon, namely ‘voluntary’ redundancy (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006) and the factors underpinning it.

Themes come from acts of readerly scrutiny. I present just six stories so the constant comparison or cutting/sorting methods hardly fit. My scrutiny lies in actions applicable to narrative: seeking repetitions and echoes in key words and concepts, attributing meaning to narrative devices, considering connotations or what meanings lie behind the surface (analogy or allegory) and finding recurrent metaphors. In relation to the latter, Helena spoke of her participants not wanting to write ‘war stories’, but to write in the Freirean spirit of hope; but what I have here are narratives of war, and Helena’s story uses cold war metaphors and speaks of battles, underground movements, spies and managerialism’s propagandist tactics, while Diana speaks of ‘colleagues in arms’ and ‘swords’ as images of old school valour. Imagery of being disciplined and punished (David, Marta, Helena) and hunted (Carl, Helena; David is ‘captured’) is aligned, as is Mira’s image of academics being forced behind closed doors.

The metaphor of espial, war and hiding infuses these narratives, and functions to speak to the tenets of temporality, sociality and locality that Clandinin (2013) said mark narrative enquiry. The term ‘resistance’ (Helena) not only connotes activism, but also those who helped the victimised during World War 2. The theme of residual powerlessness can be inferred from the absence of resistance in other narratives as resistance is a form of empowerment.

Instead, they all enact inevitable downward spirals with the narrator as a victim of the managerialist traps Vaillancourt (2020) details, including accidentally circulating emails (Helena) or other personal information (Carl); pushing people over glass cliffs (Diana, David, Helena), sowing seeds of doubt (all narratives) and slow micromanagement (Marta). Diana even writes that she is the put-upon protagonist in the archetypal hero’s journey narrative, while David’s experience evokes a political horror allegory where the genuine are replaced by the neoliberalised. Powerlessness is omnipresent: ‘Underlings’ surround the powerful (David); academics become ‘stooges’ (Mira). vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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We see fresh critique of how new managerialism works only in Carl’s narrative; what we see instead is a sense of the horrific opportunities it offers those in power to skewer the powerlessness, and the loss of humanity and collegiality involved (all narratives), in the case of Diana, because they have all been picked off one by one leaving no-one except bastard leadership. It is not neoliberalism that dehumanises, but rather the corrupted individuals who uphold it. References to criminality appear but, ‘theft’ aside (Helena), the crimes are seldom named, perhaps because they are symbolic violence of invisible and impenetrable cast; perhaps because the fear of being accused of libel hangs over everyone, or perhaps because they have all, after all, signed final agreements at the point of accepting ‘voluntary’ redundancy (Carl). Words shared in confidence become gossip and weaponry (Carl, David, Helena); collegiality dies (Diana, David, Mira) or is forced underground (Helena). It is not the ideology but the people, the ‘shit poor management’ (Mira) who bastardise and suborn the term ‘leadership’ (Carl) who are the villains.

Marta goes as far as to bullet-point their ‘crimes’. The motif of madness recurs (Mira, Helena), arguably as a strategy to try to understand the obscene (Carl). Hence, so, too, does the theme of appearance versus reality, epitomised by Carl’s description of managerialism’s tactic to make ‘excellent people appear mediocre and quality work appear unimportant’.

In seeking repetitions, we see recurrent words including ‘despair’ (Carl, Mira, Helena) or Diana’s ‘travail’, ‘toxic’ (Carl, David, Mira, Helena) and ‘vexatious’ (Carl, David, Helena).

References to degradation and death are pervasive (David, Marta, Mira) including the death of passion (Diana, Marta).

Carl takes to violent images of decapitation and murder. The narratives appear on the brink of punning on ‘discipline’ until Helena finally goes there.

Dominant themes include the furtive forms that bullying takes (all stories); the absence of transparent or fair change management strategies in universities (all stories); loss of value/identity (Diana, Carl, Marta, Mira) and the deceitful tactics of that faceless, nameless but all powerful entity, ‘management’, often named simply as ‘they’ (all stories).

Common narratives include barriers to promotion (Marta, Mira) or the poisoned chalice that comes with it (Diana, David, Helena); the tedium of in-house training as substitutes for genuine professional learning (Diana, David, Marta) and the slow death by Excel (Marta).

There are four stories that include the theme of jobs changing: Diana’s rewritten person specification wrote her out; David found that becoming management compromised his moral compass; Marta lamented her admin load prevented her from attaining a rewarding academic identity; Mira detailed how the work of an academic simply is not the passion job it once was; Helena found the work she was given radically differed from what had been promised. Numbers are another vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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source of anxiety: a change from true quality to the quality as something quantifiable sets the background for the narratives.

Commodification is seen as the root of evils; for instance, academics are made to pass unworthy students because they are customers (Mira). Similarly, evaluations are meaningless as a measure of an individual’s contribution and quality (Diana, Carl, Marta, Mira). As for voluntary redundancy, the six survivors detail narratives of exit. In all cases, the job ceased to be viable or bearable. The four clearest themes are: sense of injustice; perception of fraud/deceit; loss of identity, glass cliffs and bullying/scapegoating.

Conclusion The main reason this study exists is to record and include the occluded voices and perspectives of academics who took voluntary redundancies in the late 2010s and early 2020s in case this is important to history. Further, it provides lived narrative data to support the autoethnographies of Joseph (2015) and Watson (2011) and leaves little doubt that injustice, theft, fraud, bullying and scapegoating are instruments of neoliberalism in times of change. The absence of strategic management, so vital to the success of VR (Clarke, 2007), cries out from the stories. We also have seen that the official story of technically legal voluntariness belies lived stories of micromanaged coercion, structured unfairness and inequity, unmanaged toxicity, policed entrapment via technologies of surveillance and suborning the mechanisms of audit to create convenient truths (actual falsehoods) that cast apparently targeted individuals unfavourably in relation to non-targeted individuals. People are made to act as willed (Pink, 2016); they are not volunteers.

As to the ‘so what and who cares?’ (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p.52), there are some who mock the experiences of overprivileged academics. The so what? is simply that life goes on as Barcan (2013; 2019), Rustin (2016), Bottrell and Manathunga (2019) and others have shown. What is done cannot be undone. But it is also historically and morally instructive about what happens to human beings forced into unnaturally individualised hyper-competitiveness over community-oriented cooperation and collaboration, a theme of topicality in the wake of COVID-19 where kindness has become a political principle. This article preaches to the converted: those interested are likely to see themselves or their peers in my mirror. There may be resonance. This is a so what?

Such readers care, and hopefully, so too, will scholars in the future, retrospectively understanding the historical moment like Nuremberg judges re-evaluating war crimes.

The study also reveals details of the toxic and vexatious behaviours that bureaucratic organisation allows and fosters (Smythe, 2017; Vaillancourt, 2020). The experienced truth of the accidental, irrational, emotional and socio-political Behind voluntary redundancy in universities Martin Andrew

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factors Weber (1915/1949) valued is discovered; another so what? I have used Weber to create a methodological analogy: my descriptive historical metanarrative as a means of showing the ribs of the skeleton, the truth behind the master-narrative/ official/corporate story. I acknowledge Weber, too, (1946, cited by Hooghe, 2011, p.40) in my final quote: ‘bureaucratic organisation has always been its purely technical superiority over any other form of organisation’. It is easy to point the finger at an ideology, but far harder to name its abusers.

Dr Martin Andrew is a liberated academic who served some time at two Australian universities and is now a doctoral mentor in the Doctorate of Professional Practice at Otago Polytechnic, Dunedin, New Zealand.

Contact: benedictandrew@gmail.com

References Academics Anonymous (2018). Voluntary severance at my university has damaged staff morale. The Guardian (23/11/18) https://www. theguardian.com/education/2018/nov/23/voluntary-severance-at-myuniversity-has-damaged-staff-morale.

Anonymous (2012). Not-so-voluntary-redundancy. The Queensland Nurse (April), 30.

Ball, S.J. (2003). The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity, Journal of Education Policy, 18(2), 215-228.

Barcan, R. (2013). Academic life and labour in the new university: Hope and other choices. Farnham, UK: Ashgate.

Barcan, R. (2019). Weighing up futures: Experiences of giving up an academic career. In D. Bottrell & C. Manathunga (Eds.), Seeing through the cracks of neoliberal universities: Vol II: Prising open the cracks (pp.

43-64). London & New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Barker, D. (2016). Ninjas, zombies and nervous wrecks? Academics in the neoliberal world of Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, Sport, Education and Society, 22(1), 87–104, https://doi. org/10.1080/13573 322.2016.1195360 Bottrell, D. & Manathunga, C. (Eds.) (2019). Resisting neoliberalism in Higher Education; Volumes I & 2. London & New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bruner, J. (1985). Narrative and paradigmatic modes of thought. In J. Bruner (2006). In search of pedagogy. The selected works of Jerome Bruner.

Vol. 2. (pp. 116–128). New York: Routledge.

Clandinin, D., & Connelly, F. (1994). Personal experience methods.

In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp.413–427). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Clandinin, D. (2013). Engaging in narrative inquiry. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

Clarke, M. (2007). Choices and constraints: individual perceptions of the voluntary redundancy experience. Human Resource Management Journal, 17(1), 76-93.

Connelly, F.M., & Clandinin, D.J. (2006). Narrative inquiry. In J. Green, G. Camili, & P. Elmore (Eds.), Handbook of complementary methods in education research (pp.477-487). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977. Brighton: Harvester press.

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Giroux, H.A. (2002). Neoliberalism, corporate culture and the promise of Higher Education: The university as a public sphere, Harvard Educational Review, 72, 423-463.

Hil, R. (2012). Whakademia: An insider’s account of the troubled university. Sydney, NSW: University of Sydney Press.

Hooghe, L. (2011). The European Commission and the integration of Europe: images of governance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Joseph, R. (2015). The cost of managerialism in the university: an autoethnographical account of an academic redundancy process.

Prometheus 33(3), 139-163, https://doi.org/10.1080/08109028.2015.

1092213 Lorenz, C. (2012). ‘If you’re so smart, why are you under surveillance’?

Universities, Neoliberalism, and New Public Management, Critical Enquiry, 38, 599-629.

Oxford University (2019). Redundancy procedure (online). Retrieved January 1, 2020 from http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/media/ global/wwwadminoxacuk/localsites/personnel/documents/ endingemployment/redundancyprocedure/PDF1_-_redundancy_ procedure.pdf Pink, T. (2016). Voluntariness and the freedom of the will. Oxford, UK: Oxford Scholarship Online. DOI:10.1093/acprof: oso/9780199272754.003.0014 Polkinghorne, D.E. (1995). Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. In J.A. Hatch & R. Wisniewski (Eds.), Life history and narrative (pp.5–23). Washington, DC: Falmer.

Readings, B. (1996). The university in ruins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Rosenwald, G. (1992). Conclusion: Reflections on narrative understanding. In G. Rosenwald & R. Ochberg (Eds.), Storied lives: The cultural politics of self-understanding (pp.265–289). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

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Soundings 63(3), 147–176.

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Field Methods, 15(1), 85-109.

Smith, J., Rattray, J., Peseta, T. & Loads, D. (2016). Identity work in the contemporary university: exploring an uneasy profession. Rotterdam: Sense.

Smyth, J. (2017). The toxic university: zombie leadership, academic rock stars and Neoliberal ideology. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Sutton, M. (2019). Flinders University restructure has left surviving staff overworked, academics say. ABC News, 2/4/19.

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Vaillancourt, A. M. (2020). 5 ‘dirty tricks’ common in campus administration. The Chronicle of Higher Education (14/01/2020).

Watson, C. (2011). Accountability, transparency, redundancy: academic identities in an era of ‘excellence’. British Educational Research Journal 37(6), 955-971.

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‘We got a different way of learning’ A message to the sector from Aboriginal students living and studying in remote communities Judith Wilks Nulungu Research Institute, University of Notre Dame Australia (Broome) & Southern Cross University

Anna Dwyer & Sandra Wooltorton Nulungu Research Institute, University of Notre Dame Australia (Broome)

John Guenther Nulungu Research Institute, University of Notre Dame Australia (Broome) & Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education

‘First know your students’, is a well-known saying in teaching. But do Australian universities really know their students? In this paper we present findings from research conducted in remote and very remote Australia where Aboriginal higher education students and educators were asked about their learning and teaching needs, and their views on things the sector could do to better support them in their journey into and through university. They shared with us experiences and thoughts about their ways of learning in face-to-face and online contexts, in particular the role of cultural security; community partnerships; Aboriginal knowledges; pathways and transitions; and student assessment and support strategies. The depth and richness of the skills, knowledges, and capacities of Aboriginal learners, and indeed of the communities in which they reside and study are vital foundations for participation, retention and completion.

However, respondents related that in the main, these attributes are not acknowledged by metropolitan-based course designers nor university administrations. We conclude that learning experiences and university operations that are designed to embrace these students’ strengths and to work in and with their communities, are more likely to retain Aboriginal students and facilitate their participation and success, enabling beneficial outcomes for all university students and ultimately society as a whole.

Keywords: Indigenous students, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island students, rural and remote students

Introduction and background The authors of this paper acknowledge and pay their deep respects to the Traditional Owners and Elders past and present across Australia, and in particular on the lands upon which we live and work. We acknowledge the Gumbaynggirr people, the Larrakia people, the Karajarri people, and the Yawuru people. This paper reports on findings of research initiated to investigate challenges and opportunities vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

characterising the higher education learning experiences of Aboriginal students living and studying in ‘remote’ and ‘very remote’ locations of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2018). The researchers, through interviews and focus group discussions, engaged Aboriginal tertiary education students from remote areas who attended a campus for blocks of intensive work, or who remained in their communities for online learning with occasional visits from university teachers, and/or combinations of the two approaches. Their teachers, ‘We got a different way of learning’ Judith Wilks et al.

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the majority of whom were non-Indigenous, were also interviewed. The student participants were enrolled through one of four Australian universities, three of which were dual system (vocational education and training (VET) and higher education).

In 2014 a broad survey of the learning experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students across 32 universities (Kinnane et al., 2014, p. 105) found that: • Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students living in remote communities across Australia believed not enough was being done to engage, support and retain them in their university studies.

• In addition to being geographically removed from most Australian university opportunities, many Indigenous students experienced the impacts of lower socio-economic status on educational attainment.

• Very low numbers of rural and remote students transitioned to university education, and although higher proportions of rural and remote students accessed VET, there were persistently low subsequent transitions from VET to university.

• Block, on-campus teaching (by all universities across Australia) was only financially viable in a small range of disciplines, such as nursing, teaching and community development.

• Limited equipment and internet coverage hindered the accessing of external studies programs.

• Outreach to Indigenous people in remote regional areas, being costly, was progressively being cut back, not expanded, with the result that students had less chance of experiencing university prior to attending it, for example, through orientation programs.

In the intervening six years Australian universities have worked hard to address disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous higher education student numbers and experiences of higher education. A recent Universities Australia report (2019) outlined this progress in a review of its Indigenous Strategy 2017-20 (Universities Australia, 2017).

Sector-wide enrolment figures have been positive at around triple the rate of annual growth of non-Indigenous students in recent years – and on track to meet one of the key targets of the UA strategy. In 2017, the first year of the strategy, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander enrolments grew by 8.3 per cent – almost four times higher than the growth in overall student numbers of 2.1 per cent (Universities Australia, 2019, p. 6).

However, utilising DET Undergraduate Applications, Offers and Acceptances 2018 data, the National Regional, Rural and Remote Tertiary Education Strategy Final Report found that these data revealed: ...a decline in both university applications from, and offers being made to, Indigenous students. In 2018, the number

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of applications from Indigenous Australians decreased by 5.2 per cent from the previous year. Furthermore, compared with 2017, there was a 3.3 per cent decrease in offers made to Indigenous applicants in 2018 – the first fall since data were originally reported in 2010. (2019, p. 37).

The report acknowledged however that while there has been a positive improvement in the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students enrolling in higher education, ‘there is still significant work to be done’ (Universities Australia, 2019, p. 4): Bachelor’s degree completion rates for Indigenous students remained poor compared to non-Indigenous students. While Indigenous students typically can take longer to graduate, nine-year completion rates for Indigenous students remain around 47 per cent, significantly below 74 per cent for non-Indigenous students. Significant improvement in success and completion rates must continue to be a priority for … the sector as a whole (p. 17).

Further, an area of significant concern continues to be the higher education Indigenous student cohort who live and study in remote locations (Behrendt et al., 2012; Guenther, Bat, et al., 2017; Kinnane et al., 2014; Pollard, 2018; Universities Australia, 2019; Wilks, Wilson, & Kinnane, 2017). Through the work of those who are researching, teaching and living in remote areas a more nuanced understanding of the learning experiences of these students is being revealed. However, as outlined in this paper, remote students are still facing significant challenges to being able to experience what the sector likes to call ‘successful’ participation in higher education, that being: transition into higher education; retention; engagement; and graduation.

Prior research has demonstrated that, to be effective, education should reject narratives of Aboriginal deficit (Hogarth, 2017) and recognise Aboriginal narratives and definitions of success (Guenther, Disbray et al., 2017). The notion of ‘success’ from an Indigenous standpoint is revisited later in this paper.

In view of the above, what is currently known about the actual number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students who are living and studying in remote locations, and additionally, in what modes are they studying? Are they on campus, online, or a mixture of both? These data can be very hard to access as most reporting subsumes data for remote students under the ‘RRR’ category (Regional, Rural and Remote), with the effect that their needs are often hidden with this much larger category of students (Pollard, 2018).

In this respect, a useful statistical snapshot of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander remote student cohort has been provided through Pollard’s (2018) Equity Fellowship work (National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education and University of Western Australia) associated with Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students. In 2016 these students were: vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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• 9.59 per cent of the higher education remote student cohort • 3.27 per cent of the higher education regional student cohort • 1.18 per cent of the higher education metropolitan student cohort • 9.00 per cent of remote higher education students studying online • 10.00 per cent of remote higher education students whose study is campus-based • 11.00 per cent of remote higher education students who study in mixed mode.

Additionally, the recent National Regional, Rural and Remote Tertiary Education Strategy Final Report (2019, p. 35) stated that in 2016 the average attrition rate for ‘Indigenous Remote’ higher education students was 29.5 per cent.

This can be contrasted with 23.1 per cent for Indigenous students in major cities and with 13.3 per cent for all students (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) in major cities.

Remote ‘red dirt’ contexts and higher education Framing our research is the geographical or ‘official’ [ABS] concept of remote, and remote Australia. Yet ‘remoteness’ can also be viewed as a construct used by people in metropolitan areas to describe places which are a long way away from them.

The language of remoteness connects to disadvantage in the metropolitan discourse, which in turn translates to ‘Indigenous disadvantage’ (Guenther, Bat & Osborne, 2013) in measures and indicators designed to explain deficits in a euphemistic way (Guenther, Halsey & Osborne, 2015). People who live in ‘remote’ places do not describe themselves in this way but are often forced to use the metropolitan descriptors of deficit to justify funding or a policy response that recognises their place in the world.

‘Red dirt thinking’ came out of research conducted in central and northern Australia where red dirt is as ubiquitous as the blue sky. Whereas blue sky thinking captures a sense of the utopian dream, ‘red dirt thinking’ is grounded in the reality of context while also expressing something of the hopes and aspirations that emerge from people who live in what we earlier defined as ‘remote’ places (Osborne & Guenther, 2013). The ‘red dirt thinking’ metaphor can be used as a way of decoupling deficit discourses from the realities of life in those places which are full of riches: culture, language, landscapes, history and diversity. It does not represent a way of working (methodologically), as might be the case with ‘both ways’ (Ober, 2009) approaches to education, but rather it represents ways of thinking (epistemologically).

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where being, thinking and valuing take different forms from those assumed by higher education and tertiary education providers (Guenther, Disbray, et al., 2017). The challenge arises from a hegemonic power imbalance such that entry into the halls of the academy means giving up something of self to be what the academy prescribes.

Research objectives The research reported here aspired to contribute a more nuanced understanding of the lived experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander higher education students studying in remote and very remote locations. Through listening to these students’ [and their teachers’] insights into the cultural and community contexts of their learning; their suggestions for systemic and practical change; and their everyday experiences as higher education students, we were aiming to identify further ways of strengthening learning and teaching for these students. The research addressed on-campus, online and/or remote to campus student learning contexts and included VET courses and bachelor level and postgraduate research. However, the main emphasis of this paper is the findings related to the higher education rather than vocational education sector.

Central to the research design was the inclusion of the voices of Aboriginal students, and of their ‘knowledges’. The term ’knowledges’, as used in this paper, refers to knowledge and lived experiences of Aboriginal people. Likewise, the term ‘cultural security’, as used in this paper, denotes the application of cultural understandings to produce effective practice. We prefer to use cultural security over cultural safety, consistent with an understanding that security infers a level of systemic and policy action support, while safety implies a more limited response based on individual non-systematised action (Coffin, 2007). Cultural security has not only provided a theoretical framework for this research but has framed how it was designed and undertaken. Cultural security involves meaningful two-way communication; deep listening and yarning; giving proper respect and cultural recognition.

It involves the use of appropriate protocols and the highest ethical standards to ensure all elements of the encounter are understood in such a way that all participants benefit fully (Kickett-Tucker et al., 2017).

The key research questions guiding the research were: 1. How do remote Aboriginal students experience studying at or via a university campus?

2. What are the key enablers and constraints to students’ successful participation and engagement with VET, higher education and post graduate study in remote locations?

3. What strategies, identified by Aboriginal students and educators, might assist Aboriginal students living ‘We got a different way of learning’ Judith Wilks et al.

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and studying in town-based and remote locations, to transition successfully through VET, into higher education and/or through postgraduate education?

Approach and methodology Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers conducted this research. It was designed to contribute knowledge and understanding to the ongoing development of a culturally secure and culturally informed approach to the design and delivery of higher education learning experiences for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living and studying in remote and very remote locations in Australia.

Such an approach seeks to: i) promote community and family awareness and engagement in these students’ learning experiences, ii) strengthen student support, and iii) improve learning opportunities and enhance student engagement; the combined effect of all three being to improve educational outcomes of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students living and studying in remote locations (Guenther, Bat, et al., 2017).

To understand the range of Aboriginal student learning experiences, the research methods were designed so as to decolonise research practices (Williams et al., 2018). The overall design situated Indigenist/interpretive research (Hogarth, 2017; Nakata, 2007a; Rigney, 2017) within a critical realism metatheory (Archer et al., 2016; Bhaskar, Danermark, & Price, 2017; Hockey, 2010), enabling a historical frame for the research. Critical realism is an interdisciplinary metatheory aiming to comprehend unobservable mechanisms that explain particular social outcomes, particularly where there are historical or socio-political relations that influence or govern behaviours.

This research was conducted with ethics approval from the Human Research Ethics Committee of the lead university in June 2018. Research followed the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Guidelines for Ethical Research with Indigenous Peoples, and the NHMRC Values and ethics: Guidelines for ethical conduct in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research. It was consistent with the protocols in the Nulungu Way (Nulungu Research Institute, 2016). A Reference Group of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people helped to guide the research design and implementation.

Aboriginal students available on one institution’s campus during a randomly selected fortnight were invited to participate in the research. Also, students living and studying in two remote communities were selected for research participation, and an invitation was sent to them and their workplace educators. The Aboriginal tertiary education students were enrolled in courses at four universities, which included dual sector institutions. Students at each location

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were invited to participate in an individual interview or take part in a focus group.

Nineteen Aboriginal tertiary education students were interviewed or participated in focus groups. The students were a mixture of undergraduate and higher degree by research, and vocational education students. All student participants resided in locations classified as ‘remote’ or ‘very remote’ (ABS, 2018).

The student focus groups in the remote communities were conducted by an Aboriginal interviewer/facilitator from that community. This process enabled the transmission of ideas in traditional languages and cultural acknowledgement and security for the participants (Kickett-Tucker et al., 2017), and allowed for the use of dialogue and narrative (Wain et al., 2016). However, whilst the literature maintains that ‘yarning’ or focus discussion group methodology is preferred for Aboriginal students because it is most amenable to the implementation of cultural security (Kickett-Tucker et al., 2017), students on the university campus elected to participate in individual interviews as this enabled them to choose the time of day that was of most convenience to them.

These interviews were conducted by an Aboriginal researcher located at that campus.

Twelve educators also participated in the research and were likewise given the opportunity to take part in either an individual interview or a focus group. All chose to participate via an individual interview. The research focus for educators was to elaborate their teaching experiences in remote locations.

The range of research locations facilitated a variety of different views and perspectives of remote higher education learning experiences. All students who participated in the research were drawn from cohorts enrolled in 2018. Interviews and focus groups were audio recorded and transcribed, or detailed notes were taken. The data were analysed thematically with the aid of NVivo qualitative data analysis software.

What we found Strongly represented in both the students’ and educators’ responses was the expressed need for learning involving culturally embedded experiences, and for teaching practices that do likewise. Respondents offered a number of ways in which Western-framed learning and teaching strategies in remote higher education settings might achieve this.

They ranged across elements such as cultural security; community partnerships; Aboriginal knowledges; pathways and transitions; learning in face-to-face contexts; learning in online contexts; and student assessment and support strategies. The following canvasses our findings in relation to the complexities of studying remotely beginning with the element of cultural security. vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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Aboriginal people are very superstitious especially with the houses on campus. Those houses I know they have been smoked before; Aboriginal students they get really nervous sleeping in them houses. I know for a fact because I know it myself, I have experienced this, like a spiritual thing happened to me, like I know a lot of people don’t believe in these things, but I believe in it and it happened to me and to my knowledge other students too…I had to drag my mattress and sleep in the lounge area with others, because when you sleep altogether with family, in one you then feel safe and comfortable. And for me I think that staff really need to get the right people to smoke the place out. Someone who knows and who is very much right into that belief system [Student].

The students’ need for cultural security was a strong theme across the findings. One practical representation of this was the need for an Aboriginal support place on campus. This emerged as a compelling student priority, with educators also expressing strong support for the creation of such a place. At the very minimum, an on-campus support place would be a cultural and social centre for Aboriginal students to meet, relax, feel supported and facilitate access to services such as computers. Such places exist in one form or another at most universities in Australia (Universities Australia, 2017, 2019; Kinnane et al., 2014) where they perform a vital role Clearly evident in both the student and educator feedback in Aboriginal student support but are nonexistent at many was the need for educators to be provided with professional remote campuses. Architecture and landscaping design of learning for cultural security. Educators need to possess very these centres is important for Aboriginal students who would good knowledge and understanding of the complexity of feel welcome and ‘at home’ and can, when done well, make living remotely in very small an important contribution communities and towns, to students’ health and wellThe students’ need for cultural security was however as one educator being, especially when on a strong theme across the findings. One framed it, ‘finding culturally campus. aware/trained staff is really From a student perspective practical representation of this was the need hard’. such a place on a remote for an Aboriginal support place on campus.

Another educator expressed campus might ideally involve: their concern that there is Like a social club or a place ‘no appreciation that Aboriginal people do not have a level where our Aboriginal students could sit together, because at playing field when they come to study’, and from the data the moment when you go into the hostel there, everybody there appeared to be significant justification for teaching staff else uses the facilities, you got staff and you got everyone, and sometime Aboriginal people, like they get a little bit shame development around knowledge of: because sometime they like to be by themselves [Student].

• Aboriginal history and cultures relating to the location of the university.

And another: • Colonisation and its continuing production of colonial Having a little cultural centre where, if Aboriginal students relations. like me would want to go to sit down and you actually feel it • Decolonising agendas. comfortable without it being so clinical, you know it looks • Trauma-informed practice, anti-racist teaching. hard to like go into to the library because it looks really nice, but it is daunting, so make it more relaxed and more so an • Aboriginal teaching/learning strategies and culturally inviting space. I reckon we would enjoy the space [Student]. responsive frameworks.

• Remote teaching induction.

• Aboriginal English and culturally secure communication.

From an educator’s viewpoint: • Culturally respectful practices.

Having a space for them (students) to just decompress, to Aboriginal cultural security along with the Aboriginal connect with other Aboriginal learners, have conversations history of localities and regions and its intergenerational with support staff, use the facilities that (don’t) cost heaps context can form the foundation of a well-integrated of money to print, photocopy and do all those things … also even a space to … bring … kids on campus [Educator]. professional development program. As illustrated by Coffin and Green (2017), the idea is to begin with knowledge of respectful ways of working in cross-cultural spaces, then plan Another facet of cultural security related to the students’ to take action for a culturally secure way of working through expressed need for cultural care of buildings such as the hostel protocol development and implementation, and in a manner facilities used to accommodate students whilst on campus that is both sustained and sustainable. during ‘blocks’ [this term refers to concentrated teaching and learning periods that take place on university campuses or in Partnerships with communities remote communities] that may need cultural treatment, such Due to their different histories, communities reflect a range as smoking, ahead of student arrival: of cultural backgrounds, languages, colonial experiences, vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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population sizes and contemporary narratives of development or otherwise. The research found that in remote higher education contexts, strong individually negotiated schoolcommunity-university-workplace partnerships are the basis for well-communicated higher education pathways from workplace and/or school and university – and beyond.

Each community reflects vastly different contexts across each higher education dimension from Information and Communication Technology (ICT) provisioning and skills, including establishment of places where students can study with tutoring support, to community-based support of tertiary education on the basis of previous lived experience in the community of higher education engagement.

When asked: ‘If the university had big funding, what would you want them to do with the money?’, one student replied: To get other people studying – looking into our community we don’t have many people studying, but they are all clever in one way or another. We should have a sign-up session. To provide students with university information and pathways… they could lay out a program for the community, to see if anyone is interested. I know they want to learn something, be someone [Student].

Family stresses can result when one family member chooses to study. The benefits of study need to be more widely understood in communities, and good community/ university partnerships can increase awareness of the costs and benefits of higher education study over time. As one educator put it, there needs to be ‘a voice out there … in the community …(but) at the moment we’re “Education” and we sit outside of it’. Clearly communities play a vital role in identifying courses that will address their needs, and are relevant to their contexts, for example practical courses with a focus around Cultural and Natural Resource Management (CNRM) to bridge TAFE graduates into University level Courses.

All communities are different in terms of their educational and collective lived experiences; thus all remote education contexts are unique and have differing priorities. In effect what this means is that every remote community needs pathways to higher education that have been negotiated with and are understood by community-based Aboriginal organisations and schools. The complex nature of pathways from remote community to the place of higher education, and the benefits of higher education, need to be clearly defined and accessible for students and communities alike. Aboriginal higher education students are important role models for education in their community. As they progress through their degrees and become more knowledgeable about policies, legislation and professionalism, or just through sharing their positive stories about their university experiences, they are promoting higher education in the students’ community network through stories of success.

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Aboriginal knowledges and skills for success One of the things frequently mentioned by respondents in terms of building students’ skills for success were enabling or bridging courses offering university preparation skills for students entering university, along with programs and specially designed face-to-face models of support. These courses were believed by the educators interviewed to be a potentially ‘huge thing’ for any remote campus to be doing for the local community in terms of building students’ confidence in themselves as learners and thereby strengthening student retention.

In higher education much mention is made of ‘student success’ around the elements of enrolment, retention and graduation. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, success can be understood as a multi-layered construct which affects many dimensions of their lived reality, including: ‘cultural identity, voice, self-realisation, self-acceptance and pride’ (Fredericks et al., 2017, p. 130). In 2014, Kinnane et al. found that success in Indigenous education contexts needs to be defined in both individual and collective terms: ‘Collectively, success is not measured by the successful transition of one Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander student … and may actualise anywhere between enrolment in a university, retention in a course, or successful completion .. ‘success’ can also include failure and … does not necessarily mean passing all units in the first year but is about ‘sticking with it’ even when a student fails to pass units (Kinnane et al., 2014, p. 6).

Student personal qualities such as resilience and the enormous capacity to ‘stick with it’ despite many challenges were acknowledged by educators as traits engendering success: …if an Aboriginal person is a student here, they have to have tenacity because they’ve had to overcome a lot of things to actually get here in the first place. [Educator] In Indigenous contexts, success in/at learning is as much a collective outcome as an individualistic one. In traditional communities, information is shared, negotiated with others, and is passed down from Elders. Traditional learning is important learning, and Indigenous learners prefer to work collaboratively, valuing community and kinship, and eschewing individual isolation (Wilks et al., 2017; Calma, 2009; Mayhew et al., 2005; Rao et al., 2011; Stoessel, et al.

2015).

Aboriginal students bring with them many skills and knowledges presenting a strong foundation upon which to construct Western knowledges and professional frameworks and learning at university. Aboriginal students from remote locations bring sophisticated cultural knowledges and skills in communicating in one or more Aboriginal languages, as well as English for education and professional purposes. Educators however noted the missed opportunity of providers to build vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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upon this cultural knowledge in the design of learning activities and materials (the latter described by students at one campus as ‘the ugly books’: bereft of colour, symbols and imagery).

The tendency of institutions has been to import training materials that are text-dense and visually uninteresting, and foreign in content, vernacular, and appearance.

Even in this age of continuing colonial impact, due to extraordinary resilience, cultural, linguistic and landscape knowledges remain in individuals, communities and places (KALACC, nd; Kinnane & Sullivan, 2015). Aboriginal knowledges underpin Aboriginal strength, cultural continuity and survival and its historical omission has resulted in a diminution of science in Australia and the world (Ball, 2015). Additionally, Aboriginal students benefit when Aboriginal knowledges are part of university courses and central to the academy (Buckskin et al., 2018). It should be noted however that the majority of universities did not have a formal Indigenous graduate attribute at the time of the survey collection (Universities Australia, 2019, p.51). This involves teaching and learning frameworks that recognise Aboriginal worldviews, epistemologies, ontologies, axiologies, aspirations and voices, as they acknowledge validity and strength in Aboriginality, relationship to country and pedagogies grounded in these ways of working (Bodkin-Andrews et al., 2017; Yunkaporta & McGinty, 2009). Recognition of Aboriginal knowledge as prior learning (Frawley, 2017) and of the cultural interface and Indigenous standpoints at all levels is essential to good educational practice (Nakata, 2007a, 2007b). Of key importance is the discourse of Aboriginal recognition, autonomy and respect.

For Indigenous knowledge take-up, universities must go beyond dualistic thinking ‘to inclusive possibilities so that Indigenous and non-Indigenous graduates can interact productively and creatively across cultural boundaries, and engage meaningfully and constructively with each other and with the academy’, enabling respectful both-ways learning to take place (Frawley, 2017, p. 77). In connecting with Aboriginal identity, worldviews and research, those who wish to work with Aboriginal communities must be transparent about their own ways of knowing and how this can bias their learning and actions (Bodkin-Andrews et al., p.19, 2017). This is because complexities of Aboriginal axiology, ontology and epistemology have been limited by Western ways of knowing. For example, ‘pan-Aboriginality’ simplifies and reduces diversities. Simplistic reductions of peoples, cultures and communities can work to maintain colonisation – an ongoing war on peoples, communities and cultures.

In 2017 the Universities Australia Indigenous Strategy (p. 30) signalled that by 2020, all universities will have plans that incorporate Aboriginal cultural content in all courses of study. Such a whole of sector transformative strategy would be vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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well-served by a staff and Aboriginal community of practice professional learning approach (Burgess & Cavanagh, 2016; Coffin & Green, 2017; Heckenberg, 2016). This equates with Nakata’s notion of cultural interface that engages with the complexities and paradoxes of working with Aboriginal knowledges (Nakata, 2007b).

The value of face-to-face teaching Another strong theme to emerge from this research was that face-to-face teaching is regarded by both students and educators as vital in remote Aboriginal higher education contexts. The data were rich with references to this, most especially in relation to the opportunities face-to-face teaching presents for the development of good relationships between students and students; staff and students; and communities and places of higher education. In remote contexts most faceto-face teaching takes place in blocks.

Students and educators alike expressed the desire for more face-to-face teaching. Students reflected time and time again that that is the way they like to learn, as the following student responses exemplify: They also should make it more cultural friendly especially for the Aboriginal students and be aware of…how…like we got different way of learning…and…our way of learning is face-toface [Student].

Our biggest strength [as Aboriginal learners] is … everyone working as a team, so if someone is stuck, we will ask about each other questions and stuff, then we will go over it as a group, there isn’t much weaknesses in my class [Student].

I’d be interested in doing more block release. I want to learn more, get more experiences, interact with others so it helps me with my studies. It’s good meeting the others to expand our experiences [Student].

And from an educator’s point of view: There was certainly a memorable number of students who disengaged completely but then I might have seen them around and just managed to have a conversation with them and that brought them back in. …You try emails, you try phone, but if you saw somebody and you had a conversation I found that they did come back in [Educator].

Students stressed the need for trusting, caring relationships with their lecturers and support staff who would ideally also maintain close contact with them when they returned to their communities. When relationships are strong, Aboriginal students feel supported and confident in meeting their study goals. For instance, here is a student’s description of her block week experience: The best thing about it [the block week] was that the lecturers really wanted us to complete our assignments before we leave for home, so during the workshop, so they would spend

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a lot time with us you know, making sure [we knew] that they wanted things done, so we don’t have to worry about it when we went home [Student].

Face-to-face teaching/learning is conducive to good teacher-student relationships, ensures clarity of purpose, administrative effectiveness and good communication structures. It enables a range of teaching/learning strategies preferred by the Aboriginal students in this research. These include strategies such as social learning, networking, peer teaching, and discussion and yarning circles along with simulation or other hands-on engagement in learning.

Peer teaching was regarded also by educators as a particular strength of Aboriginal students, and both students and educators noted the value of face-to-face learning in as much as it creates opportunities for students to provide peer support for each other whilst on campus. This helps to build student confidence, commitment and motivation and the quote below describes the value of yarning circles to their learning in this respect: We would all just have a big yarning group when we had our breaks… we will talk about it; we sit together, and we would talk about it like what we didn’t understand. Have a group tutoring together, I reckon you would get more out of it, because some people might be a little quiet asking this question, thinking it is silly, but if you were in a group would be helpful, because I know if I worked in a group it would really help me [Student].

Teaching blocks based in the remote communities enable community-university-workplace partnership maintenance and renewal through regular community visits by travelling university educators. Students stressed that University staff need to be responsive to community needs and be prepared to stay longer with them. For example, it is important for educators to accept that local visits are limited around sorry business and ceremonial times, and sometimes change of seasons such as flooding or cyclones. Basic, practical things such as stationery, pens and paper, digital devices, or just a quiet place to study can be in short supply for these students.

Aboriginal cultural commitments and family networks Many students have significant community demands on them which makes it difficult to sustain their studies, resulting in students getting ‘sucked out’ of university (Kinnane et al., 2014). Remote Aboriginal students engaged in higher education studies are impacted by factors such as: deaths in the community; cultural obligations; family and community responsibilities; and often poverty and ill-health in communities. High priority is placed on these responsibilities and these commitments take precedence over university requirements such as assignment submission dates (KickettTucker et al., 2017; Wilks et al., 2017; Kinnane et al., 2014)

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Having support from families is vital for students. Among the cultural considerations at play when students take part in campus blocks is the need to ensure that families are comfortable with university facilities for these on-campus weeks, for example not mixing female and male students, respecting kinship relationships and the need for distance and separation, and in some cases providing accommodation for the families of students with young children. Sufficient staff resources need to be allocated for these cultural dimensions of student learning: Without personal contact students can fall through the cracks due to the impact of things such as Sorry time and family crisis and all those types of things; there needs to be recognition that especially when students first start that a percentage of staff time needs to be for student contact [Educator].

The educators and students in this research also pointed out the value of strategies that encourage families at home in communities to engage with the campus through such activities as open days or family days for block weeks or other campus engagements. The use of multimedia resources was also suggested where it is impractical for families to visit.

Aboriginal support officers also play an important role in providing student support, with one student sharing that: …. having the Indigenous Support Office team on ground makes a big difference for all of us especially coming from community [Student].

Similarly, from an educator’s perspective: …that idea of having someone to walk beside them is important particularly in their 1st and 2nd years; to mentor and find links into the profession; and patience is important [Educator].

For many universities, the standard amount of cultural leave for students to take part in traditional activities associated with sorry business and ceremonial time is around three days. Yet these students often require three to four weeks away from their studies, and during this time there can be considerable social pressure and stressors coming from families on the students. Therefore, students must not be distracted from cultural commitments and responsibilities by way of their studies. One strategy to redress the impacts of family, cultural and community responsibilities on their study may be to accommodate Aboriginal students who need to take lengthy breaks for these reasons in the same manner that elite athletes and defence reservists are accommodated in the higher education system (Commonwealth of Australia, 2019, p. 52). Although a practical and worthwhile idea, it does not take into account the significant and at times seemingly insurmountable, amount of catching up to be done by vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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students following an absence of a couple of weeks. If students take lengthy breaks, when they return they will need tutorial support and an equivalent extension of assessment due dates to enable them to participate equitably.

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of technical access is further compounded by the need for students to be able to afford, maintain, and be willing to use a webcam and microphone in order to take part in online classes. Most students cannot afford such equipment, and many are not comfortable using them even if they possess one for reasons of shyness, concerns about images going into digital space, and avoidance of certain relationships according to kinship in group situations.

Some of the students we interviewed were well provided for in terms of technology and facilities, whereas others had very few well-resourced places to access the internet and technology. This finding suggests that individual ICT arrangements need to be negotiated for each particular community and/or student workplace. Differential abilities in terms of students’ ICT skills were also apparent:

Expressed student preference for traditional ways of learning came through often in their responses. Building on Aboriginal knowledges in the design of assessment of student learning outcomes bestows recognition of cultural backgrounds and prior knowledges as student strengths (Buckskin et al., 2018; Frawley, 2017). It was clear from the feedback received from the educators that universities and education providers in remote locations need to be way more flexible and creative in the ways in which learning is assessed, so that students are Because of the remoteness and the lack of internet a lot of not impacted by language restrictions, for instance, when the students aren’t very computer literate e.g. scanning and demonstration of other-thanuploading assessment tasks is language learning outcomes challenging. Online learning Some of the students we interviewed were is a whole other world [Eduare required. Similarly, cultural well provided for in terms of technology cator]. strengths need to be enabled by the assessment, so that and facilities, whereas others had very few students can demonstrate their Educators discussed the well-resourced places to access the internet learning in a holistic way, for importance of on-campus preand technology. example orally, rather than teaching session orientation subjected to the limitations around ICT, as opposed to just of Western knowledge frameworks where so much is based letting the students ‘fumble about at home’ in the first critical on written assessment. Innovation would also be welcome in weeks of the teaching session: the arena of cross-curricular assessment design in terms of the Students respond very, very well when there is someone there grouping of skills required across the suite of units comprising to assist them like myself or the trainer, or the tutor. But when a course. In so doing, students would be assisted to develop a left to their own devices and don’t have a history of learning, better overview of how all the elements of their courses come they often don’t know what to do. The biggest problem they have is not with the materials, it’s with the support [Educatogether and build progressively over the years. tor].

Flexibility is also required in terms of assessment submission practices, especially in communities with inadequate internet connectivity and the uploading of assessments can Educators proposed other solutions to issues of access to be interrupted or even not possible at a critical time. It was connectivity, computer hard and software, and of students’ suggested by one educator how ideal it would be for students ICT skills levels: to have ‘someone on the ground to go to’ in communities at There are a lot of Aboriginal people with mobile phones critical points such as submission deadlines, to help them [but there are very few with iPads or computers who came to sort out technology issues, and to liaise with the education study] … the phones could be used for giving more pastoral providers should difficulties arise around assignment due support [Educator]. dates and times.

I would like to see all the students having a smart phone we need to look at how learning can be enhanced through ICT support mobiles, that’s probably the key for very remote Australia (as In education contexts ‘reliable internet access is immediately opposed to online) as they can get all that can be transferred recognised as an equity issue’ (Pollard, 2019, p.41), and to small screen [Educator]. connectivity issues are significant for remote communities and Connectivity is our biggest barrier, so to address this we put particularly for students studying online in remote locations. the material onto USBs and give that to the student for examAnother commonly cited challenge for these students is the ple a video of ourselves going through the material [Educalevel of their technical skills (Anthony & Keating, 2013; tor].

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It should be remembered that some students have ICT problems simply because they cannot afford the equipment, and one student suggested universities might like to consider long-term hire of equipment.

Student Support Services on remote campuses

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The comment reflects the significance for students of caring, supportive relationships: It made me feel like, they wanted me to complete my course and just knowing there was someone (at university) to help you, it made a huge difference so you don’t feel like you’re so alone. Since I have come home (remote community) they have been calling me to see how I am. They you know also care about your wellbeing. They will always phone and check up on you and see how you’re going and where you’re at, so that’s important for me [Student].

Every remote community is unique and the nature of higher education student support will vary. Arrangements need to be negotiated and made clear with each individual and/or group of students for effective communication and administration. It is important for higher education providers to recognise that each remote student is supported by a remote community, and when there are administration errors it is not only detrimental for a student it is also detrimental for the community’s relationship with the university. For many students in remote communities, simply the experience of attempting to communicate with their course teachers by phone, email or other means is hugely challenging given telecommunications unreliability in remote locations.

Students in remote locations are seeking greater reliability in communication in another sense, which is that of course organisation:

Practical arrangements for services such as childcare, childfriendly accommodation, food on campus and local transport in town is an essential consideration for many students coming from remote communities. Where this is organised by the university or education provider, it is greatly appreciated by students who may otherwise feel lost and struggle. It means students can concentrate on their studies instead of having to worry about their family:

I feel what should be improved is definitely better communication and sitting down with the students and explaining properly about what to do. When we go on campus you don’t know who your tutor’s going to be and nothing is said to you to say ‘oh you going to have this tutor while you’re here’, sister you know what I mean. It makes you weak [Student].

[When on campus] …if they have some sort of support network for [childcare], at least to bring their little ones down with them, then I know that you will have more successful students actually graduating and going through things [Educator].

And an educator’s frustrations in this respect is evident in the following response: There have been some situations where the system just doesn’t support them, and being really upfront about that saying, ‘No, we’ve got to get this student here no matter what’ or, ‘No, we’ve got to get the unit that this student needs, can we pull together enough heads to figure this one out?’ so really advocating for Aboriginal students. They would bring me to tears [Educator].

To address some of these concerns one educator identified the importance of having a single contact person to support remote students, and where necessary take student grievances forward on their behalf; ‘someone to hold it all together’: A direct line of communication and that person to be able to meet with lecturers and everybody on campus… Like who they (students) can call straight up like if they couldn’t get the lecturers or wasn’t sure how to communicate properly. I think to have that middle person would be better [Student.]

Educators and students stressed the importance of maintaining relationships through phone and other means, particularly back in community preceding and subsequent to the block week or visit. Below, this student is referring to returning to her community after an on-campus block week.

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I had little kids and if I needed to bring them to uni while I studied, maybe I had a tute, maybe I needed to write an assignment, I could bring them there. We don’t really have that here (Remote Campus) [Student].

Key future directions for the sector As one participant educator put it, ‘you can’t put a dollar value on education in considering a student’s life chances’.

Universities must realise the potential positive impacts of higher education in improving individual lives, communities and societies, and actively promote this concept in Aboriginal communities. Participation in higher education can open up people’s life chances offering graduates the possibility of achieving their aspirations through moving beyond historically restrictive lived experiences and beliefs. However, to disregard Aboriginal culture is a form of epistemological racism, one that is embedded in academic institutions through the privileging of Western knowledges and the stereotyping of the epistemologies of Aboriginal and other minority groups as inferior (Bodkin-Andrews & Carlson, 2013; Fredericks, 2009; Larkin, 2015; Moreton-Robinson & Walter, 2009).

While often less obvious than other forms of overt racism, it alienates Indigenous students and impacts their ability to succeed academically by the very fact that knowledges are western-framed.

Systemic change principles for organisational transformation towards integration of Aboriginal knowledges and vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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ways of working include community-based approaches that are anti-racist and trauma-informed, apply culturally secure Aboriginal pedagogies and utilise Aboriginal leadership.

Applying these principles in remote campuses paves the way for collaborative design and co-implementation of teaching and professional learning programs. Whole of system approaches have had the most impact, where Aboriginal recruitment and leadership programs, cultural respect training for all staff, cultural redesign initiatives, anti-racism policies and local community engagement work together to produce institutional transformation (Paradies, 2017).

The significance of building effective university-remote community relationships and partnerships cannot be overemphasised. Remote higher education students belong to communities, and through the principles of cultural security universities must develop visible, meaningful pathways to higher education through partnership activities with remote Aboriginal communities. Solid partnerships between universities and remote communities are the basis for welldesigned strategies to enable community members to consider higher education, to take part in courses that are relevant to community needs and frameworks, and to support them once they make the decision. As Smith et al. (2017, p. 42) assert, a paradigm shift is needed in the ways university-community engagement takes place, towards a more culturally respectful and responsive framing. Partnerships need to be in place for community-initiated proposals to the university to be designed and implemented, rather than the initiative always being from the university on its terms. In remote settings in particular this means involving Elders and other community leaders in leadership and advisory activities to foster community and family support, and to ensure that the courses being run are of value to remote communities and recognise their needs and perspectives.

Recently the National Regional, Rural and Remote Tertiary Education Strategy (2019) made a number of recommendations of relevance to important future work for the sector in increasing participation, and improving the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students living and studying in remote and very remote locations. These included the need for more flexible course delivery involving programs ‘on Country that are designed and co-implemented with the local Indigenous community’ (p.39). This strategy also identified the need to accommodate students who may need to take lengthy breaks from their studies to respond to family and community events ‘similar to support available for elite athletes and defence reservists’ (p.52).

One of the key issues we found in our interviews with both staff and students, related to ICT. To a large extent, universities based in urban areas can take digital inclusion for granted—where this means having access to reliable infrastructure and tools—the reality in many remote locations vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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is that infrastructure is either unaffordable or unavailable hampering access to higher education learning opportunities (Park, Freeman, & Middleton, 2019). Universities should work towards overcoming these issues, rather than working around them or avoiding them altogether.

Increasing the numbers of Aboriginal staff was a priority described by almost all participants in this study as they offer an enhanced capacity for support through epistemological, ontological and axiological mediation of the students’ educational experiences (Buckskin et al., 2018; Nakata et.al, 2018). Increasing the numbers of Aboriginal staff is a decolonising strategy, meaning one that recognises Aboriginal rights, knowledges and ontologies (Buckskin et al., 2018).

Committed, effective teachers, tutors and mentors who are caring, concerned, knowledgeable, trustworthy and available can have huge positive impacts on student achievement.

Suitably qualified, trauma-informed staff can develop trusting, caring relationships able to support students impacted by racism and trauma. We need a collaborative approach to sectoral change based on Aboriginalisation principles so that the whole university - from the level of the chancelleries to the levels of faculties and courses - becomes an Aboriginal place to be (Raciti et al., 2017). This demands learning and change on the part of administrations, leaders, educators and students. It also involves a willingness to implement the strategies enunciated in a number of recent sectoral reports and reviews (e.g. 2019).

To achieve this the sector must engage with decolonisation and its meaning. (In a forthcoming paper we have examined how the notion of epistemological racism might be applied to a further exploration of our findings). Universities that are willing to embark on core transformational activities, and implement processes that incorporate Aboriginal definitions of success; that value Aboriginal knowledge and identity; that feature local Aboriginal knowledges and ways of working; that embrace cultural revitalisation; that work towards Aboriginal empowerment; and collaborate in culturally secure ways by including Aboriginal families, communities and Elders, are likely to be supportive of all learners (Coffin & Green, 2017; Guenther, Disbray, et al., 2017).

It will be important for the higher education sector to develop a shared sense of the Aboriginal history of its many university campuses, to follow up the stories of the Aboriginal students who have completed, to ensure they become part of the campus story to be celebrated, and for an ongoing relationship with them and their communities to be maintained. We need those stories to become part of who we are as the higher education sector.

Conclusion Educators and remote Aboriginal tertiary students in this study have urged the need for campus transformation towards ‘We got a different way of learning’ Judith Wilks et al.

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culturally secure and culturally informed education pathways, education provision, and university-community relationships.

Likewise, learning experiences and university operations that are thus designed are more likely to retain Aboriginal students and facilitate participation and success, enabling beneficial outcomes for all university students and ultimately society as a whole.

Respondents described with a great degree of consistency the conditions and services Aboriginal students need in order to make good progress through their courses. Aboriginal students need stability and predictability in their places of higher education. They need to understand their learning pathways, and to ‘know’ the ways towards and along these pathways, including all steps in the transition through university to completion. They need cultural security along the way: to know that their cultural needs will be understood, so that they can anticipate how their learning will be organised, and then find their needs met once they are enrolled and comfortably working through their courses.

Cultural security and culturally responsive approaches are NOT underpinned by notions of deficit or gaps, they are instead predicated upon acknowledgement of history and recognition of the depth of skills, knowledges, perspectives, and capacities which Aboriginal learners bring to the learning task, and to Australia’s future.

We do not underestimate the challenges raised by our respondents in this research, particularly when university resources are stretched. However, what we have seen is that there are practical solutions to many of the problems raised, that would have a significant positive impact on the equitable delivery of higher education to remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

Acknowledgements The research team extend thanks to the Advisory Committee: Stephen Kinnane, Clive Walley, Maria Morgan and Vennessa Poelina. Thanks to Kamesa Sibodado for her contribution as a research assistant, and to Dr Kathryn Thorburn and Dr Susan Wilks for their advice.

Judith Wilks is Adjunct Associate Professor, Nulungu Research Institute, The University of Notre Dame, Australia, and Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Education, Southern Cross University, Australia.

Anna Dwyer is a Senior Researcher & Associate Lecturer, Nulungu Research Institute, The University of Notre Dame Australia.

Sandra Wooltorton is Senior Research Fellow (Education), Nulungu Research Institute, University of Notre Dame.

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John Guenther is Research Leader, Education and Training, Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education.

Contact: Judith.wilks@scu.edu.au

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Student experience at international branch campuses Stephen Wilkins The British University in Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Many higher education institutions now have offshore campuses in foreign countries. To attract students in the host country, these international branch campuses typically rely on the parent institution and home country higher education system reputations.

Institutions that operate international branch campuses typically claim that the student experience at the offshore campus replicates the onshore home campus experience. Such claims are made even though the majority of offshore campuses lack the scale or financial strength needed to invest in physical infrastructure and resources. This article is a consideration of the extent to which claims of replicability may be true. It is concluded that although institution claims of replicability between onshore and offshore student experience may be somewhat fanciful, it may be reasonable to judge the offshore experience as largely comparable, particularly at the larger branch campuses.

Keywords: transnational higher education, offshore education, international branch campuses, offshore campuses, student experience

Introduction Student experience has become an important concept in higher education institutions worldwide. Higher education systems have become increasingly market-based, and students have become ‘customers’ that demand a high-quality student experience. The term ‘student experience’ usually refers to a student’s overall interaction with an institution, which refers to teaching and learning activities, non-academic support and student life. Most institutions have devised objectives, policies and processes to provide student experience, and institutional performance is increasingly monitored by governmental quality assurance agencies.

Institutions that operate international branch campuses in foreign countries typically claim that the student experience at the offshore campus replicates the onshore home campus experience. For example, promotional literature of Monash University claims, ‘our education is consistently excellent – across campuses and international boundaries. It doesn’t matter where our students start their journey, if they are at vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

Monash they can expect the same high-quality education, and their teachers will be leading academics in their field’ (Monash University, undated).

This article considers the extent to which claims of replicability between offshore and onshore student experience may be true. Bhuian (2016) observes that much of the discourse regarding the dissatisfaction of offshore students is speculative and based on anecdotes rather than well-designed empirical research. International branch campuses operate in unique contexts, and student experience may be affected by the lack of scale or financial resources at branch campuses; the commercial objectives of joint venture partners; the problems of recruiting and retaining high quality staff; as well as the differing expectations of students in different countries.

Transnational higher education – also known as crossborder and offshore higher education – involves providers and programs crossing national borders. Thus, the term ‘transnational higher education’ refers to all types of higher education study programs or educational services in which the learners are located in a country different from the one

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where the awarding institution is based (UNESCO/Council of Europe, 2001). Traditionally, when students wanted a foreign education, they had to travel overseas as international students, typically to countries such as Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US).

Over the last two decades, transnational education provision has mushroomed, and now students can access foreign education in their home country (or in a neighbouring country) via franchised/joint programs delivered by local providers; distance/online programs; international study centres; and international branch campuses. As one of the more conspicuous forms of transnational higher education, international branch campuses have received considerable attention from researchers and higher education commentators.

Wilkins and Rumbley (2018, p. 14) define an international branch campus as, an entity that is owned, at least in part, by a specific foreign higher education institution, which has some degree of responsibility for the overall strategy and quality assurance of the branch campus. The branch campus operates under the name of the foreign institution and offers programming and/or credentials that bear the name of the foreign institution. The branch has basic infrastructure such as a library, an open access computer lab and dining facilities, and, overall, students at the branch have a similar student experience to students at the home campus.

The concern of this article is with assessing student experience at campuses that fit with this definition.

Like all other higher education institutions, international branch campuses generally claim to offer students a highquality student experience. A study by Wilkins and Huisman (2019), which analysed the content of six institution websites in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), found that every institution made claims about providing a high-quality student experience. However, Altbach (2010) claims that in terms of breadth of curriculum, quality of academic staff and students, physical environment, learning resources and social facilities, transnational programs are rarely comparable with home campus offerings. Some empirical research has supported this view.

For example, Bhuian (2016) found that students at international branch campuses in Qatar were dissatisfied with all the major services at institutions, including academic, administrative and facility services. Bhuian (2016) concluded that branch campuses could not meet, let alone exceed, the service quality expectations of students in any of the core dimensions of service quality. A comparative study by Shah, Roth, and Nair (2010) found that offshore students were less satisfied with the quality of teachers, student administration, library and learning resources than their onshore counterparts.

In contrast, research by Ahmad (2015), Pieper and Beall

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(2014), and Wilkins, Balakrishnan and Huisman (2012) found that offshore students were largely satisfied with their program; lecturer and teaching quality; learning environment and resources; counselling and academic support; and social life/facilities.

Given the contrasting claims about student experience (and satisfaction) in transnational education, the purpose of this research is to provide a review of documented, reported and claimed evidence related to student experience at international branch campuses. The review reveals the extent to which students at international branch campuses enjoy the same student experience as their home campus counterparts. The review involved analysis of institution websites and reports; scholarly papers; practice-oriented articles; newspaper articles; and the reports of host and home country quality assurance agencies. The findings are presented in three sections, related to offshore students’ academic and campus experiences, and the support services that institutions offer to these students.

International branch campuses International branch campuses are a fairly recent phenomenon in higher education. Of the 263 international branch campuses operating at the end of 2017, only 33 existed before 1995 (Garrett et al., 2017). In fact, almost half of the international branch campuses currently operating are less than ten years old. The countries that host the largest number of international branch campuses are China, the UAE, Malaysia, Qatar and Singapore. The largest source countries of international branch campuses are the US, UK, France, Russia and Australia.

Although there are a few international branch campuses that have over 5,000 students – such as Monash University Malaysia, the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China and RMIT Vietnam – the vast majority of campuses have fewer than 1,000 student enrolments. In terms of physical infrastructure, many institutions possess only a few rooms in an office block, and many of these institutions offer only a single qualification, or a very small number of qualifications, while others employ few or no full-time academic staff in the host country. While it may be impossible for such small operations to replicate the student experience that is provided to students at the institutions’ much larger home country campuses, it may be reasonable to judge the extent to which the offshore student experience is equivalent or comparable to the onshore experience.

Although a vibrant stream of literature on transnational education emerged in the 1990s, researchers largely ignored international branch campuses. The first collection of articles on international branch campuses was published in 2011 (Lane & Kinser, 2011). It was not until the 2000s that home country quality assurance agencies such as the Australian

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Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) and the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) conducted rigorous and systematic quality audits at international branch campuses. Host country quality assurance agencies were generally even slower to begin quality evaluations of branch campuses. Hence, there is little published research on student experience at international branch campuses before the mid-2000s. As this article seeks to report on the quality of student experience at international branch campuses at the present time, and given that it takes several years for most institutions to develop the scale necessary for investment in infrastructure and resources, it was appropriate to focus on reviewing reports and publications published during the last decade.

Student experience Student experience is important because it may impact upon student learning and attainment; student motivation, commitment and satisfaction; and even post-graduation opportunities in the labour market. The whole range of facilities and services offered by institutions contribute to the student experience. Students who receive a high quality experience are more likely to be satisfied with their program and institution, and satisfied students are more likely to perform better academically (Buultjens & Robinson, 2011).

Satisfied students are also more likely to participate in positive word-of-mouth and give higher scores in student satisfaction surveys, which may improve institution positions in rankings.

Through funding initiatives and other authority structures, such as national quality assurance schemes and institution rankings, the discourse on student experience in higher education has treated students as rational technical learners (Sabri, 2011). Policy makers assume that students have the capacity for free rational choice and are not constrained by social or cultural background, or financial resources.

Furthermore, it is assumed that by collecting, analysing and disseminating data on student experience, institutions will be motivated and empowered to improve student experience, and students will be able to make better choices.

The concept of student experience typically positions students as the most suitable stakeholder to define what quality in higher education means, and to determine what benefits institutions should deliver to students participating in higher education. However, some students may not have the ability to be objective in assessing student experience, while marketised higher education systems and high levels of tuition fees may cause students’ expectations to be unrealistic and unreasonable (Gibbs & Dean, 2014). Such expectations may be particularly common in transnational education, where many institutions lack the scale or financial resources needed to invest in physical infrastructure and resources. vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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As the term ‘student experience’ refers to the totality of a student’s interaction with the institution, the next sections of this article are discussions of offshore students’ academic and campus experiences, and the support services that institutions make available to these students.

Academic experience Program quality By their very nature, transnational programs are usually designed in a country other than the one in which the program is actually delivered (Wilkins, Balakrishnan, & Huisman, 2012). Some international branch campuses deliver ‘off-the-shelf ’ standardised programs, which are irrelevant or inappropriate in the host country context (Donn & Al Manthri, 2010). The dilemma for institutions is that some students, parents and employers expect transnational programs to be exact replicas of their onshore counterparts, while other students, parents and employers expect programs to be adapted and customised for the local environment. In some host countries, local regulations require students to take extra courses. For example, in Malaysia, the Malaysia Qualifications Agency (MQA) requires Malaysian nationals who have not been exempted through earlier studies to take courses in the national language, Malaysian studies, Islamic studies and Moral Education. The University of Nottingham Malaysia delivers these additional courses on Saturdays (QAA, 2010).

Programs must equip students with the knowledge and skills (use value) that will enable them to gain employment in local, regional and international labour markets (exchange value).

A study conducted in Malaysia by Ahmad (2015) found that students generally perceived that their program offered both good use and exchange values. The research participants agreed that their program was intellectually stimulating, that it was made relevant to the Malaysian context, and that it prepared them well for a future career. Younger learners often favour transnational education because they regard themselves, or want to develop themselves, as global citizens (Pieper & Beall, 2014). Compared to public institutions, offshore programs often incorporate more opportunities for developing international and intercultural competences, as well as English language competency.

Many international branch campuses focus on offering programs in business, management and computer science/ information technology. Such programs are considered to be popular with students, and these programs are relatively cheap to deliver, as they do not require substantial investment in equipment or resources. Data published by the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) reveals that approximately 40 per cent of students in transnational education in the Emirate of Dubai study in the field of

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business. In 2011, there were 170 programs in business offered in the emirate, but fewer than ten science programs. As a result, it is likely that many students in transnational education are not studying their subject of first choice. Furthermore, when student enrolments fail to meet targets, or if suitably qualified and experienced teachers cannot be found, institutions often fail to deliver courses that were advertised at the time the student entered the program. In recent years, there has been an increase in the establishment of offshore medical schools, particularly when host country governments actively encourage the development of such schools, or contribute to their funding.

A number of studies have found that offshore students are attracted to transnational education – particularly programs and institutions from Australia, the UK and the US – because they are perceived as being of higher quality than local alternatives (e.g. Ahmad, 2015; Mok, 2012; Pieper & Beall, 2014; Wilkins, Balakrishnan, & Huisman, 2012). However, these students also believe that transnational programs are not as high quality as the programs delivered at the main home country campuses. In some countries, foreign students and expatriates are not admitted into the public institutions, or, even if they are admitted, there is insufficient capacity to satisfy student demand. In such situations, transnational education may be the only option for a student who wants to study in a particular country. Many of the students at international branch campuses are mature ‘second chance’ learners, who study part-time. Offshore providers often offer more flexible modes of program delivery, which satisfy the needs of working students.

Wilkins (2017) observes that maintaining quality standards may become problematic when local management has autonomy over curricula, assessment, and the recruitment of teaching staff and students. Issues and disagreements concerning ethics and academic integrity are common.

Many international branch campuses are owned or operated with a local partner. Conflict between institutions and local partners may occur because each party may have different and conflicting objectives (Healey, 2015). Local partners may seek to maximise student enrolments by not rigidly enforcing entry requirements, while institutions may prioritise the maintenance of academic quality, often to avoid reputational damage. Altbach (2010) claims that many students studying at international branch campuses would not have been accepted into the same program at the institution’s main home campus. Very often, students lack sufficient English language competency, and it is difficult for such students to enjoy a positive classroom experience.

Grade inflation is an increasingly common phenomenon in higher education globally, but empirical research and quality assurance audits have found it particularly prevalent in some transnational settings. In some institutions, it is

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not uncommon for academic staff to have their contracts terminated if they receive poor course evaluations. Badri et al.

(2006) found that in the UAE, student evaluations of teaching were a key factor in determining promotions, merit awards, long-term contracts and contract renewals. Thus, concerns over complaining students and job security may encourage teachers to reduce the academic demands of programs and to award marks that are higher than would be given at the institution’s home campus.

Institutions such as Middlesex University Dubai avoid this problem by sending the majority of examinations and other major assessments to the UK for (first) marking. Other institutions also send student work to the home campus for first or second marking, or moderation. However, when coursework and examinations are marked or moderated at the home campus, it generally takes longer for students to be informed of their final marks, and this is often a source of student dissatisfaction with the assessment process.

Some institutions have campuses in multiple foreign countries. For example, New York University has international branch campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai, and HeriotWatt University, based in Scotland, has campuses in Dubai and Malaysia. It is quite usual for such institutions to encourage campus rotation, whereby students change campus for different parts of their program. Most institutions have reported greater student flows from offshore branches to home campuses than from the home campuses to offshore branches.

Teaching and learning experience Teaching is universally acknowledged as the core activity in higher education. Most international branch campuses focus on the delivery of undergraduate programs in the social sciences. Offshore teachers need a unique combination of knowledge, experience and skills, which include subject expertise; knowledge of the home country and institution’s systems and approaches to teaching and assessment (e.g. interactive, student-centred learning); and the ability to apply subject content in a way that is relevant for the host country context. Very few international branch campuses engage in research, but among those that do, the quality of output is sometimes higher than that of the host country’s public universities, and even occasionally the institution’s main home campus (Pohl & Lane, 2018).

Teaching staff at offshore campuses are typically recruited using three different approaches: (1) recruiting full-time teachers, with a high proportion sourced from outside the host country; (2) adjunct academics employed locally; and (3) visiting academics from the institution’s home campus (Neri & Wilkins, 2019). Many international branch campuses rely heavily on adjunct staff. For example, in the 2019-2020 academic year, Modul University Dubai’s website revealed

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that its Department of International Management employed Technology use has become popular in higher education only two full-time lecturers (who were both employed as worldwide, to extend modes of program delivery and to assistant professors) and seven part-time lecturers. Prestigious provide learners with new opportunities to gain knowledge institutions previously relied heavily on the fly-in staffing and skills. Some research has generally found that offshore model, but this has been used much less in recent years because learners are mostly satisfied with the information and of the high costs associated with flying in and accommodating communication technology (ICT) facilities provided in visiting staff from the home campus, and the reluctance of classrooms; their teachers’ use of ICT; the availability of academic staff to undertake offshore teaching assignments. computers with appropriate software for personal use; and the A number of studies have found that students are generally provision of online learning resources for independent study satisfied with their lecturers and teaching in their program (e.g. Wilkins, Balakrishnan, & Huisman, 2012). (e.g. Ahmad, 2015; Mok, 2012; Pieper & Beall, 2014; Wilkins, However, Ahmad’s study (2015) in Malaysia, and Nair, Balakrishnan, & Huisman, 2012). However, satisfaction with Murdoch, and Mertova’s study (2011) in South Africa, found lecturers does vary according to their contract type. Both that some students could not gain wi-fi access throughout scholarly research (e.g. Miliszewska & Sztendur, 2010; Mok, the day, while others complained that computer labs had 2012) and audits conducted by quality assurance agencies insufficient opening hours. Most international branch (such as the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency – QAA – and campuses have fairly modest libraries, in terms of their Australia’s Tertiary Education physical size and the number of Quality and Standards Agency items stocked. However, most In many countries, including the UK, – TEQSA) have found that offshore students have access assessment and feedback is one of the areas while students are typically to the same online journals satisfied with the quality of and electronic resources in which student satisfaction is lowest. full-time and visiting academic available to onshore students staff, they are less satisfied with at the main home campuses, the subject expertise and availability/support of adjunct staff. which typically results in the offshore students being satisfied Transnational education is typically delivered according with the overall level of learning resources available to them to the idealised norms in the main Western higher education (Wilkins, Balakrishnan, & Huisman, 2012). systems, e.g. that students are actively involved in their In many countries, including the UK, assessment and classroom learning and that they undertake substantial feedback is one of the areas in which student satisfaction is amounts of learning independently. For students who have lowest. The same tends to apply in transnational education, only previously experienced didactic teacher-led education, and learners are generally less satisfied with the guidance, as is the case in some host countries, this can be challenging. support and assessment feedback provided by adjunct For example, Chinese students often feel anxious when they teaching staff. The vast majority of offshore learners pay are asked or expected to communicate in English in lessons. tuition fees, which are often relatively high in the local In such situations, some academic staff encourage and context, and therefore students commonly perceive that they support the students to adjust to Western styles of learning, are ‘buying’ an education. In some countries, such as those in while other staff may simply regard these students as low the Arab Gulf region, the local culture emphasises social status quality. and reputation. As a result, students and their families often Given that most international branch campuses have fewer expect that students will receive high grades regardless of their than 1,000 students, class sizes tend to be much smaller at ability or effort. Furthermore, Randeree (2006) found that offshore campuses than their home country counterparts. plagiarism is common in the UAE because students are naïve Offshore students are more likely to feel special; receive and view the sharing of work to be simply an act of kindness more attention from academic staff; and generally enjoy and helpfulness, rather than an unethical act. Some offshore more staff interaction (Garrett et al., 2017). However, small programs do not incorporate the compulsory training and cohort sizes may make it more difficult to run clubs and outtesting of student knowledge on plagiarism that exists at home of-class activities. Most institutions have a mechanism by campuses. which students may suggest and establish clubs and societies, both for academic and recreational purposes. Virtually every Campus experience offshore campus has a system for pastoral care, which typically involves each student having a personal tutor, with whom ‘Campus experience’ is a term that is commonly used to refer they meet two or three times each academic year, to review to student experiences that are not directly related to teaching academic progress and to resolve any issues related to study, and learning (which in this article has been referred to as the careers or personal problems/difficulties. academic experience). Student services associated with study vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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outside the classroom, careers and personal well-being are referred to as student support in this article. Thus, the campus experience is mainly concerned with the quality of the physical campus environment as a place to study, undertake sporting and recreational activities, socialise, and possibly live. However, it should be noted that the vast majority of international branch campuses do not offer student accommodation.

The main barriers that prevent offshore branches providing a high quality campus experience are lack of scale and financial resources. In 2014, the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) concluded that only two of the eleven British universities that were operating in the UAE could be recognised as campuses in terms of their infrastructure and facilities (QAA, 2014). Because the vast majority of international branch campuses have fewer than 1,000 students, they do not possess the scale needed to develop purpose-built campuses that offer social and sporting activities, dining facilities, student accommodation and extensive library or computing facilities (Wilkins, 2018). Many institutions fail to achieve enrolment targets or financial break-even, and in these circumstances it is a huge risk investing in campus infrastructure.

Because it generally takes a number of years before it is known whether a new campus will be successful and sustainable in the long term, it takes a number of years after campus establishment before institution decision makers will commit to large-scale campus investment. Hence, it is the campuses that were established before 2010, and which now have over 3,000 students, that are most likely to offer campus experiences that are comparable with home campuses. A problem for students when deciding where to study is that most institutions claim on their websites and in their promotional literature that they offer a high quality student experience. Those institutions that have good campus infrastructure – like Amity University Dubai – will emphasise the fact whenever possible, and those institutions that do not – like Synergy University Dubai – will offer in their website and publicity materials little or no information about their physical infrastructure, and will emphasise instead other things such as graduate careers (Wilkins & Huisman, 2019).

As an example, Amity University Dubai’s website boasts: Our 700,000 square feet campus in Dubai International Academic City boasts top-notch infrastructure that inspires anyone who walks through our doors. From our digital classrooms and high-tech specialised labs in the academic block, to the world-class residential, recreational and fitness facilities, the campus is unmatched by any other in the region.

One solution available to offshore providers that do not possess the scale or financial resources to develop their own purpose-built campus is to operate from a shared campus.

Shared campuses exist in countries such as Malaysia, Qatar,

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South Korea and the UAE. In the UAE, there are two shared campuses: Dubai International Academic City (DIAC) and Dubai Knowledge Park (DKP). Among other institutions, Amity University (India), Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani (India), Curtin University (Australia), Heriot-Watt University (UK), Manipal University (India), Murdoch University (Australia) and the University of Birmingham (UK) are based at DIAC, while Islamic Azad University (Iran), Middlesex University (UK) and the University of Wollongong (Australia) are located at DKP. On shared campuses, the infrastructure provider, often a property developer, may provide the physical structures for dining facilities; sports and leisure facilities; health services; and student accommodation, which is typically available for use by students of different institutions. Some infrastructure providers also organise recreational and careers events, and sports competitions. EduCity, a shared campus in Malaysia, has a sports complex featuring a 6,000-seat stadium; a 1,500seat indoor arena; an Olympic-sized swimming pool; student accommodation; and a common student area for socialising and special events. Despite these facilities, some students have still complained about the lack of food and beverage options and entertainment outlets, as well as poor accessibility because of limited public transport (Wan & Weerasena, 2018).

It is not only the physical infrastructure that determines the quality of the campus experience. Students who use the facilities available to them and who participate in activities – whether sporting, cultural or recreational – are more likely to be happy and satisfied with their overall student experience. Also, students who identify with their institution may be happier and more satisfied. In particular, many US institutions are known to be successful in developing and nurturing student-institution identification, i.e., students’ sense of belonging and oneness with the institution. For institutions, the benefits of student-institution identification include students and alumni spreading positive word-ofmouth (recommending the institution to others); graduates participating in alumni events; alumni making financial donations; and alumni sending their children to the institution they attended. Most offshore campuses have some sort of student representative body, such as a student council or union, but these vary in influence and effectiveness, often because of the host country culture and political regime.

Texas A&M University at Qatar aims to create in Qatar the same institutional ethos of the home campus in Texas (Wood, 2011). Students at Texas A&M are commonly referred to as ‘Aggies’. The department of student affairs in Qatar seek to replicate home campus traditions wherever possible. Every year, an evening of fellowship is enjoyed by current students, alumni and academic staff at the annual Muster held in Texas, Qatar and numerous other locations worldwide. It is an event full of symbolism and traditions. For example, candles are lit to

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honour Aggies who passed away in the previous year. During Gig’em week, undergraduate students, in both Texas and Qatar, who have completed 90 credit hours toward a degree, may collect an Aggies ring (usually made of gold), which is an important symbol of Aggie values and ideals. Sports and athletics are important on most US campuses, and students at the Qatar campus are encouraged to participate both as players/competitors and spectators. Spectators are expected to wear the official maroon coloured T-shirts. Some Aggie traditions are difficult to replicate in Qatar – for example, students participating in community service and volunteering – but, overall, students in Qatar enjoy a campus experience that is somewhat comparable with their counterparts at the home campus.

Student support Most students in higher education enjoy a range of support services outside the classroom, such as language support; personal counselling; careers information and advice; health services; and provision of accommodation or assistance in finding accommodation. The vast majority of transnational programs are taught in English, and at many offshore campuses English is integrated into the foundation or first year of programs, even though this may not occur at the home campus. For example, the first year of programs at the University of Nottingham’s campus in Ningbo, China is considered as a preliminary year that consists of considerable English language training. After the first year, further English language support is available, but it is not compulsory.

Some institutions, such as the University of Wollongong in Dubai, position the English language centre in a separate college that provides pathway programs to higher education study. Such centres often focus on preparation of students for the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) English language test. Language support is also common at the offshore campuses that do not teach primarily, if at all, in English. At Soochow University of Laos, all students must complete a preparatory course in Chinese language before starting their degree program, and students also receive on-going support in Chinese language during their degree program. Although most students at this campus are Lao citizens and also ethnic Chinese, some students find it difficult to write in Chinese.

Only a handful of the very largest international branch campuses employ full-time staff that offer personal counselling or careers advice and support. The most common arrangement for these services is to have specialists who visit the campus for fixed time periods once or twice a week.

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offshore campuses, graduates receive limited assistance in finding employment, mainly because these campuses have limited links with employers in the host country.

However, internships and work placements are becoming more common in some campuses. At the University of Wollongong in Dubai, ‘Professional Experience in Business’ is an internship subject, which is designed to ensure that students engage with work integrated learning.

Most offshore campuses do not offer health services.

However, students studying on shared campuses typically have access to medical centres, where they can visit a general practitioner or undertake the medical examinations required by international students to obtain study visas (e.g. having a blood test in the UAE). The vast majority of international branch campuses do not have their own student accommodation. Some campuses work with private providers to whom the institution refers students. Shared campuses usually have student accommodation that is operated by the infrastructure provider, but in some locations the rental charges may be expensive.

Conclusion Although institutions are tasked with ensuring that students have a positive experience, there are aspects of the students’ overall experience that are determined off campus.

Unfortunately, institutions may have little ability to influence things like the scarcity and high cost of housing, or incidents of racially motivated attacks on students. Furthermore, individual students have their own personal expectations, desires and preferences, and these may even vary over time, making it difficult for institutions to achieve a high student experience rating from every student. Perceived student experience may influence a student’s satisfaction, which may in turn influence whether the student completes their program or withdraws; achieves well academically; and engages in positive behaviours toward the institution, e.g. recommending it to others. Thus, student experience and student satisfaction are concepts that no higher education institution can ignore, particularly when quality assurance agencies and institution rankings expect institutions to provide student experience and achieve student satisfaction.

When researchers and quality assurance/regulatory bodies evaluate student experience in transnational education, they typically consider the extent to which the offshore experience replicates the home campus experience and/or the extent to which it is equivalent or comparable. Given that most international branch campuses are much smaller than their home campus counterparts, and have far fewer financial resources, it may be unreasonable to expect the offshore campuses to replicate home campus offerings.

However, the evidence presented in this article suggests that

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most international branch campuses – and particularly the larger campuses – offer a student experience that is largely comparable with that enjoyed by students at the main home country campuses. As offshore campuses continue to grow in size, and gain more experience of operating in foreign countries, it is likely that student experience will further improve.

Stephen Wilkins is a professor of strategy and marketing at The British University in Dubai. He has authored more than 80 scholarly works, of which more than 60 are refereed journal articles. Much of his research is concerned with transnational higher education and international branch campuses.

ORCID: 0000-0002-0238-1607 Contact: stephen.wilkins@buid.ac.ae

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Wilkins, S., Balakrishnan, M.S., & Huisman, J. (2012). Student satisfaction and student perceptions of quality at international branch campuses in the United Arab Emirates. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 34(5), 543-556.

Wilkins, S., & Huisman, J. (2019), Institution strategy in transnational higher education: Late entrants in mature markets – The case of international branch campuses in the United Arab Emirates.

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Wilkins, S., & Rumbley, L.E. (2018). What an international branch campus is, and is not: A revised definition. International Higher Education, 93, Spring 2018, 12-14.

Wood, C.H. (2011). Institutional ethos: Replicating the student experience. New Directions for Higher Education, 155, Fall 2011, 29-39.

Mok, K.H. (2012). The rise of transnational higher education in Asia: Student mobility and studying experiences in Singapore and Malaysia.

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Barriers and facilitators for women academics seeking promotion Perspectives from the Inside Lyn Francis & Virginia Stulz Western Sydney University

In this paper, we discuss findings from a research project in which barriers to and facilitators for promotion with women academics were explored. Four focus groups of women academics at an Australian university were held. Data including responses to semi-structured questions were analysed and interpreted using coding and thematic analysis. We found that multiple barriers and facilitators still exist in the university sector for women applying for promotion, covering structural, organisational, and individual levels. The barriers for promotion included workloads and huge expectations, the multi-pronged promotion process, competition, not being valued, juggling family life and not wanting to risk happiness. Facilitators for promotion included mentoring and collaborative nurturing, giving back to others including the university and flexibility.

Keywords: Barriers and facilitators for promotion, women academics.

Introduction Women currently constitute 50 per cent of the population in Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2016), 50 per cent of the workforce (Workplace Gender Equity Agency, 2017) and 56 per cent of students in Australian universities (Universities Australia Executive Women, 2018). While the number of women employed has increased in Australia there remains an overall gender pay gap and less than 50 per cent of women in senior management positions (Commonwealth Government of Australia, 2017). The presence of women in the academic sphere has increased exponentially in the past 50 years with women making up most of the tertiary sector workforce yet their representation in upper level positions in academia remains underwhelming (Bell, 2016; Dobele et al., 2014; Eddy & Ward, 2015; Jarboe, 2017; Madsen, 2011; Pyke, 2013).

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levels in Universities (Universities Australia, 2017) and a steady increase in gender balanced representation on academic board committees, women nevertheless remain poorly represented in the top tier roles. Equal gender representation across all levels of academia is crucial to ensure leadership and innovation that is representative of the population, inclusive and diverse (Jarboe, 2017). Universities as educators of our future workforce leaders have been called upon to set an example in increasing representation of women in senior leadership positions yet women do not always claim senior appointments, with 84 per cent of men claiming senior appointments compared to 16 per cent of women as at 2016. Universities are now targeting academics claiming senior appointments such as professorial and senior executive positions by providing mentorship programs and professional development support that will enable women to apply for promotion and succeed (Universities Australia Executive Women, 2018).

Evidence in the literature indicates that, while equal opportunity policies are in place in academia, women are still

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not being awarded promotions, regardless of their workload or achievements (Dobele et al., 2014; Treviño et al., 2015).

A 2000-2013 review of the literature suggested a paucity of research in this area and suggested future research focus on the impact of gender in higher education (Gómez et al., 2016).

While the literature is expanding regarding gender inequality in leadership positions, the precipitants and causes of the issue remain a point of conjecture (Airini et al., 2010; Howe-Walsh & Turnbull, 2014). In higher education, cultures cultivate networks that exclude women, especially in leadership roles (Burkinshaw & White, 2019).

With this project we aimed to identify and explore barriers and facilitators, as perceived by female academics employed at one university in Western Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, who are, or have considered, applying for an academic promotion.

The research questions for this study were: 1. What barriers do academic women face when applying for a promotion?

2. What facilitators might help academic women in applying for a senior position?

Background There are numerous barriers and facilitators that academic women face in their journey towards promotion. These barriers and facilitators consist of various levels that include structural, organisational and individual factors. The structural barriers that women face include professional relationships developed in their networking with colleagues and mentoring they provide or receive during their career.

The organisational levels that women face include issues that are related to women’s harassment, bullying and patriarchal values that are bestowed upon them. The individual levels that women face include work and family issues and gender stereotypes that align with the role of women as mothers raising families. These multi-factorial levels will be discussed in this review of the literature.

Barriers to promotion faced by academic women at the structural level While universities and the wider community try to increase the female presence, specifically in senior leadership positions, issues continue to arise due to the structures and requirements of universities and ability to secure funding.

Without adequate funding, academics are unable to conduct significant research and subsequent publications, important prerequisites for senior leadership positions (White, 2015a).

The short turnaround time of spending the revenue related to the research means that research projects have a fastpaced approach that tends to be of short duration and lacks

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the ideal of fundamental, robust research that is long-lived (Ylijoki, 2013).

Women in senior management positions in universities find it difficult to balance their roles between management and research. They often provide support and solve other people’s problems at the expense of having time for their own research (White, Carvalho & Riordan, 2011). The uneven distribution given to teaching and research affects career progression because teaching is absorbing and highly marginalised whilst publications and research work is more important for career progression. Research is valued at the expense of teaching.

Workplace relationships contribute to career barriers in pursuing success that pertain to a lack of collaboration amongst colleagues working together in research and a workplace milieu that promotes competitiveness rather than collegiality (Santos, 2016). Women tend to be disparaging about a shallow performance-driven culture that is heavily regulated and leads to anxiety about ‘production’. Arguably research should be considered as a core activity rather than being additional to teaching (Fletcher et al., 2007).

Women may feel that their intrinsic motivation and academic freedom are being violated if their performance is measured by predetermined quantitative as opposed to qualitative measurements (Kallio & Kallio, 2014).

Performance management discourages novelty and innovation and leads to bland research (Kallio et al., 2016).

Some academics now regard universities as merely other workplaces that were previously seen as communities of scholars. Workload has increased due to previously managed administration tasks being transferred to teachers and these deteriorating working conditions lead to reduced levels of autonomy in work and less academic freedom (Yljoki, 2005). These administrative tasks include producing selfassessments, mission statements and strategic plans that are considered futile. As a result, academics have little time to engage in research (Ylijoki & Ursin, 2013). In Australia, the ongoing discourse of managerialism permeating the university executive, is often unevenly distributed within the organisation (Göransson, 2011).

Barriers to promotion related to a gendered organisational culture The literature suggests that bullying and discrimination against women continue to occur in the academic sphere, depleting confidence levels and eliminating supports that are prerequisites to promotion (Monroe et al., 2008; Pyke, 2013). A UK study found British Universities continued to have specific social events and outlets which remained off limits to women while new male colleagues were explicitly invited, consequently providing men with more opportunities to develop networks and garner support (Fisher & Kinsey,

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2014). Other researchers have found apprehension about Barriers to promotion faced by academic having women in senior positions within the university women at the individual level system (Afiouni & Karam, 2014) and policies may cement the problems of re-positioning women in more senior positions Significant barriers to promotion for women reported in (Fitzgerald & Wilkinson, 2010). the literature include family responsibilities and career It has been suggested that gender plays an integral role in interruptions such as child bearing and caring for children gatekeeping practices and women are disadvantaged, as it is or ageing parents and trying to strike a work / life balance often men who are in gatekeeper roles (Brink & Benschop, (Monroe et al., 2008; Airini et al., 2010; Devine, Grummell 2014). Barriers have been identified in the promotion & Lynch, 2011; O’Connor, 2011; Pyke, 2013; Bell & Yates, process, for example, gender bias was found in letters of 2015; Morley & Crossoard, 2015). The literature suggests that recommendation for promotion with letters in support family or carer responsibilities cause interruptions in a woman’s of women containing more ‘negativity, hedges and faint career, resulting in a sporadic or intermittent trajectory along praise’ than their male counterparts which was found to their career pathway (Pyke, 2013). Some academic women have an impact on the applicant’s evaluation (Madera et with children feel a heavy burden when they are not always al., 2018 p.11). If women have a greater propensity to enter available for their children and may feel as though they are teaching roles compared with men, they may have a deficit of missing out on their children’s growing processes (Santos, knowledge about research skills 2015). Women’s aspirations compared with men (Fletcher to gain professorial positions Barriers have been identified in the et al., 2007). Managerialism may negatively impact promotion process, for example, gender bias in its conflicted attitude to women’s academic careers as gender equity and diversity, domestic expectations are not was found in letters of recommendation for may in fact, re-emphasise the recognised (Ozbilgin & Healy, promotion with letters in support of women discrimination of women in 2004). containing more ‘negativity, hedges and working towards promotion Importantly, in an faint praise’ than their male counterparts...

(Teelken & Deem, 2013).

Australian study, Pyke (2013) Some academics will delay found that women who were seeking promotion due to aspiring to apply for promotion the perceived demands of senior leadership positions and to a senior academic level did not have children, their children difficulties in meeting these demands in the context of were older, or their partner played the primary carer role. competing family commitments (Hardy et al., 2016). In fact, Research has further indicated the need for academics to be some women may never pursue academic roles in preference willing and able to conduct research in the international space taking on leadership roles that may occur accidentally or out to achieve promotion, a task made more difficult by family of altruistic reasons through commitment to the university responsibilities (Fritsch, 2015; Hardy et al. 2016) with travel (Acker, 2014). Women are more likely to engage with requirements posing time, energy, resources and financial leadership roles in alignment with changes in universities that constraints. Santos (2016) found that academics defined harbour valuing knowledge, teamwork, inclusivity of various successful careers as being able to establish a healthy workdisciplines and feedback (Blackmore, 2014). life balance and that this was more important for younger Pyke (2013) reported that women who did not aspire to women than men. Alternatively, work life balance can be just promotion identified increased paperwork or workload, as well as difficult for younger men as for younger women, especially as a change in their position as disincentives for promotion when trying to negotiate part-time work (White, 2015b; which would result in them no longer being able to engage in Padavic, Ely & Reid, 2019). enjoyable aspects of their current position. Women are prone to contribute to their own downfall as they are distracted Facilitators to promotion that may assist by conflicting demands on their time (Burkinshaw, 2015). academic women at the structural level Young women have been reluctant to embrace the university organisational culture in order to pursue their academic careers One significant facilitator for promotion identified frequently (Burkinshaw & White, 2017). Interestingly, recent literature throughout the literature is the implementation of mentoring has identified that the notion of the ‘boys club’ is still prevalent (Diezmann & Grieshaber, 2010; Fritsch, 2015; Harris, in universities and may be acting as a barrier for women to gain Ravenswood, & Myers, 2013; Pyke, 2013). Mentoring has promotion to senior positions (Fletcher et al., 2007; O’Connor, benefits of advancing careers and performance and provides 2011; Brink & Benschop, 2014; Fisher & Kinsey, 2014; Morley, a positive contribution to career success (Kirchmeyer, 2005).

2014; Fritsch, 2015; White, 2015a; Santos, 2016).

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an individual can act as significant barriers to promotion so it follows that a support system that includes mentoring has a facilitating effect. Harris et al. (2013) went so far as to utilise a fairy tale metaphor, describing higher positions in universities as the ‘Ivory Tower’ and having mentors play the role of the fairy godmother. Mentoring is seen as important for gaining access to established research circles and contacts (Fletcher et al., 2007).

One way of attaining excellence for women in their academic career is a strategy that involves collaborating with more senior dedicated scholars that enable them to co-publish with them resulting in increased citation of their publications.

Persistence is also a virtue for women who are publishing, and this can be a large component of the game of transitioning from rejection to publication when addressing editors’ comments. The rewards of excellence in academia translate to job mobility, peer esteem and better career prospects (Butler & Spoelstra, 2012). Women have reported the advantages of networking with colleagues as a method of integrating into the research culture (Fletcher et al., 2007). However, there seems to be a shift from this collegial way of working to a new managerialist form that resonates with a top down approach (Göransson, 2011).

Promotion models are the norms and rules that guide academics into their individual choices and career paths and can ultimately change over time. For example, the opportunity of applying for a new position at another university to pursue promotion may also mean tougher competition for that position. Some academics who have reflected on their career choices refuse to focus their life on publishing, alternatively, emphasise their desire to maintain their work on interesting subjects at a pace that suits them (Dany, Louvel & Valette, 2011).

Facilitators to promotion that may assist academic women at the organisational level Facilitators for promotion for women include supportive policies and legislation, aiming to encourage universities and organisations to support women in achieving senior leadership positions (Diezmann & Grieshaber, 2010; White, 2015a). Equal employment opportunities have been found to be a primary facilitator for promotion for women (Diezmann & Grieshaber, 2010). Indeed, some universities place more importance on collegial characteristics such as listening, consensual-decision-making and people skills that are traditionally seen as feminine skills, but not recognised as specifically feminine (O’Connor & Carvalho, 2015). Women make positive contributions to university decision-making at senior levels of management and are renowned for making decisions sensitively, being more pragmatic and fairer in all processes (White et al., 2011).

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Facilitators to promotion that may assist academic women at the individual level Young women in Santos’ (2016) study found that they were able to separate their work and personal life as an academic as they achieved more flexibility in their hours of work schedule, especially if they had young children in their early careers.

Similarly, Fletcher et al. (2007) also found that women enter this type of profession as their perception is that family responsibilities are more successfully managed and flexible.

Some academics have immersed themselves in research and appreciate the time it takes to slowly think and write and rewrite as a testimonial to their own dedication, engagement and enthusiasm as a researcher (Ylijoki, 2013). Many academic women enjoy their job and the financial security it brings.

Other academic women have found that mothering may not be meeting their needs and is exhausting, whereas academic work provides meaning in life, a sense of purpose, autonomy and personal achievement (Santos, 2015).

Methodology Four focus groups were undertaken with women academics to explore challenges and possible resolutions to issues regarding promotion for women in academia in one university. Each focus group was specific to a particular group based on seniority in academia. The aim of running the focus groups was to illicit responses to research questions regarding perceived barriers to applying / obtaining senior academic positions. A secondary aim was to determine what support might assist in reducing / overcoming obstacles identified.

Focus groups were an ideal and meaningful source of data collection for this research regarding the focused topic of barriers or facilitators perceived by women interested in or actively seeking promotion in academia. Focus groups were the preferred method for collecting data as groups may give rise to insights of not just the individuals present but revelations and solutions might then be identified by other participants in the group (Quinn Patton, 2002; Stewart & Shamdasani, 2015). Focus groups usually entail participants who come from a similar cultural and social background or alternately share similar interests or knowledge (Liamputtong, 2009). Participants in this research often responded to others in order to express their own ideas about the phenomena of interest providing additional insightful perspectives about issues regarding promotion (Stewart & Shamdasani, 2015).

One advantage of holding focus groups for this research was that a number of participants could be interviewed simultaneously in the limited time available (Stewart & Shamdasani, 2015). Focus groups usually include between four and 12 participants (Stewart & Shamdasani, 2015, Krueger & Casey, 2015). In this research the size of the focus

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groups varied from two to five participants. In line with other researchers (Minichiello, Aroni & Hays, 2008), we would argue the small groups were effective for the study topics in question, being barriers and facilitators for promotion, as the participants were more likely to emphasise their viewpoint and not be swayed by others as could be the case in larger groups.

The researcher could observe the collaborative sense making and the divergence or convergence of expressed viewpoints during a focus group (Wilkinson, 2008). The exploration of one phenomenon, in this research, barriers and facilitators for promotion in academia, from multiple viewpoints may assist in developing a more detailed and many-sided account of that topic of interest and allow comparisons to be made (Reid, Flowers & Larkin, 2005).

Recruitment and sample

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Textbox 1 – Semi-structured interview questions I am interested in your opinion and/or experiences regarding academic career progression.

I’d like to start by asking what motivated you to come along to the group today?

What obstacles do you see as being in the way of progressing your academic career?

Tell me more about these barriers?

What may help to overcome these barriers?

What may assist you to progress/apply for a promotion? …how can [name of university] provide support?

How do you feel about your career progression?

Why aren’t you applying for a senior academic promotion?

Is there anything you would like to add?

Following approval from the Human Research Ethics Committee services including the Employee Assistance Program and an (No. H12298) a request seeking interested academics was external provider. Participants consented to the use of recording promoted twice on the E-update Daily News. This resulted devices following an invitation to ask any questions of the in over 100 emailed responses, however very few respondents moderator regarding this research. There were no concerns requested further information. Posters inviting participation or emotional distress reported by academics participating in in focus groups were then distributed across all campuses. the focus groups concerning their university work, although a Following this response, information sheets and consent forms couple of participants complained about exhaustion regarding were emailed to interested academic staff. Participants selfworkloads. selected which campus they preferred, and which focus group Although the number of participants was lower than they would attend based on their level of seniority. anticipated (see Table 1) the focus groups were lively, vibrant The four focus groups were undertaken at two campuses. and the rich data provided insight into this relevant topic.

Two focus groups were offered to women who were senior level Timeframes for focus groups ranged from 40 to 96 minutes. academics and two were offered to lecturer level academics Demographic questions included age, number of children, (less senior). Unfortunately, on two of the set dates industrial years spent in academia and discipline (see Table 2). action occurred and the numbers of participants was lower than anticipated. Due to the limited time and budgetary Table 1 Number of participants in focus groups constraints, further focus groups were unable to be arranged.

Semi-structured open questions were asked of the participants Focus Focus Focus Focus Gp 1 for Gp 2 for Gp 3 for Gp 3 for with prompts utilised when required (see Text Box 1).

Senior Senior Lecturer Lecturer One researcher (the first author) convened (moderated) AcaAcaLevel Level the focus groups. Although complete objectivity is not demics demics Academics Academics possible (Stewart & Shamdasani, 2015), the moderator No of 2 5 3 2 provided an introduction before each focus group affording particisome contextual background. The moderator acknowledged pants being an Early Career Researcher with prior experience in arranging focus groups who was a relatively Table 2: Characteristics of participants recent employee with the university and had Children No of How many How many What an interest in, but was not currently seeking, Age yes/no children years in years at is your promotion. A supportive leadership style under 18 academia the current discipline?

(Stewart & Shamdasani, 2015) approach was university? utilised in the focus groups with a friendly, 8 yes 5 with 2 – 30+ years <1 to 30 5 STEMM equitable and open approach provided to all 30- 59 years 4 no children (Average years years 7 Nongroup members.

(Average <18 years in academia STEMM Additional information was provided at the age 45) of age 12 yr) focus groups regarding access to counselling vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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A summary of findings was emailed to participants who requested this, with no requests from participants for any changes. This project was not specifically targeted towards academics employed in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Medicine) fields, however five participants represented STEMM areas and seven from nonSTEMM areas. The themes identified for all focus groups was similar with some differences between the senior and less senior academics that will be discussed further. All participants who attended were interested in seeking promotion in the future or were currently seeking promotion. Some of the participants knew each other but issues of power and control were managed as senior and less senior staff were in separate focus groups (Krueger & Casey, 2015). In order to ensure the confidentiality of participants is protected, no further characteristics of participants are included in this paper.

Data analysis A brief literature review was undertaken prior to undertaking the focus groups with a more thorough search for literature taking place following thematic analysis. Thematic analysis was utilised to identify core themes from the data. The data included full transcripts of recordings in addition to notes and reflections taken by the moderator (Krueger & Casey, 2015).

Riessman (2008) suggests that set standards or criteria should be avoided in relation to the validity of qualitative research, however for research findings to be considered trustworthy, a researcher should be able to demonstrate they followed a systematic method of data collection and analysis that was guided by ethical considerations and theory. In this research project the moderator used hand written notes recorded before (for example, the positions of academic staff around the interview table and placement of recording devices), during (short points of interest and insights) and after each focus group that included a recorded reflection, which were all utilised during the analysis process. Cross-checking of themes was undertaken by the second co-author (who was more senior than the first author) for this paper. If there was any disagreement regarding a theme, the authors discussed their perspectives considering the data.

The process of thematic analysis was assisted by a qualitative data analysis program NVivo (12) developed by QSR International. NVivo allowed the researchers to look very closely at the data (Krueger & Casey, 2015) in order to clarify and categorise themes (called codes in NVivo) that were identified by the researchers (Bazeley, 2007; Bazeley, 2009). The transcribed recordings were initially listened to by the moderator with missing parts of the interviews or incorrect sections replaced. After the full transcribed interviews were imported into NVivo the data was read several times with notes taken during this process to identify

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possible categories. Segments of the text were highlighted and examined in order to determine the underlying meaning.

Initial categories / codes were arranged into visual mind maps on the NVivo program to assist with synthesis and refining and all codes were defined and named. These were then further classified, and re-coded as necessary with any duplications identified and preliminary analysis recorded (Creswell, 2014). Following identification and description of the main themes, the differences and similarities were then compared between the four focus groups outlined in the findings section, below. This is followed by a discussion of the main themes / categories in light of the existing literature (Bazeley, 2009).

Findings: Barriers encountered in promotion processes by academic women Both barriers and facilitators to seeking promotion were identified following coding and thematic analysis of the data.

Structural barriers Workloads and huge expectations The escalating levels of workloads that resulted in reduced levels of energy and increased levels of stress and burnout was the most prominent theme in this project. Several of the participants had reached their limit and capacity in what they could achieve due to excessive workloads which meant that subsequently, they avoided applying for promotion. Among the comments from participants were the following: Senior level academic focus group: ‘I think that expectation is there, that if you’re going to keep your job, if you’re going to get the next job, then you have to be working all the hours that God gives you…’

‘Yeah, sacrifice your life essentially.’

Lecture level academic focus group: ‘You never catch up.’

‘Yep.’ ‘You’ve never done enough. You’ve never submitted enough grant applications. You’ve never written enough journal articles. You haven’t done enough research. You haven’t got - and it’s - you are never meeting the expectations that people have of you. That’s how I feel. I feel like I am so behind.’

Academics said they invested so much time already that there was no incentive for future application to a higher level of promotion. Some participants feared additional workloads and stress with any promotion process was just far too time consuming and too difficult to address.

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As one lecturer level academic stated: ‘I was really interested in this research, because, I guess, for me, I sometimes sit and reflect and I think am I interested in going further than where I am now? Do I actually have the capacity to do that? I feel like so much of me is already invested at this level. I just don’t know that I have any more to give.’

The number of excessive hours being worked was a common theme identified by many academics. The number of hours paid versus the number of hours actually worked within an academic’s week was highlighted as a financial conflict, as the 35-hour week often equated to 50-, 60- or 70-hour weeks.

Lecturer level academic: ‘...already I’m working 15 hours a week for free. Is it I become a Senior Lecturer and suddenly I’m working 30 hours a week... for free? So technically I’m actually taking a pay cut to have this position?’

The risks to health while working long hours was identified by some participants who made decisions not to take on additional promotional opportunities.

Senior level academic: ‘I work - I make sure I don’t work more than a 50-hour week otherwise I get health consequences. Lately I’ve tried to keep it to about 45….’

The multi-pronged promotion process Most academics considered the promotion process to be onerous, unclear and open to interpretation. Several academics stated that they would need to step out of their current role in which they performed well to attend to roles the university considered more important towards promotion. Academics did not always feel they were acknowledged for the value and the effort directed towards their current roles. This is demonstrated in the following comment: Lecturer level academic: ‘Not worth it [promotion]… Now that doesn’t mean I’m not open to it, it doesn’t mean that I can’t, but I know it says for [more senior promotion] and what I would need to do to get that. At the moment…I couldn’t even keep reading the document. I would need to completely change - I would need to step down from being [in governance role] for starters and I know that but that’s what I happen to be good at…To be promoted I actually need to leave that and do some other things that the university regards as important…’

Some academics considered they lacked the competitive edge to apply for promotion and never felt they had achieved enough to apply.

Lecturer level academic stated: ‘…they’ll say, men get promoted over women on a regular

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basis, because men just throw caution to the wind...Just chuck it....and they’re like, I am good enough for this and I’ll go for it, whereas women are like, no, no, no, I need to address this specific criterion.... So, we tend to hold back until we’re ready and so that’s…like, there’s no way that I’ll meet these criteria…’

The requirements for the promotion process and the need to meet the three levels of achievement i.e. namely teaching, research and governance was reported as being difficult to achieve.

As outlined by one senior level academic: ‘I think the promotion process and selection criteria is a barrier…Previously you had to show certain levels of achievement across at least two of the three criteria. Now, they want a well-rounded academic. However, we are a teaching focused university, but they will still in the back of their heads always put the focus on...on your research productivity…Then when they question your research productivity and you say it’s because I’ve been doing all this teaching...it’s, well, the teaching can take care of itself now. You should be doing research. But in what hour of what day...would you like me to do that?’

Competition versus Collegiality Participants highlighted that it can, at times, be colleagues that pose a barrier in professional progression. ‘Unfortunately, there are people that try and – not block you necessarily, but there’s people that aren’t always supportive to help you with that progression…’ It was further indicated that this competition amongst colleagues was felt more keenly with colleagues who were women. ‘There’s no collegiality, it just seems to me to be, again, intrinsically, a female thing and most of my mentors in the school are male’.

Academics perceived the university encouraged competition rather than collaboration due to the limited resources available such as grants, ‘there’s all these silos…. this university loves this divide and conquer thing, right’. Other academics highlighted that the structure of the university as a multi campus environment that did not contribute to being able to collaborate. ‘I think the multi campus nature of our school… and it keeps expanding and moving. It really dilutes that opportunity to have that collegial nature.’

On the other hand, some academics worked together in teams with senior staff included in order to obtain grants or write publications together and used this towards promotion.

As stated by a senior level academic: ‘…having a Professor has really helped my career, but also actually the early career researchers that I’m working with, so we did team together. We’re friends. We said, right, each of us is going to write a grant. We’re going to put everybody on it.

Each of us is going to write a publication. We’re going to put everybody on it…’

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Organisational barriers Not being valued, recognised or acknowledged Several academics stated that the expectations of working at a higher level without being remunerated were off-putting regarding applying for promotions. Academics identified little acknowledgement of difficult workloads from managers and felt their individual contributions were not recognised.

Senior level academic: ‘That intrinsic feeling of worth, that what you do is valued, is felt as though as if it’s a contribution to the university and they see that that’s a good thing. Whereas I don’t think I might - I do work 12-hour days and it’s just always well why can’t you do this, we need this done. We need that stat. It’s like what is it? - and I’ve just worked seven days straight like this.’

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‘The other topic that comes up …quite a bit is little cliques of rock stars who seem to have tremendous levels of support and recognition and they’re almost being groomed by senior staff…I can watch this happening in front of my eyes. Some of it is exciting and motivating and some of it’s really having a terrible effect on everyone else’s motivation because they feel like there are these favourites, they feel like there’s these rock stars.’

Individual barriers Always juggling decision making: Work vs children Some participants struggled juggling work and meeting the needs of their children whilst also attempting to meet the requirements for promotion and career progression.

Lecturer level academics stated:

Some academics identified the lack of senior staff ’s recognition and incentivising staff already working at the level for which they would be applying.

A lecturer level academic stated:

‘...the natural challenges of juggling motherhood with working. Even in terms of things that look good on the CV like international conferences and doing fellowships at international universities or all kinds of international travel, even domestic conferences are a challenge.’

‘Just - sometimes I wish that our ‘student feedback on teaching’ (SFT) was actually read by someone who was in a position to give us that recognition... Who’s actually reading them and going, you know what? This person is consistently doing an amazing job. They deserve some recognition.’

‘When I’m in the car or at work smashing things out, I’m thinking about all the things I should be doing at home with my kids, but when I’m with my kids, all I want to do is check my emails to see what I’m missing.’

Senior level academic:

Other academics noted the absence of gender equity in the workplace.

A senior level academic stated: ‘We don’t have any representation, any female representation or any gender and equity value.’

However, another senior level academic stated: ‘Yet this project is being funded by a vice-chancellor’s gender equity fund. So, there are things.’

Grooming the rock-star There was a perception by several academics that some staff are more valued than others and are provided with additional support and opportunities for both university awards and promotions. Some academics suggested that the Dean / supervisor decided who would be supported for promotion and everyone else was refused the opportunity even if that academic felt they had the same or better qualifications than the person promoted. There were also several comments regarding favouritism and being groomed for the awards and the promotions processes. Some academics were being mentored and assisted including both men and women while others doing their work are ignored. As one senior level lecturer states:

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‘If you want to be an associate professor or professor, then you’ll make your kids and your husband book time with you on your days off. But if you want to spend time with your family, then you need to be content with being at a certain level.’

Not wanting to risk happiness in current role Some academics did not want to apply for a promotion as they did not want to risk no longer enjoying their career.

Remaining happy in their career was more important than applying for more senior roles.

Senior level academic – ‘I think a successful career is one where you’re happy. That’s really important to me. I don’t have that goal to - I’ve got to be a professor to be successful in my career. I just have to be doing work that I’m really committed to and feel passionate and happy. ‘ Senior level academics highlighted the requirements for promotion included expectations that you would sacrifice your family life, happiness and disrupt any work / life balance.

This prevented future promotions as academics chose health and happiness over future promotion. ‘...if you want to push your name forward, as in get ahead, then you almost have to....accept that you’re going to be working in

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the evenings and you’re going to be working on the weekends to be able to get yourself - your name on as many things as you can, and that’s not for me...(different academic) ‘Well, yeah, it’s not healthy. So for me I chose not to push myself to that extent because then I won’t be happy, and that’s the bottom line.’

Facilitators encountered in promotion processes by academic women Structural facilitators: Mentoring and collaborative nurturing

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‘I think making an impact, making a difference is definitely important for me…To society or whatever your field is, whatever your area of interest is…To the stakeholders in your field.

I’m not talking about policy or whatever it is…. But yeah, to people in society.’

Senior level academics acknowledged the importance of making a difference and mentoring less experienced staff. On the other hand, lecturer level academics sought more support and wanted more of a work / life balance:

Participants identified the need for collaboration to undertake research and for women academics to support each other in a collaborative and supportive way and recognised the importance of mentors providing support for the promotion process.

Senior level academic:

‘Successful career… Thriving in your position…Allowing to develop… Your work supporting you, so that you can thrive and develop…Having a good work / life balance, where you can still thrive. What’s a successful career? Being able - feeling motivated that you can actually get to the next step, to the next level up. Yeah, having a balance. The three areas that we have to focus on, governance, teaching and research, having a good spread and actually making a difference in all of those areas.’

‘So it’s almost like we need that community of women, a community of women that are there to support other women because only other women can relate to what you’ve just said and go, oh my goodness, I can absolutely imagine how that would be, to be blocked out when you’re the person leading this thing. So that sort of feels like that’s a thing that’s needed for academics, is other women to support each other.’

I think the fact that we live in this world and have a life to live, it’ll be nice with a successful career if you have the proper financial payment I suppose. I think finance also defines success. Anything - I mean, academia is probably not the best, but again I enjoy the job, so hence...I stay in it. I am really satisfied with the job itself, but I guess there’s room for movement.’

Several academics identified the need for promotion and specific mentoring programs to assist women academics who apply for promotion, including the provision of guidance and support as well as the actual application process.

Senior level academic: ‘There’s the mentoring program, which the university runs, which is really beneficial and that’s really what helped me to be confident enough to go for a promotion because I would go and talk to my mentor who would look at what I’ve got and go, are you mad? Of course, you should go.’

A good mentor identifies your abilities even if you are not aware of them and supports academics to go for promotion Senior level academics saw their role as including mentoring unlike lecturer level academics who sought mentoring.

Organisational facilitators: Giving back Senior level academics stated there were many factors they enjoyed in their current role and that a successful career also meant they could contribute to others including the university.

This also meant more autonomy and choices regarding where they could go in their career and the following comments reflect this: ‘Well I think there’s a lot that I’d like to give back to the university and that’s always been the way I’ve worked. I believe that we commit that to our profession – give back to our profession, that’s part of what you do as an academic.’

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Individual facilitators: Flexibility Other academics at both lecturer level and senior lecturer role appreciated the flexibility of their work life.

As one lecturer level participant states: ‘This university has offered me a great deal of flexibility in terms of my working arrangements which makes it possible to effectively juggle motherhood and working, which so many of my friends who had children around the same time haven’t been able to achieve in other work places. I am just so extremely grateful for that. I really, really am. There’s no expectation that you have to arrive at nine and stay until five. You can organise your work schedule around what your family needs. On any of the rare occasions when I have to say to my supervisor, no I can’t make that meeting because there’s nobody else to pick up the children, there’s not an eyelid battered. Despite the fact that she doesn’t have children herself. ‘ Another senior level lecturer commented: ‘That’s one positive thing is the flexibility around the working hours.’

Discussion This paper supports existing evidence that there remains a multitude of factors that include barriers and facilitators for women applying for promotion in the workplace. These factors are faced by women at the structural, organisational

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and individual levels. These findings have been reported in this research study and will be discussed further considering the existing literature. Barriers to promotion will be discussed initially followed by facilitators.

Barriers to promotion faced by academic women at the structural level The increasing workloads was the most prominent theme identified for academics in this study and reportedly resulted in increased levels of stress and burnout and subsequent reduced energy levels. Extensive workloads contributed to academics feeling unprepared to tackle any tasks associated with applying for promotion. Similarly, Pyke (2013) found that women were less likely to aspire for promotion due to increased workloads.

Barrett and Barrett (2011) identified that large schools spend most of the time on teaching and this leaves little time to devote to research, which often means that women are spending time after hours working on research. Ideally, universities should allocate workloads equally, so that academic staff working at lower levels should also have the opportunity to expand their roles into other areas such as research and governance that will count towards their future promotion. This distribution of work should be equitable to ensure that academics are not working extensive hours past the normal working week and enables academics to work towards a well-rounded portfolio of their achievements (Barrett & Barrett, 2011). Levels of outof-hours academic work has been shown to be high, although increased accessibility to technology enables academics to work anytime and may encroach into leisure time (Barnett, Mewburn & Schroter, 2019).

Excessive workloads prevented academics from applying for future promotions as it was deemed that the time taken to prepare for promotion was not a realistic option. The rapid growth of managerialism in Australia over the past 20 years has encouraged women towards applying for promotion although they may be railroaded into assuming demanding governance roles that exhaust them and leave no room or time for important work that will eventually contribute towards their promotion (Teelken & Deem, 2013). Academics in this study identified the pressure of never having done enough to even consider applying for senior positions and this leads to a vicious circle of not being able to apply for adequate funding to conduct significant research that ultimately leads to the inability to procure senior positions which resonates with White’s (2015a) findings discussed earlier.

Most academics considered the promotion process to be unclear, did not feel that they had achieved enough to apply and they would need to step out of their current role in order to work towards promotion. The requirements for the promotion process and meeting the three levels of achievement, such as teaching, research and governance were reported as a difficult process. Similarly, Barrett and Barrett

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(2011) also highlight the breadth of work across these specific three areas as criteria for applying for promotion. Dobele et al. (2014) found that junior academics juggle large teaching workloads that leaves insufficient time and resources to be able to attend to their own research.

Academics identified colleagues as a barrier to career progression and perceived that they were encouraged to work in isolation due to the competitive nature of grants and promotions. The geographical locations of the multi campus sites within the university also made it more difficult to collaborate. This study highlighted that being a community of scholars is a possible facilitator, for example, working together in groups to write grants, promotional documentation and papers. Research by MacFarlane (2016) suggests that collegiality has been outweighed by the competitive pressure for individual academics to meet performance targets and provide external evidence to support claims for success which also results in academics feeling isolated.

Barriers to promotion faced by academic women at the organisational level Academics in this study identified the lack of achievement and recognition for the substantial workloads that they had endured. The working culture was identified as non-nurturing.

Similarly, Pyke (2013) also identified the work organisational culture as being pivotal to advancing career development and that a lack of support or bullying in the workplace were contributory factors in not progressing further.

One of the main themes for this study highlighted gender inequity as an inevitable component of being unrecognised as women that contributed substantially to their lack of career development. Fritsch (2015) highlights that women are often judged by their personal appearance or behaviour, rather than their achievements or qualifications. Ranieri et al. (2016) identify one of the themes in their scoping review of the literature as career discrimination that is based on gender. The feminisation debate places women in the minority, but this will change as women’s participation levels are on the increase in universities (Morley, 2011). The continuing gender gap in pay poses a significant barrier towards women’s career advancement (White & Burkinshaw, 2019). Despite the move of universities to introduce policies to eradicate gender inequity, this has not been translated into achieving just that.

Academics identified the complete lack of recognition and up to the point of being ignored, even if they had performed well in their career, whereas other academics were groomed and promoted all the way, almost being favoured over others’ reputable achievements. Other research (O’Connor, 2011) has found that women do not ‘feel valued’. The supervisor or Dean was instrumental in this process as academics who were nominated for recognition including awards or opportunities for promotion were often those who were continually in the

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limelight. Academics being groomed by those above were perceived to be given additional support and mentored towards promotion. This is a finding that has not been previously addressed in the literature.

Barriers to promotion faced by academic women at the individual level Academics felt restricted in applying for promotion due to family responsibilities. In the past decade, Barrett and Barrett’s (2011) study identified that women’s family responsibilities often precluded them from engaging in research and if they were to achieve in that space, this implied doing that work after-hours. Women’s nature of work was often associated with fractional and part-time employment that further precluded them from applying for promotion (Barrett & Barrett, 2011). In the current climate, family responsibilities such as caring for children or ageing parents still contribute to this disparity of promotion in the workplace (Airini et al., 2010; Bell & Yates, 2015; Monroe et al., 2008; Pyke, 2013).

More importantly, travel abroad including lengthy stays in another country also contribute to advancement in promotion to professorial positions (Fritsch, 2015) and this factor could also prevent women with families and children applying for such advancement in their career. This geographic mobility has been identified as an essential component of advancement of careers (Fritsch, 2015; White, 2015b; Zippel, 2017).

Academics identified that family were aware of their work responsibilities encroaching into their home and family life environment. They identified the dichotomy of family members viewing them as always being at the computer and if spending time with family at home, the omnipresent thoughts that they should be working and answering emails that they had not attended during the work week. Pyke (2013) also reports on the abilities of women being able to seek promotion that could be restricted by responsibilities of family care, that included physical care and emotional well-being of family members. Similarly, Ranieri et al. (2016) also identified worklife balance as one of the themes scoped in their review of the literature and identified the imbalance between extreme workloads and the responsibilities of child-rearing with women often challenged in applying for promotion due to accommodating children and their husband’s careers (Eddy & Ward, 2015).

Academics identified risking their happiness in their current position if they were to apply for a higher promotion.

This finding is unique as other studies have not revealed this important revelation, although Caprile (2012) alluded to the choice of life-course factors. Academics identified the distinction between being available for family when at home and keeping work life separate to family life. The importance of work-life balance and happiness surpassed the benefits of promotion which they envisaged aligned with higher vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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workloads and longer working hours. Women and men should be able to work to their potential whilst maintaining work-life balance (Bagilhole, 2013). Academics in this study identified the risks to health if they continued to work long hours and decided against taking on additional promotional opportunities which resonates with Santos’ (2016) study which found that academics defined successful careers as establishing a healthy work-life balance.

Facilitators to promotion faced by academic women at the structural level Academics identified the need for collaboration with partners to undertake research and supporting each other in a collegial way. Academics also recognised the importance of mentoring within the university environment and that a mentor would identify and encourage those skills and attributes that they were not aware of themselves. Available current mentoring programs need to be enhanced, better advertised and targeted for women seeking promotion.

Academics also identified that supporting the application process of promotion was an inherent component of mentoring. The academics in this study also emphasised the importance of senior level academics seeing their role as including mentoring unlike lecturer level academics who sought mentoring.

Ranieri et al. (2016) identified in their scoping review of the literature that work environments that included mentoring had a major positive influence on academics seeking promotion and that a supportive supervisor was also important to early career researchers. They also found that the literature focused on the barriers to effective promotion and found a gap in the literature that provided positive incentivisation and motivation to continue in academia (Ranieri et al., 2016). In addition, Pyke (2013) identified the importance of a having a mentor in the academic working environment as an integral component of one’s career aspirations. Diezmann and Grieshaber (2010) suggested mentoring was a catalyst for success for women applying for professorial roles.

Facilitators to promotion faced by academic women at the organisational level Academics in this study showed that a successful career also meant that they could contribute to others in the university and that they were providing some unique contribution back to the university. Similarly, other literature (White et al., 2011) found that women also contributed positively to their university decision-making. Academics in this study highlighted that more autonomy and choices scaffolded their career including support from their supervisor or Dean that has a positive practical contribution for other academics pursuing their promotion.

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Facilitators to promotion faced by academic women at the individual level Previous studies (Ylijoki, 2005; Ylijoki & Ursin, 2013) have highlighted the lack of autonomy and academic freedom that has been forced upon academics due to high intensive administration tasks, and managerialism that has reduced senior academics’ power (Göransson, 2011), however senior level academics in this study stated that they valued their autonomy. This study also found that academic women appreciated the flexibility of academic life that they experienced that resonates with young women in Santos’ (2016) study being able to juggle young children and work in their early careers. Conversely, women who take advantage of this flexibility may be caught up in a ‘flexibility stigma’ that results in their careers being derailed and further embedding gender inequality and ultimately may lead to different career trajectories (Padavic et al., 2019; White & Burkinshaw, 2019).

Limitations and future research opportunities The participation rate in focus groups was lower than expected. Several reasons provided by academics included industrial action, childcare issues, sick children, illness in academics and ‘being busy’. This project only offered live focus groups for participants, despite several staff requesting on-line and telephone interviews, that may have increased the response rate. Due to time and budgetary constraints additional focus groups were unable to be arranged. There were insufficient participants to identify differences between the STEMM and non-STEMM areas regarding barriers and facilitators to applying for / obtaining promotions.

There is an identified need for future research that includes extending the scope of the seeding grant to include interviews with all identified gender groups who are successful senior academics and professional staff across other schools and universities in addition to senior management staff in the private sector. Comparisons across the sectors can then be explored providing further opportunities to enhance our knowledge regarding barriers and facilitators to promotion to more senior positions for staff who are academics or professional staff members.

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that their role included mentoring less-senior academic staff and they saw their role as giving back to the community.

Less-senior academics were seeking mentoring specific to promotion and working in a collaborative way with others to write grants, promotional job applications and publications.

The tertiary sector would be wise to consider supporting collaborative mentorship arrangements for staff seeking promotion as a means of overcoming some of the barriers with more senior staff utilised to formally assist in this role.

Individual Women should be provided with more flexibility in their working patterns so that they are able to maintain better management of their family. Offering part-time employment should not preclude women from applying for more senior positions. Consideration should primarily involve the contribution of the woman’s work, rather than how many hours she has worked in her current role.

Conclusion There are numerous reasons why women might choose not to seek promotion in academia including structural issues that include excessive workloads and other colleagues, organisational issues that include lack of recognition and gender inequity issues and individual issues that include family and work life balance. Facilitators for overcoming barriers to promotion need to be considered for women in the workplace in light of the findings from this study.

Dr Lyn Francis is currently the Academic Course Advisor in the postgraduate Master of Nursing (Professional Studies) at Western Sydney University and research areas include domestic violence, gender equity, workplace bullying, health law and consent.

Practical implications

Associate Professor Virginia Stulz is currently working in a conjoint position and is currently Chief Investigator on four research projects in her district that investigate innovative models of midwifery care and improving birth options for women.

Contact: v.stulz@westernsydney.edu.au

Structural

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Barriers and facilitators for women academics seeking promotion Lyn Francis & Virginia Stulz

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Is mindfulness a useful next trend in doctoral supervision?

Nicolette Buirski Southern Cross University

A review of the trends in doctoral education reveals that the focus has been on what supervisors should do in supervision and very little on ways of being in the supervisory relationship. A new direction for doctoral supervision foregrounds the importance of mindfulness traits that well-regarded supervisors embody in their highly valued relationships with candidates, that tacitly establish rapport and create a supportive interpersonal environment that is conducive to the candidateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s intellectual insightfulness and developing scholarly identity. These traits are capable of being learned by supervisors, regardless of the disciplinary setting, and may inform the professional development of doctoral supervisors.

Keywords: Liminal spaces and threshold concept theory; mindfulness traits of well-regarded doctoral supervisors; doctoral supervisory relationship; supervisor development.

Introduction In Australia and most countries, the award of a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) generally requires the development of a thesis that scholars will judge for its significance and originality as a contribution to knowledge in a discipline or field of education.

Doctoral candidates must negotiate the intellectual and emotional challenges commonly associated with meeting the requirements for the award of a PhD. To this end, universities typically appoint one or more supervisors to guide and support the candidate. The desired characteristics and behaviours of doctoral supervisors have been extensively investigated, giving rise to the identification of a variety of models for best supervisory practice. Less well understood are the kinds of dispositional qualities of mind and character, which might be called mindfulness traits, that enable a supervisor to develop a strong intellectual and emotional rapport with a candidate within the supervisory relationship. This article suggests that there may be lessons from the rising trend of mindfulness in positive psychology, and particularly mindfulness in helping relationships, for promoting doctoral supervisory relationships vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

that may assist candidates to negotiate the liminal space of candidacy. The article begins with an overview of trends in doctoral education in Australia and globally.

Trends in the doctoral education literature In Australia, interest in doctoral education has been evident since the early 1980s. Issues of concern in the literature reported at that time included: the quality of doctoral supervision (Ibrahim, McEwan & Pitalbo, 1980; Barrett, Magin & Smith, 1983); a perceived lack of clarity about doctoral supervisory roles and responsibilities (Moses, 1984); deficiencies in the research and writing skills of doctoral candidates (Zuber-Skerritt & Knight, 1986); the lack of recognition given to doctoral candidates for their contributions to research (Powles, 1984); and poor retention and completion rates (Anderson & Johnston, 1983; Barrett & Magin, 1983; Hill, Johnston & Smith, 1983; Nightingale, 1984; Powles, 1989).

Interest in the quality of supervision intensified during the early 1990s, particularly as it pertained to improving on-time

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doctoral completions. Moses investigated gender-related and discipline-specific barriers to doctoral completions (Moses, 1990a; 1990b); and the Australian Vice-Chancellorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Committee (1990) examined the progress rates of doctoral candidates over a seven-year period from 1983. There also emerged an interest in the nature of supervisory quality.

Parry and Hayden (1994) investigated doctoral supervisory practices across a range of academic departments at a large metropolitan university in Melbourne; and Cullen et al., (1994), as part of a research project conducted at the Australian National University, surveyed doctoral supervisors and candidates in order to identify characteristics of effective doctoral supervision. A desire to see the research emphasis move away from administration, policy, finance, and governance also began to be expressed (Lee & Green, 1995).

Green and Lee (1995), building on an earlier assertion by Connell (1985) that doctoral supervision is a highly advanced form of teaching and not simply a technical exercise, identified the need for doctoral supervision to be seen as a pedagogy that involved complex power relations between the discipline, research and teaching.

Later in the 1990s, a Commonwealth Government review of higher education financing and policy (West, 1998) expressed further concern about lengthy doctoral completion times. It saw a link between these and supposed deficiencies in the quality of doctoral supervision. In the policy statement that followed, the Commonwealth Minister for Education emphasised the importance of universities being responsive to the needs, interests, and circumstances of doctoral candidates (Kemp, 1999). These developments prompted further investigation of doctoral student dissatisfaction. Harman (2003) reported that PhD candidates were largely dissatisfied with their supervision due to the high supervisory workloads that had become prevalent as enrolments escalated nationally, together with weaknesses in supervisory practices. Neumann (2003), drawing upon a large-scale survey of doctoral candidates and experienced supervisors, reported similarly.

She found that as many as 12 per cent of the candidates surveyed were dissatisfied with their experience of doctoral supervision, and five per cent of respondents expressed serious grievances (Neumann, 2003). Sinclair (2004) re-examined doctoral completion rates and reported marked differences between different disciplinary groupings, a finding that resonated with earlier reports by Becher, Henkel and Kogan (1994) in the UK, and by Parry and Hayden (1994) and Cullen et al. (1994) in Australia. Ways of improving doctoral supervisory practices were explored, including through professional development of doctoral supervisors (Pearson & Brew, 2002), the creation of models of facilitative supervisory practice (Pearson & Kayrooz, 2004), and evaluating the quality of doctoral supervision (Zuber-Skerritt & Roche, 2004). The trend in much of the research at this time was to

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respond to national and institutional imperatives to improve doctoral supervision in ways intended to achieve increased efficiency.

Notwithstanding the volume of research produced, there was still a lack of a robust conceptual understanding of what doctoral supervision involves (Pearson and Kayrooz, 2004). In a similar vein, Grant (2003) noted that while good supervision was widely considered to be central to the success of a doctoral candidate, it was a pedagogy that was poorly understood, with attempts to generate a unifying theory for supervisory pedagogy still limited. In Grantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s view, supervision was meant to be an ethical practice in which there were productive power relations between a doctoral candidate and a supervisor (Grant, 2003). However, Manathunga (2005), argued that research to date had erroneously portrayed supervision as an unproblematic teaching relationship that was understood to be a rational and transparent engagement between two equally powerful, autonomous individuals.

As doctoral enrolments continue to increase, the Australian literature on doctoral education has come to accommodate a broad range of concerns. Pearson (2005) argued the need to link critical developments in research on doctoral education in Australia with what is happening in the global context in this area of research. Manathunga (2005), responding to a trend in Australia and elsewhere for universities to prescribe supervisor training and development programs, criticised the focus of many of these programs, arguing that they were concerned solely with administrative responsibilities and that supervisors would benefit more from a pedagogical focus that took account of the cognitive and affective demands of doctoral supervision. Parry (2007) provided a detailed analysis of the nature and significance of disciplinary differences and, in the process, identified the largely tacit ways by which candidates learn disciplinary conventions. Boud and Lee (2009) identified the need to frame doctoral education as an area of professional practice that accommodates the various types of doctorates increasingly on offer. Nulty, Kiley and Meyers (2009) produced a framework for promoting and recognising excellence in supervision. Vilkinas, Leask and Ladyshewsky (2009) articulated a business management approach to doctoral supervision. Brew and Peseta (2009) investigated mechanisms for institutional recognition of successful doctoral supervisors. Halse and Malfoy (2010) presented an argument for theorising doctoral supervision as professional work, advancing a model that provided a discourse, language, and theory to prepare academics for understanding the task and responsibility of supervision.

The need to develop more relevant doctoral supervisory training programs has also been a theme in the related Australian literature. Hammond, Ryland, Tennant and Boud (2010), drawing upon a large-scale empirical investigation of existing supervisory training programs in Australian

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universities, identified a need to take account of the changing United States with a view to providing empirical evidence context of research education and of the impact that this that could be used to address the ‘woefully uneven’ quality of change is having on supervisory roles and responsibilities. They doctoral supervision. These researchers found that doctoral argued the need for a more formal and a more professional supervisor responsibilities were diverse: they included helping approach to supervisor training. Kiley (2011a) also identified candidates to be successful, and to develop as researchers this need. Drawing upon national data, including national and as professionals. Supervisory functions were reported to Postgraduate Research Experience Questionnaire survey include collaborating, mentoring, advocating, and chastising; data over the period from 2002 to 2009 that showed a slight and desirable supervisor characteristics were identified as improvement over time in candidate satisfaction levels with including being friendly, collegial, supportive, accessible and supervision, Kiley argued that although supervisory training honest (Barnes & Austin, 2009). According to Kiley (2011b), and development programs had become better informed by doctoral supervisors in Australia share many similarities with the increased focus on the pedagogy of research education, their American colleagues. there was only slight evidence that the quality of supervision Some pertinent themes and reference points from the had improved (Kiley, 2011a). literature on doctoral education include: how doctoral A more recent development in many Australian universities candidates achieve mastery of discipline-specific conventions has been the requirement to establish supervisory teams for making and reporting knowledge; what the characteristics or panels for each doctoral are of quality communication candidate.

Manathunga between doctoral supervisors Supervisory functions were reported (2012) argues in favour of and their candidates; and to include collaborating, mentoring, this requirement, suggesting whether or not there are that it provides better support tensions arising from the advocating, and chastising; and desirable for doctoral candidates and power imbalance between supervisor characteristics were identified their supervisors, particularly doctoral supervisors and as including being friendly, collegial, those in trans-disciplinary and their candidates that have a supportive, accessible and honest inter-disciplinary fields where potential to be disruptive. a broad range of intellectual Important reference points on expertise is required. This these themes include works by development has provided insight into the way the sector has Parry (2007), Wisker et al. (2008), Arnold (2009), Doloriert, responded with relative speed to the perceived needs of higher Sambrook and Stewart (2012), and Jasman (2012). Parry degree research candidates in the rapidly changing context of (2007) investigated the importance to doctoral completion of doctoral education in Australia, and globally. understanding field-specific cognitive and social conventions Parallels exist between the interests of Australian researchers for making and reporting knowledge, which she identified and those of researchers in other countries concerning as being communicated largely by tacit means. Wisker et al. doctoral supervision. One broad area of interest concerns the (2008) identified the heavy reliance of doctoral candidates on requirements for high quality supervision. Wisker (2005), the communication skills of their supervisors, including skills writing in the context of the UK, developed a comprehensive in communicating tacitly. Arnold (2009), building on research list of recommendations for supervisors to follow to provide

by Grant (1999), introduced insights from psychoanalysis effective supervision. Lee (2008), also drawing on experience as a means of exploring how doctoral supervisors might in the UK, argued that a more conceptual approach to learn from taking account of the requirements of onesupervision was required in order to add a new dimension to-one relationships between psychotherapists and their to doctoral supervisory relationships. Walker et al. (2008), clients. Doloriert et al. (2012), who investigated the nature drawing upon the results of a five-year project that sought of supervisor-candidate communications, identified the to transform doctoral programs at American universities, importance of emotion and how power within the supervisory reported that students who have had beneficial supervising relationship was managed. Jasman (2012) reported on an relationships often refer to themselves as ‘lucky’, highlighting initiative to make tacit elements of communication practices the almost random and haphazard access to high-quality more explicit in doctoral supervision so that these elements advising and mentoring (Walker et al., 2008). They also could be adequately questioned, reflected on, and changed. observed that ‘... effective teaching and advising of doctoral Doctoral education continues to be an important area for students should not be a matter of luck!’ (Walker et al., 2008). scholarly investigation. Cuthbert and Molla (2015) suggest Pursuing a related avenue of enquiry, Barnes and Austin that governments in many countries are now demonstrating by (2009, p.298) investigated the responsibilities, functions, their policies and auditing requirements that the management and characteristics of exemplary doctoral supervisors in the of the PhD is too important to be left to universities themselves. vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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Governments also have a vested interest in the efficiency and effectiveness of doctoral supervision. In Australia, at least, fees for doctoral candidature in public universities are publicly subsidised, and public funding is predicated upon expectations of timely completion by doctoral candidates. Attrition rates that are too high and completion rates that are too slow are routinely identified as being a drain on public resources.

High attrition rates also impose a significant personal cost on doctoral candidates. In Australia, as in other developed countries, there has been growth over recent decades in the number of doctoral candidates. Associated with this growth, as noted by Hammond et al. (2010), is an increase in the diversity of doctoral programs. As documented by Neumann (2003) there has also been an increase in the diversity of the backgrounds and aspirations of doctoral candidates.

In Australia, doctoral supervisors report increased pressure both to assist candidates to complete in minimum time (Connell & Manathunga, 2012) and to supervise in areas that lie close to the perimeter of their spheres of knowledge (Manathunga (2012). There are also reports of an increased incidence of cultural and linguistic differences between doctoral supervisors and their candidates (Hammond et al., 2010), of pressure on supervisors to accommodate the increasingly trans-disciplinary and applied nature of knowledge production (Taylor, 2013), and of an increasing need for PhD programs to be tailored to meet specific labourmarket needs (Muller & Young, 2014). These pressures impact significantly on doctoral supervision (Taylor, 2013) and they have important implications for the professional development needs of doctoral supervisors (Hammond et al., 2010). Though the circumstances of doctoral education are evolving, the fundamental need for quality in doctoral supervision remains.

Doctoral candidacy as a liminal space One perspective through which the successful supervisory relationship may be examined concerns the notion of liminal spaces, a concept that is associated with the threshold concept framework (Meyer & Land, 2006). A central tenet of liminality is that in all disciplines there are conceptual gateways, or threshold concepts, that must be passed through to arrive at important new understandings (Land, Meyer & Smith, 2008). One way of describing the difficulties of negotiating conceptual gateways is by likening them to the experience of being in a liminal space, or ‘limbo’, described by Turner (1977, p. 37) as being ‘between established states.’ A liminal space is a space of transformation, but, as Land et al.

(2008) argue, it can also be a suspended state, or stuck place, in which understanding approximates to a kind of mimicry and lack of authenticity. Various scholars have referred to the experience of doctoral candidature as being akin to a liminal

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space (see, for example, Trafford, 2008). Becher and Trowler (2001, p. 134) refer to it as a ‘rite of passage to the scholarly life’ in which the candidate is repeatedly confronted by conceptual challenges that must be addressed in order to make intellectual progress. In the liminal space of doctoral candidature, candidates negotiating threshold concepts are prone to experiencing feelings of uncertainty, ambiguity and a lack of authenticity (see, for example, Parry, 2007). Their intellectual challenges have emotional correlates, an appreciation of which is important knowledge for doctoral supervisors because of the relevance of emotions in candidature.

Doctoral candidates, by virtue of being in an extended state of liminality, are prone to feeling uncertain and apprehensive about the knowledge-making processes in which they are engaged. In these circumstances, the ways in which supervisors relate to and are perceived by their candidates becomes important. According to Spinelli (2005, p. 112), there are ‘ways of being’ embodied in a helping professional that are conveyed to and perceived by the client. In the same vein, Becher and Trowler (2001) employ the notion of ‘ways of being’ describing the process in which individual academics adopt a particular way of being, a personal and professional identity, set of values, taken-for-granted knowledge and recurrent practices.

Insights from helping relationships Some studies have drawn parallels between doctoral supervision and the helping professions, which include, for example, coaching, counselling and psychotherapy (see, for example, Arnold, 2009; Grant, 1999; McMichael & Garry, 1990). Bartlett and Mercer (2000) argue that many aspects of the doctoral supervisory relationship are to be found in a range of other professional relationships including those in mentoring, personnel management, and supervision between psychoanalysts. Similarly, Wisker et al. (2008) note that supervision has in common with mentoring, coaching and tutoring a one-to-one relationship intended to support a candidate and empower learning. Further, Arnold (2009) argues that supervisory pedagogy may benefit from interrogating the pedagogical aspects of psychotherapy, to enable a deeper understanding and richer practising of postgraduate supervision.

Rogers (1961) drew on his experience as a psychotherapist to argue that people are positive, constructive, moving towards self-actualisation, and growing towards maturity, and socialisation. Based on this positive view, Rogers (1969) advocated a facilitative way of teaching that gave expression to three conditions: congruence, where the facilitator is sincere rather than inauthentic in the role adopted in the relationship; unconditional positive regard, where the facilitator unreservedly accepts the learner without judgement; and

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empathetic understanding, where the facilitator identifies the nature of supportive interpersonal communication in with the feelings, thoughts and attitudes of the learner. the doctoral supervisory relationship. In psychotherapy, Rogers’ perspective provides an insight to the mindfulness for example, important qualities of the therapist in traits of doctoral supervisors. communicating with the client are ‘empathy, warmth, In order to effectively establish a working relationship with congruence, complex verbal skills, approval, supportiveness, a candidate, the doctoral supervisor is required to have a mix optimism and respect’ (Arnold, 2009). Siegel (2010, p. 180) of attitudes, behaviours, and skills in both the educational and refers to these qualities as ‘mindfulness traits.’ Richardson, interpersonal aspects of teaching and learning. Consistent Sheean and Bambling (2009, p. 72) draw attention also with this idea is Grant’s (2003) argument that supervision is to the ethical aspect of the qualities that counsellors and different from other forms of teaching and learning in higher psychotherapists should demonstrate, including: ‘empathy, education because of its peculiarly intense and negotiated sincerity, integrity, resilience, respect, humility, competence, character, as well as in its requirements for a blend of fairness, wisdom and courage.’ Qualities such as these may be pedagogical and personal relationship skills in the supervisor. equally important for doctoral candidates to experience in According to Rogers’ (1961) definition of the helping their interpersonal communications with their supervisors. relationship, the supervisory relationship is a helping Second, each of the helping professions shares a requirement relationship. By this term, Rogers means a relationship for practitioners to have highly developed interpersonal in which at least one of communication skills, together the parties has the intent with supportive attitudes and In order to effectively establish a working of promoting the growth, behaviours, that need to be relationship with a candidate, the doctoral development, maturity, developed and learned by the improved functioning, practitioner in order to achieve supervisor is required to have a mix of improved coping with life a successful relationship with attitudes, behaviours, and skills in both the of the other. Clearly, this clients. Effective interpersonal educational and interpersonal aspects of definition covers a wide range communications skills seem teaching and learning. of relationships, including also to be essential for doctoral the supervisory relationship. supervision, but doctoral It is important to note that supervisors do not always doctoral supervisors are not helping professionals, and innately acquire these skills, and the department, faculty or a supervisory relationship is, therefore, fundamentally institution in which they work may not necessarily require different from a helping relationship, particularly in that it them to receive relevant training. Indeed, supervisors may is not a healing relationship. There may, however, be merit also need to develop emotional management skills. Most in interrogating parallels between the nature of the doctoral Australian universities have mandatory training for novice supervisory relationship and the relationship that typically supervisors that, as Kiley (2011a) observes, are intended occurs between helping professionals and their clients. to raise awareness about candidate expectations, roles and Important parallels between a client-centred approach responsibilities, and about the need to implement effective to the helping professions and doctoral supervision are that supervisory practices. Doctoral supervisors may, however, both relationships typically involve learning conversations; remain relatively untrained in interpersonal communications both are constructed around one-to-one relationships that skills when compared to the helping professions, where, are developed over a long period of time; and both involve according to Richardson et al. (2009), professionals are problem-solving, often in an atmosphere of emotional typically trained in interpersonal relationship-building discomfort and an unequal power balance. Seen in this skills over a number of years. Therefore, just as the helping way, certain responsibilities may be attributed to doctoral professionals are required to be skilled in the interpersonal supervisors in working successfully with individual candidates, dimension of the therapeutic relationship, so, arguably, might including a responsibility to guide and support the candidate doctoral supervisors be required to be skilled in interpersonal in negotiating the liminal challenges associated with doctoral communications in their supervisory relationships. The candidature. importance of training supervisors in interpersonal Useful insights about the quality of supportive doctoral communication skills has implications for the quality of the supervisory relationships can be drawn from the broader supervisory relationship. therapeutic context of the helping professions. First, what A great deal of research over the past three decades has is particularly noteworthy in making the comparison is produced models of doctoral supervision (see, for example, that the qualities in communication required in the helping Cullen et al., 1994), lists of attributes of productive relationship might provide a deeper understanding of supervisors (Kiley, 2011b), and inventories of characteristics vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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and behaviours of exemplary supervisors (see, for example, Barnes & Austin, 2009). The purpose of much of this research has been to establish what doctoral supervisors should know and should do to be successful as supervisors, particularly given the pressures on them to accommodate changes in the context of doctoral supervision. Various scenarios have been developed, but their reach has not extended to take fully into account the importance of the dispositional qualities, or mindfulness traits, of supervisors in establishing rapport in the supervisory relationship.

The interpersonal communication between a supervisor and candidate, according to Lee (2008) and Wisker et al.

(2008), is critical to developing a high-quality supervisory relationship. It might be expected that the non-verbal elements of communication play an important role in the development of such a relationship. By their nature, dispositional qualities are communicated mainly by tacit means, as Gerholm (1990) explains. It follows that non-verbal communication plays a pivotal role in how dispositional qualities are conveyed within interpersonal relationships, including in a doctoral supervisory relationship. According to Wisker et al. (2008), non-verbal communication in doctoral supervision is experienced by picking up unspoken messages conveyed by choice of words, emotional undertones, behaviours, and body language. Non-verbal communication creates a particular tone in the communication between supervisor and candidate. It is also used to establish rapport in the one-to-one supervisory relationship (Wisker et al., 2008). According to Parry (2007), the importance of rapport in a successful supervisory relationship cannot be underestimated. She noted, though, that its importance is not given much empirical attention in the literature.

Supervisors have been shown to facilitate, largely by tacit means, the learning of academic conventions that are rooted in disciplinary norms. An examination of the tacit nature of the practices of well-regarded doctoral supervisors may provide a means by which such practices can be made explicit.

Other than in research by Becher (1989), Parry (2007) and Jasman (2012), there has been little acknowledgement to date of the role and importance of tacit cues, behaviours and conveyances of meaning between supervisors and their candidates. A central concern, therefore, is the nature of what is tacitly communicated between supervisors and their candidates, while acknowledging that not all elements of tacit communication may be described (Polyani, 1983).

Conclusion This article has presented some trends in doctoral education over the last few decades showing how the focus has moved from financing and policy to models of supervision to the professional development needs of supervisors. Framing

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doctoral candidacy as a liminal space characterised by isolation, ambiguity, and uncertainty, and marked by anxiety for doctoral candidates, suggests that the doctoral supervisory relationship is highly important to the success of the candidate.

This article has highlighted the importance of taking lessons from the helping profession, and particularly mindfulness in positive psychology, as a possible useful new trend in improving doctoral supervisory relationships. To the extent that the elements of tacit communication between supervisors and candidates may be described and documented, it may be possible to identify the mindfulness traits of well-regarded supervisors. Achieving this outcome would shed light on the ways in which highly valued supervisory relationships develop. Further, it may provide ways to inform the effective professional development of supervisors.

Nicolette Buirski is a lecturer at SCU College - Southern Cross University, Australia and a consultant to SCPA working with PhD students in developing their theses.

Contact: nicolette.b.burger@gmail.com

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Change and continuity in Australian doctoral education PhD completion rates and times (2005-2018) Marc Torka University of Sydney

Australia is following a global trend in doctoral education policy to improve PhD completion times and rates. It is widely believed that accurate data on PhD completion are needed to assess the success of reforms and drive changes in doctoral education. In this article, new national completion data (2005-2018) provided by the Australian Department of Education and Training (DET) have been employed to examine changes and continuities in the Australian doctoral education system. The findings demonstrate that Australian completion rates and times have changed only slightly over time, exceed normative expectations and systematically differ by student characteristics, disciplines and institutions. The article suggests that better completions data are needed to guide detailed research into the structural conditions that determine completion. This knowledge would help to base future reforms on evidence rather than normative expectations and to realign expected with actual completion times and rates.

Keywords: Doctoral education, institutional change, completion times and rates

Introduction Completing a PhD has always been a matter of concern, but the focus of the discourse has changed over time. Early debates raised the question of whether the completion of a PhD should be a necessary requirement to obtain academic positions ( James, 1903; Parsons & Platt, 1968). Since the late 1980s, high attrition rates and concerns that many students start but never complete their PhD dominated the discourse (Bourke et al., 2004; Lovitts, 2001). Today the question is how long it takes and should take to complete a PhD. It has been argued that low completion rates and long completion times are detrimental to students’ self-esteem, employability and career progress (Lovitts & Nelson, 2000). It is further argued that poor completion rates and times may damage the reputation of institutions and their capacity to attract promising students as well as funding. PhD students who take longer vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

than expected may occupy free slots, and overload unpaid supervisors or coursework capacities (Horta et al., 2019). For funding agencies and governments low completion rates and long completion times are simply an ‘unacceptable wastage of private and public resources’ that undermines the expectation to gain ‘reasonable return on their investments’ (Kemp, 1999, pp. 2, 18). As a result of these concerns, PhD completion developed from an individual intellectual challenge to an abstract indicator of institutional, organisational or systemic levels of success. Although the reliability and validity of this indicator is contested, information on completion rates and times is highly sought after and has been widely used to allocate funding, compare and restructure doctoral programs within and across national doctoral education systems (Geven et al., 2018; Hall et al., 2006; Palmer, 2016; Spronken-Smith et al., 2018). This international trend towards a data driven ‘governance by numbers’ (Heintz, 2008) heavily relies on a ‘trust in numbers’ (Porter, 1995). For this reason, higher

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education policies around the globe aim to create and use more trustworthy data sets to drive change and improve PhD completion in doctoral education systems.

In Australia, concerns about PhD completion can be traced back to the 1960s (Rodwell & Neumann, 2008) culminating in the Dawkins reforms in the late 1980s. Given the late introduction of Australian PhD degrees, with the first not awarded until 1948, early reforms primarily aimed to increase PhD numbers by creating specific postgraduate pathways, training programs and funding opportunities to encourage students to undertake doctoral studies in Australia rather than overseas (Torka, 2019). Dawkins’ reforms explicitly focused on monitoring completion: ‘The Government has recently asked institutions to develop action plans to improve the present low rates of course completion in postgraduate study. The Government will monitor the implementation and effectiveness of these plans’ (Dawkins, 1987, p. 71). Since then, completion numbers have become a significant performance indicator. They contribute 50 per cent to the formula which determines the allocation of Australia’s national postgraduate funding scheme (known as the Research Training Scheme to 2017 and the Research Training Program after) (Kemp, 1999, p. 19). Institutional reforms emerged to further drive timely PhD completion by reducing expected candidature time from traditionally four towards three full-time years, introducing new preparatory pathways such as the master’s by research degree, mandatory coursework, supervisor training as well as annual progress reviews (Torka, 2019) and creating a ‘completion mindset’ (Green & Bowden, 2012) to ‘“speed up” candidature’ (Kiley, 2017, p. 82). While some international studies show that such reforms can improve actual PhD completion times and rates (Geven et al., 2018; Kyvik & Olsen, 2014; Skopek et al., 2020), evidence for Australia is largely missing. This is why the Australian Council of Learned Academies’ (ACOLA) most recent review of Australia’s research training system demands better completion data to ‘assess’ impacts of these organisational reforms, ‘drive performance improvements in the system’, help ‘students to make informed choices’ about the best available Australian PhD programs and enable ‘international benchmarking of HDR [higher degree by research] training’ (ACOLA, 2016, p. ix). Subsequently, the study of completion times and rates has become a priority in current Australian doctoral education policy. A working group established to implement the ACOLA report recommendations is currently exploring how existing DET completion data and methodologies can be used to that end (Department of Education and Training, 2018b, p. 16). A recent report focuses on completion rates of all HDR students including those graduating with doctorates and master’s by research (Department of Education, 2020).

To differentiate between these two very different degree trajectories, in this study the focus is on PhD completion

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rates and times using a subset of existing DET data. The first section describes the dataset and critically assesses its quality.

The second section compares the development of median completion times (MCT) and cumulative completion rates (CCR) over time to investigate factors that may speed up or slow down completion. The data indicate slightly improved completion rates and times, a mismatch between expected and actual completion times as well as remaining differences between research field, institution and cohort-specific completion rates. These outcomes contradict the common notion of a radically ‘Changing PhD’ (Group of Eight, 2013).

The conclusion section therefore includes presentations on both changes and continuities in Australian doctoral education and outlines implications of the results for future research and reforms.

Data, methods and definitions When analysing PhD completion and assessing the quality of the underlying dataset we need to know how the completion process has been constructed, defined and measured. In this study I have drawn on national DET completion data from 2005 to 2018, covering all PhD students, granting institutions and fields of education in Australia. It only takes ‘Doctorates

by Research’ into account and excludes master’s by research students (1,584 in 2018) as well as the small number of ‘Doctorates by Coursework’ (119) and ‘Higher Doctorates’ (11) compared to 8,647 ‘Doctorates by Research’ in 2018 (Department of Education, 2019), thereby focusing on the internationally most common Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). ‘Doctorate by Research’ is the term used in DET data for doctorates most similar to PhD. Previous research about Australian PhD completion has relied on single university case studies and selective disciplines due to a lack of published national data (ACOLA, 2016, p. 73; Bourke et al., 2004; Hall et al., 2006; Jiranek, 2010; Martin, 2001; Neumann & Rodwell, 2009; Palmer, 2016; Pitchforth et al., 2012; Rodwell & Neumann, 2008; Snyder & Forgasz, 2008).

National completion data allow for comparisons between and generalisations beyond these (at times) more detailed single case studies.

DET uses student IDs and Commonwealth Higher Education Student Support Number (CHESSN) to track the time elapsed between commencing and completing a PhD course for each student even if they move between Australian institutions. This measurement is commonly known as ‘elapsed’ time-to-degree (ETD) as opposed to ‘total’ time-to-degree (TTD)’ and ‘registered’ time-to-degree (RTD) (Bowen & Rudenstine, 1992, p. 113). DET data links ETD to a range of student characteristics (sex, age, Indigenous origin, domestic/ international, full/part-time) and institutional factors (field of study, type of university, funding) that are likely to influence

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completion (Bourke et al., 2004; Latona & Browne, 2001).

This enables comparative research into the conditions that shape the completion process.

ETD is a widely used, readily available but also an imprecise measure due to common definitional, tracking and reporting difficulties. DET measures ETD in years rather than months and ETD does not accurately account for previous studies, the time students took off or the dynamics that may occur during candidature (Bourke et al., 2004, p. 3). While counting periods of leave is likely to increase the measured time to degree, the institutional strategy of transferring elements of the PhD process to preparatory studies may reduce it. Some programs such as the ‘Macquarie Model’ expect students to find supervisors, design and carry out some parts of a larger PhD project during the master’s by research. Not only is the start of a PhD difficult to define and measure consistently, but so is the completion. According to DET, ‘course completion is recorded when a student has completed all the requirements of the course. This is not a prescriptive definition and may be interpreted differently by different higher education providers’ (private communication, 11 June 2019). They may report any date from thesis submission, receipt of examiner reports to the final conferral of the title (Palmer, 2016, p. 114).

Furthermore, DET data do not accurately track the dynamics of the PhD journey such as changes between full-time and part-time roles or between fields of education because, according to the Department, types of attendance are only recorded at the beginning or at the end of candidature. This means for example that a student might start in a ‘Sciences’ degree full-time but may switch to a part-time ‘Arts’ degree later. Several studies also found that enrolment status does not predict how much students actually work on the PhD leading to the counterintuitive result that part-time students are actually faster in equivalent-time terms (Bourke et al., 2004; Neumann & Rodwell, 2009; Rodwell & Neumann, 2008). A last difficulty is that, so far, DET data are only available in aggregated rather than at a student-level format.

This means that inter-relationships between variables are difficult to observe (Department of Education and Training, 2018a). Differences in the completion rates and times by institution, for example, may be due to a myriad of underlying factors such as funding, research culture and environment or the capacity to attract usually faster international or high achieving students. A precise explanation would require access to more fine-grained information to break down and analyse compound factors.

While these limitations apply to all PhD students, granting institutions and disciplinary fields equally, they also restrict the analysis methods we can use and the way in which we should look at completion data. All completion data should be used with caution and in context, particularly if we aim to compare the completion process across different cohorts, disciplines, vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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institutions or even doctoral education systems (Hall et al., 2006). The review of existing research will show mixed results in almost every dimension of the complex completion process and this is mostly due to specific definitions, data, methods and doctoral education systems. In order to deal with always incomplete, imprecise and context specific information on completion, Palmer recommends using completion time and rate data as ‘raw’ and ‘crude’ indicators to understand the completion processes rather than precise measures of quality or success. Accordingly, the interpretation of such data needs to be informed by additional information about the context in which doctoral education takes place (Palmer, 2016). The analysis here follows a ‘pragmatic approach’ (Rodwell & Neumann, 2008) using two descriptive completion measures to shed light on contextual factors that influence completion times and rates. The results of these analyses can be used to inform further investigations and the creation of evidencebased institutional support systems.

The first measure is the length of candidature for exiting cohorts (2005-2017). These data are useful to calculate and compare median completion times (MCT) over time.

The second is the study of completion rate, measured as the percentage of students of a commencing cohort that has completed the PhD in each year since commencement. The study uses a nine-year scale to account for usually longer completion times and lower completion rates among parttime students. Completion rates and times are examined simultaneously by calculating so-called cumulative completion rates (CCR) (Bowen & Rudenstine, 1992, p. 119). Although CCR is actually a summation of rates rather than a rate itself, the article will follow the convention in completion studies to refer to cumulative completions as a rate. CCR curves show a general pattern that is useful to compare different completion processes by discipline, institution type and student characteristics. In Australia, completion rates tend to leap up rapidly after four to six elapsed years before levelling off towards the ultimate completion rate (see Figures 1-9). Differences in the pattern indicate specific conditions that may speed up or slow down completion. The comparison of completion rates over time focuses on 2005 (first available data), 2009 (last year covering the entire nine-year scale) and 2013 that includes the fifth candidature year (2018 last year covered) in which most Australian students complete their PhD.

Findings The typical pathway to doctoral studies in Australia is to complete either a traditional one-year honours or internationally better known master’s degree following at least three years of undergraduate studies. Australian doctoral education policy traditionally expects students to complete a PhD within four equivalent full-time years. The aim is

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Table 1: Candidature length for PhDs awarded in 2005, 2010 and 2017 2005

2010

All n= 5244

2 yr & less

%

Domestic

Overseas

All

n= 4250

n= 994

n= 6053

%

%

2017 %

Domestic

Overseas

All

n= 4456

n= 1597

n= 9054

%

%

%

Domestic

Overseas

n= 5525

n= 3529

%

%

99

2%

79

2%

20

2%

123

2%

83

2%

40

3%

154

2%

110

2%

44

1%

3 yr

242

5%

166

4%

76

8%

297

5%

167

4%

130

8%

291

3%

170

3%

121

3%

4 yr

936

18%

688

16%

248

25%

1191

18%

732

16%

459

29%

1586

18%

808

15%

778

22%

5 yr

1422

27%

1,042

25%

380

38%

1849

28%

1,259

28%

590

37%

3310

37%

1,737

31%

1,573

45%

6 yr

937

18%

807

19%

130

13%

1027

16%

797

18%

230

14%

1782

20%

1,087

20%

695

20%

7 yr

593

11%

513

12%

80

8%

551

8%

475

11%

76

5%

795

9%

609

11%

186

5%

8 yr

369

7%

342

8%

27

3%

376

6%

337

8%

39

2%

397

4%

327

6%

70

2%

9 yr & more

646

12%

613

14%

33

3%

639

10%

606

14%

33

2%

739

8%

677

12%

62

2%

Median

5.0

5.2

4.4

4.8

5.0

4.3

4.8

5.0

4.5

Source: DET completion data, author’s calculations

currently to further reduce completion time to 3.5 or even three years (ACOLA, 2016, p. xiii; Group of Eight, 2013, p.

41). Postgraduate funding mechanisms (RTS, the Research Training Scheme or since 2017 RTP, the Research Training Program) that cover up to four years’ tuition fees and three to 3.5 years’ living allowance stipends reflect this normative expectation. How long it actually takes to complete a PhD in Australia is not reflected in policies and funding schemes.

This analysis will explore Australian PhD completion times and rates in three steps. First, the development of median completion times between 2005 and 2017 will investigate the relation between expected and real completion patterns.

Second, the comparison of CCRs by discipline, institution type and funding availability aims to reveal structural conditions that drive or slow down completion. Finally, the comparison of CCRs by different student characteristics investigates how social conditions contribute to completion.

Median candidature length of exiting PhD cohorts (2005-2017) The median candidature length of exiting cohorts provides a first overview of how long it usually takes to complete a PhD in Australia. Table 1 shows the distribution of students who completed their PhD in 2005, 2010 and 2017 within a set period of time (1-9 years).

Most students complete their PhD in the fifth year. The median completion time (MCT) for all students is consistently around five years with a slight decrease by 0.2 years since 2010. Overseas students are significantly faster than domestic students with a MCT between 4.3 and 4.5 years. While the percentage of early completions (three and less years) tend to

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equalise over time at a low level (4-5 per cent), completion times differentiate between domestic and overseas students in the following years. The percentage of overseas students completing in year four and five is significantly higher and late completions (seven and more years) are rare compared to domestic students. This pattern indicates that the rising proportion of PhDs awarded to faster overseas students (from 19 per cent in 2005 to 39 per cent in 2017, see Figure 7) is a main driver in reducing Australian overall completion times.

Faster completions among overseas students may be due to a range of factors such as visa restrictions, the threat of high tuition fees or differences in the overall career situation of overseas students (see Figure 8).

While Table 1 does not account for contextual factors that may drive completion, it can be used to address the question of whether the focus of doctoral education policy on completion has enhanced actual completion times. This is only partly the case. The data show a consistent mismatch between the expected three to four years and actual MCTs for all students.

The percentage of students who completed their PhD after four or fewer years has even fallen from 25 per cent in 2005 and 2010 to 23 per cent in 2017. What has changed is that more overseas as well as domestic students complete after five to six years and fewer of them in the following years resulting in a slight overall decrease of MCTs from 5.0 in 2005 to 4.8 years in 2010 and 2017. This is certainly due to the higher intake of faster overseas students but also to doctoral education policies for timely completion that apply to all students. Domestic students seem to catch up, as the difference between domestic and overseas students’ median completion times fell steadily from 9.6 months in 2005, to 8.4 months in 2009 and six months in 2013. This preliminary result needs to be further

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examined as the data do not account for differences between full-and part-time roles or other student characteristics and only applies to exiting rather than commencing cohorts.

Overall completion rates of PhD students commencing in 2005, 2010 and 2013

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timely completion manifest after the expected maximum of four years candidature. To further detail factors that drive or slow down completion, the next sections compare the overall CCR with structural conditions (disciplines, institutions and funding) and a number of student characteristics.

Disciplinary differences

Comparisons between commencing cohorts are more reliable than between exiting cohorts because students start the PhD under similar institutional conditions. Cumulative completion rates (CCRs) of commencing PhD student cohorts are useful to investigate how structural factors and student characteristics influence the completion process. CCRs show the percentage of each entering cohort that earned a PhD against the number of years since commencement. It is the nature of CCRs that they grow from year to year, but their patterns and pace of growth may differ due to the conditions under which students pursue a PhD. As mentioned before, Australian CCRs display a general pattern. Completion rates tend to leap up rapidly between the fourth and sixth years before levelling off towards the ultimate completion rate. Figure 1 shows the CCR of all Australian PhD students commencing in 2005, 2009 and 2013.

Overall completion rates have slightly increased between 2005 and 2009. While both cohorts show similar completion rates until the end of year four, they differentiate in years five and six as the 2009 cohort is four to seven per cent above 2005 completion rate levels. Thereafter the rates per year are roughly equal, as evidenced by the two curves being parallel from year 6 onwards. This trend may continue as the 2013 cohort completion rate is again three per cent above 2009 levels in the fifth year. The steady slow rise of completion rates is due to a range of factors including policies that focus on timely completion. The pattern indicates that pressures for

80% Per cent of completed PhDs

70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

Most international studies (Abedi & Benkin, 1987; Booth & Satchell, 1995; Groenvynck et al., 2013; Jiranek, 2010; Rent & Anderson, 1996; Rodwell & Neumann, 2008; SpronkenSmith et al., 2018; van de Schoot et al., 2013; Visser et al., 2007; Wright & Cochrane, 2000) show that ‘completion rates and time-to-degree vary more significantly with field of study than with any other variable’ (Bowen & Rudenstine, 1992, p. 123). Figures 2 and 3, contrasted with other factors in further figures, demonstrate that this pattern is also valid in the Australian context. Figure 2 shows the 2009 CCRs for all broad fields of education distinguished in DET data, while Figure 3 focuses on selected fields to investigate the development of CCRs from 2005 to 2013.

While Natural and Physical Sciences (hereafter ‘Sciences’), Engineering, Agriculture, Health and Information Technology are above or at the level of average completion rates, all other fields are below with Education as an obvious outlier. This pattern is similar in other doctoral training systems (National Science Foundation, 2019, p.

10) and suggests that differences in the completion process are attributable to field-specific socio-epistemic conditions (Torka, 2018) and related ways of pursuing a PhD (Bowen & Rudenstine, 1992, pp. 123-141). Students in science-related fields, for instance, typically undertake a PhD within highly structured research environments. They are often part of a research team, usually contributing to ongoing research and developing their thesis generally within consolidated intellectual frameworks or projects at times predefined by supervisors (van Rooij et al., 2019). By contrast, PhD students in the multi-paradigmatic social sciences and humanities often work alone and are expected to develop individualised PhD projects that may or may not align with the research of supervisors (Manathunga, 2005; Seagram et al., 1998). In addition, PhDs in other research fields such as Engineering, Information Technology, Health 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 or Education have a much more Years elapsed applied character and often 2005 All All 2013 All Figure 1: CCR of all PhD students2009 commencing in 2005, 2009 and 2015 contribute to professional work

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and reach the highest levels in year seven (76), eight (80) and nine (82 per cent). A reason for this pattern might be that PhD students often depend on a specific lab, cannot leave before completion and they need the title to find a job as a postdoc or in commercial labs. In engineering we find a slightly different pattern.

CCRs in Engineering reach the highest levels until year six and level off rapidly afterwards. Engineers seem to either complete in a timely fashion or late. The high proportion of usually fast overseas PhD students in Engineering (32.1 per cent in 2009, see Dobson, 2012, p. 99) and difficulties in combining PhD work with work commitments in Engineering industries after Figure 2: CCR 2009 all Broad Fields of Education funding has expired are the most likely contributors to this pattern. environments beyond academia. Such different settings Management shows a similar influence the PhD process and create characteristic completion pattern and shares some characteristics with completion rate patterns.

Engineering. Management had the highest proportion of Most of the 9,884 students commencing a PhD in 2009 overseas students in 2009 (33.2 per cent, Dobson, 2012) and were enrolled in Society and Culture (‘Arts’) (2,244) and prepares students for professional careers that may not allow Sciences (2,070), followed by Engineering (1,390), Health to complete a PhD while working. After seven years, CCRs (1,310), Management (857), Education (669), Agriculture in Management level off and merge with Society and Culture (427), Creative Arts (386), IT (363) and a small number of and Creative Arts patterns that are consistently about five 168 PhD students in Architecture (Department of Education per cent below average. The CCR pattern in Architecture is and Training, 2014). CCRs in the Sciences grow consistently inconsistent most likely due to small PhD student numbers and Education consistently shows the lowest completion rates.

A possible explanation could be that students in Education pursue a PhD as a side project, while already working in the education sector. This means more distraction but also more independence from funding systems and the restrictions that come with them. Most students (≥50 per cent) in Education complete their PhD after eight compared to five years in Sciences and Engineering or six years in most other fields. Although CCRs vary considerable between fields, a mismatch between actual and expected completion times Figure 3: CCR by selected Broad Fields of Education 2005, 2009 and 2013 applies to all. To explore whether

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field-specific patterns have changed over time, we consider Figure 3 which compares the development of CCRs in three contrasting fields.

The fields with most PhD students, Sciences and Society & Culture, represent a ‘fast’ and ‘below average’ and Education an exceptional ‘slow’ completion process. All following figures use line tones to indicate commencement years (2013 black, 2009 dark grey and 2005 light grey) and dash types for different groupings.

Figure 3 shows that the general pattern of ‘fast’, ‘below average’ and ‘slow’ completion persists from 2005 to 2013, despite increasing enrolment numbers (Total +46) in Sciences (+47), Society & Culture (+25) and Education (+6 per cent) in all and growing completion rates in most fields. In Education, the rise of completion rates is inconsistent. After a strong increase of about 8 per cent between 2005 and 2009, completion rates tend to fall in the 2013 cohort. These ups and downs might be an effect of smaller PhD numbers or of specific ways how students pursue a PhD in Education as described before. The overall pattern demonstrates an ‘elevator effect’ (Beck, 2007, p. 687) in which disciplinary differences remain within overall improved completion rates and times. Improvements occur across disciplines and must be due to changes in the general environment in which students pursue their PhD, including policies for timely completion.

As differences between fields persist, these policies have not affected the field-specific conditions that may drive or slow down completion. Conversely, Australian doctoral education policies and funding mechanisms do not differentiate by disciplines although the field of study explains most variations in empirical completion times and rates.

Institutional differences Figure 4 shows the CCRs of different university types.

Although Dawkins (1987) introduced a unified university system in the late 1980s, differences between large researchintensive Group of Eight (GO8) and other universities remain.

The proportion of PhDs awarded by non-GO8 universities increased steadily since Dawkins reforms (Dobson, 2012) and reached 51 per cent in 2018. This means that the eight GO8 universities are still the largest PhD producers, but other universities are catching up in size as well as completion rates and times. vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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Figure 4: CCR by types of university In the period 2005 to 2013, completion rates improved at all universities. While GO8 universities improved their completion rates only by about 4 per cent between 2005 and 2009, all other universities increased them by seven to nine per cent in the same period. This indicates that differences between ‘types of university’ are shrinking and may converge in the long run. This development could be a result of doctoral education policies aiming at timely completion or an effect of a range of institutional factors that are difficult to break down on the basis of DET data. International research suggests that the quality of the student intake, of the academic environment, and financial support to students are the three most important institutional factors that drive completion rates (Geven et al., 2018; Skopek et al., 2020; Stricker, 1994).

These include for example the ability to select potentially faster high achieving or international students, to create a beneficial research environment with a low student-supervisor ratio and intense research training or to attract and offer enough postgraduate funding. To estimate the influence of funding, enrolment status and a number of student characteristics on the completion process, the next sections compare specific student groups with average CCRs. Differences indicate that contextual factors impact on completion rates.

PhD funding The relationship between PhD funding and completion times or rates is complex even if we focus on direct funding for student living expenses rather than implications of general research and higher education funding. Empirical studies have produced mixed results due to a range of interacting factors (Horta et al., 2019, p. 3). Whether PhD funding generally

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years. This might be a selection effect as recipients of stipends are often high achieving students or a long-term normative effect of funding as scholarships always come with the expectation to complete in a timely fashion. The difference between students with and without a stipend has slightly increased from 2005 to 2009. In both years, most scholarship holders (≥ 50 per cent) completed the PhD after five and non-scholarship recipients after seven years. While completion rates of scholarship holders increased by four to six per cent from 2005 to 2009, those of non-scholarship holders remained unchanged (+one or two per cent). These differences Figure 5: CCRs of domestic students with APA and without scholarship indicate that scholarship holders can cope better with the expectation to reduces (Abedi & Benkin, 1987) or extends (Stock et al., complete in a timely fashion and may be subject to enhanced 2011) the time to complete a PhD may depend on the type institutional pressure inscribed in the postgraduate funding (de Valero, 2001; Ehrenberg & Mavros, 1995) and length mechanisms. Although the formula does not directly account of funding (Kim & Otts, 2010; Skopek et al., 2020), as well for completion rates or times, the Government compensates as the research productivity and credentials accumulated institutions only for a maximum of four years’ tuition fees paid during candidature (Horta et al., 2019) to face labour market on completion (Kiley, 2017). CCRs also indicate that incentives conditions (Breneman, 1976). to further reduce completion times are rather weak (King & Figure 5 compares the CCRs of domestic students who hold Dobson, 2003) as completion rates leap up rapidly after four an Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) scholarship with years. As scholarship holders usually have more impressive entry those who are not equipped with any scholarship. Overseas qualifications than most other candidates and are expected to students and other funding opportunities have been excluded enrol full-time (Bourke et al., 2004), the impact of enrolment to ensure comparability. Overseas students are subject to status on completion rates needs to be examined in more detail. different conditions such as visa restrictions and high tuition fees (see below) or may have access to international funding Enrolment status schemes not recorded in DET data. Other Australian funding opportunities such as a range of university stipends ‘Completion rates can be strongly skewed by differences in or supervisors’ grants are not considered to control for similar enrolment patterns’ (Hall et al., 2006, p. 5). For this reason, it funding conditions. Domestic doctoral students do not pay is necessary to estimate the effect of the enrolment status on tuition fees and the APA covers a maximum of 3.5 equivalent completion. DET data only track students’ enrolment status full-time years’ living allowance that enables them to focus on at the beginning or end of their doctoral studies. Changes the PhD rather than other work duties. APA stipend award between full- and part-time status during candidatures as well numbers (and rates) have increased from 1,550 (A$ 18,872) as actual time spent in employment are not recorded. DET in 2005, 2,584 (A$ 20,427) in 2009 to 3,500 (A$ 24,653) in assumes that part-time students work only 50% although 2013 (Department of Education and Training, 2016). research has shown that they spend much more time on Domestic CCRs increase significantly if students hold an their PhD and actually complete earlier (Bourke et al., 2004; APA scholarship. Cohorts start to differentiate from three years Neumann & Rodwell, 2009; Rodwell & Neumann, 2008). onwards. In each following year completion rates of scholarship However, Figure 6 demonstrates that the entry enrolment holders are between 16 and 23 per cent higher than those of status strongly influences completion rates and times. students without stipends. Although most APA recipients In 2005 and 2009, only about 50 per cent of part-time and are full-time students and the stipend only lasts 3.5 full-time 73 to 79 per cent of full-time students completed the PhD equivalent years, the curves keep diverging in the following after nine years’ candidature. In the period 2005 to 2013,

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Figure 6: CCRs full- and part-time students

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improved consistently, part-time studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; completion rates merge over time.

To analyse social conditions that may drive or impede completion rates and times, CCRs of specific student groups will be examined. The analysis is restricted to full-time students to account for enrolment status effects. Changes in the composition of the Australian PhD student population may influence overall completion rates and times. Figure 7 shows overall Australian PhD numbers (left) and how the proportion of female, Indigenous, mature and overseas students developed from 2004 to 2017 (right axis).

Indigenous figures are plotted as ten times the real figure to visualise changes despite very

completion rates of full-time students increased steadily, while CCR patterns of part-time students show ups and downs. small numbers.

Completion rates of part-time students fell from 26 to 20 per The proportion of female PhD students is consistently high cent between 2005 and 2009 and jumped to 32 per cent in at around 50 per cent and their completion rates and times 2013 at the five year mark, but tended to level off afterwards only marginally differ from average CCRs (see Figure 9). This most likely due to a high proportion of late completers. indicates that gender does not affect Australian completion While CCRs of full-time students are S-shaped with a clear rates in the observed period. Indigenous PhD students are rush between years four and six, part-timers show constant underrepresented in Australia. Only 0.4 to 0.9 per cent of all rates of completion. Most (â&#x2030;Ľ 50 per cent) part-time students domestic PhD students are Indigenous Australians, although completed the PhD after nine years, while most full-time students finish after five years. This is consistent with the finding that timely completion policies tend to manifest after four years candidature, with the expectation that part-time students may take twice as long as full-timers as they are meant to work about 50 per cent on their PhD and with the result of previous research that part-timers are actually faster than full-time students in equivalenttime terms. About a third of the part-time students even complete after four to six years like most fulltimers do. The comparison of the 2005 and 2009 indicates that timely completion policies may impact on student cohorts differently. While Figure 7: PhDs awarded by student groups the CCRs of full-time students have vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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Domestic and overseas student CCRs have steadily increased over time. Domestic student CCRs are consistently below overseas student CCRs. The difference becomes more pronounced in year five and six before levelling off in the following years. This pattern demonstrates that overseas students elevate overall CCRs and domestic students follow this trend although both groups pursue the PhD under very different conditions. Overseas students face a range of socio-cultural and linguistic challenges (Yu & Wright, 2016) that are likely to slow down completion.

Research has also shown that the overall situation of studying abroad Figure 8: Full-time domestic and overseas students drives timely completion (Lin & Chiu, 2014) including high tuition they represent 3.3 per cent of the Australian population. With fees, specific visa and funding some sizable uncertainty, due to the statistically small numbers conditions that expect overseas students to work full-time on involved, Figure 7 shows that the Indigenous proportion of the PhD and leave Australia after completion or enhance their the PhD student population doubled over the 13-year period. career prospects (Harman, 2003).

A high proportion of mature age PhD students (40+ years at In the period 2005 to 2009, domestic completion rates commencement) is characteristic of the Australian doctoral and times improved by four to six per cent at a lower level but training system because â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Contrary to past experience, in many faster than those of overseas students. This is most likely due disciplines it is now unusual in Australia for PhD students to to timely completion policies. Universities currently try to move directly from an undergraduate degree to postgraduate adjust the conditions of domestic to overseas PhD students trainingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (Group of Eight, 2013, p. 15). The proportion of by implementing strict submission deadlines, closing existing students who are mature age students decreased from 36.1 loopholes (e.g. withdrawal and re-enrolment) and considering in 2004 to 26.9 per cent in 2017 but is still relevant because financial penalties for domestic PhD students or even completion rates and times of mature age PhD students supervisors. differ considerably from other students (see Figure 9).

The strong intake of overseas students is likely to have the Student characteristics strongest impact on overall completion rates and times. Their proportion increased rapidly from 19 per cent in 2004 to 39 Figure 9 shows the CCRs of female, mature age and per cent in 2017 and overseas students usually complete the Indigenous PhD students who are likely to pursue the PhD PhD faster than domestic students (see Table 1). under different social conditions.

The completion rates of women closely align with overall Domestic and overseas students CCRs. Surprisingly, possible gender specific conditions such as more care responsibilities, parental or maternity leave only The analysis of median candidature lengths of exiting cohorts marginally influence completion rates and times in Australia. has already established that overseas students complete faster International research on the influence of gender has shown than domestic students, although the gap shrank steadily from mixed results, with some studies indicating no influence 9.6 months in 2005, to 8.4 months in 2009 and 6.0 months in (Bourke et al., 2004; Seagram et al., 1998; Sheridan & Pyke, 2013. International research shows that doing a PhD abroad 1994; Spronken-Smith et al., 2018; Wright & Cochrane, improves completion times and rates in most disciplines 2000), while others have found that women take longer in (Council of Graduate Schools, 2008; Jiranek, 2010; Lin & all (Booth & Satchell, 1995) or only in some fields such as Chiu, 2014; Palmer, 2016; Spronken-Smith et al., 2018; male-dominated or science disciplines ( Jiranek, 2010; Stock Stock et al., 2011). The comparison of full-time domestic and et al., 2011) but tend to be faster in the Social Sciences and overseas PhD students CCRs in Figure 8 confirms this pattern.

Humanities (Council of Graduate Schools, 2008). The role of

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Decreasing completion rates from 2005 to 2013 may indicate problems to keep up with the pressure to improve completion.

This result supports the call for ‘a range of actions to overcome these barriers including better acknowledging Indigenous rights and culture, providing better supervision training, providing greater financial support for Indigenous HDR candidates, and introducing system incentives’ such as a higher weighting in the postgraduate funding schemes (ACOLA, 2016, p. xvii). In a more general perspective, the comparison of CCRs has shown that completion rates and times differ largely due to Figure 9: CCRs by full-time student characteristics the structural and social conditions under which students pursue their having children seems to change since older studies suggested PhD. Taking these conditions into account would allow to that completion times rise with the number of dependents better align normatively expected and real completion rates (Abedi & Benkin, 1987), while more recent research shows and times. no negative effect of children (van de Schoot et al., 2013), if they are born before enrolment (Mastekaasa, 2005).

Discussion and conclusion Figure 6 shows that the CCRs of mature age and domestic Indigenous PhD students are far below average for very This article utilised national DET data to analyse the impact different reasons. The impact of age on completion times of Australian doctoral education policies on actual completion and rates is not linear and best understood as an indicator rates and times. These policies emerged in the aftermath of late of a PhD student’s specific life circumstances. Some studies 1980s Dawkins reforms and primarily focused on regulatory found no effects (Spronken-Smith et al., 2018; Wright and funding frameworks to ‘“speed up” candidature’ (Kiley, & Cochrane, 2000), while others distinguish between 2017, p. 82). The main finding of this study is that overall fast young students who can focus on their studies, slower completion rates and times can be interpreted as having mature aged, already financially settled or retired students slightly improved over time, while differences between for whom timely completion might be less important and disciplines, institutions and specific student cohorts largely very slow middle aged PhD students who are subject to remain. This means that doctoral education reforms have been often conflicting responsibilities (Department of Education, partly successful but failed to address the specific structural 2020; Kim & Otts, 2010; Martin, 2001; Rent & Anderson, and social conditions, which drive or slow down completion.

1996).

The study of national completion data underpins the result Research on American Native PhD students found that of most previous case studies that higher completion rates they usually take longer than other domestic PhD students and faster PhDs can be found in science-based research fields, (Council of Graduate Schools, 2008; National Science Group of Eight universities, among full-time, younger and Foundation, 2019), particularly in the Social Sciences and particularly overseas students. International research suggests Humanities (Kim & Otts, 2010). Australian Indigenous additional predictors such as social origin, first-generation PhD students seem to face similar cultural barriers and a lack university students or study results that are not covered by of political or social support. High variations in Indigenous DET data. To identify and analyse the dynamics between CCRs are due to very small numbers (see Figure 7) and should often hidden and compound factors that drive completion be interpreted carefully. The curves seem to be flatter than more precisely, DET data would need to be more detailed and others and even better in the years up to year four. A reason made available in disaggregated format. might be that a few high achievers can make a big difference The general pattern of policy-driven overall improvements in the small group of Indigenous PhD students. and remaining inequalities can be described as an ‘elevator vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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effect’ (Beck, 2007). While doctoral education policies expect all students to complete within three to four equivalent fulltime years, some cohorts are more likely to keep up with this pace than others due to the conditions under which they pursue their PhD. If policies would address these conditions more specifically, a mismatch between expected and real completion rates and times is likely to persist. Even the CCRs and median completion times of fast overseas (5.2 years) and full-time students exceed the expected three to four-year timeframe by far. Completion rates tend to rise after, rather than before, the fourth year suggesting that current measures such as Australia’s funding schemes provide weak incentives (King & Dobson, 2003) to further improve completion rates and times, closing existing loopholes or dealing with the time consuming challenges of doing a PhD. What a divergence between expected and real completion times means is largely unknown. Some theories predict a situation in which patterns of ‘cognitive dissonance’ (Festinger, 1957) and ‘double-bind’ (Bateson, 1973) communication emerges. This may trigger the already high prevalence of mental health problems among PhD students (Levecque et al., 2017); discomfort of supervisors, departments, faculties and universities who are held accountable for but cannot guarantee timely completion; statistical tricks of improving outcomes by transferring crucial tasks of the PhD process to earlier preparatory stages or a political climate in which the realities of doctoral training can no longer be addressed.

A re-alignment of expected and real completion rates and times is required, although an ideal strategy is yet out of sight.

The current priority is to adjust the PhD process to expected completion times by selecting presumably high-achieving students and ‘doable’ PhD projects (Neumann, 2007), enforcing research planning and strict deadlines, closing existing loopholes (e.g. periods of leave, suspending, switching to part-time roles) and charging high tuition fees or penalties for students and supervisors who fail to ‘manage’ timely completion. The results show that this strategy has been partially successful to date but it may come at the expense of crucial elements associated with doctoral education such as the advancement of knowledge, academic freedom, the creation of independent researchers, the overall quality of the PhD experience or social justice. The opposite strategy of adjusting completion rates and times to the real needs of disciplines and students has become almost unthinkable in an increasingly competitive environment. Although structural differences in completion processes are evident and we know that the equal treatment of unequal is unjust, it seems frivolous to ask for more time and therefore money for a PhD in the humanities than in the sciences.

In the absence of a best model, it is reasonable to increase our understanding of why completion rates and times differ.

Quantitative studies can be improved by refining available data

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sets that allow the application of more sophisticated methods to analyse the interacting factors that influence candidature.

Moreover, completion rate and time data should be used to guide qualitative research into the realities of doctoral training. Such studies can reveal the different conditions that drive or prevent timely completion and inform the design of field- and student-specific support structures beyond ‘one size fits it all’ models that dominate current discourses.

Marc Torka is a sociologist of science, higher education and the professions at the University of Sydney, Australia.

Contact: marc.torka@sydney.edu.au

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Torka, M. (2019). Doctoral Education in Australia. Between Global Trends and National Traditions. Internationalisation in Higher Education, 4/2019, 35-54.

Sheridan, P., & Pyke, S. (1994). Predictors of Time to Completion of Graduate Degrees. Canadian Journal of Higher Education.

van de Schoot, R., Yerkes, M. A., Mouw, J. M., & Sonneveld, H. (2013).

What Took Them So Long? Explaining PhD Delays among Doctoral Candidates.(Research Article). PloS one, 8(7), e68839. doi:10.1371/ journal.pone.0068839

Skopek, J., Triventi, M., & Blossfeld, H. P. (2020). How do institutional factors shape PhD completion rates? An analysis of long-term changes in a European doctoral program. Studies in Higher Education, 1-20. doi: 10.1080/03075079.2020.1744125 Snyder, I., & Forgasz, H. (2008). A study of factors contributing to HDR completions and non-completions at Monash University. Melbourne: Monash University.

Spronken-Smith, R., Cameron, C., & Quigg, R. (2018). Factors contributing to high PhD completion rates: a case study in a researchintensive university in New Zealand. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(1), 94-109. doi:10.1080/02602938.2017.1298717 Stock, W. A., Siegfried, J. J., & Finegan, T. A. (2011). Completion Rates and Time-to-Degree in Economics PhD Programs. The American Economic Review, 101(3), 176-187. doi:10.1257/aer.101.3.176 Stricker, L. (1994). Institutional factors in time to the doctorate.

Research in Higher Education, 35(5), 569-587. doi:10.1007/BF02497088

van Rooij, E., Fokkens-Bruinsma, M., & Jansen, E. (2019). Factors that influence PhD candidatesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; success: the importance of PhD project characteristics. Studies in Continuing Education, 1-20. doi:10.1080/0158 037X.2019.1652158 Visser, M., Luwel, M., & Moed, H. (2007). The attainment of doctoral degrees at Flemish Universities: a survival analysis. Higher Education, 54(5), 741-757. doi:10.1007/s10734-006-9021-9 Wright, T., & Cochrane, R. (2000). Factors Influencing Successful Submission of PhD Theses. Studies in Higher Education, 25(2), 181-195. doi:10.1080/713696139 Yu, B., & Wright, E. (2016). Socio-cultural adaptation, academic adaptation and satisfaction of international higher degree research students in Australia. Tertiary Education and Management, 22(1), 49-64. doi:10.1080/13583883.2015.1127405

Torka, M. (2018). Projectification of Doctoral Training? How Research Fields Respond to a New Funding Regime. Minerva, 56(1), 59-83. doi:10.1007/s11024-018-9342-8

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A program for writing Brian Martin University of Wollongong

A writing program based on brief regular writing sessions can greatly improve research productivity. Ten years’ experience with a program at the University of Wollongong provides insights into the benefits and challenges in supporting a new writing habit.

Introduction I coordinate a writing program for academics and research students at the University of Wollongong. The core of the program is daily writing. Every member is encouraged to write some ‘new text’ – text of an article, thesis, blog, grant application or diary – most days of the week, spending five to twenty minutes per day at this task. Members are encouraged to keep a log of their writing specifically how much new text they write each day and how many minutes this took.

They are also invited to send their log to me, as a method of accountability. In addition to writing new text most days, participants carry out their other usual research activities such as collecting and analysing data, reading, revising texts and submitting articles.

Unlike most other methods used to boost research performance, the writing program is based on published evidence. In this article, I describe some of the studies underlying the writing program and then tell about what I’ve learned over the ten years it has been running.

Background Robert Boice is a psychologist and education researcher who worked at the State University of New York. In the 1980s, he carried out investigations concerning the research productivity of newly appointed academics. He noticed that most junior academics felt under a lot of stress. They put most of their energy into teaching with the result that their research output was low. They postponed writing until they had large blocks of time or until the pressure became too great. Then they would write continuously for lengthy periods. Boice vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

suspected that this typical approach of procrastination and bingeing was not very productive.

Boice also observed a small number of new academics who seemed to be more productive while being less stressed.

They carried out their teaching and research using brief daily sessions. Boice thought that the same approach might help other academics to become more productive and set out to test this idea. In one study, he compared the research output of three groups of junior academics (Boice, 1989). One group was left to proceed in their usual way (procrastinating and bingeing). The second group was instructed to write every day in brief sessions, while the third group was instructed to write every day and to report to Boice regularly.

The first group, procrastinating and bingeing, had a very low output. The second group wrote several times as much and the third group was even more productive. Boice’s results showed that changing junior academics’ writing habits could greatly increase their productivity. In another study he showed that daily writing also led to greater creativity in dealing with their research topics (Boice, 1983).

Although Boice wrote books as well as many articles about his studies (e.g. Boice 1990, 2000), I never heard about them until reading a short cogent book titled Publish & Flourish written by Tara Gray (2005/2020). Gray, a professor at New Mexico State University, in her own research confirmed Boice’s results (Gray and Birch, 2001; Gray et al., 2018).

Furthermore, she formulated a multi-step program for higher research productivity. The program is based on brief daily sessions. It also has various other steps, including seeking comments on drafts from non-experts and then from experts before sending polished texts to publishers.

It is compatible with recommendations from a number of A program for writing Brian Martin

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other authors ( Jensen, 2017; Johnson and Mullen, 2007; Silvia, 2007).

I read Gray’s book in 2008 and was struck by the value of her approach. Prior to this, I had a special role in my faculty, ‘publications mentor,’ in which I had free rein to try to promote research productivity. I had talked with academics and research students and organised a variety of workshops.

However, none of this seemed to have much of an impact.

Gray’s program offered the prospect of changing habits in a way that would make a lasting difference. However, I soon learned that most researchers find it extremely difficult to change their habits.

The writing program After reading Gray’s book, I immediately adopted the program myself, writing nearly every day and keeping a log of the amount of new text I had written and how many minutes this took. Usually I worked on an article or book chapter following a dot-point plan prepared in advance; sometimes I would write on a grant application, diary entry or letter to a friend. Typically, this daily writing session was about 20 minutes resulting in 300 words of text. During this time, I did not look at other texts or check sources.

The idea behind writing without stopping to edit or check sources is to tone down the mind’s critical eye and allow the creative side to come out. Many writers are excessively perfectionistic. Some can hardly write a paragraph or even a sentence without obsessively seeking to make it perfect.

Fortunately, I had never suffered this syndrome. Even so, I found daily writing to be a liberation. Instead of slogging through an hour or more on an article, which was exhausting, I could stop whenever I liked, even after just five minutes.

The amazing thing was that writing just a few hundred words per day provided a powerful incentive to accomplish other aspects of my research. After a week of writing, I had text to revise, new ideas to follow up, awareness of gaps in my argument and awareness of areas I needed to follow up with new data, sources or theory.

Writing in brief daily sessions is an efficient way of working on research. A bit of writing, unfinished, uncovers gaps and weaknesses. In the time before the next writing session, the unconscious mind often addresses these challenges.

Often, the solution is available the next day. Regular writing maximises mental processing just like regular exercise builds strength and endurance.

Another saving occurs in time spent on reading. Rather than reading everything potentially relevant beforehand, by starting writing, you learn what you need to know so your reading is much more focused. Some books and articles can be probed for relevant ideas and others passed over as unnecessary.

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For a researcher, writing daily is analogous to training daily for an athlete. Coaches these days know that training once a week, no matter how long and strenuous, is inferior to daily training. Runners and swimmers, for example, may vary their routines, but they train nearly every day. Furthermore, this daily training drives other aspects of their preparations, for example diet and sleep.

After trying out the writing program myself, I next offered it to the PhD students I was supervising. Only some of them took it up; those who did thrived. My weekly supervision meetings with them meant that I could help them fine-tune their practice.

I also offered the program to colleagues and research students in my faculty. I held an initial meeting at which I explained the program and then we met for an hour each week, nearly every week of the year, discussing progress and challenges, and reading each other’s texts.

Strengths of the program I soon learned that relatively few researchers are interested in changing their habits, despite the promise of a huge boost to productivity. Some colleagues were interested and listened eagerly at an initial meeting but did not return. I remember talking to a colleague who desperately wanted to make progress on writing but suffered from severe perfectionism. I suggested writing for just five minutes per day. She couldn’t do it, even for a single day.

Just as Boice had observed in the 1980s, most academics have developed habits based on procrastination and bingeing. Writing is seen as unpleasant, even agony, and so is postponed as long as possible, until the pressure of deadlines is overwhelming. Then comes a binge session lasting hours or even days or weeks. The binge is exhausting and so aversive that it leads to another round of procrastination. Brief daily writing counters this pattern. However, for many, it doesn’t feel productive. It is so brief that it seems like nothing is accomplished. Furthermore, it doesn’t seem like the familiar agony of bingeing. If it feels easy, the unconscious assumption may be that it must not amount to much.

Some participants prefer to follow the program on their own. They adopt its principles but do not attend meetings.

One assiduous member writes every day and sends me his detailed log every week but never attends meetings.

Attendance at the meetings is usually between four and eight, varying week to week. There are full-time academics, honorary fellows (unpaid PhD graduates) and research students. Occasionally we’ve had honours students as members.

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of thwarted aspirations privately. Learning that others have similar struggles can be liberating. The group is a safe space for admitting difficulties and seeking help. Expressing vulnerability is rare in academia, where competition is the rule and many scholars suffer from the imposter syndrome, the fear that colleagues will discover they are not a real scholar.

In the first half hour of each meeting, we share how we’re going, with special attention to anyone who is having difficulties. This conversation usually centres on the process of writing but can also range across other issues in academia and beyond. Challenges discussed include being stuck and not able to write anything, suffering from a lack of confidence, how to respond to article reviews, what to expect from thesis examiners, how to organise material in an article or thesis, and how to deal with co-authors.

We are mostly from humanities, social sciences or law, with occasionally someone from education or business. A diversity of membership has advantages. When reading each other’s texts, we are usually non-expert readers. No one else in the group was knowledgeable about Xiaoping’s research on Chinese language learning or Ben’s research on the oral history of Vietnam veterans. Nevertheless, we could read their texts, make suggestions and ask questions. Non-expert readers can actually be better than specialists in requesting clarification of terms and logical arguments; experts already know the area and often do not notice omissions and lack of clarity.

Sometimes asking basic questions highlights assumptions that need to be articulated. Occasionally our comments, coming from a different background, provide unconventional perspectives.

Members of the group have had different amounts of experience with the writing program itself. As well, individuals have their own personal challenges. This diversity enables us to provide each other better advice than would be possible from any single person, no matter how knowledgeable. Sometimes newer members provide the most helpful suggestions because they have recently dealt with the problem themselves. For example, one issue raised by some members is dealing with the challenge of writing while being a mother. Other mothers in the group, with children at different ages, sympathise and are able to offer suggestions. Another is addressing the internal voice that tries to discourage writing, saying ‘This is no good,’ ‘I’ll never finish’ or ‘I’ll never become a researcher.’ Although such thoughts are remarkably common, few writers ever admit to encountering them. The group is a good place to bring such obstacles out in the open to be addressed.

Challenges For participants, the most common problem is getting started with a new habit, in this case writing regularly in relatively brief sessions. Some begin with great enthusiasm but give up vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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after a week or two, and we don’t see them again. Typically, it takes a few months to establish a new writing habit. The most important thing initially is establishing a routine with daily writing as a component, even if it is just five minutes per day and the writing has nothing to do with research.

My impression is that research students find it somewhat easier to adopt a daily writing habit than do academics. There are two plausible explanations. The first is that academics have been writing for longer and hence their habits are more entrenched. The second is that academics no longer think of themselves as learners: already having PhDs and publications, they assume they are supposed to know how to do research.

Boice (2000, pp. 75–80) wrote that when academics were asked about how they can improve their teaching, they answered that they relied on themselves rather than asking for assistance. The same seems to apply to research. Most academics rely on their own skills and resources and don’t often seek assistance to improve (Baker, 2020).

In the writing group we mostly support each other in the early stages of Gray’s program, including writing regularly and commenting on each other’s texts as non-experts. One particular step needs development: seeking comments from specialists prior to submitting articles to journals.

Wright and Armstrong (2008), based on a study showing a low rate of accurate reporting of cited research methods, recommend sending drafts of publications to authors cited for confirmation or clarification of results and methods. Not every living author cited needs to be contacted, but certainly ones whose work is discussed at length and whose methods are used. I’ve used this technique myself, sending drafts of texts to authors whose works I discuss, sometimes even in just a paragraph. Most respond. Who can resist checking what others say about your research? In this way my writing has become more accurate. However, most researchers, including ones in our group, seem reluctant to seek feedback from cited authors.

There is a nice connection here. The usual approach to writing – at least in relation to theory and ‘the literature’ – is to immerse yourself in piles of reading, become familiar with as much of it as possible, and only then to start writing. When you’ve polished the manuscript, you send it off to a journal.

The only formal help along the way is feedback from referees or, for collaborative work, from co-authors.

The implication is that researchers can greatly benefit by being willing to ask for help. This applies to many of the steps in the writing program. Instead of reading everything relevant before writing, a slogan of Gray’s that we use is ‘Write before you’re ready.’ In other words, write before you know everything about a topic, and before you feel psychologically prepared. Help is valuable for this and is available from others in the writing group. Obtaining comments from non-experts and experts also involves seeking help.

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Sending drafts to readers requires time, but it also saves time when readers offer suggestions that can address shortcomings.

Importantly, obtaining comments on drafts addresses the feeling that the quality might not be sufficient because you haven’t read everything. Actually, you can feel more secure.

Unlike competitive sports, in research there is no obvious and repeated test of performance, and so research support systems have insufficient incentive to promote skill development. In this context, those few who are able to change their habits will gain a great advantage.

Learning skills

Acknowledgements

My experience with the writing program has highlighted a widespread reluctance in academia to give attention and support to skill development. At the individual level, most attention is oriented to content, namely learning about the topic being researched. In other words, the attention is focused on what is being researched, not on skills to do the research more efficiently.

It seems that most researchers assume they develop skills by using them. Most researchers treat their skills as fully formed, so they just need to be applied to new topics or applied more diligently. To the contrary, studies of experts show the importance of practice, in particular practice that is oriented to improving the weakest parts of one’s performance (Ericsson and Pool, 2016).

Skill development in areas besides writing is also neglected.

Most researchers spend a considerable amount of time reading, yet few put in effort at becoming faster and more efficient readers, despite the ready availability of guides on how to do this. Similarly, many persist in two-finger typing rather than putting in effort to become touch typists, something that would save large amounts of time over a career.

Ways of reading and typing are habits that become deeply entrenched, meaning that change requires effort, by oneself or with support from peers or mentors.

Neglect of skill development is also apparent at the level of research policy. Within and beyond institutions, the primary tool for promoting research is incentives: money, grants, jobs and promotions. These are incentives to work harder or sometimes to work on particular sorts of projects, but not directly to improve skills.

Thanks to all participants in the writing program, past and present, for a host of insights, and thanks to Tonya Agostini, Anu Bissoonauth-Bedford, Zhuqin Feng, Kathy Flynn, Xiaoping Gao, Tara Gray, Anneleis Humphries, Jody Watts and Qinqing Xu for helpful feedback on drafts of this article.

Conclusion There is evidence that writing in brief regular sessions is a path to greater research productivity. However, evidence alone is not enough to alter deeply entrenched habits or to introduce policies that address inefficient practices. Part of the resistance to change is related to the idea that scholarly performance is largely based on innate talent. According to Boice, leading researchers benefit from belief in the primacy of talent and hence are reluctant to promote adoption of habits and development of skills that would level the playing field.

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Brian Martin is emeritus professor of social sciences at the University of Wollongong, Australia.

Contact: bmartin@wollongong.edu.au

References Baker, W. (2020). All You Have to Do Is Ask: How to Master the Most Important Skill for Success. New York: Currency.

Boice, R. (1983). Contingency management in writing and the appearance of creative ideas: implications for the treatment of writing blocks. Behaviour Research & Therapy, 21(5), 537–543.

Boice, R. (1989). Procrastination, busyness and bingeing. Behaviour Research & Therapy, 27(6), 605–611.

Boice, R. (1990). Professors as Writers: A Self-help Guide to Productive Writing. Stillwater, OK: New Forums Press.

Boice, R. (2000). Advice for New Faculty Members: Nihil Nimus.

Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Ericsson, A. & Pool, R. (2016). Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. London: Bodley Head.

Gray, T. (2005/2020). Publish & Flourish: Become a Prolific Scholar.

University Park, NM: Teaching Academy, New Mexico State University.

Gray, T. & Birch, J. (2001). Publish, don’t perish: a program to help scholars flourish. To Improve the Academy, 19(1), 268–284.

Gray, T, Madson, L. & and Jackson, M. (2018). Publish & flourish: helping scholars become better, more prolific writers. To Improve the Academy, 37(2), 243–256.

Jensen, J. (2017). Write No Matter What: Advice for Academics.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Johnson, W.B. & Mullen, C.A. (2007). Write to the Top! How to Become a Prolific Academic. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Silvia, P.J. (2007). How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Wright, M. & Armstrong, J.S. (2008). The ombudsman: verification of citations: fawlty towers of knowledge? Interfaces, 38(2), 125–132.

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Ways to improve your research profile David S Waller University of Technology, Sydney

When I first started as an academic, many, many years ago, I remember chatting to a much older, wiser, senior member of staff who was very interested in my newness to the academic world. When he was asking me about my teaching and research interests, he said that he would give me some advice the trick is to ‘get famous’.

At the time I thought what a dumb thing to say, as I did not understand what he was actually saying. This was not advice to become a Kardashian of the academic community but being famous in a particular topic area can be extremely important for your career. By being ‘famous’ you would become the authority in a particular field; primarily through your research and writings, you would become known, not only in your school but also at other universities here and overseas.

Therefore, you would be the ‘go to’ person for a specific topic. If someone was thinking of who is the best person to ask about this topic? It would be you. Who would be the best person to mark a thesis on this topic? It would be you. Who would be the best person to review this article on this topic?

It would be you.

So, from an obscure comment a profound idea was being expressed. At least this was more meaningful than just saying “publish or perish” (Miller, Taylor, & Bedeian, 2011). But then the question (or trick) is how do you become famous?

Of course, it is more easily said than done. However, a major way is to be proactive in improving your research profile.

If you are to look at your research profile, what is it? Do you have one? Is there a topic or field that you have written about that other people know you for? If not, what would you like it to be?

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else, or may not fit with the research focus of your school (Thomas 2009). This can be quite disheartening when you realise it.

After years of working in academia, publishing articles, and being disheartened, I have come up with ten points to help raise your research profile. I’d also like to thank the colleagues who attended seminars to help discuss and refine these. The points can be grouped into: (1) making the right choices, and (2) making the right connections.

1. Choose the Right Topic Deciding on the right topic that you are going to be an expert in is extremely important. You must weigh up a number of questions to decide whether you have chosen the right topic. While it can be interesting personally, is it interesting for other people? So, here are some questions to ask yourself: • Is it a ‘hot’ topic? Does the topic hold interest for people now, or is it something that is developing for the future?

• Is it a topic that has enough interest? Not only for you personally, but will it be of interest to your colleagues, and academics internationally?

• Is it a topic that is of interest to journal editors? Are there any calls for papers in this topic? Has there been discussion about the topic in conferences, particularly in sessions in which you can meet the editors?

• Is it a topic that has a theoretical underpinning? A topic may be interesting, but it is also important for journal articles that there is a theoretical basis for the discussion of the topic.

• Is it a topic that can get a grant? This can also help you work out if there is enough interest in the topic. Obtaining a grant can be a valuable way to help build your research profile in a topic.

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2. Choose the Right Projects

4. Choose the Right Journals

It is one thing to choose the right topic, it is another to choose the right project. There may be lots of potential areas to study within that topic but which specific project will be the one to help build your research profile? Some questions you can ask are: • What project should you spend your time on?

• Is it your interest or someone else’s? Often if it is based on somebody else’s interest it can be harder for you to be motivated to go the extra mile for this project.

• Will it hold your attention/interest for a period of time?

• Is anyone else interested in this project? Similar to having the right topic that people are interested in, it is also good to think if your project is the right one in this topic area.

• Will the project attract any funding? Extra money from grants will help fund the project and can also provide you with good feedback from reviewers.

• Will external grant bodies be interested? Obtaining funding from an external body is usually seen better than obtaining internal University grants, especially Australian Research Council (ARC) or Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Grants.

The term “publish or perish” has already been mentioned, but an issue is where should you publish? To some institutions it is more important to achieve one publication in a top ranked A or A* journal than getting several publications in low rank journals – quality rather than quantity. Also, a growing issue is research impact, and a metric used to measure this is whether it is in a top journal. Some questions to ask are: • What are the main journals for your topic? Are there any associated disciplines related to your topic?

• What rank is the journal?

• Does the journal have Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) recognition if it is in the business area?

• Is the journal classified as being in your area? For example, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC) or Field of Research (FoR) Codes.

• Has the journal published articles in your topic? If so, make sure that you cite them in your article.

• What is the focus/image of the journal? Some journals in a particular field may be perceived as being more of an industry journal, or an academic or theory-based journal.

• Does it focus on qualitative or quantitative methodology?

This can influence whether your paper would be of interest to the journal editor/s.

• Is the journal listed on websites like Google Scholar or Scimago? This can be a big help for measuring citations or showing evidence of impact.

• Can you meet/contact the editor? Sometimes it is good to email the editor to confirm whether your paper is suitable to be published in the journal. Also, some conferences have ‘meet the editor’ sessions where you can hear what the editors want from papers for their journals, as well as talk to them personally about your research area.

The first four points were about making the right choices in relation to your research topic and output. The following points relate to the importance of getting the right connections.

While it is important to build contacts, it is also good to reflect on where those connections are and what type of connection would be helpful to you building your research profile.

3. Choose the Right Co-author/s While it can be nice to be seen as an independent thinker who can undertake large research projects and write articles by yourself, there are also valuable lessons to be learnt by being able to undertake research and write with other people, especially if your co-author already has a name in the topic area. It has been noted to me in academic recruitment that when looking at CVs, it is important to note whether the candidate has only written by themselves or only written with other people. Both situations have advantages and disadvantages. So, you should ask yourself: • Can you write alone?

• Are there colleagues or international academics who are interested in your topic?

• What academic rank is the potential co-author? There are advantages in co-writing with a senior academic, however, you have to be careful that they’re not using you without you getting any benefit for your work. Also cowriting with a fellow junior academic may cause problems if neither of you have the necessary skills to produce an academic article.

• What can the potential co-author bring to the study? You want to make sure that one person is not just doing all the work, so it is important to determine what skills in writing the literature review, or analysis they can bring to the paper.

• Can you work well with others? It is important to think about how you can work with the co-author/s, what skills are you bringing? Can you make deadlines? Can you take criticism?

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5. Get Connected to your University Depending on whether you are a PhD student, recent graduate, or early career researcher, you should be aware of what is offered by your University. It can be surprising what support your University can offer you to help with research projects and assist you in establishing your name in a particular research area. You should try to discover: • What is the School, Faculty, and University doing to encourage quality research?

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• Are there internal grants or seed funding that you can apply for?

• Are there seminars, workshops, or conferences that you can attend or even help organise?

6. Get Connected to a Relevant Assn./Group Outside the University there may be an association or research group that you can contact that can assist you in developing your interest in that topic area.

• What is the most relevant association for you?

• Are there any special interest groups (SIGs)? These may be part of a larger association.

• What information or journals do they publish?

• What conferences do they run?

7. Get Connected to People Once you have worked out who is who in the topic area, you should make yourself known to them. This can be daunting, but it can also be worthwhile.

• What are the main conferences? Are you prepared to travel and present at these conferences? Conferences can be a vital way of networking with people who have got the same interest in an issue as you, and where you can possibly meet future co-authors, or colleagues, or even mentors.

• Email people to make contact, ask questions, or remind them afterwards that you met them at the conference.

• Build connections for potential co-authors, reviewers, referees, and friends.

8. Get Connected Online There are several ways to use the Internet to connect to other people online and build your research profile.

• What is your university profile page like? Can you add to it?

• Use social media to promote yourself and your research, such as Twitter or a blog.

• Are you on Google Scholar, ResearchGate and Linkedin?

Make sure that these are open to the public so that people can contact you if they are interested in your research.

• Can you develop shortened versions of your findings for the media? You can try to publish opinion pieces or short articles for magazines or outlets like The Conversation.

• Build connections with journalists or media companies as they can contact you for a ‘quote’ to add to their story on the topic.

9. Get Connected to Family/Support People Life is not all about work, so it is important to remember the people closest to you. It is not healthy to be so career or research focused that you forget those who support you no matter what. Some things to ask are: • Who is your main support?

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• How does your family life affect your work?

• Do you have a mentor?

• Or is there someone you can ask questions?

Personal relationships and your own mental health can suffer if these issues are ignored.

10. Get Connected to Yourself In some ways this should be considered first. You should be sure to connect to yourself and what you really want to do, and what projects you are comfortable working on. If you are not happy personally then you can make yourself feel miserable about your work which can lead to further career and personal problems. Therefore, you should ask yourself: • What are your real feelings about the research topic, projects, writing, analysis, etc?

• Are you comfortable with the current situation?

• What are your plans for the future?

These are just a few personal reflections on how to raise your research profile, and possibly reduce the disappointments that you might face in your academic career. It is important to remember that an academic’s life is more than their research output. There is teaching, administration, and university service, as well as an opportunity to mix with wonderful people and students who can greatly enrich your life. I hope that this will at least get you thinking about your future career and potential opportunities, so that it will be a long and fruitful one.

David S Waller is Head of the Marketing Discipline Group at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia.

Contact: david.waller@uts.edu.au

References Miller, A. N., Taylor, S. G., & Bedeian, A. G. (2011). Publish or perish: academic life as management faculty live it. Career Development International. 16 (5), 422-445.

Thomas, H. (2009) Business Schools and Management Research: A UK Perspective. Journal of Management Development. 28 (8), 660-667.

Websites Australian Research Council (ARC) https://www.arc.gov.au/.

The Conversation https://theconversation.com/au.

Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) https://www.arc. gov.au/grants/discovery-program/discovery-early-career-researcheraward-decra.

Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com Linkedin https://www.au.linkedin.com ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net

Ways to improve your research profile David S Waller

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The elusive siloed subjects Sacrificing humanities to Techno-Tehan Jim Daly Monash University

This article questions the use of the term ‘siloed’ to describe certain degrees or subjects in the Australian university curriculum.

Education Minister Dan Tehan used the term as part of a justification of a re-set of funding priorities for university education from 2021 which he announced in June 2020. The Minister partly turned his argument on the floating of an impression that humanities degrees are ‘siloed’. They or, more specifically, units within them, would become more expensive for students since ‘job readiness’ needs to be prioritised. The author analyses the term, its uses and applications to fields of knowledge, and concludes that such a term is neither accurate nor useful. He suggests that focusing on needs arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic might provide a less conflicted and future-oriented way of thinking about the problem rather than making superficial judgments of the merits of particular undergraduate degrees as a foundation for dictating education and education funding policy.

On 18 July 2020, Federal Education Minister, Senator Dan Tehan, announced Government plans for education to be put in place in response to the economic effects in Australia of the COVID-19 pandemic. The main focus of his announcement (National Press Club Announcement) was the need for undergraduates to take up degrees which would provide jobs and quickly serve the needs of the economy in a national task of job building and rebuilding. To act in this way would, he argued, spur recovery from the recession into which the country had fallen, and, in the process, lead directly to jobs for young people (Tehan, 2020a).

In the course of his speech (National Press Club Address, 2020), Senator Tehan outlined cheaper levels of fees for certain courses and dearer ones for others. The cheaper levels included education, IT, medicine and nursing, and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects.

Subjects like law and economics would be dearer. In general, fees for the humanities would be 113 per cent higher. Most school leavers and their parents would regard such costs as intimidating. It seems likely that this is the point of increasing costs, in a strategy to enforce what the Government regards as priorities, a not entirely unreasonable approach from a

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budgetary point of view: Universities will play a crucial role in producing the job-ready graduates that Australia will need to drive its post COVID19 recovery. Our universities’ response to the Government’s challenge to roll out short courses demonstrated they can be innovative and flexible in skilling and re-skilling Australians.

We will need to harness that innovation as Australia reshapes the higher education architecture with a greater focus on domestic students – specifically regional and Indigenous Australians – and a greater alignment with industry needs.

(Dan Tehan (2020b), ‘Job Ready Graduates’, 19 June 2020) One of the main justifications which Senator Tehan in his presentation offered for deciding on such a cost was that the humanities subjects are instances of what he called ‘siloed’ subjects: ‘We are encouraging students to embrace diversity and not think about their education as a siloed degree.’

(Tehan, 2020b).

He argued that if you are going to learn history, you should perhaps learn how to teach history, and be a teacher. Citing his own story, he argued that if you are going to do economics, perhaps you should learn another language. He confessed that his lack of a language had limited him earlier in his career in vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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obtaining a job. However, many arts degrees are structured thought he was ‘just’ (but usefully) a hospitality worker, so in such a way that there is already a degree of flexibility and was surprised to learn that he was doing postgraduate studies variety across subject areas so that a candidate can choose in Philosophy. I met the second at a postgraduate seminar. from a smorgasbord of subjects and skills, within the degree, He was well into his PhD: expensively, immaculately dressed, some of which might serve the presumed ‘employability’ with a hint of a Toorak accent, and in his thirties I guessed. I criteria. Might. The Minister did not note that many, if not sensed financial independence. He may test or grease racing most holders of arts degrees, go on to obtain some form cars on the weekends in order to earn a crust. I have no idea. of professional postgraduate diploma or degree, and seek But, if so, such anomalies are not unusual. There was recently registration in professional organisations. The degree itself in our department a double PhD working on a musicology may include one or more subjects which offer the possibility of thesis. He is an older man, like me, and a motorbike freak with employability more than others in it. I suspect most students significant skills and accomplishments in the public service, would already embrace within an arts degree the ‘diversity’ in the very relevant field of public transport, nationally and which he encouraged in his speech. University administrators internationally. The point of the stories is rather obvious – across the varied tertiary landscape could provide figures that nothing in life is as clear cut as the incision Dan Tehan attesting to the variety or exclusivity where it exists. has made into the heart of humanities.

I suspect that there would There are three questions be few candidates who would which I would like to probe The point of the stories is rather obvious pursue philosophy (only) – into in this article. The first is – that nothing in life is as clear cut as the which the Senator used as a to ask if the term ‘silo’ and its perhaps rather obvious example cognates is merely analogical incision Dan Tehan has made into the – across an undergraduate and does not accurately heart of humanities. degree (if that were possible) describe the nature of many followed by continued, undergraduate arts degrees. In exclusive immersion in philosophy at the postgraduate level. addressing this question, I will move quickly to confine myself Again, it might conceivably be safe to attack philosophy, to the performing arts, an area with which I have familiarity. not just because philosophy is inherently resistant in se, but It is also an area which is an easy target for the Minister’s because the more obvious target, performing arts, is at the pricing. Its apparent ‘siloed-ness’ which can be inferred and time of the Minister’s presentation, being smashed by the might well be implied is, unfortunately, part of the national restrictions brought about by the pandemic, and the public myth. While actors may seem to inhabit some fairy land in has been made only too aware of performers’ plight, even if the eyes of the public, their presence on television is taken for the Government seems to have performed throwing arms up granted almost to the point that the characters they play are in the air and turning deaf ears, despite the announcement of often taken, I believe, by some of the viewing audience to be a competitive application round for funding which is likely real people. I agree that this is a strange phenomenon, and its to assist only the big-end-of-the-town of performing arts explanation would take longer than the space I have available producers; for example, Michael Cassel and his Harry Potter here. Actors might in return believe that, in this fantastic case, production, as mentioned by Arts Minister, Paul Fletcher on it is the viewing audience which is ‘siloed’ away from the lives ABC’s Insiders program (28 June 2020). Clearly, it is all the of actors. The present writing attempts to throw some light on arts subjects in the arts degree which will be penalised in terms the ignorance which informs that view. The second question of cost. It is also clear that the young people he was addressing addresses the implication that the performing arts in the were not the scientists, the architects or the budding teachers, workplace-as-endpoint-of-arts-education is somehow ‘siloed’ but those intending to pursue arts degrees. There was no hint in itself and that such a view leads to a position where high at all in Dan Tehan’s speech that he was encouraging scientists pricing is justified. The third question is whether and to what and mathematicians, for example, to ‘embrace diversity.’ The extent the cheaper, now favoured or sometimes short courses students which he encouraged towards diversification, in a or subjects, are ‘non-siloed’. seemingly heartfelt way, were exclusively humanities students.

What does ‘siloed’ mean in relation to the humanities ‘If you are an architect, think about doing choreography. You subjects to which the Minister referred? It may be helpful can learn a lot about the flow of line’ was the kind of specific to remove that image which readily comes to Australian advice which never arrived. minds of a concrete cement thing straddled by a dusty road A short anecdote: I have, oddly, only ever met two and railway line – a tall thing, thick, impenetrable and filled dedicated philosophy students whom I can recall in the last with stuff that is homogenous and mysterious because it is so twenty years. One was a hospitality worker at the Melbourne locked away. There is something emotive about the image.

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them fit with the effects of bureaucracy outlined by Karl Weber (Gerth & Mills, 1946). The height of the silo suggests a structure that is strongly present, formidable, a work of thought, construction and labour. Its thickness suggests the barrier that keeps things in, and out. The thickness guards the capital (intellectual, marketable or financial) that the product represents. It is impenetrable. There are bodies of knowledge, rules, protocols and regulations which make the scoria of the thing itself. These combinations constitute its opaque life: its life is to slow and capture life, something analogous to setting concrete. It moves painfully slowly, like the Australian Immigration Department. It asserts life and the movement that is productive export, but its manifestations can be selectively arcane or lightning fast in its harnessing of technology and use of it: grotesque, effectively, in such hybridity and excess. Being deceptively unpredictable, it can shock and surprise. It can also slam on the brakes quickly, keep people out, police them, and track them down and bring them ‘to confront the full force of the law,’ if necessary. The matter which the silo contains is distinctive and necessary to the purpose of the silo, or the aims of the organisation. The matter may be plucked chickens, state security, barley, digitised requests or trading algorithms. Not all bureaucracies are thorough-goingly hermetic, but most are.

It is difficult to begin to think that humanities could possibly be like this.

A quick Google search throws up some interesting thoughts about silos and workplaces. They both generate a lot of hot air.

You can ‘drown’ in them; they stop you breathing and then you sink, particularly if the silo/organisation is being emptied (‘going to the dogs’) at the same time. The use of the term as a descriptor has been used across a wide range of fields: the nature of organisations (Niemi, 2019; Norton, 2011), educational organisations (Barnes, Weinbaum, & Francis, 2012), the nature of work groups; racial or ethnic groupings (K.M. Gillespie, 2015), animals and others (K.A. Gillespie, 2015), transnational mobile subjects and technology (Gomes, 2018); the management of data (Choi, 2014), the preservation of laboratory samples (Treene & Grigoryan, 2020); the complexion of subjects of study: art education (CreeganQuinquis & Thormann, 2017), arts education (Weston, 2019), medical education (Kitts et al., 2011, Weston, 2019), integration of Indigenous content into health curricula (Virdun et al., 2013), health systems (McKnight, 2005); the being of nations (Mukharji, 2018); the teaching of STEM subjects (Thornburg, 2009; Newhouse, 2017), the teaching of engineering (Gallegos, 2010); web development project teams (Dalziel et al., 2018), and groups in long chains of command (Terziovski & Kanchan, 1991), for example, the army.

Although this list is not exhaustive – I have not referenced the siloes that sheath nuclear weapon rockets – it suggests that ‘siloed’ behaviour can occur in any organisation. The only exceptions which I anticipate are anarchist ‘organisations’.

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A perusal of the literature suggests that the descriptive term ‘siloed’ gained currency around 2010. I have not been able to determine the exact origin of its metaphorical use.

David Ian Willcock (2013) describes ‘silo working’, for example, as when people in organisations focus on their own needs and goals to the exclusion and sometimes detriment of the wider organisation and its aims – a lack of joined up or holistic thinking and behaviour (2013 p. xv).

‘Silo’ operates metaphorically in all the above contexts, no less when an minister of education applies it to university degrees: some degrees or subjects within them are ‘siloed’, in his opinion, and some are not. Perhaps Mr Tehan, indulging in a little expensive philosophy, can conceive siloes as worlds in relation to other worlds. Each is presumably a particular kind of world (with a limited number of combinations/academic subjects to be studied and/or with limits within them) in greater or less proximity to other worlds (university degrees or subjects or a great many but finite number of ideas), each of which, in turn, also has a large, finite set of combinations.

Such an attitude fits comfortably with late Enlightenment philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey’s concept of what counts for understanding in our world: matter, ideas, psychology, history, culture, and feelings are part of the world. One may explain the natural world empirically, but understanding requires a broader, less ‘siloed’ response, I think he would suggest. Eric S. Nelson (2011, p. 33) comments: …Dilthey interprets naturalistic world-picturing to be an expression of a mode of life that, as a life rather than a theory, has its own legitimacy and cannot be refuted. Dilthey argued that there can be no one unified natural worldview common to all humans, but concluded from this that naturalism is one expressive possibility of life among others rather than impossible. Naturalism is one expression and enactment of the truth for Dilthey and only untrue when it overextends itself and takes on a totalising metaphysical form. A world-view is essentially historical for both Dilthey and Heidegger, but for Dilthey this entails that it is irreducibly individual and worthy of recognition for itself.

Finding the worlds and defining them may be more challenging. I am certain that Dan Tehan in his heart of hearts does not believe in the possibility of science, as narrowly understood, or language as the end-point of all that we know and feel. Where are the barriers or walls of the ideas? Where do they end? Can we be sure that each idea, discipline, theory, application can start only in one place? Can we make cuts at their boundaries with sharp obsidian blades like the Aztec priest to get to the heart of the matter? Is there more than one origin of an idea and so on? As I walk across the world of my loungeroom to the table and pick up The Sunday Age (21 June 2020) to check the front page article by journalist Zach vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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Hope, I hear Ken Done, a successful Australian artist in the artistic and commercial sense, say on the telly in the corner, ‘I am ever grateful to my parents who let me leave school to go to Art School.’ He partly answers my question. Zach Hope (2020) opines:

reasons, but one is that it opens up that comportment to those who undertake it. There is not a field of interest in human activity which is closed to the emergence of ways of thinking in performing arts. It is a sieve, filter and shaper of all ideas.

Above all, performance characterises all human activity.

Inversely, at its most basic level, all kinds of activity occur in The changes announced by minister Dan Tehan last week are performing or may be the ‘subject’ (or ‘object’) of performing intended to encourage students such as Andrew [the school arts. Performing arts invites and prepares for many things: captain at Oakleigh South my insertion] to move away from mimesis (copying more or less), demonstration, teaching, more nebulous humanities degrees and into ‘job-relevant’ studies (p.1). satire, explanation, critique, philosophy, identity, protest, specialised physical activity, contemplation, teamwork ‘Nebulous’. ‘Cloudy’ and ‘airy-fairy’ is the meaning and, par excellence, reading, relaxation, laughter, improvisation, quite possibly, the underlying meaning in the Minister’s use of imaginativeness, design, self-development, physical fitness, ‘siloed’, as Hope implies. It is Hope’s descriptor, not Tehan’s, safety-awareness (stages can be dangerous places), craft, play but it seems to be an attempt to get at the feel and attitude (‘siloed play’ is an oxymoron), aesthetic experience (feeling or of the siloing operation which the Minister imputes to all beauty), co-operation, propaganda, marketing, celebration, humanities students. Note that income-generation, exhibition, clouds are romantically ‘soft’ as re-creation, creation, ritual, I do not believe that arts degrees are in any in ‘soft subjects’. ‘Siloed’ sounds habit, socialising, socialisation. way siloed since there are always many more academic, ‘nebulous’ Performing arts enterprises dismissive, crass and insulting offer all types of tasks or ways to express life by usage. But, for the purpose formal specialised areas of of the argument in favour employment : law, accountancy of putting an impost on the nebulous, at least ‘nebulous’ and business management, marketing, stage design, carpentry, provides a means of contrast with the ‘un-siloed’ subjects welding, mechanical invention or application, electrical which supposedly have ends and beginnings: they are upright knowledge, costume design, properties, sound design, solid-citizen things that belong. They fit and make up the new curation, lighting design, writing, stage management, hard-headed world, the new Rinascimento. They are things computer skills, cleaning, public relations, customer services, that you can pick up and put down, and leave: like banging hospitality, export, booking and ticketing, tourism, casting, in the last nail or whipping out the last catheter at the end small business creation, one-off project creation (repeated/ of the shift, putting the hammer back in the tool box and development). Students who undertake performing arts rubber gloves in the bin instead of having to think about the take up roles and occupations in one or often more of these meaning of ‘education’ (Latin root [language!]: to lead out or activities in myriad projects, including much ‘rough theatre’; to go somewhere) or ‘crisis’(Greek root: gathering together only occasionally on the mainstages familiar to Government and unfolding) or ‘adaptation’(Latin root: moving to another ministers who often get invitations to their orgiastic or magical skill), to a ‘renewed focus’ on types of work as Mr Tehan Slytherin theatricalities. Many of the activities and skills of described the purpose of the new policy. Clouds (L. nebulae) skilled arts workers are transferable, able to walk out the door also have the tendency to make you think of the world and its to other spheres of work. A significant proportion of acting big questions, like how do I belong to the world and how does it graduates leave acting but move into related fields, sometimes belong to me? How do I have it? How does it have me? with additional formal study, and learn additional skills on the Maybe one should not even ask this question about ends job or formally. If the work area of the nebulous arts degree and beginnings and leadings on, because, according to the is somehow also a silo, it is a fertile one, an incubator, and Minister, Philosophy is definitely a siloed subject, and, after all, capable of letting its steamy contents burst out. we’re talking about money for real jobs, money with its more It is hard to see how the learning and work activities which or less clear rules and demands and edges which somehow live, I have described could be termed ‘siloed’ if the term means permeating all, digitised in another sort of cloud. In short, I do ‘cut off ’, ‘disconnected from’, or ‘immured against’ the world it not believe that arts degrees are in any way siloed since there adjoins, abuts or inhabits. It can only be siloed if someone else are always many ways to express life, as Dilthey has proposed. or something else, like a government with funds, cuts itself off I have indicated that I will question whether a performing from it. To ‘silo’ something is thus to use a metaphor to make arts degree can be siloed. It is obvious to all, I would think, a value judgement about something. ‘Silo’ discourse usually that the performing arts bares its breast to all aspects of life. occurs in a negative context, although its possible opposite, Its teaching proceeds in that spirit. The degree exists for many ‘integration’, sometimes attracts criticism, such as the parking vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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of history, geography and religion under ‘social studies’ or some such. Most educators see knowledge as connected, not something to be sliced and diced, as it has often been in educational settings for different reasons. On the other hand, the reverse may be true. Some of the ‘job-ready’ degrees may be victims of ‘siloing’. Thornbury, Neahouse and Gallagos (above) all bemoan the siloing which occurs in STEM subjects and engineering, study areas which Minister Tehan bravely implies are non-siloed in contrast to the humanities.

He adds a voice which makes the way up and through the intellectual thicket unnecessarily rocky and conflicted. Even on less demanding peaks, making one’s way in the world requires using the equipment available to us, co-operatively I would urge. The motto of the Melbourne City Council, ‘Vires acquirit eundo’ catches succinctly the value of learning: ‘We get stronger as we go along.’ A variety of equipment from many store-houses can help.

The kinds of activities which I have listed above are those which actually occur in workplaces in which people who have studied in the performing arts work. Students of performing arts may not have studied marketing, for example, as part of their degree but may well find themselves having to learn about and do it when engaged in a production, especially of the alternative or ‘rough’ kind. Forget Potter (even though I auditioned for Dumbledore – and I am not envious). This is how it works for ninety-five per cent of the five per cent of actors who are employed at any one time: three weeks’ rehearsal and one to three weeks of performance (the other five per cent are doing commercial or mainstage theatre).

Finish. Split of the door of $300 to $700 ($33 per day) for the whole period, if you are lucky. Back to your day gig, dear actor, as even the Potters will also do eventually. So, yes, be open and unsiloed to learning about, say, statistics or formally study Statistics for the casual few days of the week you work for that superannuation company.

My second question is to ask whether the type of work in which performers engage post-study is siloed. One does not need to snoop around for too long to discover that this is not the case. I will offer personal evidence from some work which I have done in the last couple of years in theatre which demonstrates theatre performance’s open stance. The Ghetto Cabaret (Klas, 2019) at fortyfivedownstairs (a notfor-profit theatre in Melbourne) in 2019 entered the pain of a discriminated group, Jews, in crisis. Jews were forbidden to lecture or study at university thanks in large part to the ideological work of Alfred Rosenberg (Rydell, 2015) and Hitler which infected Nazi Party policy. While the experience of the play enabled me to deepen my understanding of the dark Nazi history, it was a stark reminder about maintaining vigilance for justice in our own times. Similar attention to injustice was present powerfully in the play Coranderrk (Nanni & James, 2013) in which I played over seven seasons:

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it concerns the wilful destruction, by political operators and rent-seekers carving out for themselves (stealing) the land of a successful Aboriginal settlement in late nineteenth-century Victoria. In playing Nicholas II in Tchekov at the House of Special Purpose ( Johns, 2019) at La Mama in 2017 and 2019, I was brought to a deeper understanding of a father’s caring relationship with his daughters. Although I am a father of daughters myself, I was able to enter somewhat into experiences which might be useful in understanding even deeper the real-life ‘substitute parent’ role which I can bring to international students in my English language classes, and empathise with thoughts and feelings which their parents at home might have. I am likely to have learned at least as much as I might have from a psychology textbook. Psychology, it should be noted, is an area of study which will attract a reduced fee, as the Minister noted in his presentation. Am I to infer that psychology is non-siloed?

It seems to be that way.

In playing two drunks in Bottomless at fortyfivedownstairs in 2018, I got some sense of the world of the alcoholic and was able to tap a similar empathetic understanding. And how does sociology stand? Allow me to go back further, to the Kennett years. In Melbourne Workers Theatre’s large-scale production of The Tower Light at the end of the Twentieth Century, I participated in an event which warned about and presaged much of the misery and venality which has since flowed through Melbourne’s casino along with the tax dollars. I protested at the opening of the casino itself with members and supporters of MWT, kept by security at a distance, on the other side of the Yarra. Well-known actor, Rachel Griffiths, sneakily got herself much closer, topless, in protest, onto the main door’s red carpet. Siloed?

With a degree in drama and dance? ‘Catapulted’ might be a better descriptor. With the same company’s Rapid Response Team, I once dressed up as a (53-year-old) baby in a nappy in Bourke Mall to protest the cutting of childcare subsidies. My willingness to be involved depended on my understanding of the issue. I may have stood on the tramlined stage bawling, but not blind. I could offer many other examples in which the work of actors is intimately connected with, not ‘siloed’ off from, the society in which we live. I have a recurrent feeling that some politicians would just like us to go away because performing is often a way of asking difficult questions. We could all become psychologists (lower fees) or philosophers (higher fees) rather easily. I know several actors who have headed off into ‘unsiloed’ psychology where the income is higher and more assured than performers’ median income.

Can you blame them?

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discourse analysis, subjects which I had studied at times. I have give some of the game away. It (not a pun) is a field in which not yet been in a situation where I have had to learn some of conjunction, ‘the provisional and precarious syntony of the skills contained in some of the degrees and qualifications vibratory organisms that exchange meaning’ (Birardi 2015, which the Minister will make cheaper, and which humanities p. 31) might somehow occur. That hope is likely a vain one. students will subsidise. Some actors have. It is not unusual Siloing will be complete, of course, when the computers are for an actor to have to learn how to cook a particular meal entirely robotic and exercising their own will, and building, or meals during the course of a play. Cooking becomes without payment or reward, other computers to do the same the focus of the work: that is largely the play (for example, thing and gradually remove/silo (v.) the human. Whether Emma: Celebrazione! (Ciccotosto (1996)), performed by we should allow that to occur or not is a matter which only Laura Lattuarda, 1996-97). Other actors have built things, philosophy can answer. like cupboards. During the course of a 12-hour production Another meaningful anecdote: I recently had an interesting of John Gabriel Borkman by Theatertreffen in Berlin in 2012, conversation with an efficient, skilful, funny, and empathetic the space of the proscenium young, Vietnamese nurse in arch was bricked up during the an outer suburban public I suspected that she had been encultured course of the play (Perkovic hospital where I found myself, in an educative silo which emphasised the 2012). I have no idea whether in emergency, for a couple a bricklayer was brought in for of days. I must say that I was empirical so firmly as to encourage her the gig, or whether the actor deeply impressed, in fact to express herself solely in terms of science learnt or was already able to lay emotionally moved, by the and with a degree of automaticity. Her bricks. I would not be surprised professionalism, skill and performance seemed to indicate a victory of if either of the latter alternatives sheer hard work of all the Apollo over Dionysus. was the case. I have worked nurses – without exception. with actor Chris Bunworth I was so impressed that I (2020) who works as a labourer wrote to the Health Minister on ‘job-ready’ building sites when he is not doing a gig, and to convey my experience and to state my belief that we are loves it. It is hard to see how the acting work in which actors doing very well in health education and that we should apply engage exists in a silo. It is not hard to imagine ways in which that attitude to other areas as we move out of the pandemic. both kinds of work cross-fertilise. Chris can play great ocker I asked this nurse how she de-stressed from the pace and types and, job-ready, carry heavy lighting equipment around demands of her work. the stage for the job at hand.

The explanation she gave me was almost entirely in terms The third question asks if the (by implication) ‘nonof endorphins: the explanation was empirical and, therefore, siloed’ degrees or subjects are, in fact, silo-free. The concept limited as an understanding of human experience. Historical, suggests something which is not hermetic; it is something emotional, cultural and aesthetic experiences were absent in open, free and dynamic, exploratory, boundary-busting, the account. I don’t believe that this woman de-stressed by world-connected, down-to-earth, pragmatic, practical and feeling the science (naturalism) in such an ‘objective’ way, adventurous, and needed. Since the ‘non-siloed’ are – by but it seemed that she had limited resources, partly but not inference and announcement – nursing, medicine, English or predominantly to do with language, to convey the experience. language (Chinese or… Inuit?), psychology, and IT, I should I suspected that she had been encultured in an educative silo ask if these subjects all fit this description? On the face of which emphasised the empirical so firmly as to encourage it, they all do. Nursing has a place for compassion, humour, her to express herself solely in terms of science and with a teamwork, role-playing (dealing with the schizophrenic degree of automaticity. Her performance seemed to indicate patient, for example), cleaning, writing (reports), knowledge, a victory of Apollo over Dionysus. This despite my overall patient assessment, and other things. The list may not be as high estimation of the nursing education she had apparently long as that found in working in the theatre which I know, received, its pragmatic roundedness, and my observation of but it is not ‘siloed’. It connects with many facets of human some flexibility in her interaction with patients and other life. A similar case might be made for the rest of the list. staff. I expect that if I had continued the conversation with Although IT might be somewhat removed from the flesh, the nurse, I might have been able to encourage her to recount it is not a field in which imagination and empathy should her experience in a freer, broader, more phenomenological go AWOL or be exposed to forces of destruction, although way. It is difficult, I suggest, for humans to be so completely some think as if anything goes. Dan Tehan did not, however, cut off, amputated, from inner and outer perceptions so that urge IT students towards teaching or language learning or the only remainder is the purely measurable and conceptual, choreography in the name of diversity. That would be to as Dilthey believes. Of course, one may be conditioned to vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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do so, and maybe that work is better left to robots. In the meantime, striving for what humans can do best in all their richness should not be discouraged.

I have hinted here that ‘siloed’ is not a useful term to characterise degrees or the subjects which compose them.

Knowledge cannot be merely sliced and diced either in designing curricula or in teaching methodology, and such an understanding is hardly new. It might have been better if Dan Tehan had simply said that there will be a need for certain kinds of jobs and the country needs to prepare to meet them.

It would have been more honest if he were to have simply said that his Government does not have high regard for the humanities (even though I suspect most of the Government members have been schooled in them), and that such studies should be sacrificed for the greater material and (it seems) psychological good of the population. Better to say that the change is a policy of social engineering. I do not wish to convey the impression that I am casting any aspersions on the intended and useful policy outcomes needed: dealing with an ageing population and the increased mental stresses in society generally, attracting young people into school teaching (which has been a relatively underpaid occupation with high burnout) to deal with the ‘Costello baby boom’ numbers (which the Minister admitted), and staffing schools in growing outer suburbs caused by immigration are all matters of some urgency. The greater good also includes, obviously, the fuelling of the operation of the digital world (which has its ‘siloing’ problems, as Choi (2014) and Dalziel et al. (2018) discuss), and the provision of mental health services founded on Psychology to deal with anxieties and behaviours emanating from recent and anticipated social and environmental weakening, damage or collapse.

As for the performing arts, we have been here before. In 1960, the time of Menzies’ Science blocks for schools and before Whitlam’s free tertiary education, I was working regularly as a young actor in the Channel 9 studios in North Adelaide in the pioneering children’s show Southern Stars. I had my heart set on going into teaching, which I did a couple of years later, and am still doing sixty years later. At the studio, a crew member told me after shooting had finished one Sunday afternoon, ‘There’s this acting school that’s just opened up in Sydney.’

He was referring to NIDA, of course. I had no idea that one could make a career of acting in Australia. Most Australian actors had to go to RADA in London to study, and most of them came from families who had the means to support them.

In the meantime, we Australians have established our own way of doing things and have made studying performance in academic or craft institutions a reality to young people of all backgrounds. Regarding such studies as ‘siloes’ or imagining them to be so is neither an accurate description nor useful for the way ahead. It is a step back to a gone world in practical terms, and a step back to nowhere in perception and judgment

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about the merits of different fields of study: as the Editor of The Sunday Age (21 June 2020) concluded: During society’s deepest challenges, from war to recession and depression, it is so often cultural touchstones such as the arts that throw up the champions of our age. The government is right to address the jobs crisis, but it mustn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and jeopardise what helps to make us who we are (p. 22).

The coincidence that Vera Lynn died on the same day as Dan Tehan delivered his speech (18 June 2020) is not lost on me. The institutions we build should not be the ‘reshap[ed]… higher education architecture’ (Tehan, 2020a) of the tiered terraces of Tenochtitlan down which the heart-less corpses of sacrificed humans were let tumble, but open silos of fermenting knowledge, skill and bravery.

Jim Daly is a veteran Melbourne-based jobbing actor, teacher and academic. He is a trained teacher, holds a BA, a postgraduate diploma and masters’ degrees in educational administration and applied linguistics. He is completing a PhD at The Centre for Theatre and Performance at Monash University.

Contact: James.Daly@monash.edu

References Barnes, C., Weinbaum, E. & Francis, E. (2012) Cultivating connections among research, policy and practice for state education agencies: social networks and knowledge use. (Draft) The Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE).

Retrieved from https://www.cpre.org/sites/default/files/ meetingpaper/1342_12951246aerabarnesweinbaumfrancis.pdf Birardi, F. ‘Biffo’ (2015). AND: Phenomenology of the End. South Pasadena: Semiotext(e).

Bunworth, C. (2020). Curriculum vitae of Chris Bunworth. Showreel.

BgmAgency website. Retrieved from http://www.bgmagency.com.au/ details.aspx?type=actor&id=612 Creegan-Quinquis, M. & Thormann, J. (2017). Effective Use of Technologies to Transform Arts Education and Teach Diverse Learners. Art and Technology. Brill Sense. 45-58. Retrieved from https://monash.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/tjo511/ catau51422415610001751 Choi, Y. (2014). From Siloed Data to Linked Data: Developing a Social Metadata Repository. Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 51(1),1–4. Retrieved from https:// doi.org/10.1002/meet.2014.14505101144 Ciccotosto, E. (1996). Emma-Celebrazione. Performed by Laura Lattuarda and others. Directed by Rosalba Clemente. Playbox Theatre. https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/26138 Dalziel, K., Dussault, J. & Tunink, G. (2018). Legacy No Longer: Designing Sustainable Systems for Website Development. Retrieved from https://dh2018.adho.org/en/legacy-no-longer-designing-sustainablesystems-for-website-development/ Editor, The Sunday Age. Nine Entertainment. 21 June, 2020.

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Gallegos, H. (2010). The Education of an Engineer in a Holistic Age: A Latin American Perspective. In Holistic Engineering Education.

Springer, New York, NY, 99-111. Retrieved from https://doi. org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1393-7_9 Gerth, H.H. and Mills, C.W. (1946). From Max Weber. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gillespie, K. A. (2015). Review of Animal Oppression & Human Violence: Domesecration, Capitalism, and Global Conflict. The AAG Review of Books, 3(2), 66–67. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/ 2325548X.2015.1015914 Gillespie, K. M. (2015). Racial diversity in University of Oklahoma student organizations: the case for increasing informal interactional diversity within siloed institutions. Master’s Thesis. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/11244/44940 Gomes, C. (2018). Siloed Diversity: A Concept. Siloed Diversity.

Palgrave Pivot, Singapore, 65-100.

Hope, Z. (2020). Uni fee hike another blow for class of 2020. The Sunday Age. June 21, 2020, p.1.

Johns, R. (2019) Tchekov at the House of Special Purpose. Unpublished play script. First produced at The Courthouse Theatre, La Mama, Carlton 2017.

Kitts, R. L., Christodoulou, J. & Goldman, S. (2011) Promoting interdisciplinary collaboration: trainees addressing siloed medical education. Academic psychiatry, 35(5), 317-321. Retrieved from https:// doi.org/10.1176/appi.ap.35.5.317 Klas, G. (2019) The Ghetto Cabaret. Unpublished play script. Premiere Production by Kadimah Jewish Theatre at fortyfivedownstairs, 2019.

McKnight, W. (2005). Business Intelligence in Healthcare Today.

Information Management, 15(5), 80.

Mukharji, P. B. (2018). Subjects of modernity: time-space, disciplines, margins. Manchester University Press. 1-3. Retrieved from https://doi. org/10.1080/13688790.2018.1440892 Nanni, G., & James, A. (2013). Coranderrk: we will show the country.

Acton, Australian Capital Territory. Aboriginal Studies Press.

Nelson, E. S. (2011) The World Picture and Its Conflict in Dilthey and Heidegger. Humana Mente Journal of Philosophical Studies,18, 19-38.

Retrieved from https://philpapers.org/archive/NELTWP Newhouse, C. P. (2017). STEM the boredom: Engage students in the Australian curriculum using ICT with problem-based learning and assessment. Journal of Science Education and Technology. 26 (1), 44-57.

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Niemi, H. (2019). Establishing a Master Data Management Process in a Siloed Organization. Master’s Thesis. Retrieved from http://urn.fi/ URN:NBN:fi:aalto-201910135728 Norton, B. (2011). Hyper-Regulation Leaves No Place To Hide.

Financial Executive, 27 (1), 40–44. Retrieved from https://link.gale. com/apps/doc/A247973283/AONE?u=monash&sid=AONE &xid=ca8e168e Perkovic, J. (2012). True Chaos: Theatre at the Limits. RealTime (August-September.)

Rydell, A. (2015). The Book Thieves: The Nazi Looting of Europe’s Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance. New York: Viking.

Tehan, D. (2020a). ‘Job Ready Graduates.’ National Press Club of Australia. Media Release. Retrieved from https://www.npc.org.au/ speaker/2020/656-the-hon-dan-tehan-mp Tehan, D. (2020b) Minister for Education Dan Tehan National Press Club address 19 June 2020. Canberra: Minister’s Media Centre, Department of Education, Skills and Employment. Retrieved from https://ministers.dese.gov.au/tehan/minister-education-dan-tehannational-press-club-address.

Terziovski, M. & Kanchan, A. (1999): What makes organisations succeed?: an examination of some of the characteristics of excellent and visionary companies. Journal contribution. Monash University.

Research Repository (figshare). Retrieved from https://doi. org/10.4225/03/5934f716aa9f0 Thornburg, D (2009). Hands and minds: Why engineering is the glue holding STEM together. Thornburg Center for Space Exploration.

Retrieved from http://www. tcse-k12. org/pages/hands. pdf.

Treene, L., & Grigoryan, Z. (2020). Gut microbiome trends observed in patients with h. pylori colonization compared with healthy subjects at Cooper University Hospital. Retrieved from https://rdw.rowan.edu/ cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=cmsru_capstones Virdun, C., Gray, J., Sherwood, J., Power, T. (2013). Working Together to Make Indigenous Health Care Curricula Everybody’s Business: A Graduate Attribute Teaching Innovation Report. Contemporary Nurse: Issues in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Care, 46 (1), 97–104. Accessed 20 June 2020. Retrieved from https://doi. org/10.5172/conu.2013.46.1.97 Weston, G. (2019). Gabriel Weston: Keeping an Open Mind. BMJ: British Medical Journal (Online), 365, l2074. Retrieved from https:// doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l2074 Willcock, D. I. (2013). Collaborating for results: Silo working and relationships that work. Routledge.

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The degrading of university education The failure from within Tim Moore Swinburne University of Technology

The grand villa on the slopes of the Acropolis was confiscated not long after the philosophers left. It is clear that it was given to a new … owner. Whoever this owner was, they had little time for the ancient art that filled the house.

Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age

that skills in university study can be unproblematically prioritised over the learning of disciplinary knowledge.

Education Minister Tehan’s recent announcement to double the cost of an Arts Degree has been a bombshell like no other in recent higher education policy. Many have rightly seen it as a policy that makes no practical sense – if you want teachers, as is claimed in the overall policy, you of course need a sizeable number of these trained in the humanities. More concerning though, is the perception that the decision is just another dismal episode in the country’s never-ending culture wars, where national policy seems to be driven, as much as anything, by a desire to vanquish one’s ideological foes - real or imagined.

We should fervently decry this latest plan by the Government and its motivations. In this piece however, I argue that our critical gaze should be directed as much at our universities – or at least at that class of administrator that has come to run them in recent decades. In the directions and strategies that have been pursued over this time, there has been little defence by our ‘institutional leaders’ of the broader educational mission of universities, leaving them seriously exposed to the antiacademic, anti-democratic policies now being imposed.

I describe two notions that have been key in the directions that have been pursued, and which lie at the heart of the intellectual enfeeblement of our institutions. The first of these, is the so-called employability agenda, which has come to construct higher education in almost exclusively instrumentalist terms; the other, is the highly flawed notion

Minister Tehan commenced his dramatic address to the National Press Club in June in bold terms: ‘Today, I announce our plan for more job-ready graduates’. Clearly, employability was very much on the Minister’s mind; in fact he spoke of virtually nothing else. In an address of just over 20 minutes, the words employ/employment were uttered 15 times, along with other related terms: work (15 times); job (22 times, including the new coinage, ‘job-relevant’ study). Notions relating to those pursuits that actually go on in a university barely rated a mention – learning (three times), thinking (four times), the latter used only as part of a mantra about students needing to ‘think’ about choosing the right ‘job-relevant’ degrees. The government, of course, is intending to assist school-leavers with their ‘thinking’ in this regard by putting the study of certain disciplines out of financial reach for many.

The reviews of the Tehan package have not been flattering.

Author Richard Flanagan saw the plan as part of a broader cultural trend which ‘places ever less value on the creative, the critical and the questioning, and which regards conformity as the greatest good’ (quoted in Carmody & Hunter, 2020).

Ian Marshman and Frank Larkins (2020), higher education researchers at the University of Melbourne, were sure the Tehan plan precludes any notion of ‘a well-rounded education’, or of students ‘achieving their full potential and wider citizenship capabilities’ (p. 1). Economist Ross Gittens (2020) was much

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more pointed: ‘Our unis are about to become even more like education. The Review’s summary of recommendations noted sausage factories’. the desire of business and industry to see a greater alignment Marshman and Larkins (2020), in their response, go on to between university curricula and industry needs and a ‘greater characterise the Tehan plan as ‘truly radical’, constituting ‘a emphasis’ placed on the development of specific employability major shift in the purpose of Australian university education’ skills (Bradley et al., 2008, p. 209). The Australian Chamber (p.1). But one wonders just how much this is really the case. of Commerce and Industry, for example, called for the Arguably, the employment agenda now so embraced by the instituting of ‘more formal structures… to ensure that students Government has been gestating for a long time, and this are able to build industry-relevant skills’ (ACCI, 2008). has happened as much as anywhere within the walls of our Within academic ranks, the new employability agenda, universities. as well as the increasing loss of institutional autonomy that The road to where we are now has been a long and mainly accompanied it, was met with disdain. Yorke and Knight unedifying one. The first striking out on that journey goes (2006), for example, noted the growing sense of unease from back arguably to the 1990s, with the publication of the within faculties, with such developments viewed as ‘narrowly Achieving Quality report, which first introduced universities conceived, relatively mechanical, and inimical to the purposes to the idea of generic skills and attributes (Australian Higher of higher education’ (p. 567). Writers like Richard Hil (2012), Education Council, 1992). The a regular contributor to the new paradigm ushered in by pages of AUR, have been more As we’ve all come to observe in our this report was characterised forthright, seeing the new institutions, the benefits of pursuing a as a shift in post-secondary ‘career-focused’ agenda having education policy away from a its roots in the productivist higher education degree are now described focus on ‘inputs and efficiency’ demands of global capital, almost exclusively in employment terms. to one of ‘outcomes and quality’ one that typically precludes (Clanchy & Ballard, 1995). ‘anything approaching Whilst this new orientation was to be welcomed in many intelligent civic engagement’ (p. 127). respects, a challenge confronting policy makers was how the But where skepticism has been the order of the day within ‘outcomes’ of the diverse and multifarious nature of higher faculties and departments, this has not been the case at all with education could be adequately described – least of all, measured. the senior management of universities. Far from pushing back Ultimately, the solution to this challenge was a highly (or even wanting to temper these pressures in some way), the reductionist one, with quality and success to be evaluated approach at senior levels over the last decade has generally been almost exclusively in industry-based terms. In time, the a wholesale embrace of the new agendas. Indeed, high-flying indicators of what constituted a quality higher education careers have increasingly been forged out of such allegiances. were reduced to two main metrics: the employment levels As we’ve all come to observe in our institutions, the benefits of graduates; and how satisfied employers were with these of pursuing a higher education degree are now described graduates, as recorded in the growing number of industry almost exclusively in employment terms. We see this in the surveys sponsored by government and other agencies (e.g. advertising slogans (Get the career-ready advantage); in the ACNielsen Research Services, 2000). Marginson and mission statements (We create future-ready learners equipped Considine (2000) saw in all this a significant shift in the for the jobs of the future etc.); in the open day sessions for future role and status of the sector, marking what they described students (Be assured, our Course X has excellent employment as the increasing ‘interpenetration of economic capital into outcomes). Commenting on all these developments, Jackson university education’ (p. 52). A related development were (2013) suggests that universities have become ‘consumed’ by the policies of the Howard Government during this time the employability idea. which sought to refashion the purposes of universities in A key part of this re-orientation has been the creation all almost exclusively utilitarian, economic terms. A significant manner of outside work experience programs in industry moment amid this new milieu was the out-of-process (internships, mentorships etc.) embedded into degrees, an cancellation by the then Education Minister , Brendan approach strongly supported by Universities Australia (2014).

Nelson, of a range of ARC grants in the humanities and While such practicum experiences have always been a part of social sciences on the grounds they demonstrated ‘no professional programs (e.g. in training for teaching, medicine national benefit’ (Haigh, 2006). etc.) – and usually undertaken towards the end of the degree Various industry peak bodies and employer groups took – they are now seen as an indispensable component of most their cue from such developments. By the time of the Bradley degrees. Students are often encouraged to think about these Review in the late 2000s, it was clear that such groups expected options from Day 1 of their undergraduate studies. One of the to have major input into the redesign of Australian higher main effects of such developments has been to take students vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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away from their campuses – and also away from their lecturers and fellow students; away from their university libraries and classrooms; away from the social life and rites of passage that are such a part of this phase of a young person’s life; in fact, away from most of the things that go to make up what is unique about the experience of higher education. In this new paradigm, it is almost inconceivable to imagine a vice chancellor in a welcome to new students saying something like the following: We want you to be here. We want you to take full advantage of this unique and short-lived experience in your life when you able to immerse yourself in a special world of ideas and ways of thinking, ones that don’t readily get exposure in the outside world. Think of yourself in this special time of your life as a student and all the opportunities and possibilities this brings – intellectually, personally, socially – before you enter the more regimented world of work and adult responsibilities. We want the precious time at our university to be a rich, transformative one, where you will develop powerful understandings and capacities – in both your areas of study and the world in general –ones that will carry you through in whatever endeavours you pursue later on in your life.

In the current environment, such an account seems almost fantastical. But in a time not so long ago, the world – or the world of our universities – was contracted thus.

The question is how did we come so far, or so low? Clearly external forces have played their part – the effects of everdiminishing funding and support from government (Tiffen, 2020); the increased competition for students; the relentless impositions and criticisms of the sector coming from industry and business interests. But much blame for this abandonment of the higher education ideal has to be directed at the leaders of our universities who have led the push in these directions.

Raewyn Connell (2019), in her highly-regarded book, The Good University: What Universities actually do and why it’s time for radical change, describes the special cultural and psychological qualities that have come to characterise this group. She notes how the changes wrought in the system in recent decades have seen an older generation of administrators – ‘steeped in an ethos of public service’ – giving way to a new class of manager who, through the corporate nature of their operations, has become increasingly detached from the educational processes of their institutions. ‘The isolation of senior managers from the university’s rank and file staff ’, Connell says, ‘is now a key feature of the university scene’ (p.

130). Such isolation has inevitably involved a loss of contact with the lifeworlds of faculties and departments and with this, one senses, a diminished affiliation and commitment to the larger disciplinary and civic concerns of university study. In the increasingly arcane and remote activities of this group, it seems that the professional affinities nowadays are much more with their counterparts in the corporate sector. This is

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especially the case with those in the management consultancy industry, who – with their shared language of strategy and restructure – have increasingly come to play a role in the governance of our institutions (Moore & Taylor, 2019; Trounson, 2014).

In the gradual entrenchment of the employability agenda, university leaderships have also been aided and abetted by a new class of higher education researcher/administrator, typically those heading up centres of learning and teaching or moving into DVC academic positions. This group have brought a quasi-religious zeal to the promotion of these new ways of thinking. There is not much subtlety, it must be said, in the nature of their pronouncements. Curricula, it is thought, should be mainly determined by employers: ‘[Modes of learning] more focused on the skills employers say they want, might be more effective and efficient paths for a sizeable proportion of undergraduate students’ (Crisp & Oliver, 2019). What students benefit from higher learning is seen almost exclusively in job-related terms: ‘If graduates are to meet their potential, they must learn as students how to maintain their future employability through careerlong employability work (sic)’ (Bennett, 2019). And in the irredeemably neoliberal conception of these things, students are, of course, viewed as customers – our essential role as teachers, it is suggested, is to broker the investment the student/customer has made in their education: ‘[Universities] are becoming more adept at supporting students to manage their educational investment in their employability futures’ (Kift, 2019, p, 50).

In this enthusiasm for ‘reform’, one can’t help also noticing an all-too-ready inclination to run down many of the established qualities and virtues of academic learning (see for example, Herrington & Herrington, 2007a). Thus, traditional university curricula are typically dismissed for being ‘bounded’ and ‘constrained’, in contrast to the ‘open-ended’ and ‘flexible’ nature of the new industryoriented modes; similarly, the knowledge base of programs is characterised – or caricatured – as consisting only of the narrow ‘facts’ and ‘information’ of disciplines, as opposed to the ‘higher order learning’ of organisations; and established assessment-types like the academic essay or review, once valued as genres ideally suited the development of students’ skills of analysis and argumentation, become scorned for their lack of ‘authenticity’ and ‘realworld’ contexts (Herrington & Herrington, 2007b). What’s needed to banish all this artifice from our halls of learning, it is suggested, is a bridging of the ‘skills gap’ (Analoui 1993) – so that there is as much similarity as possible between tasks and content in the ‘learning setting’ (education) and in the ‘application setting’ (workplace).

But we need to question the soundness of such notions.

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create convergence of these two domains, we need to recognise fragmented landscape’, where alternative private providers (and also to insist on) their fundamental differences (Dias et – ‘employers, corporates, professional associations’ – would al., 1999). This does not stem from some desire to merely increasingly dominate the sector, and where degree structures preserve existing structures, but rather from a recognition that would be supplanted by ‘learning experiences, ranging the purposes and ‘activity systems’ (Engeström, 2001) of each from micro-certifications to corporate training to industry type of organisation – education and work – are objectively qualifications’ (p. 21). The reality check for all of us in the different. Le Maistre and Paré (2004), for example, explain here-and-now is that such notions were clearly articulated in this in terms of differing configurations of what they call – the different sections of the Tehan statement in June. ‘mediational means’ and ‘outcomes’ of the two domains. Thus, in universities, the ‘mediational means’ are those practices and Skills over knowledge artefacts that are used for the purposes of learning (classes, labs, textbooks, assignments etc.); and the outcomes are Running hand in hand with the employability agenda, as we the discipline-based knowledge and skills students acquire have seen, has been an increasing focus placed on skills – often through these means (i.e. theories, methods, techniques). at the expense of the teaching of disciplinary knowledge.

In the move to professional practice, the ‘outcomes’ of Debates about these two notions – skills and knowledge - and university learning become in effect the ‘mediational means’ their relationship go back at least as far as the Greeks, with of the workplace; that is to say, Aristotle’s elaboration on two the new professional draws on distinct types of ‘knowing’: the We also need to be aware of the disturbing the outcomes of their learning ‘knowing that’ (episteme) and implications of the ‘skills gap’ idea – which to enact a fundamentally the ‘knowing how’ (techne). different type of ‘outcome’ (i.e.

In time, this distinction if taken to its logical ends, would seem to the provision of professional came to underpin a broad point towards the ultimate obsolescence of services to clients, patients, division within many national the university. pupils etc.). Le Maistre and educational systems – between Paré (2004) argue that it is vocational training on the one naïve to imagine that the two hand, with its focus on the areas can simply be conflated. In fact, we greatly diminish realm of the technical, and higher education, on the other, the power and opportunities of one domain – in this case, with its focus on the epistemic. While we know in practice, education – if we try to force it to assume the characteristics such divisions are far from being clear cut, the conceptual of the other. A similar view is expressed by Simon Marginson. difference has nevertheless, provided a useful way to think As he adamantly states things: “Work and education are about the differing missions of these two institutional strands. qualitatively different social sites, and need to remain so” The increased focus on employability in universities (quoted in Hansen, 2014). in recent years, however, has seen a progressive shift away We also need to be aware of the disturbing implications from the epistemic base of learning. This has been evident of the ‘skills gap’ idea – which if taken to its logical ends, in the growing influence of the so-called ‘21st Century would seem to point towards the ultimate obsolescence of skills’ movement (Griffin et al., 2012). The types of skills the university. Thus, if the aim is constantly to bridge the gap and qualities generated out of the movement are now very between the domains of study and work – to create greater familiar to us all: teamwork, collaboration, communication, and greater ‘alignment’ between them, as the jargon has it – creativity, problem-solving, computer skills, and the like. the ideal situation, presumably, is one where no gap exists at What has also become familiar is the increasingly hyperbolic all. This would be a situation in which the university was in way such skills are now referred to in university documents some sense indistinguishable from the worlds for which its and pronouncements. The following descriptions, taken from graduates were being prepared, suggesting a higher education a Graduate Attributes policy paper at one university, speak to system more or less subsumed into the training regimes of their almost magical potential: businesses and corporations.

Such skills are what enable a graduate to arrive ready to ‘hit Such a scenario may seem far-fetched. However, it is not the ground running’ in diverse professional contexts. too far away from the sort of ‘visions’ of higher education Future-ready skills are the transferrable skills that enable now being espoused by a range of private entities. The people to move between diverse professional contexts in the management consultancy firm, Ernst & Young Australia future world of work while responding to global problems.

(2018), for example, in a report speculating on the future of higher education – Can the universities of today lead learning This focus on – even fetishising of – skills has been for tomorrow? – predicts, or rather pitches for, ‘a more accompanied by a derogating of the importance of vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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disciplinary knowledge. Stephen Parker, a former vice chancellor, and now ‘national sector leader’ at consultancy firm KPMG, states the case plainly: ‘Our education system needs to place greater focus on skills and capabilities, and correspondingly reduce the “knowledge content” of the typical syllabus’ (Parker, 2017). Others see the specialist knowledge that comes out of degree structures as increasingly an impediment: The world of the future is not so fixated on degrees. Employers actually want skills and confidence. [At my university] we’re more into developing skills rather than transferring knowledge (Quester, quoted in Basu & Rohaidi, 2018).

In a more extreme version of this idea, there is a questioning whether lecturers should concern themselves with content knowledge at all. Universities, it is suggested, should not be in ‘the content business’ (Quester, quoted in Basu & Rohaidi, 2018). The rationale for such a view? ‘The internet does that much better’ – as though a coherent syllabus of study might be created through the simple compiling of an assortment of YouTube clips and TED talks. Under such a view, we see growing criticism of the methods by which essential knowledge is passed on to students. In course and unit review processes, for example, pressure is often exerted on academics to reduce the reading requirements of their subjects. The lecture format – especially the live lecture – is now under constant attack.

It is a relief that such ideas are not left unchallenged. One powerful critic in recent times has in fact been the Australian Chief Scientist, Alan Finkel. In a number of interventions, Finkel (2018) has expressed his great dismay at the way that ideas about workplace skills have been misinterpreted – or even deliberately distorted – in the formulation of policy and curricula. He writes: I say: ‘Engage [students] through real-world problems’ – but people hear: ‘Great, let’s toss out the textbooks’.

I say: ‘Students should be work capable’ – but people hear: ‘I need to teach generic skills like collaboration, instead of content knowledge like chemistry’.

And on the current obsessions with the development of students’ communications skills, Finkel (2018) finds it inexplicable that ‘so many people [have come to] associate being a 2lst-century worker with knowing less and talking more’ (p. 29).

This is an inexplicable state of affairs, especially given that the academic literature on this subject is so much at odds with the policies being pursued. Among the various thinkers working in this area, the view is virtually consensual – this is, that the development of any desired skills and attributes can only happen in any meaningful way if taught within the context of studies in a discipline. The following are a number

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of key quotes from the last 20 years of research in the field around this idea: Such skills cannot be learned in vacuuo … they must be learned in the context of a specific discipline and body of knowledge (Clanchy & Ballard, 1995, p. 164).

A preference for teaching graduate attributes in the context of disciplines has been mentioned in the literature often … but it cannot be emphasised more strongly (Chapman, 2004, p. 23).

Educators and policymakers must ensure that content is not shortchanged for an ephemeral pursuit of skills. Skills are inseparable from knowledge (Rotherham & Willingham,2010, p. 18).

Finkel (2018) too leaves no doubt about the validity of such a view: ‘The evidence from every field of knowledge – cognitive psychology, education, philosophy, engineering, applied labour economics – [says] very clearly: give up content at your peril’ (p. 29).

It is worth recounting the rationale and support for such a view. On a simple philosophical level, it is impossible to think of many of the skills that appear on graduate lists without thinking of a content base that gives them meaning and substance. Such a notion is rooted in the phenomenological axiom – advanced by Brentano a century ago – that ‘thinking is always of neccessity thinking about something’ (cited in Howard Gardner, 1985). In relation to other skills that students need to develop – communicating, problem-solving, collaborating etc. – we can say that they too need always to be about something – about some ‘epistemic’ content.

And this ‘something’ of its nature must have a specificity to it. Philosopher, John McPeck (1992), a leading scholar in the area of critical thinking, notes that our critical thoughts are never about ‘things in general’, but of necessity are always directed at ‘something in particular’. Indeed, it is the nature of that ‘something in particular’ (its disciplinarity) that generates the distinctive criteria that enable relevant critical judgements to be made; that is to say, a novel, for example, will be judged by criteria quite distinct from other disciplinary entities such as a chemistry experiment or an architectural design (Moore, 2011). McPeck concludes that the idea of skills not being related to a specific subject X is ‘conceptually and practically empty’ (1992, p. 54). Finkel (2018) has a similar notion in mind when he queries the value of having students learn separately about the much-hyped skills of collaboration and teamwork: “What’s the use of learning to collaborate”, he bluntly states, “if you actually don’t have anything distinctive to contribute?”

Research in this area also confirms two additional principles.

One is that the level and quality of skill development appears to be proportional to the depth of knowledge one has attained in a field. In an influential article by Glaser (1984) ‘Education vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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and thinking: the role of knowledge’, which reviewed psychological work in this area, the conclusion drawn is that familiarity and active engagement with content is ‘the crucial difference between individuals who display more or less ability in thinking and problem solving abilities’ (emphasis added, p.

97). It is an irony that as universities increasingly spruik their mission to produce graduates ‘equipped to solve complex problems in the world’, the policies pursued seem guaranteed to reduce the field expertise necessary for these problems to be adequately addressed in the first place.

The other principle relates to transfer. Thus, far from confining one to a narrow specialisation, the development of skills through deep disciplinary learning, it is held, provides a platform for their transfer to new contexts of activity (Perkins & Salomon, 1992; Clanchy & Ballard, 1995).

Such skills – once learned – do not have to be learned totally anew in each new context. Some degree of transfer does occur, and the most effective learners are those who in fact most quickly recognise the relevance of previously learned skills to the new contexts and are most readily able to adapt them to those new contexts (Clanchy & Ballard, 1995, p. 164).

But as Ballard and Clanchy insist, for this transfer to occur, the grounding has to be there in the comprehensive and systematic learning in a field. It is these principles that have formed the basis of university learning for a century, and which arguably, have been responsible for the creation of both a skilled and adaptable workforce, and an engaged and intelligent citizenry. Within the highly problematic paradigm of ‘skills over content’, such foundations seem now to be very much at risk.

Reflecting on such developments, Richard Sennett (2007), the eminent US sociologist of work and employment, warns about the dangers of an education system founded more on these much vaunted skills than deep knowledge and understandings. What’s produced out of such regimes, he suggests, is a worrying, ‘superficial’ version of knowledge.

[This new type of knowledge] ‘involves moving from scene to scene, problem to problem, team to team. Such work typically … divides analysing from experience, and penalises digging deeper – a state of living in process. To skim rather than to dwell….’ (Sennett, 2007, p. 122) Among other things, Sennett is sure such an outlook cannot deal in any adequate way with the quite serious issues and challenges increasingly faced by our societies and the environment.

These are issues for Australia. Indeed, the abject failure of so much public policy in the country over recent years, along with accompanying economic malaise, leaves one wondering whether there might be a connection at some level between this societal decline and the reshaping we have seen vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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of Australian higher education. There is no space to explore this issue here. However, it does seem far from clear that our repurposed higher education system, geared, as it is, to these strongly utilitarian objectives does actually produce the positive outcomes so frequently claimed.

Conclusion When Minister Tehan delivered his address at the National Press Club, many recoiled in horror at the drastic nature of the plan. But as we have seen, these developments have been gathering force for quite some time – and, as has also been noted, this has happened, as much as anywhere else, from within the corridors and boardrooms of our own institutions.

There is no doubt that any campaign to fight the Tehan proposals will need to be directed in the first place at our political masters in Canberra – who would do such wanton damage to our univerities. But, as I have been suggesting, there is also a campign to be fought on the local front – to demand much better from our own insitutional leaders, whose actions and ambitions over the last decades have failed – in so many ways – our once impressive tertiary system. To return to the archaeology quotation at the beginning of this piece, as the ‘new owners’ of our institutions, these leaders need to be made to account for the ‘little time’ they have shown to the ‘ancient arts that fill our houses’, and which they have allowed to become so imperiled.

But all that said, in any campaign going into the future, our greater energies will be best devoted to our students. The task here is to persuade them – and also to demonstrate through our teaching and support of them during the great challenges of these times – that they really are entitled to a much better version of a university education than the one currently on offer, and which shows signs now of only falling into greater disarray.

Tim Moore is an associate professor in Academic Literacy and Linguistics at Swinburne University of Technology. He is also Secretary, Swinburne Branch of NTEU. Contact: tjmoore@swin.edu.au

References ACCI. (2008). Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Submission to Review of Australian Higher Education. Canberra, ACT. ACNielsen Research Services. (2000). Employer Satisfaction with Graduate Skills. Canberra:Australian Government Publishing Service.

Analoui, F. (1993). Training and Transfer of Learning. Aldershot: Avebury.

Australian Higher Education Council. (1992). Higher Education: Achieving Quality. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service.

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Basu, M. & Rohaidi, N. (2018). This university wants to boost skills, not knowledge. Gov Insider 8/02/2018. Retrieved from https:// govinsider.asia/digital-gov/university-adelaide-pascale-quester-skillsover-knowledge/ Bennett, D. (2019). Meeting society’s expectations of graduates: Education for the public good. In in J. Higgs et al. (Eds.), Education for Employability: Learning for Future Possibilities (Volume 1). Brill Sense, pp. 35-48.

Bradley, D., P. Noonan, H. Nugent, & B. Scales. (2008). Review of Australian Higher Education. Canberra, ACT.

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Herrington, A. & Herrington, J. (2007b). What is an authentic learning environment? University of Wollongong. Retrieved from https:// ro.uow.edu.au/edupapers/897 Hil, R. 2012. Whackademia: An Insider’s Account of the Troubled University. Sydney: New South Books.

Jackson, D. (2013). Business graduate employability – where are we going wrong? Higher Education Research & Development 32 (5): 776790.

Carmody, B. & Hunter, F. (2020). ‘Gobsmacking’: Writers savage humanities fee hike. The Age. 20/06/2020.

Kift, S. (2019). Employability and Higher Education: Keeping Calm in the Face of Disruptive Innovation. in J. Higgs et al. (Eds.), Education for Employability: Learning for Future Possibilities (Volume 1). Brill Sense pp. 49-60.

Chapman, L. (2004). Graduate Attributes Resources Guide: Integrating Graduate Attributes into undergraduate curricula. University of New England.

Le Maistre, C. & A. Paré. (2004). Learning in two communities: The challenge for universities and workplaces. Journal of Workplace Learning 16(1): 44-52.

Clanchy, J., & Ballard, B. (1995). Generic skills in the context of higher education. Higher Education Research and Development, 14(2), 155-166.

Marginson, S., & M. Considine (2000). The Enterprise University: Power, Governance and Reinvention in Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Connell, R. (2019) The Good University: What Universities actually do and why it’s time for radical change. Melbourne: Monash University Publishing.

Crisp, G & Oliver, B. (2019). Re-imagining graduate achievement and employability. In J. Higgs et al. (Eds.), Education for Employability: Learning for Future Possibilities (Volume 1). Brill Sense, 73-82.

Dias, P., Freedman, A., Medway, P. & Paré, A. (1999) Worlds Apart: Acting and Writing in Academic and Workplace Contexts, Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ. Engeström, Y. (2001). Expansive learning at work: Toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization. Journal of Education and Work, 14(1), 133-156.

Ernst & Young Australia. (2018). Can the universities of today lead learning for tomorrow? The University of the Future. Retrieved from https://assets.ey.com/content/dam/ey-sites/ey-com/en_au/topics/ government-and-public-sector/ey-university-of-the-future-2030.pdf Finkel, A. (2018). Master the foundations and rule a universe. The Australian, 18(07), 2018.

Gardner, H. (1985). The minds new science: A history of the cognitive revolution. New York : Basic Books.

Gittens, R. (2020). A hit to nation’s ‘human capital’, The Age, 24/06/2020.

Glaser, R. (1984). Education and thinking: the role of knowledge.

American Psychologist, 39(2), 93-104.

Griffin, P., McGaw, B., & Care, E., (Eds.) (2012). Assessment and teaching of 21st century skills. Dordrecht: Springer.

Haigh, G. (2006). The Nelson touch: research funding: the new censorship. The Monthly, (May 2006), 20.

Hansen, A. (2014). Universities Australia deal to get students ‘work ready’. The Conversation 26/02/2014. Retrieved from https:// theconversation.com/universities-australia-deal-to-get-students-workready-23719 Herrington, A. & Herrington, J. (2007a) Authentic mobile learning in higher education. In: AARE 2007 International Educational Research Conference, 28 November 2007, Fremantle, Western Australia.

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Marshman, I. & Larkins, F. (2020). The vocationalisation of university education. Campus Morning Mail 21/06/2020. Retrieved from https://campusmorningmail.com.au/news/the-vocationalisation-ofuniversity-education/ McPeck, J. (1992). Thoughts on subject specificity. In S. Norris (Ed.), The generalizability of critical thinking: Multiple perspectives on an educational ideal (pp. 198-205). NY: Teachers College Press.

Moore, T. J. (2011). Critical thinking and language: The challenge of generic skills and disciplinary discourses. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Moore, T., & Taylor, G. (2019). The university of the future: Can the universities of today lead the learning of tomorrow? (book review).

Australian Universities’ Review, 61(1), 93-96.

Parker, S (2017). ‘Educating for the new world of work’. KPMG; Australia. Retrieved from https://home.kpmg/au/en/home/ insights/2017/06/australia-education-system-for-the-new-world-ofwork.html Perkins, D. N., & Salomon, G. (1992). Transfer of learning.

International Encyclopedia of Education, 2, 6452-6457.

Rotherham, A. J. & Willingham, D. (2010). 21st Century. Educational Leadership, 67(1), 16-21.

Sennett, R. (2007). The culture of the new capitalism. New Haven: Yale University Press: Tiffen, R. (2020). The four-and-a-half-decade higher education squeeze. Inside Story 17/06/2020 Retrieved from http://insidestory.org. au/the-four-and-a-half-decade-higher-education-squeeze/ Trounson, A. (2014). ‘Uni consultants make $17m killing’. The Australian 19/04/2014.

Universities Australia. (2014). Statement of Intent: Work integrated learning-strengthening university and business partnerships. Retrieved from http://cdn1.acen.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/WILstatement-of-intent.pdf Yorke, M., & Knight, P.T. (2006). Embedding employability into the curriculum. In Learning and Employability Series. York: Higher Education Academy.

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Post-COVID Australian universities The need for a new teaching and research vision Bob Birrell The Australian Population Research Institute

Australian universities have used the revenue from overseas student fees to enhance their international research standing. COVID-19 has undermined this business model. A new strategy is required, based on the universities’ contribution to making Australian industry more self-reliant. This outcome will require a national industry policy, such as has been successfully pursued in Israel. Australia’s universities will need to adjust their research activities in order to contribute to this end. The Australian government will have to provide the funds and direction. The universities too, need to embrace this vision.

Keywords: COVID-19, overseas students, university teaching and research

Introduction Pre-COVID, Australian universities had flourished despite very limited growth in Australian government funding. They had done so by expanding their overseas student enrolments.

Now, in the post-COVID setting, most of the funding from this source has gone and is unlikely to return to 2019 levels for several years.

Universities are appealing to the Australian Government for additional funding that will cover the likely shortfall.

They are doing so in a context in which the Government has decided to implement major higher education reforms.

These involve greater focus on job relevant teaching and research that addresses Australian industry needs. This is what university leaders claim they have been doing.

However, in the ominous words of the Minister for Education, Dan Tehan: ‘Our reforms are being implemented to support universities to strengthen their focus on domestic students and strengthen the mutually beneficial relationship with business and government’ (Tehan, 2020).

The challenges of this new situation are immense, since in order to promote overseas student enrolments Australia’s vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

universities prioritised quite contrary objectives. This particularly applies to the Group of Eight (Go8) universities.

They massively increased their enrolment of overseas students and, partly to attract these students, focused their research effort on work adding to the global stock of knowledge in the hard sciences. As for domestic teaching it has become a second order priority, subordinate to the research effort. This opinion piece assesses the scale of the financial and reform challenge.

The overseas student focus Australian universities have long been engaged in a competition to expand their research effort. Research output has been regarded as the key to their overall prestige, but Commonwealth government funding has been limited. One option, the deregulation of domestic fees, which would have augmented the revenue of the more prestigious universities, has been denied.

The Abbott Government presented legislation to implement this deregulation in its 2014-15 budget. However, the legislation was rejected in the Senate.

The Abbott Government, however, like the preceding Gillard Labor Government, wanted to promote the overseas Post-COVID Australian universities Bob Birrell

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student industry, both as a source of funds to finance research free from taxpayer reliance and to promote the export performance of the overseas student industry.

In the case of the Labor Government, prior to losing office in late 2013, it had taken action to rectify some of the excesses of the industry in the years up to 2010. It introduced reforms in 2010 and 2011, mainly involving higher English language entry requirements and increasing the funds overseas students were required to show they could access prior to taking up their enrolment. These initiatives resulted in a sharp decline in the number of overseas student enrolments in universities at the time. This intervention provoked a sharp push-back from the overseas student industry.

Since 2012 successive Australian governments have reversed the 2010 and 2011 reforms, at least as they affected the universities.

The tough rules on English language standards have been softened. Overseas students do not have to achieve the English levels needed for university-level instruction.

The funds each overseas student must have access to have been reduced and decisions on the matter have been devolved from the Immigration Department to the universities. Overseas students are only required to establish that they have access to the funds needed for one year of study and living expenses.

This means that, for most students, especially those from the Indian subcontinent (see below) they arrive with the presumption that they will be able to access the Australian labour market in order to meet their expenses. From the time of their arrival they are permitted to find employment (in theory 40 hours of paid work a fortnight). In addition, overseas students enrolled since 2012 and who complete any degree level course, can stay in Australia with full work rights for a further two years.

There have been no limits on the number of overseas students a university can enrol except for a vague and rarely enforced government statement that such enrolments should not be at the expense of domestic enrolments. Moreover, universities have been free to charge whatever fee level they think these overseas students will pay.

Both the universities and overseas students have rushed to take up the opportunities offered. For the year 2018-19, 216,724 higher education visas were granted. The students are drawn from two major markets. Some 32 per cent were from China and around 43 per cent from the Indian subcontinent (Department of Home Affairs, 2019).

These two dominant streams are quite different.

The Chinese market In recent years, the Chinese students have been attracted to the Go8 universities, where they dominate the enrolments.

They are paying $40,000 plus a year for undergraduate and postgraduate by course work degrees. The courses themselves

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have been customised in order to cope with the limited English language skills of their overseas students. Around half are in the business and commerce field of education, mostly at the master’s by coursework level.

These courses are relatively cheap to provide. They do not usually require additional teaching accommodation because they can be crammed into existing campus buildings.

What are these students buying? They are attracted to the Go8 because most are ranked in the top-100 research universities in the world. The Chinese are buying credentials which carry this status and, on this account, are valuable at the elite level in the Chinese job market.

The Indian subcontinent market The second stream of overseas students is primarily recruited from the subcontinent of India, particularly from India and Nepal. Most attend non-Go8 universities where the course fees range from $20,000 to $25,000 a year. They too are mainly enrolling in business courses and to a lesser extent, IT and engineering courses.

What is this stream of students paying for? It is mainly access to the Australian labour market and the potential of obtaining a permanent residence visa. This is what the post2011 changes to the enrolment rules facilitate. The subcontinent stream dominates the ranks of overseas students who are in the Australian labour market. They also show the highest propensity to take up the two-year post study work visa referred to above. They are mainly employed in low skilled service jobs, as in hospitality, retail, cleaning and the like.

The result As Table 1 indicates, the outcome is an explosion in the level of overseas student enrolments relative to domestic student enrolments. It is strongest within the Go8. By 2018 over 40 per cent of all commencing student enrolments in these universities were overseas students. Most of these students came from China. No comparable data are available for 2019, though this ratio would have increased further because, in 2019, overseas student enrolments continued to grow faster than domestic enrolments.

For the Go8, this enrolment has delivered a revenue bonanza.

In the case of the University of Sydney, total revenue from overseas student fees increased from $285 million in 2012 to $884 million in 2018. By 2018, this overseas student fee revenue accounted for 34.1 per cent of the University of Sydney’s total revenue of $2,589 billion (Department of Education, Skills and Employment, Finance Publication, 2020).

In the case of Monash University, this fee revenue increased from $319 million in 2012 to $852 million in 2018, by which time it also made up 34.1 per cent of the University’s total revenue. This was $2,498 million in 2018. vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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This is not all. With the imposition of COVID-19-related travel restrictions, most Go8 universities face additional losses in revenue from accommodation fees, parking and other services provided to overseas students.

Losses of revenue of $300-$400 million over 202021, compared to budget expectations for the largest Go8 universities are in store.

Australia’s non-Go8 universities have also become dependent on revenue from overseas students, though to a lower degree than the Go8. The proportion of overseas student commencing enrolments to total commencing enrolments across the non-Go8 spectrum was between 20 and 30 per cent by 2018. For example, in Victoria, Deakin had reached 29.7 per cent, La Trobe 25.9 per cent and Swinburne, 23.2 per cent.

Overall, total Australian university overseas student fee revenue more than doubled from 2012 to 2018, increasing from $4.1 billion in 2012 to $8.9 billion in 2018. By 2018 this revenue amounted to 26 per cent of total university revenues and represented an increase of 117 per cent.

By contrast, over the same period Australian Government Financial Assistance increased from $14.67 billion to $17.62 billion, an increase of 20 per cent.

Table 1: Proportion of commencing onshore* overseas students to all onshore commencing students, Go8 universities and all Australian higher education institutions, 2012, 2016, 2017 and 2018

What have the universities done with this revenue bonanza?

financed (or have been used as collateral for loans) to pay for the campus rebuilding across the sector: in the form of shiny research centres, student accommodation, trophy administration headquarters and grand landscaping. The funds have also helped pay for the massive expansion in university administrative salaries. These grew from $4.8 billion in 2012 to $6.5 billion in 2018 (Department of Education, Skills and Employment, Finance Publication, 2020).

As the universities have made clear, the expansion in university research activity, which has delivered the Go8’s top-100 international research ratings, has heavily depended on fee revenue from overseas students.

While the Australian government pays for much of the costs of the research workers who receive competitive grants, the universities have to pay for the infrastructure (laboratories, equipment and the like) needed if the research is to proceed.

Overseas student revenue pays for much of this.

The research itself has focused on that which enhances the global stock of knowledge in the hard sciences. It is the research output that is most likely to find a home in the prestigious international science journals which are the basis of the global research university ratings.

This research usually has little direct relevance to the needs of Australian industry. It could hardly be otherwise. Even if the universities had wanted to focus on applied research, the demolition of Australian industry through Australia’s globalisation priorities (detailed below) has denuded the ranks of the locally based industries able or willing to finance applied research.

This is not all. A far bigger financial hole looms. The loss of revenue from the decline in overseas student numbers threatens the business model on which universities have operated over the last decade. These funds have directly vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

Group of 8:

2012

2016

2017

2018

Melbourne

27.3

36.2

38.7

41.2

Sydney

22.8

39.2

42.9

45.6

Monash

24.0

36.5

39.8

43.6

ANU

28.8

36.5

43.1

48.8

University of Queensland

27.4

31.8

37.0

41.8

UNSW

30.2

38.7

42.9

45.7

Adelaide

28.5

28.3

31.4

33.0

UWA

19.1

20.8

25.1

24.3

All Australian higher ed institutions

21.8

26.7

28.9

31.6

Source: Department of Education, Skills and Employment, Selected Higher Education Statistics (2020), Table 1.10, Commencing Students by State, Higher Education Provider, Citizenship and Residence Status, full year 2018 * The term onshore is used to distinguish overseas students being educated in Australia from those in Australian campuses set up overseas. The latter are not included in these figures.

The impact on domestic teaching Because this issue has been given a thorough public airing in the context of government proposals to focus teaching in vocationally relevant fields of study, I do not offer any extended comment.

The universities can, at least, look forward to the fulfilment of the recent Government promise to expand the funds it will provide for taking on more students and that it will index this funding in order to ‘maintain the real value of funding for domestic students.’ (Minister for Education, 2020). This is not the case, as noted above, for the funding of research activities.

The universities like to claim that their overseas enrolments enrich the educational experience for domestic students. This is a claim that is wearing thin. It is reflected in Dan Tehan’s demand, cited above, that the universities need to focus more on domestic training.

Indeed, it is obvious that domestic training has become a second order priority. The universities’ top priority is to Post-COVID Australian universities Bob Birrell

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maximise their research output. To this end, teaching has been subordinated to research, and is increasingly carried out by casual staff.

The Government must share much of the blame for this outcome. As noted, the only direction to universities has been that the overseas student presence should not be at the expense of domestic teaching. This directive has not been enforced.

In the case of the Go8, domestic commencements (at undergraduate and post graduate levels) in the Go8 actually fell, from 87,939 in 2012 to 85,529 in 2018 (Department of Education, Skills and Employment, Selected Higher Education Statistics, 2020). Whatever capacity the Go8 has had to increase enrolments has been devoted to overseas students. The number of commencing overseas students at Go8 universities has increased over the years 2012 to 2018 from 30,320 to 62,423, an increase of 32,103.

The Go8 could have increased domestic enrolments prior to the 2017 when the Coalition put a cap on domestic enrolments. They chose not to do so.

This priority is less evident for the non-Go8 universities.

Their overseas student commencement numbers grew by 53,737 between 2012 and 2018 (from 72,820 to 126,557).

But this increase was not completely at the expense of domestic enrolments, which grew over the same years from 282,375 to 323,841, an increase of 41,466. Relative rates of growth were 73 per cent for overseas students, and 15 per cent for domestic students.

The Government’s proposals to focus more teaching in STEM and other more allegedly job relevant fields has been widely canvassed. I do not think that the criticism of the humanities and social sciences implied by this proposed change is warranted. This is because these fields of education offer a crucial enabling skill to those employed as professionals and managers. That is communication skills. University level training, first in the humanities or social sciences then in postgraduate level vocational skills, is thoroughly justified from a vocational perspective.

However, in this context, the universities are vulnerable to criticism. I refer to another crucial enabling skill: this is IT literacy. The universities have sat on their hands regarding this issue. IT literacy is not a requirement of the humanities, social sciences or business and commerce fields of education.

The universities are also vulnerable to criticism for their limited teaching in the specialist IT fields of study.

Between 2014 and 2018 course completions at the domestic undergraduate level in IT in Australian universities grew from just 3,208 in 2014 to 4,088 in 2018. This is a miniscule number when measured against the total number of undergraduate completions in 2018 of 139,458.

To the extent there was any significant increase in training in the IT field in Australian universities it was delivered to overseas students. Most of this growth was at the masters by

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course work level, where such overseas student completions increased from 3,385 in 2014 to 8,141 in 2018.

The Australian Government and the universities have been content to outsource the inflow of IT specialists to the immigration program. The number of IT professionals recruited annually, from the temporary entry work visa program alone, is around 10,000 a year. They are mostly coming from India.

The COVID-19 calamity Since 20 March this year, overseas students have not been permitted to travel to Australia. The universities’ initial reaction was that this was not a major blow because, as of April 2020, 80 per cent of those holding overseas student visas were in Australia.

However, most of the 20 per cent not here were Chinese students. Some 67,919 of the total of 177,442 Chinese citizens holding student visas were not in Australia at the end of March 2020 (Department of Education, Skills and Employment, Research Snapshot, 2020). Thousands of these are likely to defer or delay their studies in Australia, thus diminishing the fee revenue Australian universities, especially the Go8, had budgeted for.

The revenue crisis will deepen for all universities over the year 2020-21. This is because normally about half of those taking up higher education student visas do so in the second half of the calendar year. Few will do so in 2020.

It seems likely that new offshore enrolments will be slow to pick up in 2021 because of continuing restrictions on international travel.

Even if these restrictions are removed, in the case of Chinese students it is possible that the Chinese Government will obstruct enrolments of its citizens in Australian universities.

This will mainly have an impact on the Go8.

However, other universities will also be affected. For the next few years, Australia’s attractions for Indian subcontinent students are likely to diminish because of the increased costs of studying in Australia (including health insurance in the postCOVID environment) and the weakness of the Australian labour market. Prospective applicants, as indicated, have to take into account the money they can make from working in Australia. This is likely to be less than in the past because of the collapse of low skilled hospitality and similar work opportunities and because a huge number of residents will be chasing similar employment.

Impact on Australian universities Australia’s universities face a dire financial outlook. Their leaders have made this plain in the course of their appeals for government assistance. vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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The crisis has prompted several vice-chancellors to take a pay cut themselves. For example, at Monash the ViceChancellor, Margaret Gardner and her senior executives have ‘volunteered’ to take a 20 per cent pay cut. This unprecedented action is signalling to researchers, teachers and administrators across Monash’s campuses that they too face cuts to staff numbers and perhaps to their salaries.

The Government response The universities’ appeals to government have been rejected.

They have not even been made eligible for the Job Keeper allowance that has helped keep thousands of private sector firms afloat.

To be eligible, a large organisation has to show it is losing 50 per cent or more of its ongoing revenue. The universities’ total revenue in 2018 was $33.7 billion, of which $17.6 billion came from the Commonwealth Government. Since the Government has promised that this revenue will be sustained over the next few years, and because the universities ‘only’ face a sharp contraction in the $8.8 billion they received from overseas student fees in 2018, they fall well short of the 50 per cent criterion.

The Government has left universities to cover their COVID-19 losses. This implies that they must continue to rely on overseas student revenue. Yet, revenue from overseas students is likely to be depleted for several years.

In any case, the core rationale of this business model has been undermined. The revenue from overseas student fees helped the universities (especially the Go8) achieve a high international research standing, and in turn helped promote overseas student enrolments.

A new business model is required A radical rethink is required, not just within the universities but in the Government as well.

Without some new source of funds, Australia’s university research capacity will languish. The existing model, based on contributions to the global stock of knowledge is not sustainable, at least not while the Government insists on prioritising industry relevant research.

A new focus is required which is consistent with this government priority.

The universities need to capitalise on the widespread (if belated) recognition in government, business and community circles that Australia has become too dependent on overseas manufactured products, especially from China. China, as is well known, is simultaneously Australia’s main market for commodities and the main source of knowledge intensive manufactured goods imports. As a consequence, Australia is now highly vulnerable to any disruption of these global supply chains.

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time, given that as Australia’s manufacturing capacity has been gutted over the past two decades, so has Australia’s productivity performance.

This is because knowledge intensive manufacturing is currently the main source of productivity gains in advanced economies (Birrell & McCloskey, 2020). The potential employment and productivity gains from a boost to knowledge intensive industries are enormous. However, for this to occur will require the establishment of industries that can apply the accumulated technological advances achieved in other advanced economies.

This is why some developing countries like China have generated such rapid productivity gains. China is in the process of transforming from a low to a high technology industrial base by drawing on western technology. It has done so by offering inducements to direct investment from western firms and/or by transferring technology to Chinese state or private enterprises in return for allowing foreign enterprises access to the Chinese market, or simply ‘borrowed’ without authorisation.

If something similar is to occur in Australia, it will need the mobilisation of Australia’s main source of research expertise, our universities. It will require the same sort of mutuality between business and academe as features in the research universities located in the US’s Boston and Silicon Valley areas.

For this to happen, Australia’s universities will need government assistance to make the transition from pure to applied research. This would offer Australia’s universities a new business model.

Of course, given the depletion of Australian manufacturing, this option could only occur if Australian state and federal governments embrace an industry policy in which they invest in knowledge intensive enterprises themselves or assist the private sector to do so. This will require a sea change in Australian economic policy priorities. This may seem implausible. However, it could be done, as I illustrate below by reference to the Israeli experience.

An unlikely prospect?

It may seem implausible because Australian elite opinion is hostile to industry policy initiatives. This is evident from the current public discussion as to how Australia might achieve a more self-reliant industrial structure.

This discussion assumes that all that is needed is a reassertion of policy reforms dating to the Hawke/Keating era. It was assumed at the time, and since, that once all forms of industry protection are removed in favour of the bracing effects of competition in the global marketplace, knowledge intensive Australian enterprises would flourish.

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by neoliberal measures (referred to by the Treasury since the Hawke/Keating era as ‘micro-economic reform’). This includes the removal of red tape, lower business taxes, ending the centralised arbitration system in favour of enterprise bargaining, privatisation of public enterprises and removal of welfare incentives that discourage workforce participation.

Current policy discussions repeat this assumption. They imply that Australian knowledge intensive industries will flourish in an open global economy, but only if another tough set of micro-economic reforms are implemented.

The pivotal event in the history of Australian economic policy when this neoliberal or micro-economic hegemony took over, occurred in the late 1980s. It happened in 1988 when the responsibility for industry policy was removed from the Department of Industry to the Treasury. This included the transfer of the Industries Assistance Commission (the forerunner to the current Productivity Commission) to the Treasury (Tilley, 2019, p. 208). Ever since, the Treasury’s microeconomic priorities which Paul Keating, the Treasurer at the time, embraced have dominated the Australian government’s economic policy focus.

This is despite the obvious evidence that, far from delivering a surge of knowledge intensive industries, the reverse has happened. Australian manufacturing, including its knowledge intensive sectors, has been in decline ever since the Hawke/Keating reforms were implemented.

This micro-economic hegemony has obliterated the memory of Australia’s previous successes with industry policy.

Australia’s industry policy record has been derided as based on tariff protection that propped up inefficient and globally uncompetitive industries. In fact, it involved much more than this. It reached its most sophisticated form during the early years of the Hawke Government from 1983 to 1988, under the leadership of the Minister for Industry, Senator John Button.

Australia-based enterprises were incentivised to invest in new capacity in return for targeted tariff protection, government financial assistance and union promises to initiate workplace reform.

Evidence of Australian success with industry policy has been forgotten (as with the case of CSL Limited, considered below). So have the successes of other countries with industry policy.

Israel is a stunning exemplar. Though a small country of just 8.6 million people it has achieved a niche in the global marketplace in the IT field, especially in the cyber security industry. It has done so on the basis of the advanced research capacity of its universities, its private enterprises and of the Israeli military. The Israeli government has poured resources into mobilising this research capacity into targeted industries. Such is this success, that all the global information technology giants like Alphabet have established research branches in Israel.

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The case of CSL The ABC’s business editor, Ian Verrender, has recently addressed the now topical issue of how Australia might become more self-sufficient in knowledge intensive industries.

Verrender cites the case of CSL. He says that CSL and one or two others (including Cochlear) ‘have developed world-beating medical technologies that are now sold around the globe’. How did they do it? His answer is ‘the lack of protection has forced them to be innovative and hungry’ (Verrender, 2020). In other words, chalk this one up to the alleged continuing efficacy of neoliberal policies.

CSL is indeed a striking success. It currently has the highest market capitalisation on the Australian stock exchange, even bigger than BHP and the Commonwealth Bank. It holds a large chunk of the global market in blood products, with research and production facilities in multiple locations, including Australia.

Verrender does not know, or chooses to ignore, the fact that CSL was not a product of the bracing impact of international competition. It flourished because it was able to build on the production and research capacity base attributable to Australian industry policy.

It is the direct descendent of the Commonwealth Serum Laboratory, an Australian government statutory organisation.

By the 1980s, the Commonwealth Serum Laboratory had become Australia’s ‘largest pharmaceutical enterprise, a fully integrated manufacture (sic) in serum fractionation, human and veterinary vaccines, antitoxins, antivenoms, insulin, antibiotics and diagnostics with some 1100 employees, 140 research staff and capital investment close to $250 million’(Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, 1988, p. 661). It achieved this status courtesy of decades of government investment in its research and production facilities.

When it was privatised in 1994, CSL was also one of the largest beneficiaries of the Factor f program. This was one of the industry policy initiatives of the Department of Industry prior to 1988. In 1987 the Labor Government approved the Factor f scheme, which paid drug companies a premium price (in effect a taxpayer financed subsidy) if they increased their production, R & D and exports from Australia.

The Factor f scheme ran in various forms through to 1999, during which time it channelled some $1 billion to participating drug companies (Lofgren & de Boer, 2004. 2404). It was remarkably successful. Exports of pharmaceutical products increased by 21.4 per cent a year between 1990-91 and 2000-01 (Coppel & McLean, 2002, 3). Factor f came to an end during the 2000s and with it this record of exports.

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Conclusion The sudden interest in a more self-reliant Australia offers Australian universities a potential new business model as the facilitator of new knowledge intensive industries both though their training function and their applied research potential.

They have been invited to play this role by the Coalition Government. It wants the universities: To be even more entrepreneurial and engaged with industry.

In the post-COVID world, universities need to re-focus on domestic students and offer greater alignment with industry needs (Minister for Education, 2020).

There is no sign yet that the universities are ready to embrace this message. Rather, their focus is on sustaining their existing business model. This includes desperate measures to revive the influx of overseas students.

It also involves continued assertions that their existing research achievements will drive the Australian economy to a new and more productive future. The hollowness is evident, given that this achievement has occurred at precisely the time that Australia’s lack of self-reliance in advanced industry has become obvious.

The Commonwealth Government is equally culpable. On the one hand, it has expressed some recent interest in a new vision of a more self-reliant industrial outcome.

It has also recognised that the universities’ present operations are doing little towards this end. It has offered them a new pathway such that they can make a contribution to this new self-reliant vision.

On the other hand, the Government continues to assume that all that is necessary to achieve this self-reliant outcome is a further dose of micro-economic reform. It has shown no interest in industry policy. Nor has it offered the universities the funds needed to redirect their research capacity towards the growth of knowledge intensive industries.

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References Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, (1988). Technology in Australia, 1788 -1988.

Birrell, B. & McCloskey, D. (2020). Jobs and Growth: Pathway to a low productivity economy, The Australian Population Research Institute.

Coppel, J. & McLean, B. (2002). Trends in Australia’s Exports, Reserve Bank Bulletin, April.

Department of Home Affairs, (2019). Student and temporary graduate visa program report, June.

Department of Education, Skills and Employment, Finance Publication, (2020). Finance data in this article are drawn from Table 1, Adjusted statement of Financial Performance of each HEP, 2018 and earlier years.

Department of Education, Skills and Employment, Selected Higher Education Statistics (2020). Enrolment and completion statistics in this paper are drawn from the full year statistics for 2018 and earlier years. Retrieved from https://www.education.gov.au/higher-educationstatistics.

Department of Education, Skills and Employment, (2020). Research Snapshot, April 2020. Retrieved from https://internationaleducation. gov.au/research/Research-Snapshots/Documents/RS_ VisaHoldersMarch2020.pdf.

Lofgren & de Boer (2004). Pharmaceuticals in Australia’s developments in regulation and governance, Social Science and Medicine, 58.

Tehan, D. (2020). National Press Club address, 19 June. Retrieved from https://ministers.dese.gov.au/tehan/minister-education-dan-tehannational-press-club-address.

Tilley, P. (2019) Changing Fortunes, A History of the Australian Treasury, MUP. Verrender, I. (2020), Manufacturing can be brought back, but at what cost? ABC News 9/6/2020. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/ news/2020-06-09/manufacturing-can-be-brought-back-but-at-whatcost/12333450. .

Bob Birrell is the head of The Australian Population Research Institute. He was formerly director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University, Australia.

Contact: bob.birrell@tapri.org.au

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REVIEWS

On a slow boat to China China in the World: An Anthropology of Confucius Institutes, Soft Power, and Globalization by Jennifer Hubbert ISBN-13: 9780824878207 (hb), University of Hawaii Press, 246 pp., 2019 Reviewed by Joanne Barker In his recent autobiography, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull asserts as a matter of fact that ‘the Chinese Government seeks to mobilise overseas Chinese, and especially Chinese students, to support Chinese government policy; this is one of the functions of the UFWD [United Front Work Department]’ (Turnbull 2020, p.427). This organisation seeks to quell dissent about China through control of political messaging. How are the functions of the United Front Work Department enacted through Confucius Institutes? Jennifer Hubbert’s study of China’s global Confucius Institute program offers a nuanced and carefully crafted perspective through an anthropological lens.

While Hubbert’s research is on Confucius Institutes (CIs) and Confucius Classrooms in the United States, it is relevant in the context of current debate in Australia about the role and purpose of CIs in this country. In the middle of 2020, we are emerging from the first wave of a global pandemic which first raised its fearsome head in China. Our higher education sector is in crisis due to the loss of tuition fee income from international students, vast numbers of whom come from China. And stoushes between the Australian and Chinese Governments simmer on multiple fronts including China’s recent warning to its citizens about the ‘risks’ of studying in Australia; cyber attacks which may have originated in China, and the recent affray between the University of Queensland and an undergraduate who launched a protest on campus about Chinese influence. Meanwhile, the Confucius Institutes occupy real estate on Australian university campuses, but what do they do there?

The official role of the CI program globally is teaching of the Chinese language and dissemination of Chinese culture.

In this way, China seeks to expand its soft power. Citing Joseph Nye, Hubbert has defined soft power as the ability to ‘get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments’ by relying upon the ‘attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies’ (Hubbert 2014, p.330).

Using both ethnographic and archival research techniques, Hubbert takes an anthropological approach to examine

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China’s soft power policy in practice through the experiences of the Confucius Institute program of teachers, students, administrators and parents. This book goes beyond examining documents and investigates first-hand what happens in the CI classroom and during CI-sponsored activities such as the ‘Chinese Bridge’ immersion trips to China. It also examines how the contentious issues in the public debate about China – particularly the ‘three Ts’ of Tiananmen, Taiwan and Tibet – and Falun Gong – are dealt with in Confucius Institute teaching and learning activities.

Hubbert contrasts her work with previous academic studies which generally present the role of Confucius programs in the US as a zero-sum gain – a perspective which views China’s accumulation of soft power as offset by a corresponding decrease in America’s power. Hubbert deconstructs this argument, moving beyond a macro-level perspective, by undertaking an ethnographic examination of the Confucius Institutes in practice. She treats them not only as objects of study in themselves but as places of engagement and exchange and provides insight into the ‘good versus bad’ binaries which remain the dominant framework for understanding CI programs, particularly within a political context.

Hubbert describes the Chinese government’s approach to the accrual of soft power as organic, through the products and actions of a society rather than a state, and not delivered as ‘self-promotion’, which would be viewed with scepticism.

Hubbert discusses the Beijing Olympics and Shanghai Expo as key examples of China empowering itself through ‘attraction rather than coercion’. Through these major global events, and through the Confucius Institute program, China seeks to reveal its ‘true nature’ to the world by providing global access to its cultural products and values.

Hubbert lays out the opposing views but does not dwell on the good/bad binaries, offering instead an interesting and original perspective through her immersion in day to day CI activities. Using an anthropological and ethnographic lens, she participates in classroom activities in high schools in the US and chaperones a group of senior secondary students vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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on a ‘Chinese Bridge’ 17-day visit to China. Her fluency in Mandarin enables her immersion in the research well beyond the level of observation. The visit to China with the young Americans reveals a carefully curated tour of luxury car showrooms, glass skyscrapers and other westernised developments, where the attention of the participants is drawn towards these symbols of China as a twenty-first century superpower and diverted away from the slum dwellings on the other side of the road. But the students resist, one describing it as like a ‘jail – bus jail’. Hubbert reveals that the students’ real learning occurs in the evenings when there are no scheduled activities, visiting the night markets and eating deep-fried grubs from local food stalls, in an environment which they perceive to be the real China, as opposed to the sanitised version presented in the daily bus excursions.

As the ‘Chinese Bridge’ tour ends, Hubbert concludes that when students perceive structured activities to be inauthentic and authoritarian, it feeds negatively into the young people’s perceptions of China’s efforts to demonstrate power and control. While few of the students expressed an interest in returning to China, a much larger number stated that they wished to continue learning the language. Hubbert’s work demonstrates that the acquisition of Chinese language skills is seen by the students as having important signalling value on their resumés and contributing positively to their efforts towards admission to prestigious North American universities.

The expansion of the Confucius Institute program has been embraced by many host institutions around the world, welcomed for the additional learning resources provided at a time when domestic budgetary constraints have created vulnerability in the range of learning activities which can be provided by universities and schools. But hosting a Confucius Institute may come at a cost. Hubbert cites several examples of intervention in American universities by the Office of the Chinese Language Council International, known as Hanban.

She relates an attempt to muzzle contentious political views at Stanford University where a professorship endowed by Hanban carried a proscription on discussion of ‘sensitive issues’. When Stanford refused to comply, the matter was resolved by establishing the funded position as professor of classical Chinese poetry. Others, such as Cornell University, declined outright the solicitations of Hanban. Hubbert reports that the CI program exists (or existed) in 47 of 50 US states and included 81 Confucius Institutes. As at June 2020, the conservative National Association of Scholars website lists 42 Confucius Institutes in the US which have closed since 2014 or are scheduled to close.

In Australia, all the original Confucius Institutes in 13 host universities still exist, but some observers regard them as ineffectual or even moribund, and not necessarily because of Chinese intervention. A core function of the American CI program in which Hubbert’s work is situated is language

teaching, but this doesn’t necessarily apply to every Confucius Institute. The website for the Confucius Institute at the University of Adelaide directs prospective Chinese language learners away from the CI to the University’s Department of Asian Studies. The same site invites entries for a competition which closed in 2017. Moribund perhaps, but observers offer anecdotal examples of interventions in Australian universities hosting Confucius Institutes, which may have come from Chinese diplomats. A public example occurred on the day after the 2019 undergraduate protest against Chinese influence at the University of Queensland, when the local Chinese ConsulateGeneral in Brisbane stated that it ‘firmly opposes any words and deeds intended to split China’ (Condon 2020, p.15).

Clive Hamilton has written that by welcoming a Confucius Institute on to campus, universities ‘abandon foundational principles of university autonomy’ and he provides details of the close engagement between University of Queensland senior management and Hanban (Hamilton, 2018, p.162). Against this must be balanced at least one review of Hamilton’s book as a ‘highly charged attack’ (Podger 2018). In a study of Confucius Institutes in Australia, Jeffrey Gil acknowledges accusations of Chinese influence or interference but found ‘no evidence to support the concerns raised about Confucius Institutes’ (Gil 2015, p.221).

Malcolm Turnbull’s autobiography exhorts Australians not to allow differences with the Chinese government to be portrayed as anti-Chinese. He advocates engagement with greater transparency on both sides, defending our sovereignty by responding ‘in a considered and dignified manner [and] never [taking] a backward step’ (Turnbull 2020, p.435). There can be little doubt that Hanban is closely connected to the United Front Work Department. Clive Hamilton has shown these connections in Australia (2018), and Anne-Marie Brady has examined how New Zealand is being targeted by China’s ‘new influence agenda’ (Brady 2017). China’s soft power efforts, including Confucius Institutes, are deeply embedded with Communist Party power structures through the United Front Work Department and Hubbert doesn’t argue otherwise. Her study of Confucius Institutes in the US is of value in that it draws attention to the role of Confucius Institutes in Australia at a time when our engagement with China is under intense scrutiny at the highest levels of government. Jennifer Hubbert’s conclusion about the Confucius Institute program is generally optimistic, showing that Confucius Institutes (or at least those in which her study was situated) offer students rich and complex opportunities for exploration of the changing global order.

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On a slow boat to China Reviewed by Joanne Barker

Joanne Barker is a PhD candidate at RMIT University in Melbourne, Victoria. Between 2006 and 2016 she held the position of Director International at the University of Adelaide, which is one of 13 universities in Australia which

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hosts a Confucius Institute. Joanne Barker is supported by the Australian Government’s Research Training Program.

Contact: joanne.barker@rmit.edu.au

Gil, J. (2015) China’s Cultural Projection: A Discussion of the Confucius Institutes. China: An International Journal, 13(1), 200-226.

References

Hubbert, J. (2014) Ambiguous States: Confucius Institutes and Chinese Soft Power in the U.S. Classroom. Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 37(2), 329-349.

Brady, A. (2017) Magic Weapons: China’s Political Influence Activities Under Xi Jinping. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC Condon, M. (2020) The boy who kicked the hornet’s nest. The Weekend Australian Magazine, 30-31 May 2020.

Hamilton, C. (2018) Silent invasion: China’s influence in Australia.

Hardie Grant Books, Richmond Victoria

Podger, A. (2018). Book review – Clive Hamilton’s Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia. The Conversation, 21 March 2018.

Turnbull, M. (2020). A bigger picture. Hardie Grant Books, Richmond Victoria

Has the moon lost her memory? She is smiling alone. (Cats, the musical) Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies – Orality, Memory and the Transmission of Culture, by Lynne Kelly.

ISBN 9781107059375, Cambridge University Press, New York, USA. 310 pp., 2015

The Memory Code: The Traditional Aboriginal Memory Technique That Unlocks the Secrets of Stonehenge, Easter Island and Ancient Monuments the World Over, by Lynne Kelly ISBN 9781760291327, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, Australia. 318 pp., 2016.

Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory Using the Most Powerful Methods and Tools from Around the World,

by Lynne Kelly ISBN 971760633059, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, Australia. 306 pp., 2019.

Reviewed by Neil Mudford In these three books, Lynne Kelly presents the results of her research which encompasses two main themes: 1. How people with oral (non-literate) cultures manage to remember and recall the immense amounts of collective knowledge they hold and faithfully pass it on to succeeding generations. In particular, Kelly focusses on the preservation of practical knowledge necessary for survival.

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The idea that many of the puzzling ancient monuments found across the world, such as Stonehenge in Wiltshire, UK, are memory palaces built by the non-literate societies, in times of transition to settled living, to aid the storage, reinforcement and recall of vital cultural memory.

Some definitions are in order. Following Kelly and others, oral or non-literate cultures are those without writing systems while literate cultures are those with writing systems. I will favour

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the term ‘oral’ here, for the former, as it is far better to describe people by what they are rather than by what they are not.

Illiterate denotes people in a literate culture who cannot read.

The ‘Method of Loci’ is a powerful memory storage and recall (mnemonic) technique in which a practitioner effectively deposits/stores memories in places in the natural or built environment. Collections of such memory repositories are called memory palaces. Being in the presence of one of your memory locations triggers the vivid and detailed recall of the memory associated with it. The Method of Loci is the preeminent mnemonic technique of the many Kelly investigates.

The method has a number of variations and a large proportion of the other memory techniques Kelly investigates share many features with the Method of Loci.

The three books The distinctions between the nature and what I assume are the purposes of the three books are as follows.

Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies, referred to here as K&P, is the most academic of the three volumes. The evidence is presented in a tightly argued form complete with extensive referencing. It is essentially the book form of Lynne Kelly’s PhD thesis.

The content of The Memory Code (MCode here) is a more generally accessible form of K&P designed to present the ideas to an audience wider than that for K&P. In the third and latest volume, Memory Craft (MCraft here), Kelly describes how she acquired expertise in many of the thirty-one memory techniques she tabulates in her Appendix A. She shows in detail how we can all learn to use the techniques ourselves. It is graduated, beginning with the simpler techniques and working up to the more powerful practices.

I here confess that I started the research for this article intending to review MCraft only but became so intrigued I had to get hold of MCode to find out more. This alerted me to K&P and, in spite of promising myself I would stop at MCode and MCraft, I found myself reading K&P as well. My favourite is K&P because I do like to know a subject in depth and K&P presents the most intensely worked ideas.

So here goes with the review! I will summarise some of the many ideas in the books because I find them intriguing and convincing. I think Lynne Kelly has developed a major re-evaluation and re-interpretation of an otherwise rather hidden past.

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on writing, photographs, electronically recorded information and so on to record, recall and search for information that we probably never stop to wonder how the oral cultures that preceded us, tackled these tasks. The broad answer to this question is that there is no alternative but to have all knowledge stored and retained in collective human memory and to be reliably and easily recalled from it. The knowledge must also be transmitted in good condition from one generation to the next.

Though I have written the last paragraph in the past tense, there are extant oral cultures here and there around the world.

Pre-eminent amongst them is that of the Australian Aboriginal people who have maintained their oral culture, in spite of the terrible pressures we white settlers have put them under. Kelly has drawn respectfully, but heavily, on their help and they have made invaluable contributions to the understanding of oral culture richness and intellectual and cultural depth that she reveals to us.

Remembering absolutely everything of importance to a society is a monumental task. Kelly emphasises, from the beginning, the huge extent, detail and complexity of the knowledge that must be retained, recalled and passed on in this way. Obviously, first and foremost, people of oral cultures must retain in their collective memory all the information necessary for survival such as food and water sources, the behaviours of prey and predator species, how to hunt the former and avoid the latter, how to choose the best seed or seedlings for planting or the best animals for breeding, the properties and uses of medicinal plants and substances, and so on.

All this is a monumental memory challenge, in itself, but Kelly’s investigations and those of many others show clearly that oral cultures hold enormous stores of information in addition to that required for survival. For instance, it seems universal that oral culture peoples know all the animals and plants in their land irrespective of their utility or dangers; in line with the curiosity shared by us all, they remember many things just because they are interesting. Particularly impressive is the retention of startling events such as sea level rise at the end of the last Ice Age, volcanic activity that ceased millennia ago and so on, as the Australian Aboriginal peoples have done! Kelly makes the point that startling events do naturally embed themselves in memory. Also, I am sure there is satisfaction in being able to say, ‘we know our land intimately; nothing about this country escapes our attention’. Life has to be more than survival.

Having said that, Kelly places considerable emphasis on the practical content of the knowledge. Her reason for this is that earlier research in the area has underemphasised the retention of practical knowledge.

Characteristics of the techniques.

So, how on Earth do people remember such encyclopaedic bodies of knowledge, even if the task is shared communally

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and therefore mutually reinforced and ‘backed up’, as we would call it now?

The first thing to realise is that committing everything of significance to memory is not possible with ‘ordinary’ techniques alone. By ‘ordinary’ techniques I mean the practices of our literate culture such as repeating the information over and over, composing a song with fixed lyrics and singing that, having several people remember the same information, etc. We all know how hard it is to accurately remember long lists of items or properties even if the list is important to us.

Something much more powerful and effective is required.

Kelly’s investigations into these memory techniques began with studying Australian Aboriginal songlines. By studying these practices, those of other current oral cultures and other sources, Kelly has concluded that there is a suite of clever and powerful mnemonic techniques that make the task possible.

Their implementation on a society scale requires immense community effort and strict organisation, but this is a price well worth paying because the reward is survival and, well beyond that, interest and enjoyment as well.

A further significant result of Kelly’s research in the first of her two themes, is that the underlying structures of these techniques are universal. They are or were used across the world in all the oral cultures Kelly examines. This universality is thought to arise from the fundamental structure of the human brain, common to us all and discussed below. Certainly, cultures which have developed separately from each other for millennia nevertheless use almost identical mnemonic techniques. This universality allows Kelly to infer that the oral cultures that predated current literate cultures operated in the same way as current oral cultures. In particular, that those ancient cultures used the Method of Loci, described further below. This is a key element in her justification for reaching the conclusions of her second theme.

Besides the special mnemonic techniques, another universal feature of oral cultures is that the task of holding all knowledge in memory is entrusted to a special group of people which, for generality, I will refer to here as the knowledge custodians. For the Australian Aboriginal peoples, this group is the Elders.

Recognition as a knowledge custodian is gained through long training and gradual initiation into the deeper meanings and more complex knowledge. This is a vital element to the whole memory scheme. The special knowledge is disclosed only to those who have earned that privilege and have shown they can be trusted with it. The main reason for this is to safeguard the accuracy of the knowledge. I think the rewards of recognition and respect are also strong incentives for people to devote themselves to this valuable task. Indeed, part of Kelly’s research, which I don’t touch on here, is about the influence and prestige that accrue to knowledge custodians, and rightly so.

If your survival depends on correct information, then you cannot allow just anybody to be considered an authority

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on content. Peer review amongst academics is required for authoritative publication for the same reason. Social media is a powerful example of how confused and wrong-headed ideas can become in an information free-for-all.

The Aboriginal songlines or dreaming tracks are real paths across the landscape. This is a prime example, indeed the leading example, of the ‘Method of Loci’. At intervals along those tracks lie special places that ‘hold’ the memories of all that is around that place. That is, the land functions as a memory palace. Aboriginal people travel along the tracks and sing, perform and celebrate at the special locations in order to implement their custodianship of the land by reinvigorating the country, reinforcing their memories, re-affirming the Land Law and a raft of associated purposes.

A reflexive symbiosis exists here. The people remember the place to go. Being there at the place calls forth their detailed memories and these are memories of the place. The memories can be spurred by conjuring up the place in the mind but it seems this cannot continue to work indefinitely; the place must be visited or the memories fade.

The Method of Loci is well-suited to capturing encyclopaedic knowledge and it permits amendments to be made to the information. Other techniques are suited for other tasks like remembering lists of properties, for example.

Some involve having physical triggers produced by portable specially decorated items, such as a stick or carved stone or a board with shells, bumps grooves etc. on its surface. The device’s owner passes their hand over the item to produce tactile stimuli that bring the memory popping into their consciousness as in the Method of Loci.

Storing and recalling the memories – The imaginary beings, song and dance There are two important enhancements for the Method of Loci. One is to have theatrical performances attend the retellings or recitations or singing of the remembered information. This is most effective if the performances are bizarre, frightening, highly active or startling as this makes them stick in the mind. The retellings refresh and reinforce the memories and educate newer knowledge custodians. The Aboriginal songlines have that name partly because singing the knowledge, along with dancing and theatrical story telling are key techniques for thoroughly embedding the memories and reinforcing them.

In case you think that all this is a poor substitute for writing, think about how much more effective, and entertaining, it is to communicate the call of birds to an audience or to show in delightful detail how an animal behaves! Anyone who has consulted a bird field guide will know how the written rendition of a call only makes sense after you hear the call. Just watch a Bangarra Dance Theatre performance!

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A second enhancement for all versions of the Method of Loci is to create in the mind, as the memory is being laid down, a lively imaginary being and link them, with actions, to the memory. When the time comes to recall the memory, the being appears in the imagination to act out a brief, lively, startling story concerning the information. The beings are sometimes animal, sometimes human, sometimes a mixture of the two and sometimes they morph between these forms as the mood takes them or the story or location requires and so on.

The very best of these creatures behave in exciting, startling, rude, wicked or lascivious ways, are extraordinarily beautiful or ugly. Perhaps their appearance or their name can remind you of the information through a pun or some such.

Kelly has experimented with many of the memory techniques and one of her characters, used to remind her of the details of a wading bird, was a beautiful, very long-legged girl named Marsha. Groan!, yes, but very effective! Plain facts, presented in mundane and unexciting ways, won’t ‘take’ or come back easily. To put it simply, ‘make them memorable’!

The historical evidence shows that these memory techniques continued to be used in Euro culture long after transition to a literate culture. The Ancient Greeks used the Method of Loci with streetscapes as memory palaces. They also wrote works on the optimal design of memory palaces.

Some sources credit them with inventing the Method of Loci but Kelly’s evidence shows, pretty clearly, that the method was in widespread use well before their time and that, ironically, their main contribution was to be the first to write about it.

In the European cultural stream, use of the method continued until the Renaissance and even beyond the introduction of printing to Europe. Why it then died out no-one seems to know. Maybe the people finally became so attached to writing and books that they just let the techniques slide away, just as my young son cannot understand why he needs to learn handwriting when he is convinced that he will always have a device to type with.

One of the implications of Kelly’s work is that we should think seriously about introducing these mnemonic techniques into the education system for use at all levels. In fact, being trained in these things as a young person would be of immense benefit for the whole of life – and it’s fun. Even though we have the internet and search engines and all that paraphernalia, many of the knowledge tasks we face would benefit greatly from an ability to recall loads of information without having to muck around with a device. For example, exams, open book or not, still require memory. The purpose of an exam is to find out what you have learned which is, essentially, what remains in your memory from your lessons.

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Kelly has been using her memory techniques, to good effect, in her research and writing. I, without the techniques, have been struggling to hold in my mind, all at once, the mountain of information Kelly presents so as to write this review. I am convinced that I should either study MCraft more closely and become an adept or stick to reviewing one book at a time.

Neurological foundation of the techniques The method’s power, success and universality are thought to derive from the central role that geographical location (place) has in our human neurology. The hippocampus, at the base of the brain, performs a central role in navigation and in memory creation and retrieval. When a ‘clue’, such as being at a special place, excites a site in the hippocampus, it sets off a cascade along neural pathways, reaching out into other areas of the brain, that brings the related memories into the conscious mind. This mechanism is known as pattern completion (D. Jhaveri, personal communication, February, 2020).

The hippocampus responds more strongly to clues related to experiences that excite fear, loathing, awe, etc. and these also create more deeply embedded memories than mild experiences. This explains how memory is enhanced by associating bizarre and striking imaginary creatures with the memory to be stored.

In an ironic twist that recalls the imaginary creatures of the mnemonic techniques, the name ‘hippocampus’ derives from its shape being reminiscent of a sea-horse monster in Greek mythology.

Wide range of sources of information Kelly draws her evidence for the existence and nature of the mnemonic techniques of oral cultures from a wide variety of extant oral cultures including Australian Aboriginal peoples, American First Nations peoples and the Yoruba people of West Africa.

Additionally, Kelly draws on written records of oral cultural practices and information created by early literate cultures, such as those of Ancient Greece and Rome for example. This sounds a bit contradictory, but it is wellestablished that the transition from an oral to a literate culture involves a long period during which the two coexist.

After all, in the first instance, hardly anyone can read and write and hardly any knowledge exists in written form.

Therefore, the bulk of the population can be expected to continue with their oral cultural practices only incidentally affected by the literate aspects of their surroundings.

Consequently, literate people had many opportunities to make written records of the oral cultural practices and content of their own, combined culture.

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On top of this, empire building by literate cultures brought them into contact with other purely oral cultures and provided further opportunity to record their observations, albeit with whatever biases and misunderstandings they might have entertained about that culture. For example, Julius Caesar in Britain in the 1st Century CE recorded encountering Celtic oral culture specialists with prodigious memory and recitation abilities. During the time of their conquest of South America, the Spanish wrote describing the Inca practice of encoding memory triggers in string creations (khipu), now recognised as a method for remembering stories as well as their longrecognised use in accounting.

The experimental component It is appropriate to note that Kelly’s work includes a significant experimental component. With help and advice from Australian Aboriginal colleagues, learned practitioners of other oral cultures, modern-day memory ‘athletes’ and ancient and modern written records, Kelly has intelligently and reflectively mastered a significant number of the mnemonic techniques she tabulates in Appendix A of MCraft.

At first, it sounds like such a project would take a lot of, well, almost drudgery but the opposite seems to be the case!

Kelly reports that implementing and developing such skills is great fun.

Using the Method of Loci, Kelly has turned the streets around her home in Victoria into a memory palace containing a brief complete history of the world from its formation 4.5 billion years ago until the present. Overlaid on that same streetscape, but always clearly distinguishable from it, she has another memory collection of what is, essentially, an encyclopaedia of the personalities and lives of 130 famous people. The neighbours’ gateposts, driveways, cracks in the pavement etc. that Kelly uses as triggers for memory recall are completely untouched by her contemplation of them. No properties suffered in the making of these memories!

Kelly doesn’t explain what happens when, say, a pavement crack is repaired but I am sure she has a ritual to transfer the memory from the newly-defunct crack to a fresh location along with a whimsical story to facilitate the alteration. It would be something like having the memory’s ‘Rapscallion’, as she calls her creatures, race up to her on her walk weeping and wailing that its home had been destroyed and begging piteously for help whereupon Kelly would invent a memorable search to rehome the creature.

Beyond just learning much and surprising herself with what she can now do with her memory, Kelly has successfully competed in the International Association of Memory (IAM) competitions, becoming Australian Memory Champion in 2017 and 2018. That’s impressive, given that she had not even competed prior to 2017.

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Misunderstandings Kelly points to a number of inter-cultural misunderstandings in the field. For example, anthropologists and others’ misinterpretations of the lively imaginary beings. As you might expect, reports of Europeans’ first encounters with stories involving these beings were written from a Christian perspective. Consequently, those reporting were inclined to interpret them as ‘gods’ (K&P p. 20) and much of the stories’ contents were consequently categorised as ‘religious’.

According to Kelly and other specialists, the Australian Aboriginal peoples stoutly maintain that characters in their tales are not worshiped or prayed to and are therefore not gods. Rather, they say that the beings are there to help with the conservation and transmission of knowledge. Additionally, Aboriginal people maintain that it comes down to personal taste, disposition or attitude of mind as to whether or not to believe these beings ‘truly exist’.

For the most part, this initial religious classification has stuck; once a feature of another culture has been popped into the religion pigeonhole, it seems it stays there relatively unexamined. Maybe this is another Christian response. With a belief in possessing the ‘true’ religion, there is little stimulus to spend much effort examining a ‘false’ religion peculiar to the people whose stories they are.

In contemplating mistaking mnemonic characters for gods, it occurs to me that there is a reverse line of enquiry.

Kelly reports that these characters feature in the mnemonic techniques of all existing oral cultures and in the early literate and medieval periods of Euro cultures. Hence, they must surely have played a central role in Euro preliterate cultures. Could the mnemonic characters of literate culture’s oral precursors have been the original inspirations for the pantheons of early literate cultures?

Consider the gods of Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and China as well as current Hinduism and Shinto. They bear a striking resemblance to mnemonic creatures. Both groups’ members are active and awe-inspiring, are often human/ animal hybrids and (some) are sky dwellers. They usually have special duties/associations in the real world such as life and death, fertility, crop growth and so on. I am not an expert in the field, by any means, but I think it is another implication of Kelly’s work that could be followed up.

Kelly argues that, in oral cultures, the knowledge custodians have great prestige and influence on decision-making and events in their society. Along with this, oral cultures have fairly even distributions of material wealth and little coercive power.

This contrasts with settled, literate cultures in which power is vested in those with high material wealth and coercive power.

Kelly points out that the role of the knowledge custodians disappears once the transition from an oral to a literate culture is well advanced. Consequently, the mnemonic creatures

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could also disappear, although their lively natures and likely broad-based popularity might well ensure their persistence in ‘folk’ or other tales. It would be not too large a step from that to have the creatures repurposed as gods who perpetuate their roles as guides to moral conduct and the law, modified to suit the new dominant class, while losing their roles in practical knowledge retention.

The second theme – ancient constructed memory palaces in the landscape In Kelly’s second theme, she advances the idea that many of the puzzling ancient monuments found across the world are memory palaces built by oral societies in a time of transition from a nomadic to a settled existence.

I will focus here on Stonehenge in Wiltshire, UK, but Kelly considers a whole range of other sites which she argues fit the mould of mnemonic sites. Of these others, the most spectacular are Chaco Canyon (Pueblos) in New Mexico, USA, and Poverty Point (Mississippi Culture) in Louisiana, USA. Of course, the interpretations she brings to bear on these grand sites also apply to similar though smaller scale sites which, for Stonehenge are the myriad of more modest standing stone sites throughout the UK and Europe.

Kelly’s foray into this area began with Stonehenge. She visited the site, partly as a tourist and partly from an interest in archaeology, while she was researching Aboriginal and other oral cultures’ memory techniques. As she contemplated the site, it came to her that the structure had many of the features of a memory palace. The serendipity that comes to the prepared hippocampus!

Kelly’s research took an important turn at that moment.

Excited by the possibilities, she undertook a sweeping consideration of ancient, Neolithic sites around the world examining them to ascertain whether they could have been built and used as memory palaces for the preservation, development, education and trade in oral culture memory.

Initially, she doubted solid evidence could be found in the archaeological record to test her hypothesis. After all, it is easy to appreciate how, by careful examination, stone constructions in a river bed can be found to be a fish trap, or how pottery shards with traces of food on them can be rightly considered to have been from a cooking pot but what archaeological traces could be left by people memorising knowledge?

Remarkably though, Kelly has built what I think is a solid case for her idea by considering the site features against a series of ten features that an ancient mnemonic memory palace ought to have. An important guide in this regard was the Ancient Greek text book Rhetorica ad Herennuim which sets down design principles for the optimal memory palace. These are included in her list. This assumes that all peoples will optimise their memory palaces in the same vol. 62, no. 2, 2020

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way irrespective of time, place and cultural variation within the human spectrum. This is where the universality of mnemonic techniques across the extant oral cultures and their link to the architecture of the human brain become important. Given these commonalities then it would seem valid to apply the tests to the ancient sites.

Let us quickly consider a few of the criteria and how they relate to Stonehenge.

Large investment of labour for no obvious reason There is no question that the Neolithic builders expended huge efforts and resources to build Stonehenge. The largest blocks of average mass 25 tonnes were brought from 30 km away and those of between 2 and 5 tonnes, the bluestones, were brought by sea and land from the Preseli Hills 150 km away in West Wales. No mean feat with Neolithic technologies.

Clearly, with all the resources poured into it, it must have been extremely important to the people who built it and yet there is no archaeological evidence of the production there of any tangible product, it could serve no defensive purpose and so on. If the product was memory training and transmission of vital knowledge, then (a) this would be a valuable but invisible ‘product’ and (b) construction of such a site would be worthwhile for its builders.

Satisfaction of this test is, of course, a necessary but not sufficient condition for Kelly’s hypothesis to be true but the piling on of many such confirming signs gradually builds confidence in her ideas.

Signs of a prescribed order The Method of Loci requires a memory palace to have a structured sequence of memory points so that the user can systematically go from one to another in a prescribed order.

With a streetscape memory palace, for example, you walk down the street and encounter the special places and features as you travel.

Posts or stones arranged in circles or spirals, in the fashion of all phases of Stonehenge, satisfy this criterion nicely. As in a contemporary art gallery, the visitor to the standing poles can move from one post to the other, contemplate each in turn and retrieve the associated memories. The spacing of the stones and variations in their shapes are also important.

Enough spacing keeps adjacent stones out of one’s peripheral vision, allowing contemplation of one stone at a time.

Distinguishable fires being the correct memory trigger.

Acoustic enhancement & visual engagement The Ancient Greeks held theatrical performances in modified natural amphitheatres. Rome’s Colosseum is a well-known ancient performance space, many of whose events were intrinsically horrifying and gruesome!

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Recalling the theatrical aspects of the Method of Loci, it would be reasonable to expect that a well-designed artificial knowledge site would accommodate an audience, would accentuated the spectacle of performances by singers and dancers engaged in a wild, energetic display and have good acoustics or even produce startling amplified or reverberant acoustic effects. Greek amphitheatres would satisfy similar performance-space requirements.

In this context, Kelly points to Stonehenge’s encircling ditches. Being flat-bottomed, they are well-suited as stages for theatrical performances. When new or well-maintained, their bright white chalk walls would make quite an eyecatching theatre stage backdrop. The walls’ acoustics could reflect and possibly focus the sound and even produce reverberant echo effects. Audiences on the embankments would enjoy quite a show.

Further support for special acoustic effects at the site comes from Devereaux (2011) and Devereaux & Wozencraft (2014) whose measurements at Preseli and Stonehenge show that the Welsh bluestones are ‘lithophones’, that is they ring when struck suggesting an extra acoustic property beyond those identified by Kelly. Such lithophones served as bells in times before the now classic metal variety we see in churches became common. There was even some evidence of the bluestones having been struck.

The timing of monument building A telling point in all this is that monument building commenced in Europe at the same time as the transition to agriculture. The argument in support of Kelly’s hypothesis then proceeds as follows. Like Australian Aboriginal peoples, European Mesolithic peoples did not need monuments; the landscape was their memory palace. The development of agriculture and the transition to a more settled existence presented them with a problem: the huge collection of vital, remembered information was ‘stored’ in the landscape that they were visiting less and less. Travelling the songlines and refreshing memories in your imagination can only stand in temporarily for real visits, otherwise the memories fade.

Kelly proposes that the solution was to build artificial memory palaces, to stand in for the landscape no longer being visited.

There is no shortage of competing ideas about Stonehenge’s principle purpose. These include as an astronomical observatory, a burial ground, a ceremonial site, a religious centre or a healing centre. All of these are plausible and none are precluded by Kelly’s memory palace argument but all of them have only weak or no supporting evidence for being the central purpose. For example, if it was primarily a burial site then it contains remarkably few graves for its 1500 years of active use.

So, ironically, the archaeological record pointing to the use

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of these memory technologies turns out to include some of the largest and most obvious ancient remains.

Further implications To finish off, I see a few more implications of Kelly’s work.

One is to now view the rise of the Great Civilisations in a new light. That is, as more of a natural extension of the sophisticated, well-organised, knowledgeable oral cultures that preceded them rather than as a relatively sudden leap from a ‘primitive’ to a sophisticated existence that I think is the general perception when we talk about the Ancient Civilisations in Europe and the Middle East, anyway.

Stonehenge exists in our minds as belonging in a ‘mysterious past’ but, if its builders had happened to have writing, its construction would probably have been seen as heralding the rise of a new civilisation. Kelly has shown that, while writing is a big change in a society’s methods for knowledge capture and storage, oral cultures are highly knowledgeable and well aware, perhaps super aware, of their world.

I find it uplifting to think that non-literate cultures of past ages led complex lives and managed their lands and existence with knowledge and awareness. That, in fact, they possessed a great deal of knowledge and used it cleverly to live well.

Not only that but they also had fun and lived complex inner lives just as we enjoy doing. On the other hand, we can never really know in detail what they knew because those people are now gone. All their knowledge was in their minds and was not passed on down to us or maybe it has but we don’t know which pieces are theirs.

Having said that, one of the implications that I see flowing from Kelly’s work is the possibility that understanding in greater detail how oral cultures preserve memories and how these are transferred into written form, might allow us to find out more about ‘prehistory’ than seems possible at the moment.

Finally, it is clear that our minds are capable of quite astounding feats of memory and recall. The way we use them now, they are just ‘ticking over’ compared with our ancestors and compared with the Australian Aboriginal peoples and other contemporary oral cultured peoples.

Neil Mudford is an Adjunct Senior Fellow with the University of Queensland.

Contact: neil.mudford@bigpond.com

References Devereaux, P. (2011). Stonehenge Rocks: A Preliminary Report on the Incidence and Distribution of Lithophones on Cran Menyn, Preseli, Wales. Time and Mind, 4(2), 217-224.

Devereaux, P., & Wozencraft, J. (2014). Stone Age Eyes and Ears: A Visual and Acoustic Pilot Study of Carn Menyn and Environs, Preseli, Wales. Time and Mind, 7(1), 47-70

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