AUR 64 01

vol. 64, no. 1, 2022 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

Cover image

Professor Timo Aarrevaara, University of Lapland

New Horizon Centre, Monash University. Photo by Graeme Butler. Used with permission.

Professor Jeff Goldsworthy, Monash University

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Professor Jamie Doughney, Victoria University Dr Mary Leahy, University of Melbourne

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Phone: +613 9254 1910

Dr Alex Millmow, Federation University Australia

Email: editor@aur.org.au

Dr Neil Mudford, University of Queensland

Website: aur.nteu.org.au

Jeannie Rea, Victoria University

Professor Dr Simon Marginson, University of Oxford

Cathy Rytmeister, Macquarie University Errol Phuah, 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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Education Research: An introduction (7th ed.). New York: Allyn & Bacon.

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Nature, 430, 311–316.

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Higher Education in Transition.

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vol. 64, no. 1, 2022 Published by NTEU

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Australian Universities’ Review 2

Letter from the editor

SYMPOSIUM – CORONAVIRUS AND THE CRISIS OF HIGHER EDUCATION: POST-PANDEMIC UNIVERSITIES 3

REVIEWS 48

Introduction James Roffee and Nic Kimberley

Guest editors James Roffee and Nic Kimberley assembled much of this issue. Their introduction explains all!

Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer & Meg Young

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Reviewed by Neil Mudford

Review of Australia’s response to international student needs during the COVID-19 pandemic

ADDITIONAL ARTICLES

Brigid Freeman, Ian Teo, Peodair Leihy & Dong Kwang Kim

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A succinct analysis of government policies and practices, the research literature and media reports on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Australian higher education sector and international students.

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The authors explain the relevant policies and targets of the research policy infrastructure designed to engage with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research and researchers.

The pandemic and the welfare of international students: abandonment or policy consistency?

OPINION

Gaby Ramia, Alan Morris, Shaun Wilson, Catherine Hastings & Emma Mitchell

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Tensions in the provision of higher education and training in psychology: A case study into their exposure by COVID-19

It started in the US, 50 years ago: universities under attack. Read on!

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Reviewed by Neil Mudford

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Working in 2021 Lost in Work – Escaping Capitalism, by Amelia Horgan

Joanne Barker & Anna Kent

With the COVID-19-instigated closing of Australian borders, many international students who would have chosen to study in Australia are enrolling in universities in the US, UK and other countries where the borders are open. What will the long-term effects be?

Well, I remember when I was young (Matt Taylor, 1973) Radicals – Remembering the Sixties, by Meredith Burgmann & Nadia Wheatley

An examination of Australian higher education in the context of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education and training in psychology.

International education recovery through scholarships: a case for a new approach

The 50-year war on higher education A L Jones

J M Innes & Ben W Morrison

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Decolonising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research Kathy Bowrey, Irene Watson & Marie Hadley

This article examines the status of international student welfare as a policy question before and during the pandemic and discusses post-pandemic policy implications.

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Blinded by science, again (Thomas Dolby, 1982) The best Australian science writing 2021, by Dyani Lewis (ed.)

ARTICLES 6

The coronavirus pandemic and global labour Corona and Work around the Globe, by Andreas Eckert & Felicitas Hentschke (eds)

Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer & Meg Young

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A gig guide for the 21st century The Gig Economy – Workers and Media in the Age of Convergence, by Brian Dolber, Michelle RodinoColocino, Chenjerai Kumanyika & Todd Wolfson Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer & Meg Young

OPINION 45

Delivering online to international students Greg Whateley

COVID-19 conditions required a shift to online learning but the unexpected shift created new demands and pitfalls. Will we get back to face-to-face teaching sometime in the future? vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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Ruin or reform and redemption?

Australia’s universities. Can they reform? By Salvatore Babones Reviewed by Bob Birrell

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Letter from the editor Ian R Dobson

This issue is a ‘special’ one, predominantly on the impact of COVID-19 on universities and university students. Guest editors James Roffee and Nick Kimberley assembled papers on this topic, and you should refer to their detailed introduction, below.

In addition to the papers on the impact of the COVID19 pandemic, we have an excellent paper on the policy background to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research

by Kathy Bowrey, Irene Watson and Marie Hadley, and an opinion piece from A L Jones on the war on higher education, focussing on the US. In the interesting times in which we now live, none but our epidemiologists expected the current pandemic. Equally, no one expected the range of supply-related ineptitudes of the current federal government delaying our path back to normality. We must also wonder why JobKeeper money was available to many businesses that didn’t require it but denied to universities that did.

In addition, we haven’t done very well with education ministers in recent years. To quote Victorian Education Minister James Merlino: ‘We’ve had this revolving door of [federal] education ministers; each one was worse than the one before’ (The Age, 2022). One was appointed as a reward for supporting Scott Morrison in the post-Malcolm Turnbull period. Fortunately for education, he was ‘promoted’ (yeh, right!) to the trade portfolio after a couple of years. The next minister left the education role under somewhat of a cloud and won’t be returning to the front bench (Butler, 2022), at least not before the forthcoming federal election.

As for the replacement, what could one say? Why does the acting minister think he understands research and the processes set in place by the Australian Research Council?

He blocked six grants on the grounds that they did not represent ‘value for taxpayers’ money’, but when reading his own record (see Jones, 2018), we must equally question whether the acting minister represents ‘value for taxpayers’

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money’. More recently the acting minister sought to blame so-called ‘dud teachers’ for our education woes. Surely ‘dud education ministers’ is a more credible reason. To paraphrase Linda Howard in Drop Dead Gorgeous (2006), somewhere a village is missing its idiot.

Finally, it is with extreme sadness that I report the recent death of a stalwart of Australian higher education research: Professor V. Lynn Meek. Lynn was a man with special qualities.

He was an intellectual scholar who spent a career producing ground-breaking research. I was fortunate to have worked with him on a few projects, and I benefited by osmosis from his quiet way of getting things done. We are all the poorer for his passing. Here at the Australian Universities’ Review we will remember Lynn Meek properly in our next issue.

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

References Butler, J. (2022). Alan Tudge to remain on backbench after report into allegations by former staffer released. The Guardian. (4 March 2022).

Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/ mar/04/alan-tudge-to-remain-on-backbench-after-report-intoallegations-by-former-staffer-released Howard, L. (2006). Drop dead gorgeous. New York, Ballantine Books.

Jones, B. (2018). Stuart Robert’s litany of transgressions.

Independent Australia. (16 October 2018). Retrieved from https:// independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/stuart-robertslitany-of-transgressions,12001 The Age. (2022). Editorial, 24 March. Retrieved from https://www. theage.com.au/national/victoria/minister-s-dud-teachers-remarkwasn-t-helpful-20220323-p5a74d.html

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Coronavirus and the crisis of higher education: Post-pandemic universities James Roffee Federation University Australia

Nic Kimberley University of South Australia

As we move well into 2022, the Australian higher education landscape continues to transform. Australia has almost abandoned all COVID-19 restrictions in the blink of an eye, as our new-normal oscillates from attempting to return to a pre-2020 state to accepting that the pandemic has irreparably transformed the world.

Those working in Australian higher education have scarcely had the chance to pause as they moved to teach online, followed by an onslaught of increased workloads exacerbated by redundancies and often knee-jerk responses to the fragile external environment and continually increasing competition.

Arguably though, universities have long been in crisis, well before the current COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic arose. As former National Tertiary Education Union President, Jeannie Rea argued in 2016, several decisions taken by university managements, partially in response to reduced government funding, transformed our sector into a marketised and commodified public system (Rea, 2016). The result has been seen for several years with systemic impacts.

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changes being a direct result of the reduced international load that universities are reporting. The commercialisation of research has become more intense and vital as universities adopt strategies to stem reduced revenues and damage to their balance sheets. Yet the damage is not simply monetary, and we would argue it is most importantly very human. We have seen the structural changes caused by the non-renewal of contracts for sessional and casual staff across both the professional and academic workforces. Due to the continued obfuscation permitted by reporting requirements (although there are examples of improvements, such as the Victorian Labor Government requiring better reporting of staff numbers in casual and fixed-term positions), it is difficult to obtain an accurate picture of the number of people impacted by such decisions not to extend or renew contracts. Further, there have long been attacks on democratic governance and collegial decision-making processes. It has long been the case that crises, such as the pandemic, are often justifications for centralisation of decision making (‘tHart, Rosenthal & Houzmin, 1993). Universities have for a long time seen attempted reductions in democratic involvement and changes to governance. However, these rarely revert or increase once the crisis has been averted.

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Therefore, we see that the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the already challenging operating conditions created by a model of higher education that inadequately values the public and community benefits of education over the benefits to individuals. It has also exacerbated the loss of income that universities face because of decisions from consecutive federal governments, most recently seen by the deliberate exclusion of universities from accessing the JobKeeper scheme established to keep employees in a job.

In line with many other ill-thought-through policies of the current Federal Government, businesses which experienced an increase in their turnover, were not required to refund ‘overpayments’ to the government (Australian Broadcasting Commission, 2021). In addition, most acutely felt in 2020 but continuing through to today, are the impacts nationwide of decisions from university leadership to reduce staffing levels, which impact teaching and research quality and the provision of student support and experience.

This issue of Australian Universities’ Review has not been immune to the pandemic. Our original call for papers elicited an enthusiastic response from contributors. However, the mass casualisation, overwork and redundancies all impacted the production of this issue.

As guest editors, we were keen to see that contributions reflect the reality of those working in contemporary higher education and reflect a cross-section of employment from casual staff and PhD candidates through to tenured senior academics. We desired to look beyond the instant and foster a contribution to the reimagining of an Australian higher education landscape that learns from past mistakes through the edition. We were keen to give space to reimagine how changes and reforms can be made and undertaken to place Australian universities as critical drivers in delivering social goods. As guest editors, we aligned with Raewyn Connell’s argument in The Good University (2019), in which she calls for universities to become places driven by a ‘social good’.

The symposium begins with authors Brigid Freeman, Ian Teo, Peodair Leihy, and Dong Kwang Kim charting Australia’s response to international students from 2020 within a rapid review. We are taken necessarily through several questionable actions from successive governments that collectively created a precarious situation for international students and the universities that rely on them. Then, synthesising the cumulative impacts, the authors reimagine a future for international students and provide recommendations for federal and state governments, universities, and other tertiary education providers. They aim through these recommendations to remedy some of the challenges international students face brought to a head by the COVID-19 pandemic but undoubtedly caused by systemic and structural hurdles.

Continuing the theme of international education, Gaby Ramia and collaborators Alan Morris, Shaun

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Wilson, Catherine Hastings, and Emma Mitchell look at international students as a cohort excluded from government assistance due to the pandemic. International education colleagues know too well the impact of the now-infamous press conference at which Prime Minister Scott Morrison suggested international students should return to their home countries. In the article, we hear directly from international students. The authors suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic and government reactions compounded and intensified the impact of existing inadequate policy responses. In rethinking our system, they posit ways of reimaging the divide between domestic and international students and the inequities such differentiations make.

J. M. Innes and Ben Morrison then use the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study to unpack several tensions felt from a frontline perspective when educating to a group of learners who are very much in demand because of the pandemic, that of psychologists. The authors note concerns with the need for a balance between the stakeholder expectations, necessary training requirements and further demands of employment readiness, which are not confined to psychology but are so well encapsulated in the paper. The authors also grapple with some contemporary concerns that universities have not yet given much attention, such as AI – artificial intelligence – and others which have been given much airtime due to the pandemic, such as online teaching. Finally, the authors give interesting thought to how some proposals relating to the current marketised system, could be utilised to support student choices towards units and courses that support registration outcomes, but have potentially serious and unintended consequences.

Next comes Joanne Barker and Anna Kent making a case for a new approach to scholarships to support international education by reinvesting profits directly related to international education. Against a backdrop of a federal government with a record of cutting well known international education scholarship programs, the authors reimagine how a new scholarship program could be created to extend the well-documented benefits of international education. Focus is on the creative way the program could be funded. The article places an important emphasis on the multiple and often significant intangible benefits provided to Australia due to our international student cohorts. Such benefits speak directly to the idea of a university system delivering a social good.

Greg Whately closes the symposium with an opinion piece on delivering online to international students. Noting the longstanding inflexibility created by the Education Services for Overseas Students (ESOS) Act, the author balances the benefits with the perils of enforced e-learning. There are some positives with the increased emphasis on staff training, though we are forced to ask whether this will be mandated, on top of already

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full workloads for many. The author postulates the future as one with significant amounts of hybrid learning as an option that allows for ready changes to mode and delivery caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We nod fervently in agreement that education provision is unlikely to return to how things were. In time, we will instead see the COVID-19 pandemic as a moment in history where education delivery in Australia changed course.

These are just a few of the many challenges our universities face. While in and of themselves, each paper seeks to reimagine an element of the higher education system, in combination, they speak to a higher education system in need of re-creation.

The objectives of universities under existing legislation, such as the example below of Monash University, provide a worthy vision for values that should guide their operations and underpin everything that universities do. Yet, in practice, such visions and missions are undermined by systemic challenges such as the underfunding of universities. Dire consequences often result, with mass casualisation occurring, removal and replacement of collegial decision-making, and the pursuit of continued achievements in flawed ranking systems, to name a few. We therefore need to continue to advocate for the sectoral and structural supports to allow us to deliver on these visions, such as the one below: a. To provide and maintain a teaching and learning environment of excellent quality offering higher education at an international standard. b. To provide vocational education and training, further education and other forms of education determined by the University to support and complement the provision of higher education by the University. c. To undertake scholarship, pure and applied research, invention, innovation, education and consultancy of international standing and to apply those matters to the advancement of knowledge and to the benefit of the well-being of the Victorian, Australian and international communities. d. To equip graduates of the University to excel in their chosen careers and to contribute to the life of the community. e. To serve the Victorian, Australian and international communities and the public interest by: i. Enriching cultural and community life. ii. Elevating public awareness of educational, scientific and artistic developments. iii. Promoting critical and free enquiry, informed intellectual discourse and public debate within the University and in the wider society. f. To use its expertise and resources to involve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia in its teaching, learning, research and advancement of knowledge activities and thereby contribute to: vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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Realising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander aspirations. ii. The safeguarding of the ancient and rich Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural heritage. g. To provide programs and services in a way that reflects principles of equity and social justice. h. To confer degrees and grant other awards. i. To utilise or exploit its expertise and resources, whether commercially or otherwise.

(Monash University Act 2009 (Vic)) On the horizon is the next federal election. We are left in no doubt that we need a federal government that values Australian tertiary education as not simply a contributor to our national economy and GDP, but as part of the bedrock in transforming lives, driving innovation, and creating fairer communities.

This requires a bold vision to re-create what it means to be a university. Tinkering around the edges will not address the decades of damage inflicted on our universities. It won’t be easy, but just as staff and students united to defeat university fee deregulation and prevent significant fee increases (Knott, 2016), it is time to embark on a united mission to re-create our universities to serve their communities better.

James Roffee is a professor and Head of Campus (Brisbane) at Federation University, Australia.

Contact: J.Roffee@federation.edu.au Nic Kimberly is a PhD candidate at the University of South Australia.

References Australian Broadcasting Commission. (2021). ATO will not recover $180 million in JobKeeper from businesses that made ‘honest mistakes’ when applying. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/news/202109-11/ato-jobkeeper-overpayments-fraud-companies-senate-treasuryasic/100452960 Connell, R. (2019). The Good University: What universities actually do and why it’s time for radical change. Melbourne: Monash University Publishing.

Knott, M. (2016). ‘Abbott government’s university fee deregulation bill voted down in the Senate’, Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/abbott-governmentsuniversity-fee-deregulation-bill-voted-down-in-the-senate-201503171m1i8r.html Government of Victoria. (2009). Monash University Act 2009 (Vic) Rea, J. (2016). Critiquing neoliberalism in Australian Universities.

Australian Universities’ Review, 58(2), 9-14. ’t Hart P., Rosenthal U., & Kouzmin, A. (1993). Crisis Decision Making: The Centralization Thesis Revisited. Administration & Society, 25(1), 12-45.

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Review of Australia’s response to international student needs during the COVID-19 pandemic Brigid Freeman University of Melbourne

Ian Teo Australian Council for Educational Research

Peodair Leihy Universidad Andres Bello

Dong Kwang Kim Okayama University

During 2020 and beyond, coronavirus disease has profoundly disrupted global economic, health and higher education systems.

As universities shuttered campuses and businesses locked down, Australia’s export education sector stalled. Many international students who were able to return home, did so, while those who could not, would experience varying levels of support and exclusion.

Government policies and practices during 2020 are analysed alongside research literature and media reports to provide an overview of how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the Australian higher education sector and international students. Specifically, the analysis addresses the emerging and emergent impact of this pandemic on the public higher education sector and its international education activities and proposes corresponding recommendations for systemic and institutional recovery. These recommendations call for increased government fiscal and welfare support, strengthened regulatory safeguards, extended post-study work rights, progress regarding foreign qualifications recognition, and institution-level strategies. A long and varied list of sources chronicles events.

Keywords: COVID-19, higher education, international education, international students, Australia

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sector, its over-exposure to China and pivot towards India, the eventual COVID-19 crisis, and associated sectorial responses.

The paper will close by proposing a pragmatic range of policy recommendations that focus on systemic and institutional recovery.

The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections in late 2019 and the resultant eponymous COVID-19 pandemic foreshadowed profound disruptions to global economic, health and higher education systems. As the virus spread across national borders Leveraging international education via international airways and sea lanes, the World Health Organisation (2020) finally declared a pandemic on 11 March Over the 2018-2019 fiscal year, international students in 2020. Like other governments, the Australian Government Australian schools, English Language Intensive Courses responded by closing its borders (20 March) for non-residents for Overseas Students (ELICOS), vocational education and recommended that temporary migrants return home and training (VET) and higher education institutions (Gibson & Moran, 2020). contributed $37.6 billion to the economy. In the higher With respect to international students, this recommendation education sector alone, this included $12 billion in tuition was justified on the basis that, as temporary migrants, fee income, and $13.9 billion in further goods and services visa requirements stipulate that they must demonstrate (ABS, 2019). A consequence of international student sufficient funds to afford cost of living and travel expenses enrolment growth has been that many universities substituted while studying in Australia their reliance on government (Department of Home Affairs funding with a reliance on In this paper, we ... will explore Australia’s [DHA], 2020a). Given these international student tuition export education sector, its over-exposure legislated safeguards, the fee revenue (see Audit Office to China and pivot towards India, the Australian Government’s of New South Wales, 2019; see initial pandemic response was Victorian Auditor General’s eventual COVID-19 crisis, and associated to exclude temporary migrants Office, 2018). To varying sectorial responses. from fiscal stimulus packages degrees, revenue generated (Frydenberg, 2020; Morrison,

by Australian universities is 2020a; Parliament of Australia [PA], 2020a; PA, 2020b). This dependent on international student enrolments. In 2017, messaging arguably compounded emerging and longstanding 23 per cent of universities’ revenue came from international concerns regarding international students. These include the students, with research-intensive universities being finding that students felt abandoned during this emergency disproportionately exposed to any downturn in student period, as well as established concerns relating to education numbers (Koslowski, 2019; PA, 2019). Additionally, quality, their study experience, safety and wellbeing, and international students often invest differentially in their exposure to exploitative employment conditions, racism Australian qualifications (PA, 2019), with tuition fees highest and discrimination (Akanwa, 2015; Baas, 2010; Bavas, at research-intensive universities (Chew & Fogarty, 2018).

2020; Debets, 2018; Doherty, 2020; Marginson, Nyland & That said, Boucher (2020) notes that international Sawir, 2010). During the months following the Australian students are a key component of the Australian success Government’s recommendation to return home, Australian story, as many have transitioned from holding student state and territory governments would amass approximately visas to making professional contributions as permanent $99 million in COVID-19-related initiatives, independent of residents (at least 16 per cent between 2000-01 and 2013the Australian Government, to support on-shore international 14) (DHA, 2018). Others have taken alternative pathways students (International Education Association of Australia, (e.g., Temporary Graduate Visas) on their way to boosting n.d.). These funds represent slightly less than 0.4 per cent of Australia’s community and economy (PA, 2019). Over the the $26 billion in income generated by tuition fees and goods last 30 years, Australia’s national, state and territory and local and services purchased by international students in 2019 governments have successfully marketed Australia’s education (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2019). sector, lifestyle, multiculturalism, post-study work rights and In this paper, we will frame the impact of this pandemic on research-based global rankings to recruit more international the Australian higher education sector within an international students. The Australian Government’s Strategic messaging education context during 2020. Using a rapid review framework emphasises Australia’s welcoming, supportive approach, the authors analysed materials relating to higher environment, quality education, diverse study options, education policy and programs, health systems, migration, employability, rewarding student experience, and visionary export education and international students. Accordingly, the research. Large diaspora communities have also embraced sections that follow will explore Australia’s export education inbound students (ABS, 2017; ABS, 2020). In many cases, vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

Review of Australia’s response to international student needs during the COVID-19 pandemic Freeman et al

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international students from yesteryear are now the parents of Australians. To date, this marketing and recruitment model has proved extraordinarily successful, with Australia’s export education sector comprising 957,000 international students in 2019 (Department of Education, Skills and Employment [DESE], 2020a).

Over-exposure to China and the pivot to India The first quarter of 2020 witnessed a drop in absolute higher education international student numbers (to 362,578) (DESE, 2020a) as some withdrew from their courses, while others deferred or changed their study focus. By August 2020, higher education international student enrolments (404,515) were four per cent lower than in 2019 (DESE, 2020b), and by December 2020, enrolments totalled 418,168, down 22,500 from that recorded for 2019 (DESE, 2021).

This reduction has weakened Australia’s higher education system. These downward enrolment trends reflect border restrictions and transformed academic practices associated with the commencement of the COVID-19 pandemic, shifting market conditions and onshore agents luring higher education students to VET. While reports suggested that some onshore education agents have profited from this pandemic by increasing commissions and shepherding students towards less reputable education providers (Mulder, 2020), unscrupulous conduct is limited to a small proportion of agencies (PA, 2018). At the same time, this drop in enrolments can also be attributed to Australia’s trade approach to higher education, and the systemic and institutional policies and practices that have historically reinforced it. As will be demonstrated, Australia’s ‘pivot’ to diversify markets from predominantly Chinese students by focusing also on Indian students highlights how trade policies and practices have shifted in response to geopolitics, market opportunities and emerging risks.

In recent years, Australia’s higher education sector has been warned about its exposure to China – reaching 165,000 students in 2019 (DESE, 2020a) – and reliance on international education revenue. In response to these foreseeable and known risks (Babones, 2020), various attempts at mitigation have emphasised pivoting to India as an additional major market (Freeman, Barker & Lahiri, 2018). With a population approaching 1.4 billion, a large youth demographic, high unmet demand for higher education, growing unemployment and over 330,000 globally mobile students in 2017, India has captured much of the world’s attention as a potential source of international student enrolees. The United States has long attracted the largest proportion (enrolling 43 per cent of India’s outbound international students in 2017), although there is competition among other Anglophone countries,

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the United Arab Emirates, European countries (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2020), and Asia (De Wit, Ferencz & Rumbley, 2013).

If Australia further seeks to develop its market share of Indian international students, then several considerations should be assessed in advance. As Figure 1 illustrates, migration policy settings, eligibility criteria and pathways, work rights, student well-being, financial stability and education provider integrity each play their part. For example, various Howard Government initiatives prior to the global financial crisis of 2008 served to entice international students towards Australia.

Following this global financial crisis, a perfect storm of events saw Indian student enrolments diminish. This included a strengthening Australian dollar (starting at 38.39 INR/AUD in 2009 and peaking at 59.06 INR/AUD in 2013), greater global competition for international students, changes to visa and migration policies, increasing academic requirements, disincentivising education-migration pathways, reputational damage due to dishonest VET and ELICOS providers and, of course, the economic contraction itself (Teo, 2018). Exposés in the Indian media of international student-related safety scandals and racism influenced family and student destination choices, occasionally consigning governments and education bodies to damage control (Baas 2010). In recent years the trend has corrected, with the number of Indian higher education students more than doubling from 2016 (44,000) to 2019 (91,000) (DESE, 2020a).

The pivot from China towards India presents an opportunity for Australia to correct the current over-reliance on a single geographical market, while acknowledging the increasing importance of Indian nationals in Australia’s higher education sector. Geopolitical shadings around the Australia-China relationship (Laurenceson & Zhou, 2020) also illustrate the need to rethink revenue projections for international education. Supporting Indian international students through their higher education learning, living and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic will subsequently go some way to encouraging Indian nationals’ return following the full reopening of Australia’s borders.

International students’ experiences of the crisis As COVID-19 cases ebbed and flowed, the ensuing crisis highlighted the high-risk nature of international student life, with significant fixed costs, often precarious employment, and frequent social isolation. In early 2020, many of the casual positions typically held by international students disappeared overnight (Morris, Mitchell & Ramia 2020). The recessionary effects of COVID-19 lockdowns globally also meant that many international students could not rely on family for supplementary income, nor provide remittances. Importantly,

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Figure 1: Australian international education policy shifts, and Indian higher education student enrolments international students working in essentially public-facing positions in sales, and in community and personal services have been highly exposed.

Notwithstanding student visa eligibility criteria, unlike some other cohorts, many Indian international students are from lower- to middle-class backgrounds (Gunawardena & Wilson, 2012). Many are heavily reliant on Indian bank loans and part-time employment while they study. In Australia, international coursework students are eligible to work up to 40 hours each fortnight during term time, and unlimited hours outside term time (DHA, 2020b); visas for research higher degree students do not limit hours of work, but often scholarship conditions do. As the pandemic unfolded, local and international media coverage spotlighted the desperate economic and social situation faced by many international students remaining in Australia. It was during this time that the National Union of Students and Council of International Students Australia lobbied for support (Stayner, 2020).

MacDonald from the National Tertiary Education Union argued that ‘by inviting these students to come to Australia, we have a responsibility to ensure their health, safety and welfare needs are met’ (MacDonald, 2020, para. 14). Students were seen lining up for free food from sympathetic restaurants and foodbanks (Carey, 2020). It was also reported that some vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

international students were weeks away from homelessness (O’Brien, 2020) and that Australia’s response contrasted with the more ‘caring, practical support of key competitors Canada, New Zealand and the UK’ (Hill, 2020, para. 1).

Importantly, by May, familiar narratives about international students being treated unfairly as cash cows (Olmos, 2020) and dehumanised were again voiced (Alcorn, 2020). Many Indian students faced reduced working hours, while others reported being unable to return home despite classes moving online (Bamford, 2020; Kamil, 2020).

Reports also surfaced, that prospective Indian international students had concerns regarding the impact of the pandemic on future jobs and salaries, personal health, finances, accommodation, post-study periods, and the quality of online education. Many Indian international students reportedly intended to defer studies should universities only offer online classes, while some suggested that they intended to change their choice of study destination (Parmar, 2020). Shiksha’s survey of 850 potential Indian international students found that COVID-19 motivated more Indian students to preference the US or Canada over Australia and New Zealand (Baker, 2020), notwithstanding the widely publicised excellence of New Zealand’s approach and Australia’s generally competent containment.

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A lack of fiscal and social supports for international students The Australian Minister for Education, Dan Tehan, launched the Council of International Education’s Global Reputation Taskforce on 21 January 2020 in the wake of a major bushfire crisis. A February 2020 Taskforce communiqué states that ‘the Government is firmly committed to supporting the sector to continue to provide the assistance needed to those affected’ (Tehan, 2020a, p. 2) by the pandemic. The Taskforce subsequently recommended ‘ensuring we maintain a welcoming place for international students and the value of our educational experience is communicated globally’ and ‘making available support services for international students to assist them during and following crises’ (Tehan, 2020b, p. 1). Initial recommendations released in April 2020 illustrated Australia’s small government approach to international education.

The Taskforce recommended the Australian Government establish committees to manage future crises, invest further in reputation management, and amend student visa criteria impacting applications, post-study work rights, and permanent residency pathways. The Taskforce recommendations narrowly conceive of the Australian Government’s role as ‘identifying, developing and consolidating new and nascent markets’ (Australian Government & Council for International Education, 2020, pp. 1-2).

Major government financing to alleviate the pandemic’s effects offered little to international students. The Australian Government’s first COVID-19 fiscal stimulus package of $17.6 billion, released 12 March 2020, focused on Australian businesses and households (Morrison, 2020a). A second package of $189 billion, released 22 March 2020, supported Australian businesses and workers (Frydenberg, 2020; PA, 2020a; PA, 2020b). Both packages explicitly excluded temporary migrants (such as international students) from unemployment benefits (Morris, Mitchell & Ramia, 2020), including those working in highly casualised, essential positions with limited financial capacity to self-isolate.

Shortly thereafter, the Australian Government’s $18 billion higher education COVID-19 support package, released 11 April 2020, focused on domestic issues and students (Ross, 2020a; DESE, n.d.). It contained no specific provisions relating to international education. Tanya Plibersek, Opposition education spokesperson, labelled this package a ‘fraud’ for failing to confront international education revenue loss projections (Hunter, 2020). The Government’s resolve continued as it repeatedly manoeuvred to exclude public universities from the JobKeeper scheme designed to mitigate staff losses due to COVID-19-induced revenue reductions (Karp, 2020). The October 2020 federal budget provided no relief for international students, while the $1 billion research fund provided one-off compensation to universities

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for reduced government revenue following the passage of the fraught Job-ready graduates legislation. Towards the end of the year, the Australian Government would further amend post-study work visa rights (effective 2021) for international students living and studying in regional Australia (Aurora, 2020), despite challenges associated with securing employment in such locations.

Emerging rights As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Australia grew, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) relaxed standards governing place of study and mode of delivery (TEQSA, 2020). The Department of Home Affairs temporarily relaxed international student visa rules under the Migration Act 1958. Enrolled student nurses were permitted to work in the health sector, while visa-related class attendance and online learning rules were relaxed to reflect teaching disruptions. International students already employed in major supermarkets or aged care homes were allowed to work more than 40 hours a fortnight without facing the prospect of having their visas cancelled. This included working in positions deemed essential while Australian workers completed COVID-19 quarantine. This relaxation expired early in the pandemic, on 1 May 2020, as newly unemployed Australians received preference for additional work amidst the deepening economic crisis.

Additionally, mixed messages from the Australian Government caused confusion and serious discomfort among international students. After an emergency Commonwealth, states and territories National Cabinet meeting on 3 April, Prime Minister Scott Morrison delivered the remarkable statement that ‘If you are a visitor in this country, it is time … to make your way home’. Morrison went on to emphasise that ‘Australia must focus on its citizens and its residents to ensure that we can maximise the economic supports that we have’ (Gibson & Moran, 2020, paras 3, 7). Morrison’s nationalistic display offered international students a firm reminder of their second-class status (see Deumert, Marginson, Nyland, Ramia & Sawir, 2005) while reassuring Australians of the Government’s prioritisation of citizens.

The following day the Acting Immigration Minister, Alan Tudge, reiterated the message that international students were more or less on their own, softened only by an acknowledgement of the contribution they have made to the education sector and the Australian economy (Migration Alliance, 2020). Minister for Education Tehan was more conciliatory than his Government colleagues when he stated on 8 April that ‘my message to our international students is: you are our friends, our classmates, our colleagues and members of our community’ (Tehan, 2020c, para. 7). But still, no financial support.

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In May 2020, in its effort to move forward, the Australian included financial support for eligible international students Government optimistically anticipated the future reopening via the new Canada emergency response benefit ($500/ of residential colleges and international student travel as part week for up to 16 weeks). Like Australia, the Government of their three-step framework for a COVIDSafe Australia of Canada improved visa conditions (i.e., maximum hours (Australian Government, 2020a). Shortly thereafter, of work, post-study work rights, mode of study), pathways government- and institution-driven pilot programs to to permanent residency and access to mental health services bring international students into Australia via COVIDSafe (El-Assal, 2020; EduCanada, 2020). Similarly, the New Corridors floundered as cases surged (Independent Higher Zealand Government extended student visas, introduced a Education Australia, 2020), and Australian citizens still temporary financial hardship fund for foreign nationals (New remained stranded offshore (Visontray, 2021). Following this Zealand Education, 2020), and provided a $51.6 million setback, the Ministers for Human Services and Education strategic recovery package for the export education sector provided reassurance to current (Hipkins, 2020). and potential international Despite murmuring Despite murmuring welcoming messages students.

In a media welcoming messages to to potential international students, the release titled ‘Supporting potential international Australian Government’s policy initiatives international students to students, the Australian support Australian jobs’, the Government’s policy have largely been restricted to relaxation two Ministers announced initiatives have largely been of visa rules, and preliminary work on immigration changes providing restricted to relaxation of visa selectively lifting border restrictions. greater flexibility in terms of rules, and preliminary work initial and further student on selectively lifting border visa application lodgement, restrictions. Work undertaken post-study work arrangements, and additional time for with the sector to prepare the Protocols and preconditions English language test results. In announcing the reforms, the for international student arrivals (Australian Government, Ministers reiterated, ‘We are a welcoming nation’ (Tudge 2020b), and anticipating state International student arrival & Tehan, 2020, para. 9). Throughout, the Australian plans and quarantine arrangements, would prove unsuccessful Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade) somewhat (other than a small cohort entering the Northern Territory in disingenuously disseminated strategic ‘welcoming’ messaging November 2020) (Vivian & James, 2020). and promoted positivity through the #InThisTogether In addition to clarifying visa rules for international students social media campaign (Australian Trade and Investment impacted by the transition to onshore online learning, these Commission (Austrade), 2020). changes anticipate some student visa holders studying offshore Amid the pressures, in early 2020, Prime Minister Morrison online, then transferring to onshore studies (including any assured Indian Prime Minister Modi that ‘the Indian requisite domestic work integrated learning), and post-study community in Australia, including Indian students, would work at a later stage. With a plethora of free MOOCs and continue to be valued as a vibrant part of Australian society’ low-cost online offerings, this model is unlikely to succeed (Ministry of External Affairs, 2020, para. 3). Subsequently, over time without substantial reductions in tuition fees. The the June 2020 bilateral virtual summit saw Modi reportedly model also anticipates resolution of foreign qualification grateful for the care extended to Indian students during recognition concerns regarding online learning, including this crisis, and Morrison thanking him for his comments Indian government stipulations (Freeman, 2018). Given the (Morrison, 2020b). Shortly thereafter, the Government of impending financial crisis for Australian universities, and India released the long-awaited National education policy the centrality of the education export sector to Australia’s 2020, which encourages ‘greater mobility to students in India economic prosperity, this posture is disappointing, selfwho may wish to visit, study at, transfer credits to, or carry defeating and damaging. out research at institutions abroad, and vice versa’ (Ministry of Human Resource Development, 2020, p. 80).

State and university responses By contrast, several of Australia’s key international education competitors responded to the COVID-19 In comparison to the Australian Government, higher pandemic by making financial support available to higher education institutions and Australian state and territory education institutions (Moodie, 2020; Davis, 2020), the governments have been more responsive to the needs of export education sector more generally (Hipkins, 2020) international students during this initial crisis period in and international students (Henriques-Gomes, 2020). For 2020. They have employed a diverse range of approaches example, Canada’s COVID-19 Economic response plan and acted independently to address student needs. For vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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universities, these have included COVID-19 scholarships and grants, interest-free personal loans, emergency food vouchers, pastoral care and technology support packages.

Universities progressively introduced initiatives to improve the ‘student experience’, and provide health and wellbeing support (e.g., mental health).

By late April 2020, most state and territory governments had introduced initiatives supportive of international students facing financial hardship as a result of the COVID19 pandemic. These initiatives reflected, in part, different international student cohort sizes. For example, in Victoria, which hosted 35 per cent of all higher education international students in 2019, including 47 per cent of Australia’s Indian students (DESE, 2020a), the Government established a $45 million International student emergency relief fund and introduced a $1,500 coronavirus pandemic leave payment.

The South Australian Government established a $13.8 million International student support package, while Tasmania allocated $3 million for a Temporary visa holder skilled employee assistance program. Western Australia established the Study Perth crisis relief program. Notably, the New South Wales Government, which hosted the largest proportion of international higher education students (36 per cent) in 2019, albeit only 27 per cent of all inbound Indian students (DESE, 2020a), initially deflected responsibility to the Australian Government and other authorities. In May 2020, the New South Wales Government belatedly allocated $20 million for temporary crisis accommodation for international students impacted by COVID-19.

In addition to support packages, some state governments introduced export education sector recovery strategies.

The Victorian Government, for example, introduced the International education short-term recovery plan 2020/21, reporting export revenue losses of $5.8 billion in 2020, and noting that ‘international students in Victoria have … been significantly impacted by the pandemic, with many experiencing financial hardship, accommodation insecurity and social isolation’ (Victorian Government, 2020, p. 3).

Looking ahead for Australia’s higher education sector This review has highlighted several significant events leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact during 2020. First, the policies supporting the growth and ‘success’ of the Australian higher education sector cannot be underplayed as they characterise the ‘trade-to-marketing’ approach taken by various governments from the 1990s to the present. Second, the long-established need to pivot away from the mainland Chinese international student market and towards the Indian market provides an opportunity for the Australia higher education sector to correct its reliance

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on one market segment and adjust to current geopolitical demands. Both preceding points contextualise Australia’s higher education and international education sectors prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Third, and following the Morrison Government’s response to international students in the wake of COVID-19 outbreaks in Australian capital cities, more forward-thinking policy-making was needed to support international students during the short and medium terms (i.e., with respect to finances, work and visa rights, and health and wellbeing), if only to secure Australia’s long-term relevance and competitiveness in the global higher education market.

During 2020, Universities Australia projected a sector-wide revenue decline of between $3.1 billion and $4.8 billion and anticipated subsequent declines of $16 billion between 2020 and 2023 (Universities Australia, 2020a). These declines represent major financial challenges to the Australian higher education sector and further highlight the crucial importance of international student programs (Marshman & Larkins, 2020). Preliminary estimates suggested that to offset these losses directly via payroll would see estimated job losses of 21,000 full time equivalent (FTE) positions over a six-month period (Universities Australia, 2020b), including 7,000 FTE research positions (Larkins et al., 2020) in 2020. This represents a sizeable proportion of Australian universities’ FTE positions (15 per cent of 137,578 FTE in 2019), going by the most recent estimates (DESE, 2020c). Even more dire, Victoria University’s Mitchell Institute estimates that the university sector will face international student revenue losses of between $10 billion and $19 billion over the next three years, with corresponding knock-on losses to the national economy amounting to more than $40 billion (Hurley, 2020).

While such losses have the potential to trigger a financial crisis in Australia’s higher education sector (Norton, 2020), circumventing this outcome will likely require government intervention to ensure the sector’s survival and sustainability (Campus Morning Mail, 2020; Ross, 2020b).

Having encouraged Australia’s export of education for decades such that it underpins the higher education sector conceptually and pragmatically, it is incumbent on the Australian Government to support its international student ‘clients’ and their health and wellbeing better, if for no other reason than to ensure the continuity of this trading opportunity. For the present authors, this is the minimum standard for the Australian Government to set itself so as to ensure that it maintains its competitive edge in the global international education market and to build back confidence students may have lost with regard to studying with Australian higher education institutions. This will be especially important for the Indian market as Australia further moves to diversify its pool of potential international students and trading relationships generally.

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Recommendations Looking back now at the response during 2020, Australian international education policy, and particularly actual and potential international students would benefit from targeted and achievable changes. Accordingly, this paper makes five recommendations directed at the Australian Government.

First, that Australian Government financial policy settings be changed, extending fiscal support to public universities to reflect decreased international education revenue. In the first instance, this would involve increasing recurrent operational and research funding, while examining longerterm solutions to ensure the ongoing viability of the public university sector.

Second, that in addition to state government and university support packages, the Australian Government extend welfare support to international students experiencing financial hardship. This support could be in the form of national emergency funding through scholarships for international students’ accommodation and food.

Third, that, following the United Kingdom’s lead, the Australian Government strengthen regulatory safeguards for international students enrolled with universities and non-university higher education providers facing potential institutional and/or course closure. Safeguards could extend to financial risk reporting, enrolment security and/ or guaranteed credit transfer pathways. Fourth, that the Australian Government extend post-study work rights to enable international students to gain employment in Australia while accruing monies to repay tuition fees. This strategy would involve reviewing international student visa arrangements, as well as permanent residency pathways and points structure. Particular attention could be given to the circumstances of international students currently studying offshore online to ensure they have access to onshore experiences (including work integrated learning necessary to complete their qualification).

Finally, recognising the pivot to emergency remote teaching, and existing challenges for some international student cohorts with respect to their post-study qualifications recognition, that the Australian Government urgently progress negotiations with the Government of India regarding foreign higher education qualifications recognition for courses obtained via online education.

Finally, we make two recommendations in this paper directed at universities and non-university higher education providers. First, that they establish a special fund quarantining a percentage of international student tuition fees for student financial, health and wellbeing support. Such a fund could progressively provide interest-free loans, scholarships, tuition and residential accommodation fee reductions, as well as support ongoing health and well-being student services vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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(e.g. health centres, counselling, advocacy and legal advice).

Second, that universities and non-university higher education providers reduce international student tuition fees until campuses reopen for teaching and learning. With those forthright recommendations, there is optimism to be found in the educational opportunity that Australia offers.

Brigid Freeman is a Senior Researcher (Education) at the Australia India Institute, University of Melbourne, Australia.

Contact: brigid.freeman@unimelb.edu.au Ian Teo is a Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research, Australia.

Pete Leihy is a Research Professor at Universidad Andres Bello’s Faculty of Education and Social Sciences (FECS) in Santiago, Chile.

Dong Kwang Kim is a Professor at the Institute of Global Human Resource Development, Okayama University, Japan.

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The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/ society/2020/may/15/stranded-without-support-internationalstudents-across-australia-rely-on-free-food-to-survive Hill, J. (2020, May 5). International ed is a Top 10 Australian export that has been actively harmed. The Pie News. Retrieved from https:// thepienews.com/the-view-from/australia-must-act-now-positionintled-strong-sustainable-recovery/ Hipkins, C. (2020, July 27). COVID-19: Stabilising international education as the sector rebuilds [Press release]. New Zealand Government.

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The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/ coronavirus-how-likely-are-international-university-students-tochoose-australia-over-the-uk-us-and-canada-142715 Morris, A., Mitchell, E., & Ramia, G. (2020, April 7). Why coronavirus impacts are devastating for international students in private rental housing. The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation. com/why-coronavirus-impacts-are-devastating-for-internationalstudents-in-private-rental-housing-134792 Morrison, S. (2020a). Economic stimulus package [Press release].

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The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2020/dec/14/australia-wants-international-studentsto-study-here-but-abandoned-them-during-the-covid-crisis

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The pandemic and the welfare of international students Abandonment or policy consistency?

Gaby Ramia University of Sydney

Emma Mitchell Western Sydney University

Catherine Hastings & Alan Morris University of Technology, Sydney

Shaun Wilson Macquarie University

In its response to COVID-19 in 2020, the Australian Government excluded international students from the temporary financial assistance it offered most permanent residents. This article examines the status of international student welfare as a policy question before and during the pandemic, and discusses post-pandemic policy implications. It draws on pre- and during-COVID-19 survey data from international students in Sydney and Melbourne. We argue that the pandemic highlighted and exacerbated an existing policy absence, rather than constituting a fresh abandonment of international students. Since the Dawkins changes in the early 1990s, international students have been officially treated in policy as consumers, not as ‘social citizens’. This made many of them vulnerable to socio-economic shocks, given widespread dependence on precarious employment and insecure private income sources. The central policy implication is that, to avoid disproportionate welfare diminutions in future crises, the government needs to align the treatment of international and domestic students.

Keywords: COVID-19, international students, vulnerability

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Introduction At a press conference on 3 April 2020, Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, announced that international students would not be eligible to receive either of the new pandemic-related financial assistance payments, JobSeeker and JobKeeper. He justified this on the basis that international students ‘have to give a warranty that they are able to support themselves for the first twelve months of their study’. The Prime Minister made clear that they are ‘not held here compulsorily’, and that ‘there is the alternative for them to return to their home countries’ (Gibson and Moran, 2020). The decision not to assist international students presented them with a harsh reality.

For many, working part-time to earn a wage – as has always been allowed (Department of Home Affairs, 2020) – ceased to be an option. This was the situation as many businesses that employed students were shut down or they operated with reduced workforces during the pandemic-related lockdowns.

As a result of the Government’s refusal to expand the coverage of social assistance at a vitally important time, international student precarity has increased further. How would these members of our community make ends meet when those of them who relied on part-time work, could not work, and were offered no effective means in a lockdown situation to earn wages to cover rent, food, and other essentials? The Government’s decision to not compensate international students represented the abandonment of a category of people who, as the Foreign Minister recognised, supported an estimated 240,000 Australian jobs before the pandemic (Whiteford, 2020).

However, despite what appeared on the surface to be a fresh abandonment by the Federal Government, the Prime Minister’s announcement did not constitute a substantive change in policy. What it did represent was a failure to acknowledge the need to compensate international students who lost their paid employment due to the pandemic.

This had dramatic, knock-on welfare impacts, especially in relation to the capacity to make ends meet financially. It is important to note that, since the early 1990s, when the Hawke Labor Government opened the education system to internationalisation, international students have not been entitled to access rights to the Australian welfare state. They are ‘non-citizens’ when it comes to accessing many of the legal, political, and social rights of citizenship which prevail for permanent residents (Ramia, Marginson and Sawir, 2013).

They have since been viewed by successive governments as temporary migrants.

This article presents fresh evidence on the welfare of international students before and during the pandemic, with a particular focus on the aftermath of the 50-day nation-wide lockdown from 13 March to 1 May 2020 (Walquist, 2020).

The 2021 lockdowns are not considered. The implications

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of our analysis for post-pandemic government policy are also discussed. Based on quantitative and qualitative data collected before and during the pandemic, including more than 7,000 valid survey responses and 45 student interviews, our central finding is that the abandonment of international students in 2020 represented a major exacerbation of already poor working and housing conditions for some students. These poor outcomes, however, were not the result of a lack of commitment in policy. Indeed, it is important to acknowledge that outside of federal government policy, assistance from state and local governments, community organisations and host educational institutions, represented a stepping-up of available assistance. This assistance has included, for example, irregular payments to assist with food, rent, and other living costs (Morris et al., 2020). On the basis of the data analysis, we argue that to avoid the diminutions in wellbeing that the COVID-19 crisis represents, the formal policy treatment of international students should align with that of domestic students.

The first section of the article briefly reviews the rights of international students in law and policy, analysing the central legal instruments and the scholarly literature that assists in understanding how government policy shapes student welfare. The second section outlines our data sources and methodology. The third section presents the data analysis, highlighting the changing welfare scenarios faced by international students before and during the pandemic.

This section also delves into student perceptions of what needs to change to improve policy. The fourth and final section discusses the policy implications of our analysis for international student welfare in the post-pandemic era.

International students – consumers or citizens?

Australia has been increasingly important in the arena of international education for the last two decades. It was placed equal second in the world, along with the UK (the US is first), in terms of the absolute number of enrolled international students (OECD, 2020). Australia has a marketised system of higher education, which charges international students full fees, but offers them largely unsubsidised welfare and human services (Marginson et al., 2010). Such a system was not inevitable. International students were accepted in significant numbers since the early post-War years as part of the Colombo Plan (Oakman, 2004). At that stage, the international education bargain between the government and international students was based mainly on providing ‘aid’ to developing countries through education. The basis began to shift from aid to ‘trade’ in the late 1980s, with the introduction of feebased programs from 1992 (Adams et al., 2011; Meadows, 2011). Since then, neo-liberalism, as seen in the prioritising

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of economic goals over educational ones, has permeated The international student rights provided through policy by successive governments (Rea, 2016; Zajda, 2013). the ESOS Framework are mainly non-specific. They are They have sought to strategically maximise fee revenues from mentioned under ‘support services’ (Standard 6 of the international education, which is an important export, while Code), which states that institutions ‘must support the regulating the education ‘market’ for quality assurance. overseas student in adjusting to study and life in Australia Despite high fees, access to welfare has been severely by giving the overseas student information on or access to limited (Ramia, 2017; Roberts et al., 2015). The rights an age and culturally appropriate orientation program that that international students are entitled to are not the rights provides information about’ a range of services. The Code provided by the Australian welfare state. In law and policy, their then repeats itself by specifying that information should rights are expressed mainly in terms of the responsibilities of relate to ‘support services’ (6.1.1), but also mentions: ‘English educational institutions, on behalf of the federal government. language and study assistance programs’; ‘legal services’; ‘the The central legal instruments registered provider’s facilities are the Education Services for and resources’; ‘student The rights that international students are Overseas Students (ESOS) Act, complaints and appeals entitled to are not the rights provided by 2000 (Australian Government, processes’; ‘requirements the Australian welfare state. In law and 2000) and the National Code for course attendance and of Practice for Registration progress’; any factors ‘adversely policy, their rights are expressed mainly in Authorities and Training to affecting’ individual students’ terms of the responsibilities of educational Overseas Students (Australian education; and ‘employment institutions, on behalf of the federal Government, 2018). Together, rights and conditions’ for government. the ESOS Act and National students who are casually Code are generally referred to or part-time employed. In by government and institutions addition, institutions must as the ‘ESOS Framework’ (DESE, 2021). The ESOS Act have ‘critical incident policies’ in place for all students specifies requirements which universities and non-university (Standard 6.8-6.9). At no point in ESOS regulations is there institutions must meet in order to be legally registered as specific detail regarding institutions’ or the government’s providers. ESOS provisions compel institutions not to engage substantive responsibilities for the material living conditions in ‘misleading or deceptive conduct’ (Pt 3, Div. 1, Sec. 15, or of international students.

Pt 3.1.15) and require that they contribute to an Assurance More is specified, however, on the accommodation Fund, and ‘refund course money’ in circumstances where and living arrangements for students under 18 years of courses ‘do not commence on the agreed starting date’ (Pt age (Standard 5.3), with ‘support and general welfare 3.2.27.3). The main point is that students are clearly afforded arrangements’ being mentioned but left largely undefined. rights as consumers. The education services they consume are However, for students who are 18 and over, the requirements purchased on a commercial basis. In return for paying their of providers are negligible, prescribing mainly that institutions fees, international students receive an education based on the must provide information on ‘accommodation options and provision of ‘quality’ programs, as listed under the ‘Objects’ of indicative costs of living in Australia’ (2.1.11). There are the Act (Pt 1.1.4A.b). provisions also on student appeals against academic and Though the exchange of services for fees is market-based, other decisions (Standard 8). Students have access to internal the National Code further specifies student rights. The institutional complaints systems, and external processes Code supports the Act in two ways: first, by specifying through either the Overseas Student Ombudsman at the preconditions for registration of providers; and second, by federal level for vocational colleges and private universities, ‘establish[ing] and safeguard[ing] Australia’s reputation as a and the relevant State Ombudsman for public institutions provider of high quality education and training’. It addresses (Kamvounias, 2015; Stuhmcke et al., 2015). quality and the reputation of Australia’s education system The legislation embeds a lack of equivalence between the indirectly by imposing ‘nationally consistent standards for rights of domestic and international students to welfare. the conduct of registered providers and the registration of International students are essentially treated as non-citizens their courses’, and by providing ‘student welfare and support (Robertson, 2015). They are required, for example, to services’ and ‘nationally consistent standards for dealing with pay for the full cost of their tuition; by contrast, domestic student complaints and appeals’ (Pt A.3.1). International students, who are subject to varying degrees of subsidy, have student welfare is thus manifestly constructed as a means to the option to defer fee payment until they earn a specified ensure Australia’s international reputation through quality minimum income. International students must ‘purchase’ education. health care rights which are broadly equivalent to those vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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of Medicare, the nominally free public health insurance system accessible to domestic students (Marginson et al., 2010). In New South Wales and Victoria – the states where the majority of international students reside – international students access only limited and non-equivalent concessions on public transport; and those were only gained over the last decade (Patty, 2012; See-Tho, 2021). International students predominantly depend on the private rental market for their accommodation, with no possibility of subsidised housing or assistance from the government (Morris et al., 2020). They do not qualify for any form of government-provided income assistance, though domestic students may qualify, if they pass stringent income and assets tests, for housing and income assistance through the social security system.

In these ways, the package of rights offered international students falls considerably short of ‘social citizenship’, which was first defined by T.H. Marshall (1950 [1963], p. 30) to approximate the welfare state. Marshall emphasised ‘the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in the society’. The pandemic dramatically exposed this noncitizen status of international students. Research on their welfare before the pandemic had already drawn attention to the wide range of challenges they face (Ramia et al., 2013; Marginson et al., 2010). Studies had highlighted a range of problems, including: housing (Obeng-Odoom, 2012); social isolation, loneliness, civic engagement and domesticinternational student interaction (Sawir et al., 2008); personal safety risks due to crime (Nyland et al., 2009); racism (Fincher & Shaw, 2011); personal finances (ForbesMewett et al., 2009); and exploitation and underpayment in employment (Clibborn, 2021). Given the largely non-binding responsibilities of government and educational institutions to international student welfare, the Prime Minister’s April 2020 announcement of non-support was simply a continuation of the present policy approach, with its known weaknesses; and not a departure from it.

Methodology The data for this study was collected as part of an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP190101073) on housing precarity among international students. It follows a convergent mixed-methods approach (Creswell, 2014). The student cohorts included those enrolled in all three postsecondary sectors (universities, vocational education and training (VET) and English language colleges), who were also living in the private rental sector in Sydney or Melbourne. The study incorporated an online survey conducted during the second half of 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic (Survey 1), and a follow-up survey fielded in June 2020, during the

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pandemic (Survey 2). It further included 45 in-depth, semistructured interviews with international students.

Survey 1 closed in early December 2019. A total of 43 educational institutions (ten universities, 24 VET providers, seven English language colleges, and two foundation course programs) assisted in the recruitment of participants, and 7,084 valid responses were obtained. Institutions sent a link to the survey to all their enrolled international students, thereby giving each student an equal opportunity to respond.

Survey 2, a rapid follow-up survey, was fielded in June 2020 to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on employment, income and housing. Due to the constraints of ethical commitments to our respondents, we were only able to invite the 3,114 students who had consented to be re-contacted and provided an email address. It was not possible to link data between the two surveys at the individual level. Both surveys were available in English and Chinese. The data was analysed using a combination of univariate and bivariate descriptive statistical approaches using SPSSv.26 software.

Importantly, the survey data helped to provide further context for the in-depth interview data. The 45 student interviewees were recruited from a shortlist of Survey 1 respondents who consented to be contacted for interview. Due to the pandemic, the in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted remotely over Zoom during the middle and later months of 2020. An initial shortlist of 120 contacts was developed from the surveys, based on a composite ‘precarity’ score and composite ‘social connection’ score, as well as key demographic characteristics. These specifications allowed for purposeful selection across important areas without targeting individuals. The contact list was later augmented to include students sharing a bedroom with one or more others, as recruitment became focused on filling gaps in the emerging data. Of the 45 interviewees, 31 were university students, 10 were VET students, and 4 were English language students; 28 students were located in Sydney, and 17 were in Melbourne.

Interviewees were asked a wide range of questions designed to probe general housing circumstances, and how they perceived their accommodation. This included how they found their accommodation, whether they had other options, and why they decided to settle on where they live. It also included questions relating to tenant-landlord relations and the role of real-estate agents. A range of questions was asked as a means to critically unpack housing affordability. Students were also asked about the features and the main characteristics of their accommodation, the relationships they had with fellow tenants, the wider local community and the social networks that they maintained. Part-time employment and income was also a major theme in the questions.

The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. A deductive coding frame of anticipated themes based on the five dimensions of housing precarity oriented initial coding.

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Inductive codes were also generated from the detail of the interview data, allowing for the emergence of unanticipated themes. Deductive codes relevant to this article included ‘capacity to afford rent’, ‘COVID change of circumstances’, ‘impact – health and wellbeing’, ‘impact – academic performance’. Inductive codes related to the topic included ‘perception of government support’, ‘COVID concerns’ and ‘feelings about family support’. Codes were collaboratively reviewed across the research team and refined with each cycle of analysis. Interview transcripts were coded by a single researcher and reviewed by the project lead. Coding queries were used to explore capacity to afford rent, as well as impacts that did and did not overlap with a COVID-related change of circumstance.

Results and analysis In presenting findings organised by major themes, our objective was to highlight how the federal Government’s policy non-response had dramatic consequences for the welfare for students. An additional objective was to elicit interviewees’ views on what would need to change if their welfare was to be more effectively secured.

Pre-pandemic struggles: Working to try to make ends meet More than two in five of the international students surveyed before COVID-19 reported doing paid work, and 36 per cent listed paid employment as their main source of income.

Of the 43 per cent engaged in paid work, 52 per cent agreed or strongly agreed that, if they lost their job, they would no longer be able to pay the rent and 58 per cent reported that they would have financial difficulties. Reliance on paid work was greatest for those earning less than $500 a week. The interviews showed how access to employment and labour market circumstances impacted on the daily lives of students, particularly when settling in. Of the 45 students interviewed, 14 said it was harder than expected to find a job in Australia.

Rahul, an Indian student in Melbourne, described the situation as he saw it: As an international student it is very difficult here. Unless you know anyone in the industry who can get you a job, it is very difficult. It is like out of 100 international students, I think only five are lucky enough to get a job on their own.

Even when Rahul found a job, the casual contract made his hours and earnings unpredictable: ‘So I think I suffered. I still have anxiety now and then when I don’t get work because both of them [both jobs] are on [a] casual basis.’ A number of students echoed the stress of looking for work and accepting poor employment conditions. Some spoke about the toll it took on their health and studies: ‘It was the heaviest toll on vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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my studies. So apart from the mental conditions, I would have done a lot better than I’ve done in Uni if it wasn’t for [working to pay] the rent’ (Yashvin, Bangladeshi university student in Sydney).

Signs of financial stress – measured using 8 indicators adapted from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2017) – were evident among participants in the pre-COVID-19 survey.

The most common evidence of hardship was borrowing from friends and family (41 per cent of respondents). This is unsurprising, given that 69 per cent of respondents received support from family as a main source of income. It should be of major concern, however, that one in five students (21 per cent) reported going without a meal over the last year. Six of the students we interviewed described missing out on food, transport or medical treatment in order to meet the cost of rent. Another six described the ‘caution’ and ‘compromise’ involved in living on the basics. Bhavna, an Indian university student, described going without basic necessities when she struggled to find work upon arriving in Sydney: Definitely at that time we used to survive on one meal per day like just having one meal. Actually I have seen some days where having nothing at all wouldn’t actually bother you much because it’s just like you have this thing in your mind that you have to pay somebody back. You have to save up for your rent and your fees. I think that was the time when you have to put it all off. So we have seen the days where we wouldn’t [be] eating all day and that actually [that] also affected me physically, not eating [for the] whole day and relying on one meal just and water.

Bhavna felt fortunate to have friends she could borrow money from in the weeks when she could not pay the rent: ‘I would actually ask some of my friends if they would lend me and then I would return to them after’.

Worsening conditions under COVID-19 For those international students reliant on paid work to cover living expenses, COVID-19 was profoundly disruptive.

The absence of an effective emergency social safety net from government meant some students fell into immediate and severe hardship. The survey conducted during COVID-19 in 2020 established that around six in ten students who were previously employed and participated in the follow-up survey, had lost their jobs. Job losses were accompanied by a loss of income and a sharp increase in difficulties paying the rent.

Almost half (45 per cent) of respondents reported an income below $300 a week in the survey conducted during the pandemic, compared to 21 per cent of pre-pandemic survey respondents. Around one in six students reported no longer being able to pay their rent, and 42 per cent were struggling to pay the rent. More than half (54 per cent) agreed that they were experiencing financial difficulty. When the pandemic hit, Dev, an Indian student at a Melbourne university, went

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from working four shifts per week, to one. He described the impact of the substantial decrease in income: I have some savings so I was able to afford the rent … but it did have an impact. Like you’d have to watch what you’re spending, what you buy more consciously. Yeah, it had an impact because suddenly you go on a third of what you were earning before.

When asked if his parents were able to assist him during this time, he replied: I don’t think they have that much money to support me. If I do ask, my dad would be able to arrange money from somewhere, either borrow it or something. But he’d have to borrow and then there is a lot of interest when you borrow. So I haven’t thought about it that way, but hopefully it doesn’t come to that.

Other students interviewed were able to fall back on family support after losing their paid employment. Haymar, a university student in Sydney from Myanmar, lost her cafe job during the initial lockdown: ‘I have no income but my parents can support me so I don’t have much stress about the financial aspect’. However, for several others whose parents were already covering their tuition fees, asking for additional financial assistance from their family was a last resort: ‘There’s a curfew, like a whole curfew in Nepal. Nothing is open and yeah, because of that, I can’t even ask help from my country …

Everyone has their own hardship so I can’t really ask anything’ (Meera, Sydney-based VET student).

The results of the post-COVID-19 survey suggest that the proportion of students enduring financial stress increased substantially during the pandemic. Direct comparison of the eight financial stress measures from the two surveys is not possible as the samples were not equivalent. In 2019, before the pandemic, ten per cent of students reported at least five items on the scale, compared to 18 per cent during the pandemic in 2020. While 44 per cent of respondents to the pre-COVID survey reported none of the hardshiprelated actions on the scale, among 2020 respondents this had dropped to 30 per cent. Close to half (47 per cent) of respondents approached their educational institution for assistance during the COVID-19 lockdown.

To stretch her limited budget, Lin, a Melbourne-based university student from Hong Kong, shared a bedroom with three others. She had expected to find work when she arrived in Melbourne, but the COVID-19 outbreak made it impossible: So before I come here I kind of convinced my parents that I can find a job here to maintain my daily expenses, but unfortunately they need to send me some money to cover a bit. Yes, I need to cut [my] budget on entertaining or eating but that’s good that [the university] gave me some subsidy… Just a cash

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payment. Yes, when I send them my bank statement and the rental agreement and explain my hardship then they [the university] give me some support.

Duong, a Vietnamese student at a Sydney-based university, was accustomed to budgeting before the pandemic hit, so he felt that little had changed, at least in the early days of the lockdown, when we interviewed him: Yeah well actually I’m like kind of budget[-oriented] and it’s not just recently. I actually before the pandemic I already like tried to watch my budget, so yeah it doesn’t change too much I think. I mean like maybe if I’m having [still had] my job, maybe I [would] buy a little more but for now at least it hasn’t affected me too much. I’m just worried about the future …

Yeah, just like afraid of running out of money because if I run out of money, I don’t know how to manage that.

Even if they perceived that they were managing relatively well at the time of the interview – as did most of the students we interviewed – many were stressed about the months ahead.

Having no safety net left students not knowing how they might cope if the pandemic was to persist into the medium term.

International students abandoned in a pandemic As highlighted earlier, the Government’s rationale for excluding international students from inclusion in a social safety net – either in an emergency or long-term – is premised on the assumption that they are self-supporting or will be supported by their spouse or family (Bauböck, 2006, p. 24).

Prospective students must prove that they can cover living costs for their first 12 months, set at AUD$21,041 as of October 2019 (Study Australia, 2021). In entering into this contract, students take their cue from government estimates of living costs, which have long been criticised as out of step with the real cost of living in Australia (Forbes-Mewett et al., 2009). As Celia, a scholarship holder at a Sydney-based university, observed: When the international students come they need to prove that they have other financial support. So at this point they present the scholarship documents and this was accepted so I assumed that this could mean that I can live with that but I think for Sydney and with Melbourne [being more expensive], that it [the estimated living costs] needs to be different.

While scholarship holders tended to fare better than others – particularly once COVID-19 hit – the gap between the accepted amount Celia could supposedly live on, and her reality, still caught her by surprise.

In addition, students must only demonstrate that they have the funds to cover the first 12 months of residence, with many counting on finding employment in Australia to pay off loans taken to meet these requirements or cover remaining expenses. As Rahul explained:

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In terms of paying for your rent as an international student, if you have loads of money in India you can probably stay without even working here [in Australia]. But with people who don’t have a strong background with huge bank balances they need to work here to stay afloat. So in my case, I didn’t get work for the first few months but after that I got a casual [retail] job.

As the preceding analysis shows, international students reliant on paid employment to cover their living expenses have struggled in Australia, and they were hit hard by the pandemic. Le, a Vietnamese student at a Sydney-based university, felt it was not reasonable to expect students to be self-supporting during a pandemic. She suggested that the requirement to prove they are self-supporting had even deterred some students from accessing the piecemeal relief payments that were available: And that create a lot of stress for international students even when … the universities like, ‘Hey, we have this sort of fund to support international students’, but to get access to those funds you need to send your bank statement and things like that. And a lot of students are just like [asking], “What if they report [me] to immigration …?”

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approach to international student welfare: ‘It is not even a mystery anymore. The Prime Minister is like, you know, “I don’t care about international students”’ (Meera, Sydney student from Nepal).

The contribution international students make to the Australian economy and tertiary sector was a recurring theme among interviewees. As Bhavna put it: Yeah, like most of the students were [saying], ‘Okay, if you want us to return just give us our fees back. Just give our taxes back because we have paid a lot’… because we are not earning that much but we have been paying a lot of money.

Bhavna is echoing the argument that, if governments create market-based services, the clients of those services should expect at least the compensation rights that markets offer (Robertson, 2015, p. 946).

What needs to change, according to international students

We asked students about what reforms were needed to deal with the problems they reported. Some argued that there was a need for the government and education providers to take greater responsibility for protecting international student The pandemic only welfare in Australia, beyond accentuated the normal the on-campus context. For ‘I think [my university] definitely was problems with visa example, Penelope pointed not communicating this [the scholarship requirements premised on to her education provider’s amount] very clearly before coming and the unrealistic assumption inadequate preparation of that students can be selfstudents like herself for daily what would be exactly the costs for living in supporting across a number life in Australian cities: ‘I think Sydney’. of years of study. In these [my university] definitely was instances, however, a failure to not communicating this [the adapt social assistance policy, so that international students scholarship amount] very clearly before coming and what were covered, had much wider and potentially long-term would be exactly the costs for living in Sydney’. Pratham felt implications for student welfare and Australia’s reputation as similarly: a study destination.

Yeah, when I arrived in Melbourne like we had orientation but Not surprisingly, students overwhelmingly perceived the they didn’t teach us anything properly, like how the finances Federal Government’s handling of their welfare in the context are supposed to work and everything […] So they have to of the pandemic, in negative terms. Only 13 per cent of make better plans for us to go through it. Yeah, to make me feel comfortable. respondents to Survey 2 rated government support as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’. Most interviewees perceived that the Government abandoning them during the pandemic was unfair and unjust.

He said he learned about how daily life operates in Australia As Yashvin, a Bangladeshi student at a Sydney university, put it: from his roommates and from YouTube videos.

Lin was emphatic that her decision to come to Australia I’ve seen and especially in this current pandemic the Australwas worthwhile, especially on education quality grounds: ‘Yes, ian Government had made it more clear that they don’t really I love the Australian curriculum’. But she would have liked to care about the students. I don’t know why is that. It’s pretty see more affordable accommodation options, particularly much heartbreaking considering the input of them [international students] in the Australian economy … the education given that employment was difficult to secure: sector and the work they put in.

I would say, my house experiences are not what I expected before I came. … It would be great if the government can proOther interviewees echoed Yashvin’s view that the vide different types of housing for international students to pandemic had confirmed the Government’s already neglectful vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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choose according to their financial situations. It can ensure our living environment is appropriate for study. It is challenging for us to find affordable places to stay after paying expensive tuition fee. Especially, in the current situation without a part-time [job] in restaurants or retails.

Lin viewed accommodation as integral to the student experience, not outside of it. Dev was also satisfied with the education he was receiving, but he felt Australia fell short in its treatment of international students: So my main purpose was to come for study, good education which I think I’m able to do that. I’m pretty happy with my progress and the course and my grades so far and my first progression as well … Yeah, but I only regret just one aspect which is that even if I would have to say other countries such as Canada, I would have got the same quality education. I could have got everything pretty much the same and then on the top of that you get government [support] … The government is supporting international students in those countries like their own you know. They are paying them not just one-off payments as Victorian Government did just giving $1,000 one off payment … and then that [Canadian, for example] Government is giving you like the JobKeeper once every fortnight.

Many students like Dev, who were disappointed by the Federal Government’s lack of support for international students during the pandemic, felt that the Australian education providers and the Federal Government needed to change the way they think about international students and their place in Australia. As Pratham insisted: ‘He [Prime Minister Morrison] was like, “Go back”. I’m like, you only need us when you want the money. Like we are not cash cows for you’.

Conclusions and implications As the first section of this article revealed, international student rights in Australia are mainly those of consumers, and more specifically, consumers of an education which is qualityassured for pedagogy but not for supportive services. The education services provided to students are also financially insured, in case the educational institution in which the student is enrolled cannot provide the promised course or program. However, there is no ‘insurance’ against the inability to work or to pay the bills. International students also have education rights equivalent to those of domestic students.

Thus, they are able to appeal academic decisions internally within their institution and if that is not resolved to their satisfaction, they can appeal externally to a State or the Commonwealth Ombudsman, depending on which sector there are enrolled in. But that is the extent of the possible claims students can make, given that they are temporary residents with limited entitlements. While domestic students have access to income assistance if they qualify under income

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and assets thresholds, international students are excluded.

This was the case well before the pandemic, and dates back as far as the late 1980s when the higher education system was opened up to fee-paying international students. The liberalisation of the system was, and remains, on a full-fee basis, and access to all other services is on a commercial basis.

The material welfare of international students has never been a concern meaningfully dealt with by policy-makers.

The main result of the pandemic has been to exacerbate an existing set of welfare deficits produced by this lack of policy.

The ESOS Framework, which provides legislative and policy bases for international student welfare, is not equipped for, and was never designed for, the provision of welfare as most would conceive of that term. COVID-19 lockdowns and movement restrictions brought this deficit into sharp relief.

Not being subjects of the welfare state, and thus not having the social rights offered to permanent residents and citizens, many international students suffered disproportionately during the lockdown. The surveys and in-depth interviews conducted as part of our ARC project have revealed the incidence and extent of poverty and hardship experienced by students. Many interviewees expressed an acute sense of abandonment by the Australian Government, given the decision not to provide assistance in a crisis that resulted in widespread loss of paid employment. Paying the rent and covering everyday expenses became a huge challenge. A sizeable proportion of students feared that they could become homeless, and cut back on meals in order to pay bills and rent. Some were able to keep working in paid employment through the lockdown, but with reduced hours. An already delicate financial situation for many was made more difficult.

The pre-existing paucity of social rights guaranteed that a welfare deficit would arise in a situation of crisis. The central implication for policy, if future crises are not to yield a similar result, is that legislation and policy should be reformed to render the social rights of international students equivalent to those of domestic students. This would entail an overhaul of the ESOS Framework, to write-in to legislation that international students have the same access to rights and services as domestic students. Broader public policy statements by governments would need to meaningfully recognise the contribution of international students to the life of the nation.

Though international students are in most cases temporary migrants, approximately fifty per cent of them are interested in migrating to Australia (Robertson, 2013). In addition, they are subject to the taxation system when in paid employment and, like all residents, permanent and temporary, international students pay goods and services taxes as consumers. In our study, students often emphasised that they make an economic contribution to Australia through taxes and education fees. In doing so, respondents made claims to entitlement that expose the lack of reciprocity in the marketised and contractualised

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relationship with the Australian Government – consequently, they ‘co-opt the rhetoric of consumption and exchange as grounds of their claims to rights’ (Robertson, 2015, p. 946).

The Government’s consumerist policy approach entices students, perhaps unwittingly, to claim at least their rights as consumers and taxpayers. The contributions of international students before the pandemic, to the economy in general and to the workforce in particular, have been recognised (Whiteford, 2020); as has their input into culture and to university life in Australia (Davis, 2010). It is evident that international students should have similar rights to domestic students, and that the ESOS Framework needs to define international student welfare in more meaningful, substantive and enforceable terms. Small signs of improvement came in 2021 when emergency relief payments for lockdown-affected States were extended to a wider cohort of temporary visa holders including international students (Klapdor, 2021).

Still, future research is needed to address longer-term welfare needs. This involves an evaluation and critical assessment of the economic and social effects of rights-equalisation in policy.

Creswell, J.W. (2014). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods Approaches (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Gaby Ramia is in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, Australia.

Contact: gaby.ramia@sydney.edu.au

Klapdor, M. (2021). Australian Government COVID-19 disaster payments: a quick guide. Retrieved from https://www.aph. gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/ Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp2122/Quick_Guides/COVID19DisasterPayments

Alan Morris, Catherine Hastings and Emma Mitchell are in the Institute for Public Policy and Governance at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia.

Shaun Wilson is in the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University, Australia.

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Morris, A., Hastings, C., Wilson, S., Mitchell, E., Ramia, G. & Overgaard, C. (2020). The Experience of International Students Before and During COVID-19: Housing, Work, Study and Wellbeing. Sydney: University of Technology Sydney.

Nyland, C., Forbes-Mewett, H., Marginson, S., Ramia, G., Sawir, E. & Smith, S. (2009). International student-workers in Australia: A new vulnerable workforce. Journal of Education and Work, 22(1), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/13639080802709653 Oakman, D. (2004). Facing Asia: A History of the Colombo Plan, Canberra: Pandanus Books.

Obeng-Odoom, F. (2012). Far away from home: The housing question and international students in Australia. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 34(2), 201-216. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360 080X.2012.662744 OECD. (2020) Education at a Glance. Paris: OECD. Patty, A. (2012, October 3). Overseas students to get discounted public transport. Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from https://www.smh. com.au/national/nsw/overseas-students-to-get-discounted-publictransport-20121029-28fkv.html

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Ramia, G., Marginson, S. & Sawir, E. (2013). Regulating International Students’ Wellbeing, Bristol: Policy Press.

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1080/03075079.2017.1293878 Rea, J. (2016). Critiquing neoliberalism in Australian universities.

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Roberts, P., Boldy, D. & Dunworth, K. (2015). The views of international students regarding university support services in Australia: A case study. The International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives 14(3), 122-137.

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Robertson, S. (2015). Contractualization, depoliticization, and the limits of solidarity: noncitizens in contemporary Australia. Citizenship Studies 19(8), 936-950. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2015.111 0286 Sawir, E., Marginson, S., Deumert, A., Nyland, & Ramia, G. (2008).

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Tensions in the provision of higher education and training in psychology A case study into their exposure by COVID-19 J M Innes University of South Australia

Ben W Morrison Macquarie University

We discuss developments in higher education in Australia through the lens of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic upon the provision of education and training in the discipline of psychology. Since its inception in universities after World War II, psychology educators in Australia have continually dealt with different, often conflicting, goals and with different methods and institutions in the regulation, accreditation, and process of the education of psychologists. These include the goals of training in practice, training in science, the administration of organisations and the concepts of profit and ‘value’ pulling teachers and students in different directions, and in the employment of graduates in multiple roles with different expectations held by the public and government. The impact of COVID-19 since 2020, rapid developments in technology, and the likely continuing changes in the sector that ensue, can be viewed as sources of magnification of the difficulties. Implications are drawn from the case study of psychology in Australia to highlight similarities and differences with psychological education in other countries and serve to illuminate possible futures for higher education in Australia and abroad.

Keywords: higher education, training, psychology, scientist-practitioner, COVID-19

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Introduction We discuss the impact of changes in the tertiary education sector in Australia that have resulted from the COVID-19 viral infection of 2020, continuing into 2021 and beyond, through an analysis of the discipline of psychology and the alignment of forces which impact upon it. The discipline of psychology is taken as a case study of the various impacts. The nature of the discipline, incorporating elements of scientific training, professional training and the suitability of graduates for employment in broad sectors of the community, beyond the professional practice of psychology, render it vulnerable to political, economic and institutional change.

We emphasise the impact of these forces upon the process of training to be a professional psychologist, but we acknowledge that the impact on the educational process in psychology as a ‘liberal arts’ subject could be less severe. However, we argue that the changes in the training of professional psychologists has had an impact upon the essential elements at the undergraduate level and so there are ramifications for how a ‘liberal arts’ education itself becomes more ‘professionally’ oriented.

The success of the profession of psychology in Australia is epitomised by the existence of over 42,000 registered psychologists (Psychology Board of Australia, 2021) who work in the public and private spheres, encompassing many jobs in the health sector, but also in commerce, business, the military, education and in research and development. Success is also signalled by the huge number of student enrolments in public and private tertiary institutions, making the discipline one of the most popular subjects to be studied across the continent.

An important feature of psychology for the present discussion is that the term ‘Psychologist’ is a legally protected term. It cannot be used by a person to describe their job unless they have been legally registered with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) after completing a fully accredited program of study, which itself must be approved by the Australian Psychology Accreditation Council (APAC). This means that the number of people who are employed as ‘psychologists’ does not reflect the number who have completed a lengthy period of study in the discipline, but who have been unable to go on to the further study necessary to be registered. Many students are enrolled in a three-year undergraduate degree but are unable to progress to a fourth and subsequent years of study. They are later employed across many facets in the community, using their psychological skills, but cannot be labelled as a ‘psychologist’. The number of people in society who have benefitted from psychological education is thus severely underestimated by the number who are registered. Our analysis therefore goes beyond the boundaries of the registered profession and into general

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employment within society and examines the management of education of psychologists and related occupations in the tertiary sector. As we have noted above, the impact of changes in the program to train professional psychologists, focussed upon the education of clinical psychologists, affects all of psychological training and affects how psychologists or people with a background in psychology think about issues and problems.

The overt success of registered psychologists is one face of the development of psychology. Other covert faces, less visible to the public gaze, depict tensions and conflicts between practitioners and scientists, employers and graduates, educators and students, and health practitioners and workers in commerce. The structure of the educational system that currently prepares psychologists for employment, and which underlies the production of partly trained psychologists who migrate into other areas of employment, generates these tensions and thus needs analysis.

In this paper we take the example of the teaching of psychology at tertiary level as a case study of change in the provision of higher education in Australia. We view the tensions and difficulties that arise as a lens through which we can view other sectors of education and employment. We use psychology as a case study in the sense proposed by Campbell (1975). Psychology itself encapsulates relevant variables in a form which can be tested and compared with other events in the same domain, namely the role of universities in the education and training of graduates in many sectors of employment. The success of psychology, taught in every Australian university, and in colleges in the private sector, with strong employment opportunities, provides a model for other disciplines. It is also taught in countless other countries, which allows global comparison. Furthermore, it is a fundamental discipline, with elements of science and mathematics in the curriculum, and it also prepares students for a professional career. Finally, it is embedded in many facets of the tertiary sector, in faculties of science, arts, medicine and in some form in faculties of business and commerce. The study and practice of psychology permeates all sectors of contemporary society.

Psychological education: the university based years The discipline of psychology has a long history in the university system in Australia. A three-year course in the discipline had been established at the University of Sydney by 1925 and the end of World War II saw the establishment of a department of psychology in most universities (Cooke, 2000). The history of education in psychology in Australia has been marked by changes from the self-accreditation of courses to accreditation by the professional society, the Australian Psychological Society (APS) and State based health

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and education departments, through to the establishment of APAC at the turn of the century (Cooke, 2000; Innes & Morrison, 2020).

The role of the registration of psychologists to allow them to practise in the community, initiated by the States and incorporated into Federal law, must also be considered in order to understand how and why psychologists are taught as they are. We can map the changes in the form and the incursion of accreditation from the early stage, where accreditation by an external body could be regarded as an invasion of university freedom of study (c. f. Cooke 2000) to today where the external accreditation processes are essentially governed by the profession and not the training institutions.

There are two primary faces of psychology, which have been accommodated in the structure of departments and in the curriculum. The first is the scientific: psychology as a discipline with an education in the scientific method, statistical analysis and an emphasis on theory testing. This has arisen from the concept of psychology as a basic science and stems from the self-conscious need by the discipline to differentiate itself from the discipline of philosophy in which its subject matter, the examination of the causes and the nature of human experience, consciousness and behaviour had originally resided. The second is the practitioner face where the intention of training was to deal with the burden of mental illness and also with practical interventions in matters of personnel, organisational efficiency and aptitude testing in schools and vocational institutes. Psychology was conceived to help the human condition in all of its forms. It has especial relevance to those who suffer from debilitating mental conditions and was therefore conceived as a form of medical practice. This is a face which especially attracts public and public policy attention. But there are many other facets of psychology that impact upon the public and the workforce which are concerned with mental health and workplace efficiency.

However, all of these facets have a basis in the scientific discipline. The adoption of the Scientist-Practitioner Model (SPM) (for a detailed review of the model’s foundations and assumptions, see Jones & Mehr, 2007), with the omnipresence of science as the foundation upon which to build a set of practical skills, however those skills may be employed, was viewed as essential to the process of the accreditation of courses in universities and to valid practice in the community.

The original process of accreditation of departments was premised upon the need to recognise graduates of psychology as providing solutions and advice based upon scientific inquiry and not upon religious, spiritual, or private experiential processes (c.f. Cooke, 2000).

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were first exposed to courses in statistics, experimental methodology and in psychological measurement and theory.

This took up a great amount of time and displaced the time that could be spent initially upon the practice of psychology.

The latter required training in close interpersonal interaction, in the ability to understand behaviour based upon the observation of subtle aspects of human behaviour, to ask questions and deal with the subtleties of interviews and the drawing of inferences of psychological states from the actions of clients. These skills also require extensive time and, in many cases, one-to-one tuition to inculcate and evaluate the skill level of the student. But in the initial training of the novice psychologist this latter set of skills was considered to be the necessary second step to and dependent upon the initial science-based training.

This tension existed within a context of the differentiation of disciplines within the university sector more generally.

Staff within universities globally will recognise a feature of university life that exacerbates differences in cultures, namely the hegemony of research as the criterion for judgment of excellence as against the ability to teach. Research performance is regarded as the principal basis for promotion (Zimmerman, 2020) as opposed to conducting applied research, consulting clients, and generally dealing with problems in the world, rather than in the laboratory, to provide the development of skills and knowledge to transmit to students. These activities almost inevitably result in fewer opportunities to conduct research and create greater delays and problems in getting things done to persuade editors that the research was valid and important. Hence, there was a further validation, in the eyes of many in the universities, that the research culture was the important one and, in the case of psychology, the scientific route was even more so.

There were, in effect, two cultures in existence within a department of psychology. The first, given priority as the foundation of scientific knowledge, was the establishment of a culture of research, based upon the induction of a tacit knowledge of how to practice research and validate psychological knowledge. Such tacit knowledge could not be attained solely through reading texts and carrying out statistical analyses. It depended upon the socialisation of students into the practice of research under the supervision of staff who themselves had undergone a process of scientific socialisation. The process of acquiring tacit knowledge was seen as the fundamental element of understanding and applying the scientific method (Collins, 2019; Strevens, 2020). The process of socialisation was achieved through attendance at laboratory classes where experiments in sensation (especially in the minutiae of procedures in psychophysical methods), perception, learning, memory and cognitive problem solving were carried out by individuals and groups under close supervision. The ubiquitous requirement

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of the final year research thesis was the symbolic culmination of this belief system. The one-on-one supervision adopted for the development of the final year thesis reflected this socialisation, without it necessarily being articulated. The dominant research culture was implicitly communicated to staff and, importantly, to students. And this took up a great deal of time.

The second culture, equally dependent upon other forms of tacit knowledge, was the transmission of knowledge of how to interact with other people. These ‘others’ were people who could be experiencing realities and insights different from those experienced by the people, the psychologists, who were trained to help. This sphere of tacit knowledge required skills that were similar in some ways to those in the sphere of scientific discourse described above, in that they were concerned with problem solving, were implicit and learned through socialisation and immersed experience, but they were separate in space and not shared across all members, who tended to be in one or other of the spheres and not in both.

The separation of the cultures was exacerbated by the adoption of a model of training in the discipline whereby the initial years of training in the science of psychology was conducted in the undergraduate degree and training in the professionally oriented practical skills for later practice and the legal requirements of registration was conducted in postgraduate degrees. It is vital to understand this distinction as it led later to problems in the calculation of fees charged for progression to a professional degree, as we shall examine in this paper.

The implicit dominant importance of efficacy in science meant that within the accreditation standards there was an emphasis on the establishment of a culture of scientific involvement of staff. This was especially so in the years after WWII where the science of psychology was prominent and the practice of psychology less so. Time was given to staff to conduct psychological research and to publish in reputable journals. Without such evidence, accreditation of a department or a new course was not possible. The provision of professional practical training was, in the universities, facilitated by the later creation of clinics whereby students could meet and treat clients in controlled conditions, under the supervision of staff who were also allowed time away from university teaching and supervision to conduct private practical clinical consultations with clients.

An important aspect of the early emphasis on ‘science’ was that the science was largely regarded as based upon the hegemony of the experiment as the method of choice and the dominant role of theory as a guide to the development of hypotheses and research questions to be posed. Only in recent years have there been developments in qualitative research methods, an emphasis upon experiential learning and exploration and the role of observation and examples

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as a legitimate method for the conduct of the science of psychology (Billig, 2020). It is within living memory that the use of qualitative methods in a research paper would lead to rejection by an ethics committee on the grounds that the methodology was not ‘scientific’ and hence not ethical!

The endorsement of qualitative methods, with an attendant emphasis on observation and interpretative analysis, skills shared with the tacit skills of professional experience, could have eroded the barriers between the cultures.

Therefore, there was a division between ‘scientific’ staff, training undergraduate and honours students, and ‘professional’ staff, training postgraduates. The professional oriented staff would frequently not be exposed at all to undergraduate students who would only get personal experience of such professionals in their final year when the staff would talk about the opportunities available for postgraduate study.

There were consequential financial effects. The conduct of science and research in the training of undergraduate students, where there were large numbers of enrolments, subsidised the practical training of students at the postgraduate level where the intensive style of training resulted in relatively small numbers of students. These requirements were ingrained in the accreditation standards over the years and the evolution of such cultures and the embodiment of them structurally in the developments of offices and laboratories and meeting places, which created barriers to communication between members of the same school or department has been portrayed in Campbell (1969).

The cultures that co-existed affected the actions and belief systems of staff members. There was also a ‘trickle down’ effect upon the students. The bulk of students in departments of psychology, especially towards the end of the 20th century and into the present, were interested in becoming psychological practitioners and not psychological scientists, as evidenced in the eventual employment of graduates in professional rather than scientific roles (Kennedy & Innes, 2005). The majority of students did not expect to spend the undergraduate years learning to be scientists. They wanted to attain practical skills to help people. They saw little point in the courses in statistics and in the concentration on the minutiae of experimental design while not being given the opportunity to meet ‘real’ people and learn the practical skills of the delivery of interventions. But the dominant message derived from the curriculum and its exegesis was that science was prior to practice and hence more important in the process of education.

The students in the main were ignorant of the degree to which the teaching of psychology in the universities was governed by the accreditation process where the emphasis was upon science rather than practice. Students reacted against

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the curriculum, which was seen as under the control of the in other countries. While a pathway to registration and staff rather than external bodies. A collision of cultures existed practice was through completion of a four-year degree and from the first year of study. The tension was always present. further two years of training at postgraduate level, many The popularity of psychology as a university subject also psychologists could proceed to registration through the played crucial roles. so-called four-plus-two pathway. This involved the student First, there were many students filling places in the completing a four-year undergraduate program, although the undergraduate degrees, and they were financially important fourth year did not need to be a full-blown honours year with for the departments and also for the universities within an individually supervised research thesis. The first three which they resided. Psychology enrolments enabled the years were the standard training in scientific psychology, but subsidisation of many departments in other disciplines that the fourth year might involve completion of a thesis (again had lower appeal, especially if the psychology department required because of the ‘science’ of psychology) but carried was based in a faculty of humanities or social sciences out in a group of students focussed on a project under the where a direct subsidy was easily arranged. Many heads of supervision of a staff member. The course work at fourth departments were required by vice-chancellors to exceed year level might also provide some additional ‘practically the quotas for psychology places to make up shortfalls in oriented’ skills. Upon graduation these students could then enrolments elsewhere. Second, the large enrolments in commence two years of supervised practice outside of the undergraduate classes put a strain on the ability to provide universities, supervised by a registered psychologist. For the required high staff/ this cohort of students, the student ratios, which enabled three years of undergraduate Therefore, there was a division between the training of tacit skills ‘science’ was increasingly ‘scientific’ staff, training undergraduate required to complete scientific seen by these students as a and honours students, and ‘professional’ experiments and surveys. distraction from the goal of Training in practical classes becoming a registered health staff, training postgraduates. declined or was replaced by professional and the fourth provision of classes dependent year of study in a group was on computer simulation of laboratory exercises. Students seen by many as a second-class education to produce secondtherefore did not become aware of a fundamental rule of class professionals. The four-plus-two pathway can no longer science, namely that many experiments fail. Their exposure be commenced by undergraduate students, but there are still was to simulations that worked or tasks that were designed students in the system who are completing such a pathway to be fail-safe. The training in how to do ‘real’ science under and there are large numbers of registered professionals who trying conditions was eroded. Training to deal with people, have been trained by this means. also extremely difficult with high failure rates was, however, The process of change within the profession, the conducted at postgraduate level with more staff and fewer accreditation body and the universities was slow and the students, so there was a greater ‘built in’ support system to differences between the various standards accreditation help students acquire those difficult skills. documents were relatively minor, until recently (APAC, There were further unintended consequences of the training 2019). The tensions within the profession between the system. The pathway to a research career, via completion of ‘four-plus-two’ trained practitioners and those who had a PhD, was through the completion of an honours degree, attained master’s qualifications were strong, and represented with a research thesis. However, as training opportunities a further collision of cultures, this time within the practice emerged in professional ranks, with postgraduate coursework of psychology. These tensions were further exacerbated a requirement, the need for selection of good students into by the introduction of a payment for psychological these led to the talented students, who wished to go into the services through Medicare in 2010, which provided two profession, choosing to do the honours route. This enabled tiers of rebates to clients, a higher one for professionals them to get a better degree and this then enabled the selection with endorsed areas of special practice (mainly trained in of students for professions to be based upon completion of coursework postgraduate units in clinical psychology) and a research degree! So, there was a further clash of cultures: those with ‘general’ registration, mainly with four-plus-two students seeking to be professionals had to complete a training. The latter group, comprising fully two-thirds of research degree to compete for entry. The rite of passage to registered psychologists, believed that their services were professional training, ironically, was through the training to essentially the same as those provided by the former group be a scientist. but attracted lower remuneration. This perception only Another feature of the production of practical further fomented the tension. These tensions persist to the psychologists in Australia set it apart from other systems present day. The establishment of professional organisations vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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separate from the original APS, for example, the Australian Association of Psychologists Inc. (AAPi) demonstrates the concerns that many registered psychologists have that the APS does not properly represent their interests and they continue to lobby government for changes in the fee structure for psychological services (Carrison, 2021).

The Popularity of Psychology These tensions within the discipline were enhanced by the immense popularity of psychology as a subject of study. For several decades psychology as a subject has been among the most popular with students. Enrolments in the first-year course are approaching 3000 students in several universities in 2021, and these numbers, while declining over the course of the three-year undergraduate degree, remained exceptionally high. Indeed, psychology contributes greatly to the prominence of ‘Society and Culture’ as the most popular broad field of education among commencing bachelor’s degree students (Department of Education, Skills, and Employment, 2019).

Many students took the initial unit as an interesting elective, but a highly significant number were intending to continue study with the intention of becoming a psychologist. These hopes and intentions were dashed for many as the numbers which could be accommodated in the fourth year, whether with a single student or group-oriented research thesis, could never satisfy the demand. This meant that at the end of the third year many students had to graduate with a three-year qualification and be ineligible to register. The responses to the Student Experience Survey in many universities were testament to the disappointment of many students with the failed promise of a career in psychology. The items assessing ‘Learner engagement’, for example, are characteristically at the level of 50 per cent for psychology students, well below the average for all graduates.

The lack of practical training in the undergraduate course meant that these students graduated with few employable skills. Teachers of psychology appreciated the fact that the majority of graduates from three-year programs did not progress into fourth year (Kennedy & Innes, 2005) and therefore there was a perceived need to provide them with a pathway to employment outside the discipline. The evolution of the graduate attributes of an Australian undergraduate psychology program (Cranney et al., 2009; Provost et al., 2010) and how these could be related specifically to components within the degree courses was an attempt to signify to students and potential employers the skills and insights embedded in a psychology undergraduate degree.

This movement was followed by one which emphasised the importance for any graduate of having ‘psychological literacy’ (e.g., Halpern, 2010). With an undergraduate

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education in psychology, equipped with critical thinking and problem-solving skills, cultural competencies and an understanding of scientific research practices, the graduate was conceived of as better equipped to become a citizen and a constructive member of society. While some aspects of an education in psychology can be seen in the general light of a broad education, the actual failure to proceed to a career in psychology could not be easily compensated for. And the degree to which such ‘literacy’ acquired from psychology is in any way different from or superior to an education in a plethora of other disciplines was not made clear. The emphasis upon science at the undergraduate level, while appropriate in the early years of the establishment of psychology in the tertiary curriculum, results in low levels of ‘employable skills’ for the three-year graduate, at a time when the emphasis of university training has changed to one of preparation for employment.

Recent changes in the construction of the curriculum and its relationship to employability have occurred. But it is first necessary to address another significant structural change that occurred within the tertiary education sector, one which could be viewed metaphorically as a new world or culture entering the system on a collision course.

The development of private tertiary education The beginning of the 21st century saw the emergence of a new force in tertiary education in Australia, namely the provision of education by private providers. While initially there was an emphasis upon education in business related courses, inevitably there was pressure to provide education in courses that, while still practically and vocationally oriented, were reliant on the so-called ‘soft skills’ in interpersonal relationships and the ability to deal with people.

In portraying the differences between private and public delivery of psychology and commenting on the effects of these changes on the general sector, we can take a case study of the accreditation of a program in psychology through one higher education provider (HEP). In 2010 the Australian Psychology Accreditation Council (APAC) gave conditional accreditation to a suite of programs in psychology to be taught from 2011 in a long standing private HEP, which had not previously offered psychology in an accredited form. This changed the practice that had enabled only universities to provide courses in the discipline (Innes, Harris & Little, 2014). The HEP also was required, as with all higher education institutions, to be accredited by the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency (TEQSA). The provider later moved to become a Self-Accrediting Authority (SAA) within TEQSA enabling it to change units and courses without having to apply to TEQSA at every stage.

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The Courses We refer hereafter to courses as a term for structured collections of units of study. Use of the term varies across the sector and may be referred to as ‘programs of study’. The courses which were the subject of the accreditation application complied in all respects with the requirements set out by APAC. They mirrored in substance and method of delivery every equivalent accredited program of psychology taught in Australia and were extensively benchmarked against Australian university programs. One could read the course descriptions of the units and be unable to differentiate them from any unit delivered in one of the countries ‘sandstone’ universities.

While the APAC accreditation process guaranteed recognition of the new accredited course by all other accredited programs, all of which were in public universities, this recognition did not eventuate immediately. Several universities for years afterwards specifically mentioned in their advertisements on their websites that students with degrees from this institution were not eligible to apply for places in their courses. And the general opprobrium of private HEP programs was summarised by the comments of one vicechancellor of an Australian university that they were akin to ‘Ma and Pa Kettle delivering courses out of the back of a ute’.

For younger readers, Ma and Pa Kettle were caricatures, played

by Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride, of ‘simple country folk’ living in rural America in the 1940s, and portrayed in a series of films from Universal Studios in the 1940s and 50s. They were somewhat akin to those described by the disparaging term the ‘deplorables’, referred to in the American Presidential election of 2016; they were conceived as people who would have nothing that would be of value to a university educated person. The irony of the comparison is that the morality and common sense manifested in the actions and words of the Kettle family were portrayed in the films as fundamentally superior to those of the ‘sophisticated’ city folk who looked down on them. The Kettles were tacitly more worldly and ‘street smart’.

An important difference was, however, that while the content of the psychology units within the bachelor’s program complied with APAC requirements, the HEPs program was differentiated from other programs taught in universities by the content of the non-psychology electives, which were a required part of the degree. The main course provision in the institution was the delivery of programs in counselling. This provided a range of units in counselling theory and method. The major benefit of the inclusion of this range of electives was that students were provided, within their first and second years of study, with units which required the acquisition of practical counselling skills.

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role plays. Therefore, while the three-year program in the content of psychology adhered to the requirement that the basis of the course be in the science and not the practice of psychology, the non-psychology electives helped to equip students with fundamental skills required for delivering psychological services. The private provider was able, early in the undergraduate course, to provide training in both the scientist and the practitioner modes required of the psychologist. They were taught within an ethic and philosophy of experiential learning (Bennett-Levy, 2006), transformative education (Hoshman, 2004) and the development of the ethical, self-aware practitioner.

This had the benefit of a dual training regime early in the development of the student. It also maintained the motivation of the students to understand the application of what they are learning during the early years of the course and less dissatisfaction with the science component.

The success of the suite of courses resulted in increasing applications to enrol, which led in turn to increasing enrolments. The behaviour of the universities, increasing psychology undergraduate places because of popularity, and thereby decreasing the quality of the educational experience for the student, was copied in the private sector, albeit to a smaller degree in terms of numbers. But the effect was the same. Larger and larger proportions of the enrolled students were unable to progress to entry into the essential fourth, fifth and sixth years of study in psychology. There was an alignment of the paths of the private with the public institutions in how the students were treated.

A fundamental collision of cultures: financial profit A key feature of the rise of private provision of tertiary education was, of course, the profit which could be made by the providers. It is a truism that all education comes at a cost; the value of primary and secondary education is seen to benefit the social capital of the community and therefore large investments are made by government to underwrite that provision. Tertiary education in the latter part of the 20th century was not seen in that category and the student, the ‘consumer’ who was seen as being the beneficiary of the tertiary experience, was seen as the person who should pay for that experience. In Australia the problem of how to charge fees was solved by the creation of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) whereby students could avail themselves of a low interest loan from the government while engaged in the education and pay off the loan after graduation upon attaining a set level of income. The part played by private providers was facilitated by the development of a similar scheme, FEE-HELP for those enrolling in a private HEP, although there were, and

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continue to be, significant differences between the public and private scheme, which involved an up-front fee within the private that was not charged in the public scheme.

For staff in a university the fact that the university, in order to exist, had to provide an operating surplus (‘profit’) in order to continue, was seen as secondary to the social ‘value’ that the universities provided through the training and later employment of graduates. The staff in a private HEP, on the other hand, were faced with the clear message that the provider had to provide a profit to the owners and shareholders of the companies. There is, within a capitalist society, nothing wrong with the concept of making a profit. However, within the HEP organisations, a loss could lead to the failure of the company. In the universities, there was a perception that a loss and subsequent failure would be unacceptable to government and so some cushion would be provided. The private HEP had to make a profit to survive, at least in the medium if not in the short term, and therefore costs had to be strictly curtailed. This meant in practice, that fees would rise, failures of students to complete would be minimised and that staff would provide as many teaching hours as possible.

This last requirement, especially in the case of psychology, meant the culture of a research culture in the accreditation standards collided with the profit motive of the owner. In our case study, the HEP did provide a culture of research. There was funding for conference attendance and travel and small research grants to start projects. But no private HEP had access to any of the government research schemes. And teaching, including assessment, was a significant component in the calculation of workloads. So, from the very beginning, there was a seed of a perturbation in the system in a department of psychology required for the successful workings of an accredited set of courses.

The accreditation of the existence of a research culture could also be raised as a matter of contention. The private HEP adopted the broad based ‘Boyer model’ of research and scholarship (Boyer, 1996), which defined four types of scholarship, namely, the scholarship of basic research, the scholarship of integration, the scholarship of application or engagement and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

While these four types are legitimate and the development and support of them is praiseworthy, psychological research was seen by the psychological staff as being in the first category and not in the organisation, systematisation and promulgation of previous knowledge. The training of psychological scientists was premised upon the socialisation and immersion of students to be able to conduct experiments and surveys with tacit knowledge of the subtleties of how to conduct science and not merely what Collins (2019) would term ‘interactional tacit knowledge’, whereby they could talk about ‘science’ with proficiency in the jargon but not in the practical skills of ‘doing’.

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A further systemic transformation Change occurred however, due to stresses in the tertiary sector generally. While the accreditation Standards of APAC had previously been highly prescriptive, the development of the Standards, commencing in 2015, resulted in a significantly changed approach and documentation.

The standards moved from an emphasis on the inputs into a degree, to an emphasis on outcomes and these outcomes were focussed more on the preparation of students for professional registration. Hence there was a significant movement in the cultures which received emphasis from the ‘science’ focus to the ‘practice’ focus. The Standards (APAC, 2019) emphasised five domains. The primary domain was Public safety, the second Academic governance and the third was the Program of study, in which there is a mention of science as the basis of training. The fourth and fifth domains are ‘Student experience’ and ‘Assessment’.

Within these domains a key change was to one which gave ‘education providers greater freedom in how they structure and run their programs and greater flexibility in demonstrating how those programs meet the Standards’ (Crowe & Carpenter, 2018). The documentation lacked lists of ‘required evidence’ or ‘prescribed approaches’ and allowed the institutions freedom to demonstrate how their individual programs reasonably met the Standards.

These changes followed upon discussion in the profession about the role of ‘competencies’ arising from educational experiences (and not attributes). The listing of competencies and the embedding of these within the curriculum developed in psychology as elsewhere in the allied health professions. psychology moved significantly from having its place in the sciences, arts and philosophy to a firm position in the health sciences (Pachana et al. 2012).

One of the significant outcomes which could result from these more flexible Standards was that schools and departments could dispense with lectures and examinations.

These features which had been significant in the case of the accreditation of the private provider to join the list of accredited institutions simply disappeared, provided that the institution could demonstrate ‘how the program reasonably met the Standard’. The public institutions now appeared more like the erstwhile private ones.

There has been a marked change in the nature of the fourth year of study within a psychology curriculum. Where once the fourth year was seen as an opportunity to learn scienceresearch based skills through the completion of a research thesis under skilled one-on-one supervision along with additional training in methods and data analysis, the fourth year is now a version of a pre-professional year, establishing one-on-one interpersonal skills, interviewing and assessment (APAC, 2019). While this can be seen as a positive development it

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does also signal the retirement of a research-based education Psychology as a profession and as a training discipline will, within a psychology program, which may be mirrored in the on these predictions, have to make significant changes in the future in cognate departments such as cognitive or computing business model of training and in the business of delivering science, or artificial intelligence systems. Preparation in the service. areas of cognitive, social and developmental psychology will The developments of technology are having major effects not be available. upon the methods of delivery of education. Online delivery, Other changes also emerged generally in the sector, which changes in methods of assessment and the demise of the profoundly affected tertiary education. The emergence of traditional lecture are all emerging as forces in the education teaching-only positions, breaking what was seen as the essential system. These developments were occurring, although at a nexus within the university between teaching and research, slow pace in the beginning of the century (Galloway, 2020). eliminated the need to demonstrate a ‘research culture’ within But the other external force in 2020 had the impact that a school. As long as there were some members of a department formed a coalition of forces that remain virtually unstoppable. who had a research profile (and perhaps could be employed in The pandemic which resulted in the massive and rapid change ‘research only’ positions) then the integrity of the SPM could in the tertiary sector to the provision of recorded lectures be maintained. Cultures within departments could be aligned and online tutorials and the perception that even when the by the elimination of a significant presence (namely research) pandemic recedes there will be a permanent adoption of a within a culture. The proportion of academics who are in hybrid model of delivery of education has changed the nature teaching-only roles is presently of education. This impact relatively small compared to has been referred to as the Online delivery, changes in methods of those who have a research universities’ ‘Kodak moment’, assessment and the demise of the traditional element in their roles (at least likening the failure to adopt before the effects of COVIDelectronic online technology in lecture are all emerging as forces in the 19 were felt). It is likely, teaching to the failure of Kodak education system. however, that departments to adopt digital cameras. This will be able to maintain their comparison can be attributed research culture by having to Professor Steven Schwartz, higher numbers of staff not teaching. However, another factor then Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University. The relative within the new Accreditation standards emerges which can advantage that the private provider had in the delivery of further bring about an alignment of systems. such a hybrid model was eroded significantly by the impact of COVID-19.

Final perturbations in the system But the emergence of COVID-19 also had the effect of producing a major perturbation in the delicate balanced Two events or processes emerged in the 21st century which system of an education in psychology, mediated by the introduced major turbulence into the system. While both injection of governmental processes into the system. The were extraneous to the process of education, they were initially effect in psychology may be greater than in many other unrelated but very quickly coalesced to provide major shocks. disciplines because of the way that training in the basic discipline and in the practical skills was separated for a long The Impact of Technology time into undergraduate and postgraduate streams.

The first was the burgeoning technology associated with COVID-19 exacerbated the perception that the tertiary automation and the development of artificial intelligence sector had to provide what are seen as employable graduates.

(AI). While such developments had long been having As part of governmental intervention to educate students to significant impact upon the world of work and employment, make them more ‘employable’ in a post pandemic world, the the changes in the education environment were essentially Liberal-National coalition in 2020 proposed a revision of the small (Galloway, 2020) and in psychology in particular the fee structure of degree courses, emphasising training in STEM threat of machines affecting the behaviour of psychologists subjects and directing students away from the study of the was seen as essentially zero (Frey & Osborne, 2013), although humanities and the social sciences, by reducing the fees in the this sanguine view was not shared by all (Susskind & Susskind, former and increasing them, massively, in the latter. Within 2015). More recent changes in the development of AI have, this, there was a proposal to facilitate the production of allied however, changed that perception and there are now fears health graduates, including a reduction in the fees of students that machines will play a large role in the disruption of the doing postgraduate courses in psychology. But the pathway to practice of psychology and in the displacement of employed postgraduate training in psychology was entirely dependent psychologists (Innes & Morrison, 2017; 2020; 2021). upon completion of an undergraduate degree in which the vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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essential feature was the intrinsic nexus of science and practice and was embedded in the distinction between them. The result was that a graduate in psychology, who planned eventually to exit the process as a health practitioner, would end up paying more! The Minister and advisors seemed not to be aware of the problem. Subsequent discussions resulted in amendments being made. It should be noted that these changes seem to have received support from the parliamentary Senate for an initial period of two years.

A proposed solution to the anomaly was that some units in undergraduate programs in psychology could be labelled as ‘Pre-Professional Pathways’ and therefore be charged lower fees than arts and social science courses with essentially the same content. This created a contrast with combinations of courses in the discipline being charged fees at lower levels than the same courses in another degree combination. A lower fee would be charged for psychology units which were pre-registration relevant. A higher fee would be charged for units which were not part of the essential accredited program.

This may have the result that more of the accredited program will be devoted to psychology units, including pre-registration practical courses, and less to the study of units in culture, sociology, anthropology and the arts which have previously been thought by many (within psychology and beyond that, in the community) to be essential for the general acculturation and social insight necessary for a successful psychologist to operate. Many practitioners in the professional branches do not hold such a view. Professional psychologists are renowned for their statements bemoaning the time spent on the irrelevance of statistics and methodology course in their training. The students have almost forever been critics of the emphasis upon ‘science’ A new generation of student, the ones who have to pay the fees may well believe that their money should be spent on the directly practical units and not on the ‘softer’ (and more expensive) material, which is contained in the social science and humanities units. Universities and departments may have problems in persuading the consumer (the student) that they know better how to spend their money.

At the same time as these events took place, there were appeals made by the APS and by Heads of Department and Schools of Psychology Australia (HODSPA) to political parties for help and there were moves by members of the National Party to assist. Such intervention may be seen by some as beneficial, with the proposal that some fees be reduced, but there are possible unintended consequences that will emerge in years to come. Members of the parliament will come to examine in more detail the content and methodology of the curricula that they have been invited to support. It would take little effort for an inquisitive MP to ask why the undergraduate curriculum of a trainee psychologist requires the inclusion of non-psychological content, in the form of electives in anthropology or history or economics, or why

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there is no emphasis in the early years of hard practical training in ‘hands-on’ skills. While the most recent (2019) APAC Standards have moved measurably towards the inclusion of such skills, they are still some way away from centrality in the process. So, the profession of psychology is at risk of having political questions being asked about what is done at the training level. There are certainly people within the profession and within the universities who ask these same questions and who may ally themselves with the political stakeholders, who, importantly, remain the purse holders.

It needs to be noted that the perturbations in the higher education system which have been created by the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic reactions to that by government have further elevated the tensions between the sector, especially the university sector, and government, which have been in existence for many years. There tensions are examined in depth by, among others, Megalogenis (2021) and they promise to continue for some time. Psychology as a discipline and profession is caught in a particular cycle of these changes.

The acceptance of government of the necessity of mental health interventions in the pandemic has resulted in much support for the health sector and the support of such changes as tele-health, which has been extended to psychologists.

At the same time the conflicts within the profession over the training of psychologists and the payment of Medicare benefits, and the two-tier system in those payments, have been a source of annoyance for the government in dealing with disparate sections of the profession. The overall training of psychologists within the university sector, as set out above, has only added further to the exasperation of government with the profession. The significant downturn in funding for universities within recent budgets, set out in Megalogenis’s article, has resulted in attrition of university staff which has been extended to psychology departments. Reductions in the proportion of the education budget allocated to higher education from 41 per cent in 1995 to 23.5 per cent in 2021 has only exacerbated the stress within psychology. In addition, the changes in demands for postgraduate training in specialties within the profession, created by the Medicare payments being made to clinical psychology practitioners, has resulted in significant reductions in applications for and enrolments in specialties other than clinical, such as organisational and development psychology. The universities have cut staff in these latter specialties, which has resulted in further disruption and imbalance of the fundamental disciplines within psychology, with consequences for the future direction of the discipline.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues, with ramifications beyond the ability of the health sector to cope with the infection. The incidence of mental illness, anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation has been emphasised, of course, and psychology plays a significant role in combatting

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these outcomes. Notably, Davey (2021) cites recent evidence for the increasing distress in the community stemming directly from the effects of COVID-19 (‘Lifeline records highest daily calls on record as lockdown exacerbates loneliness, hardship’ (Davey, 2021)). Relatedly, the introduction of telehealth and smartphone apps are outcomes that have an impact on the delivery of psychological interventions and the general appraisal of technology will affect training of psychologists (Innes & Morrison, 2017; Innes & Morrison, 2021; Susskind & Susskind, 2015). But the impact of lockdowns on attendance at school, with impact not only upon learning and skill development, but also upon emotional and social development of children which follow from peer interaction, participation in sport and general fitness are in the province of psychologists training in educational and development psychology more so than in clinical psychology. The effects of the pandemic upon work practices, working from home and participating in distributed teams and virtual meetings, and increased automation lie in the province of organisational psychologists trained to assess productivity, efficiency, the effects of social interaction in groups, the influence of organisational culture, mediation and monitoring of workplace behaviour, and much more.

These latter professional psychological skills have traditionally been acquired at postgraduate level in universities.

With the surge in enrolment applications for places in clinical psychology, however, many universities have shifted places from these programs to places in clinical psychology, resulting in the closure of programs, the severance of staff and the inability to respond to changing demands in the nature of the psychological workforce. The pandemic has affected the ways in which psychologists are needed. The universities have responded to the enrolment desires of students and are now in a changed environment with a need to pivot resources.

within psychology between the relative emphasis on science in the early years and employability in the latter years, has produced a particularly virulent form of strain. The tensions that created the discipline of psychology are in a new balance.

The pandemic has only added a new stress with consequences for employment and mental health which follow and create additional governmental interest, which especially resonate with issues within the discipline and profession of psychology.

But the history of the discipline shows that that balance has always been delicate. Where the next perturbation will come from and what effect it might have on the employability of psychologists and the employability of those who train and teach them remains to be seen. The nature of the degrees of psychology will almost certainly change significantly very soon.

Conclusion

Bennet-Levy, (2006). Therapist skills: A cognitive model of their acquisition and refinement. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 34, 57-78.

An education in psychology in Australia has always been an exercise in balancing conflicting forces, whether they be the balance between science and practice, teaching and research, or the balance between emphasis upon the undergraduate or postgraduate years of study. The impact of private education and then later forces of technological change added to the stress and the strain within the system. The present circumstances in which psychology is seen as a desirable and necessary bastion in the battle against mental illness, stress and change which can be supported by government in training and in practice in the fight, demonstrates the nature of the balance and how delicate it can be and how it can be perturbed. The emphasis placed upon the universities by community and governmental expectations for ‘employment-ready’ graduates has added further tension in the system and the particular tension vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

J M Innes is at the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, Justice and Society, University of South Australia.

Contact: consultancycam@gmail.com Ben W Morrison is with the School of Psychological Sciences at Macquarie University, Australia.

Acknowledgements We are very grateful to Caroline Raphael and Michael Weston for considered commentary on aspects of this paper from the perspective of undergraduate students and also as graduates working in postgraduate training and teaching and in subsequent private practice.

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International education recovery through scholarships A case for a new approach Joanne Barker RMIT University

Anna Kent Deakin University

With the Australian international borders closed to international students due to the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Australian universities have experienced unanticipated financial losses. At the same time, many international students who would have chosen to study in Australia instead chose to enrol in universities in the US, UK and other countries where the borders opened earlier. The long-term effects of this are unknown, but with borders finally now open again, Australia will need to re-establish itself as a destination of choice for international students. An opportunity to establish a prestigious international scholarship program may be created by the recent sale of the universities’ collective investment in IDP Education Pty Ltd. The income generated by this sale could create a source of funding for an international scholarship program which would create goodwill and help to diminish the reputation of Australian international education as predominantly revenue-driven.

Keywords: COVID-19, international students, Australian universities

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Introduction The Australian higher education system has found itself in a crisis created by COVID-19 and exacerbated by various decisions of universities and governments made not only during the crisis, but also during the decades leading up to this point. This article will offer an argument to support a non-government-centred response to one small, but important element of the crisis, the loss of incoming international students to Australia due to the border closure.

The article centres around an important contention: international scholarship programs are important for Australia. A proportion of the foreign citizens who study in Australia have always done so on prestigious government scholarship programs. Australia was an early and highly visible participant in the original Colombo Plan from the early 1950s (Auletta, 2000; Oakman, 2010) and for 75 years has continuously offered international students the opportunity to study in Australia through government scholarship programs. Many other national governments in first world countries have comparable programs, such as the US Government’s Fulbright program and the UK Government’s Commonwealth Scholarships and Fellowships Program.

The history of international students in Australia since the 1950s, and particularly since 1987, has been covered elsewhere (Cuthbert, Smith & Boey, 2008; Davis & Mackintosh, 2011; Adams, Banks & Olsen, 2011). However, the history of international education scholarships in Australia is under-researched, despite their foundational role in the Australian community’s understanding of international education. Most research has focused on the Colombo Plan (Auletta, 2000; Lowe, 2010, 2015; Oakman, 2010), with less critical analysis of other important schemes such as the Australian Development Scholarships, the Australia Awards and the Endeavour program (which was abolished in 2019). This has led to a minimisation of the role of scholarships in the broader international education ecosystem.

In 2020, international education was estimated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to be worth $37.5 billion to the Australian economy (ABS, 2020). Scholarships formed only a small part of this figure, but the benefits of scholarship students in Australia go beyond financial considerations. It is axiomatic that there are substantial economic advantages brought to Australia by international students, but our focus in this paper is on the unique, non-financial contribution brought to this country by government-funded scholarship recipients. Their contributions include the more difficultto-measure and unquantifiable measures of worth connected with soft power and regional influence.

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What is an Australian international scholarship?

For the purposes of this paper, we define a scholarship program in accordance with a definition adapted from John Kirkland (2018). It may serve one or more of the following purposes: 1. National interest (narrowly defined): Scholarships driven by the desire of the host country to fill particular skills or other labour market shortages.

2. National interest (broadly defined): Scholarships intended to benefit the host country in less direct or measurable ways, for example, winning long-term friends for public diplomacy purposes or enhancing the reputation of national higher education systems.

3. Merit based: Scholarships awarded to the most able candidates, regardless of their personal background or likely impact on national or development objectives.

4. Development based (individually focused): Scholarships seeking to address disadvantage, prioritising candidates who are under-represented in some way.

5. Development based (society focused): Scholarships which prioritise candidates who appear most likely to address development problems in their respective countries, regardless of personal background (Kirkland, 2018 p 153-4).

Since 2014, international scholarship opportunities offered for inbound study to Australia funded by the Australian Government have been in decline; the number of Australia Award Scholarships went from 2,112 in 2013 to only 971 long term awards in 2016 (Austrade, 2018). Concerningly, the number of in-Australia long term awards offered in the 2021 intake was only 330 (DFAT, 2021). Due to the border closure as a result of the pandemic, the 330 awardees for 2021 will not commence their studies until mid-2022 at the earliest.

A brief history of scholarship provision by the Australian Government The Australian Government has provided scholarships to nations in the Indo-Pacific region since the late 1940s. It can be seen from Cabinet documentation and other archival notes that the first scheme, the Southeast Asian Scholarship Scheme, was designed by the Australian Government to appease the newly independent nations of South East Asia who resented the continuing White Australia Policy (NAA: A1838, 2047/1). The Colombo Plan, introduced in 1950, furthered this approach, additionally seeking to contain the spread of communism throughout South East Asia (Oakman 2010).

Scholarship schemes with various names have been in place since these early iterations, providing opportunities for students from developing nations to study in Australia.

While it has been a resilient form of aid delivery, the number

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of scholarships has not been consistent. Despite this, as a form, scholarships have weathered cuts to budgets and changing trends in aid delivery and management. A subsidy scheme introduced by the Whitlam Government in 1974 allowed for significantly larger numbers of students to study in Australia with the support of the Australian Government.

This program lasted until the late 1980s, after which a more limited scholarship scheme was put in place.

Accepting that the Australia Awards program today can trace its history to the South East Asian Scholarship Scheme of 1948, alumni of various programs have made social, political and community contributions over decades.

The contributions have been documented in DFAT funded research by David Lowe, Jonathan Ritchie and Jemma Purdey (2015).

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What could be lost?

The new era of austerity which has emerged from the loss of international tuition fees during the pandemic is a further threat to the remaining government scholarship programs.

Already eroded in recent years, 2019-2020 brought the closure of one government scholarship program (Anderson & Barker, 2019; Barker, 2019) and funding cuts to others (DFAT, 2021). The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, as the largest provider of international scholarships in Australia, has produced a strategy for reducing post-pandemic economic shock in the Indo-Pacific region (DFAT, 2020), but it is silent on the future of DFAT’s key international scholarship program, Australia Awards.

In the coming years of financial uncertainty, well-designed international scholarship programs could bring advantages to What has been gained by Australia – Australia in terms of goodwill and soft power benefits which universities, government, communities far outweigh their modest monetary cost. Privately-funded international student cohorts, when they return to Australian Australia has gained significant value from these long-running universities, will continue to concentrate the enrolments scholarship programs. Research by the Global Tracer Facility from particular source countries and in just a few academic confirms and quantifies this value through their tracer case disciplines. Government-funded international scholarship studies (DFAT and ACER 2021). While there may be some programs help to attract students of exceptional talent and debate as to the appropriateness create diversity in the choice of a development scholarships of academic programs, the The new era of austerity which is emerging program being measured in range of countries from from the loss of international tuition fees terms of the value it accrues to which students come, and the during the pandemic is a further threat the donor, this value cannot be distribution of international denied. students across locations in to the remaining government scholarship Alumni occupying positions Australia. The Australian programs. Already eroded in recent years, of power is often pointed to as community has been enriched 2019-2020 brought the closure of one a key performance indicator by the presence of international government scholarship program and of a scholarship program, and students, in both regional and funding cuts to others. there are many examples of urban settings (Lowe & Kent, Australian universities’ alumni 2019). in powerful roles across the In addition, these programs recipient nations in education, medicine and public policy. facilitate long-term soft power benefits, as beneficiaries return And there are those scholarship recipients who have used to their home countries and assume influential employment their education in Australia as a stepping-stone to further posts, forever retaining their understanding and appreciation education elsewhere. These soft power outcomes are difficult of Australia. Soft power advantages include the strengthening to quantify, but provide Australia and Australians with of diplomatic ties, facilitation of trade and export arrangements familiar (and often friendly) faces in all walks of life across the and enhanced national security (Kent, 2018). The long-term Indo-Pacific region. benefits of government-funded international scholarships Universities have also gained not only through the presence should not be calculated in dollars, but in the priceless and of high calibre students in their ranks, but also by the alumni enduring asset of goodwill. marketing power provided by the scholarship programs.

The fees paid to universities also form an unofficial funding Where to from here – what are the mechanism (Kent 2012), as full international student fees important things that we want to carry are paid by the Commonwealth Government. As the number forward? of scholarship awardees increases or decreases, so does the funding being provided to the institutions where the scholars It has been demonstrated that universities already contribute would be enrolled. to supporting the costs of incoming international students vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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through various forms of scholarships or tuition fee remissions.

As far back as 2013, 33 universities reported spending $364.4 million of non-government money on scholarships, fee waivers and stipends for commencing international students (Olsen, 2014). This contribution is not insignificant, but there is no national coordination or targeting of the expenditure in an effort to make a collective impact on the international community.

There is an opportunity for a greater collaborative effort in the provision of scholarships on the part of the Australian higher education sector. It would be possible to implement a scholarship program which is less fragmented, more visible, less connected to individual institutions and more unified across the sector than the current system, to make an impact internationally which would show the Australian higher education sector collectively in a positive light. This would be a scholarship program fitting Kirkland’s category 2, viz. scholarships intended to benefit the host country in less direct or measurable ways, for example, winning long-term friends for public diplomacy purposes or enhancing the reputation of national higher education systems. It could be a program which is funded and managed by the Australian higher education sector itself, thereby avoiding the political pitfalls which impact on government-funded scholarship programs.

Such a program would sit alongside and complement Australian Government scholarship programs but not compete with them, as Australian Government international scholarship programs have sometimes competed with each other (ANAO, 2011).

Most importantly, such a program would need to provide full-ride scholarships (tuition fees, living allowances, health cover and travel costs) to minimise the risk of bringing students to Australia who cannot afford their living costs.

Current scholarships funded by universities which provide only partial funding in the form of tuition fee remissions, and no support for living costs, risk exacerbating the already substantial number of international students living in Australia with inadequate resources, vulnerable to wage theft and other forms of exploitation. A scholarship program which is unified across the Australian higher education sector and fully funded could build a sense of collaboration and goodwill between Australian universities and, internationally, doing much to break down perceptions of a goal ‘to secure revenues rather than to allocate scholarships’ which has long been the view of some international education experts (Marginson, 2009).

Funding the new scholarship program Australia’s universities, often criticised for over-reliance on one aspect of their businesses, built substantial reserves up to the year 2019, in part due to the revenues from the tuition fees

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paid by international students or their sponsors. The 2019 financial position of Australia’s universities, as summarised by Australia’s Department of Education, Skills and Employment in November 2020, shows that the universities in aggregate held $24 billion in reserves at the end of 2019 (DESE 2020).

It is not our purpose in this article to argue whether the universities with their reserves and borrowing power should have been able to weather the storm of the COVID-19 pandemic without the need for a government bailout. Rather, we want to highlight another source of potential funding for a post-COVID-19 Australian international scholarship program.

IDP Education Ltd., a company listed on the ASX as IEL, has been half-owned by 38 Australian universities through an entity called Education Australia Limited. In the last 50 years IDP has transformed from the Asian Australian Universities Cooperation Scheme (as a Standing Committee of the then Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee), to a not-for-profit enterprise (IDP Education Australia) with all 38 Australian universities as its members, to, in 2006, its current for-profit structure. This change in corporate structure occurred when the universities sold half of IDP to SEEK Pty Ltd (IDP, n.d.).

As a privatised for-profit company, IDP Education has adopted a global strategy, extending beyond Australia to New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, Canada and the United States.

That IDP receives commission payments for recruiting international students to countries other than Australia might lead to questioning the rationale, and perhaps the appropriateness, of continuing ownership by Australian universities. After protracted debate extending over many years and long pre-dating the pandemic, in June 2020 Education Australia announced the sale of 5.1 per cent of IDP to enable Education Australia shareholders to monetise some of their investment in Education Australia. The decision was motivated by the need to release funds for other purposes in their capital-constrained universities, a need which was compounded by the impact of COVID-19. Proceeds of the sale amounted to $219 million, or $5.8 million for each of the 38 shareholder universities. IDP’s annual report for the year to June 2020 noted that Education Australia, which represents 38 Australian universities, owned approximately 40 per cent of the shares of IDP Education Limited (IDP 2021a).

In March 2021, IDP Education’s market capitalisation was $6.71 billion, meaning 40 per cent was $2.684 billion, potentially unlocking $70.6 million in value for each of the 38 universities who own Education Australia Ltd (Hare, 2021a).

The estimate as at September 2021 was $54 million to each university (Dodd, 2021; Hare, 2021b).

Australian universities, because of culture, history and government funding, do not have access to the endowments that are available to US universities, estimated at more than

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US $600 billion in 2017 (US Department of Education, 2017). The Australian universities’ divestment in IDP provides a windfall which could prove transformational.

A proportion of this windfall could be set aside for the creation of an international education foundation that provides international scholarships and education aid. With appropriate investment, this scheme could be in place in perpetuity.

By establishing a foundation for the delivery of international scholarships, Australian universities could provide significant support to developing university systems in the region, as well as attract high-achieving students from all over the world, without being reliant on the whims of government scholarship allocations. Foundational scholarships are nimbler than government scholarships, are adaptable and can address shortand long-term needs in both host and home communities.

A foundation such as this would also help to address many of the criticisms that come from nations sending students to Australia who may resent the market (mercenary) recruitment approach of many Australian universities. The benefits arising would not rely solely on the funded scholarship awardees, but would flow through to the private student market.

It would also provide Australia with significant soft power dividends, without the involvement of the government.

When Joseph Nye first theorised on soft power, he imagined the concept relating to non-government actions (Nye, 1990), so in many ways, this approach is more true to the original concept of soft power.

Conclusion The Australian Government and Australian universities are facing significant financial challenges in the post-COVID-19 environment. With borders long closed to incoming students, including the effective suspension of the Australia Awards scholarship program, universities have been closed to new international students wishing to study in Australia. This only adds to the problems caused by cuts to aid funding, and the erosion of the Australia Awards program which has occurred almost every year since the election of the Abbott Government in 2013. With only 330 long term awards offered for study in Australia in the 2021 cohort (and not able to travel), this marks a new and significant low in the provision of government scholarships.

By putting in place a significant foundational program, the university sector has the opportunity to take back some of the control when it comes to international scholarship programs. This would also issue a challenge to the Australian Government to do more in this space, leading to the provision of more scholarships from a greater number of sources – growing the pie. The COVID-19 pandemic offers the higher education sector and the Commonwealth Government vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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an opportunity to rethink the approach to international education. Supporting students within the region to access the sector via scholarships provides the Australian university sector with an opportunity for that to happen, and will generate goodwill which will expand to non-scholarship student cohorts.

There is now an opportunity, arising out of the COVID19 pandemic, for universities to collaborate to create a global scholarship program that repositions Australian higher education on the international stage. The program could give senior leaders in this country an equal opportunity to engage with scholars studying in Australia, funded by Australia and for the benefit of Australia’s national interest.

The program would be apolitical, in many ways disconnected from the political cycle all together. This is an opportunity to implement a creative solution in the form of a new global international scholarships program, repositioning Australian international education in a novel way.

Joanne Barker was Director International at the University of Adelaide for ten years until 2016. In 2022, she has submitted a PhD thesis through RMIT University entitled ‘A Trying Endeavour: A case study of value and evaluation in an international scholarship program’, and is awaiting examination results.

Contact: joanne.barker@rmit.edu.au Dr Anna Kent has a PhD from Deakin University. Her thesis was titled ‘Australian Government Scholarships for Papua New Guinea and the Pacific: mandates and mis-steps, 1948 – 2018’. Her research interests include international education, international development and the intersections between foreign policy, international education and international development.

Contact:anna.kent@deakin.edu.au

Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge the work of Alan Olsen, SPRE Pty Ltd., for valuable background research on IDP Education Pty Ltd.

References Adams T., Banks M. & Olsen A. (2011). International Education in Australia: From Aid to Trade to Internationalization in R. Bhandari and P. Blumenthal (Eds). International Students and Global Mobility Higher Education: National Trends and New Directions. Palgrave Macmillan: New York.

Anderson K. & Barker J. (2019). Vale Endeavour, Long Live the New Endeavour: The End of Australia’s World Leading Commitment to Internationalism and the Opportunity to Reassert Ourselves.

Australian Policy and History, 28 May 2019. Retrieved from http://aph. org.au/vale-endeavour/

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Auletta, A. (2000). A Retrospective View of the Colombo Plan: Government policy, departmental administration and overseas students. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 22:1, 47-58.

Austrade (2018). Australia Awards Data (2002 – 2018), Australian Trade Commission, Canberra.

Australian Bureau of Statistics (2020). International Trade: Supplementary Information, Financial Year 2019-20. Retrieved from https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/international-trade/ international-trade-supplementary-information-financial-year/latestrelease Australian National Audit Office [ANAO] Audit Report No 44 201011 (2011). AusAID’s Management of Tertiary Training Assistance.

Canberra.

Barker, J. (2019). The end of Endeavour: The short and tumultuous life of ‘Australia’s Fulbright’, the Endeavour program. Australian Universities’ Review, 61(2), 72–77.

Cuthbert D., Smith W. and Boey, J. (2008). What Do We Really Know About the Outcomes of Australian International Education? A Critical Review and Prospectus for Future Research. Journal of Studies in International Education, September 2008, Vol.12 (3), pp.255-275.

Davis, D. & Mackintosh B. (eds.) (2011). Making a difference: Australian international education. UNSW Press, Sydney.

Department of Education, Skills and Employment (2020). 2019 Higher Education Providers Finance Tables. Retrieved from https://www. dese.gov.au/higher-education-publications/resources/2019-highereducation-providers-finance-tables Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2020). Partnerships for recovery: Australia’s COVID-19 development response. Canberra.

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2021). Information Brief – Australia Awards. Retrieved from https://www.dfat.gov.au/sites/ default/files/australia-awards-statistical-profile.pdf Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade & ACER (2021). Australia Awards Global Tracer Facility. Retrieved from https://www.dfat.gov. au/people-to-people/australia-awards/australia-awards-global-tracerfacility Dodd, T. (2015) Windfall return for SEEK in $330 million IDP float. Australian Financial Review 26 November 2015. Retrieved from https://www.afr.com/companies/windfall-return-for-seek-in-330million-idp-float-20151125-gl80fi Dodd, T. (2021). How unis built an $8b company. The Australian, 1 September 2021 Retrieved from https://www.theaustralian.com.au/ author/tim-dodd Hare, J. (2021a). Unis may pocket nearly $70m each in IDP shake-up.

Australian Financial Review, 12 March 2021. Retrieved from https:// www.afr.com/work-and-careers/education/unis-may-pocket-nearly70m-each-in-idp-shakeup-20210311-p579x9

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IDP Education (n.d.). IDP International Education Specialists website.

Retrieved from https://www.idp.com/australia/why-idp/history/ IDP Education (2021a). Annual Report. Retrieved from https:// investors.idp.com/Investor-Centre/?page=Annual-Reports IDP Education (2021b). ASX announcements 2020 and 2021. Retrieved from https://investors.idp.com/Investor-Centre/ Kirkland, J. (2018). Case Study: Balancing Change and Continuity – The Case of the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan, in J. Dassin, R. Marsh & M. Mawer (Eds). International Scholarships in Higher Education: Pathways to Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan: Cham.

Lowe, D. (2010). The Colombo Plan and ‘soft’ regionalism in the AsiaPacific: Australian and New Zealand cultural diplomacy in the 1950s and 1960s. Alfred Deakin Research Institute Working Paper Series, 1.

Lowe, D. (2015). Australia’s Colombo Plans, old and new: International students as foreign relations. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 4, 448.

Lowe, D. & Kent, A. (2019). Sponsored Students and the Rise of ‘the International’ in Australian Communities. Journal of Australian Studies, 43(4), 479–494.

Lowe, D., Ritchie, J. & Purdey, G. (2015) Scholarships and Connections: Australia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, 1960-2010. Retrieved from http://dro.deakin.edu.au/view/DU:30073518 Kent, A. (2012). Australian Development Scholarships and their place within diplomacy, development and education. MA thesis, University of Melbourne.

Kent, A. (2018). Recent Trends in International Scholarships in J. Dassin, R. Marsh & M. Mawer (Eds). International Scholarships in Higher Education: Pathways to Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan: Cham.

Marginson, S. (2009). Is Australia Overdependent on International Students? International Higher Education, (54).

National Archives of Australia: Department of External Affairs; A1838.

DEA Note, 28 May 1958, 2047/1. Australian International Scholarship Awards 1958/59.

Nye, J. S. (1990). Soft power. Foreign Policy, 80, 153–171.

Oakman, D. (2010). Facing Asia: A History of the Colombo Plan. ANU Press.

Olsen, A. (2014). 2014 Research Agenda: Australian Universities International Directors’ Forum, Presentation to Australian International Education Conference.

US Department of Education. (2017). National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display. asp?id=73

Hare, J. (2021b). Unis earn $54m windfall after IDP share sell-off Australian Financial Review, 30 August 2021. Retrieved from https:// www.afr.com/work-and-careers/education/unis-earn-54m-windfallafter-idp-share-sell-off-20210829-p58mud#:~:text=Each%20of%20 the%2038%20university,for%20%241.14%20billion%20last%20week.

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OPINION

Delivering online to international students Greg Whateley Group Colleges Australia

COVID-19 conditions required a shift to online learning – for many this was both unexpected and difficult to manage. For others the shift was essentially already in motion. The unexpected shift created new demands and pitfalls. The inevitable return to face-to-face teaching sometime in the future is also troublesome and may need a rethink.

Keywords: Alternative modes, flexible delivery, blended learning, online learning, hybrid learning, mobile learning

As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an involuntary shift to online learning in its many manifestations. In turn. this has also highlighted and facilitated a range of other alternative mode delivery mechanisms for international students. Sometimes they are referred to as flexible modes of delivery and at other times as alternative modes of delivery. The traditional faceto-face mode has been overtaken (certainly for a period of time) by a range of alternative arrangements that cater for lock downs and community restrictions. Arguably, the most difficult part of these restrictions being the unpredictability making planning and strategy difficult. The notion of having alternatives to face-to-face delivery ready and able is a most valued commodity at present.

Prior to the pandemic, international education (onshore in Australia) was in face-to-face mode with strict regulations around the percentage of classes allowed to be completed online by international students; the importance of attendance at faceto-face classes; the extent of employment hours permitted on a student visa; and five per cent progression rates (mostly) in order to maintain a student visa. Much of this was dictated by the Australian Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000 and the supporting National Code (Australian Government, 2021). Then, of course, everything changed!

In truth there has been a slow and determined movement in the regulations over a period. Matters such as attendance have been downplayed for several years for example. Working hours have been redefined (quite significantly in recent times) vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

and even matters of progression have been either suspended or made more flexible to provide the support and compassion required when dealing with students under duress.

The so-called alternative (flexible) modes of delivery – Blended Learning (bLearning) as described by West (2021), Online Learning (eLearning) as outlined by Chanda (2021), Hybrid Learning (hLearning) as illuminated by Whateley (2021) and Mobile Learning (mLearning) were viewed previously as essentially domestic options with little if any application for international students studying in Australia – certainly those onshore. International students were provided with some of these options at the more progressive institutions – but usually under conditions and other restrictions. This too is no longer the case! The rapid shift to online learning that occurred created a new precedent (some say a lightning rod) that is likely to stay with us for some time. The prediction is that, even on a return to face-to-face learning in the years ahead, the percentage of study permitted online for international students will grow to 50 per cent of the load. This represents a significant shift in thinking and would be consistent with developments in other countries around the world.

Tertiary institutions were required to move rapidly into eLearning – as a matter of survival during the pandemic. Some of the better prepared organisations managed to deviate even further and utilise the other modes with varying degrees of success. Many had been dabbling in alternative/flexible options for some time.

Sector reports suggest the more flexibly inclined have fared best in the so-called international student crisis. There are several Delivering online to international students Greg Whateley

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reasons for this. As the Australian Government regulations softened on the number of paid hours that international students can work in the country for example – from 40 hours per fortnight to unlimited – the demand, of course, for flexibility has grown significantly. This will be a very difficult development to reverse in the coming years. It is highly likely that the flexibility will remain a constant feature moving forward.

The perils of enforced eLearning The sudden switch to online (eLearning) caused a considerable level of distress for many institutions and, in particular, for academic staff. For many this was the ‘end of the world’ as they knew it. Understandably, for staff who had been teaching international students for many years in the traditional face-toface mode this was indeed a precarious and uninvited demand – they were in fact ‘digital convicts’ (Whateley, 2020). For others it was the opportunity to put in place a variety of modes that could still maintain high levels of student engagement. Learner engagement (coupled with the student experience) – remember – is perceived as the end game.

My own institution appears to have fared well with the most recent ( July 2021) Student Feedback on Units scoring 4.41/5 (the highest score since records were kept since T1, 2016 – the average score over the last 16 trimesters being 4.2/5); Staff Satisfaction scoring 4.3/5; and 92 per cent of students noting that they would prefer to stay online for the duration. Sector feedback suggests the aggregate is lower than this.

Given the commitment made to technology upgrades and capital investment in lecture studios, these indicators are satisfying and to some degree a relief. Classrooms were quickly converted to lecture studios with roaming cameras, monitors, an upgraded learning management system and a ‘live’ studio look and feel – all at considerable cost.

Staff training also became a priority. The notion of simply throwing staff online (and from remote locations) was not seen as either appropriate or viable. The key issue was a focus on learner engagement, and this could best be achieved with high quality delivery from a familiar environment. This again came with a cost.

This approach is by no means the standard approach. Many institutions were thrown into chaos from the outset and have struggled with working from home delivery and have reaped significant disapproval from students throughout the country.

The notion of recycling low end presentations has also met with considerable criticism and disappointment across the sector.

The pitfalls associated with returning to face-to-face classes on campus The return to campus movement has taken quite a few hits with flash lockdowns across the country. Some of the

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enforced lockdowns (Victoria has had six to date) have varied in length from ten days to four months. The key issue being the unpredictability of closures (and durations) especially in some States with hair-trigger border closures accompanied by circuit breaker lock downs – both with very short fuses – and very little time to prepare. In this context face-to-face options seem dim – in truth doomed for the short term at least.

The very notion of opening up to face-to-face operations and then having to do an about turn several weeks later in response to restrictions makes the task at best stressful, and at worst unmanageable. The process also creates unnecessary uncertainty for students. This is less an issue with business students than it is for applied science students.

Several providers have recently formally announced they will continue online learning for the rest of 2021, some even predicting throughout 2022 – the news has not been well received in many quarters. What the decision has done though is that it has provided a degree of certainty and consistency – which is not a bad development in itself. It would appear online learning (and the associated variations) are here to stay for some time. Some predict that this will endure well into 2022, possibly 2023.

The future of Hybrid Learning Hybrid Learning (hLearning) appears to be the future – or certainly the mode for the next couple of years. The model is based on delivering live sessions online with the option for students to attend face-to-face by choice. This is not unlike the concept of ‘live to air’ television. Drawing from the analogy of the hybrid car – the driver makes the decision on the mode, and this can change as required along the journey.

The enormous advantage of the mode is the quick (and relatively easy) response mechanism to future lockdowns and restrictions. The acceptance of the notion of high-end hygiene and COVID safety are also well accommodated in this mode. The worst-case scenario is that the option of sitting in a classroom during a live delivery is suspended for a given period – but teaching and learning continues online without interruption. It is important to remember that my own institution has gauged through a student survey that currently only eight per cent of students are even interested in physically returning to campus.

The mode also provides students with the all-important option of on campus/off campus delivery. This is well received by students. For staff it requires delivery on site throughout the trimester/semester. This is less well received by staff but many regard it as a necessary evil. The issue of staff teaching on site is all about ensuring a quality output complete with the necessary technology standard and IT support. This standard and consistency of delivery is difficult (if not impossible) to replicate in the home studio environment. vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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The impact on multiple site/campus delivery is now up for debate. In the face-to-face environment international students on multiple locations would receive dedicated campus bound delivery. This has changed significantly with a more centralised online delivery with additional campus support required (face to face) as needed. This provides an extra swing on the notion of hybrid learning. The idea of a centralised delivery to a range of sites is an ever- growing option and possibility.

Staff and student perceptions At the heart of the COVID-19 scenario is the impact that the changes have had on the international student experience.

There is a mixed response to online learning – and this is not surprising. At the same time, there has also been considerable acceptance of the mode not only in Australia but internationally (Klebs et al., 2021). This has been accompanied by an acknowledgement of the validity and currency of online learning (along with variations).

There has been a considerable focus on student and staff responses to online learning and teaching – and the outcomes vary from institution to institution. Mechanisms such as ‘student feedback on units’ surveys; staff satisfaction surveys; satisfaction with online learning surveys; national Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) surveys relating to the overall student experience (the 2021 data collection commenced in July 2021 and will be published in early 2022); industry group surveys; and a plethora of research surveys (both private and public) are all useful tools for gathering intelligence on and around student/staff satisfaction.

The essential issue is gathering the data – and most importantly using the findings to improve delivery.

Keeping abreast of state and national trends is important.

The best source of meaningful feedback though is internal survey. It is essential that all providers have a clear understanding of their own student/staff needs and respond quickly and appropriately to the needs expressed. Acting on national feedback can be useful, but nothing beats listening carefully to your own cohorts and acting quickly and decisively. If supported appropriately, the outcomes and levels of satisfaction can be highly credible and satisfying for all stakeholders.

Using the ongoing data collected provides a genuine opportunity to enhance both the student experience and learner engagement. My school is an independent business school. It appears that onsite activities are currently not a high priority for students. Lecturer engagement and eResourcing on the other had have become vital elements to the learning and teaching effort. This may not be the case with other institutions – but the important fact is that it is the key to our success. vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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What does international student learning and teaching look like moving forward?

The acknowledgement of online learning will be with us for some time – well into 2023. With the likely opening of international borders in mid-2022 (still speculative) we will see a significant return of student numbers – some say a tsunami-like event – others are more conservative – but most agree that there will be a return in solid numbers.

The prediction, though, is not a return to the ‘way things were’ but rather a more mixed mode approach to learning and teaching. This mix will likely include up to five per cent online, a partial return to face to face (as it was) and alternative options (blended, hybrid and mobile) changing the international education landscape for the better.

This may impact significantly on the notion of completing the full degree onshore. Students may opt for the online option (for example) offshore with only partial completion onshore.

This will require a rethink in terms of visa regulations – but may in fact be a viable approach. Several institutions – forced by the pandemic conditions – have significant numbers of students currently offshore studying online. To some degree this has changed the thinking around the issue.

Emeritus Professor Greg Whateley is Deputy ViceChancellor, Group Colleges Australia Contact: greg.whateley@ubss.edu.au

References Australian Government, Department of Education, Skills and Employment. (2021). National Code of Practice for Providers of Education and Training to Overseas Students 2017. Retrieved from https://internationaleducation.gov.au/regulatory-information/ Education-Services-for-Overseas-Students-ESOS-LegislativeFramework/National-Code/Pages/default.aspx Chanda, A. (2021). The Efficacy of Online Studies: Addressing the Student Dilemma. Retrieved from https://www.ubss.edu.au/media/2695/theefficacy-of-online-studies.pdf Klebs, S., Fishman, R., Nguyen, S. & Hiler, T. (2021). One year later – COVID-19’s impact on current and future college students. Retrieved from http://thirdway.imgix.net/pdfs/one-year-later-covid-19s-impact-oncurrent-and-future-college-students.pdf West, A. (2021). What is meant by ‘blended’ delivery and how does it work in higher education? Retrieved from https://www.ubss.edu.au/ media/2716/what-is-meant-by-blended-learning.pdf Whateley, G. (2020). Full marks for educators – the digital convicts of Covid-19. Campus Review. Retrieved from https://www.campusreview. com.au/2020/09/full-marks-for-educators-the-digital-convicts-ofcovid-19/ Whateley, G. (2021). What is meant by ‘hybrid’ delivery and how does it work in higher education? Retrieved from https://www.ubss.edu.au/ media/2670/understanding-hybrid-delivery.pdf

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REVIEWS

The coronavirus pandemic and global labour Corona and Work around the Globe by Andreas Eckert & Felicitas Hentschke (eds) ISBN: 9783110716894 (hbk.) DeGruyter Press, Berlin, Germany. xxi+255 pp.

Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer & Catherine Link

By June 2021, the world had seen about 175 million coronavirus cases and almost four million deaths. The coronavirus pandemic has not only caused death and misery for countless people around the world, it also changed the way we work. Written in A4 format and colourfully illustrated, the 39 contributors to Andreas Eckert and Felicitas Hentschke’s Corona and Work around the Globe showcase impressive insights into global workplace changes occurring during the coronavirus pandemic that began in January 2020.

While slightly thin on the ground on the South Pacific (e.g. no contribution from Indonesia (population: 275 million), Australia, New Zealand, etc.) and missing the Middle East and North Africa (Egypt, Algeria, Sudan, Iraq, Morocco alone have a combined population of roughly 240 million people), the book nonetheless covers an impressive range of countries: India, Israel, Brazil, UK, USA, Senegal, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Argentina, Japan and Ethiopia.

Another shortcoming is the absence of a conclusion that would have told the reader of this exquisite book, what we can learn from all this.

Despite these minor imperfections, this German Ministry of Education sponsored book starts with a picture of the coronavirus painted by four-year-old Miquel from Brazil.

Despite his beautiful picture, the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on work tells a grim tale. To tell this story, the editors have grouped their 15 chapters into seven parts: 1) Despair and Indifference, 2) Being Relevant to the System, 3) Shutter Release I, 4) The Health System, 5) Thwarted Youth; 6) Shutter Release II, 7) Fighting for Justice, and 8) Private and Public Space.

In the short prologue, the author argues that ‘a university campus…can be seen as a microcosm of sorts for the world of work at large’ (p. xiv). Having seen university campuses in the UK, the USA, Japan, Australia, Germany, Canada, etc. I am wondering where the car factories are; where the children who dig up e-waste on a dump in Accra are; where the slave labour is; where the miners held in bonded labour

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are and where the women who toil in sports footwear sweatshops are.

Despite what some might see as ‘off to a bad start’, the book really begins with the editors’ introduction noting that virtually all academic ‘communication [has] switched to online’ (p. xvii).

They also say that ‘the coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally disrupted the world of work’ (p. xvii) and that ‘in the second quarter of [2020] …more than three hundred million jobs’ were lost (p. xvii). In summing up, the editors say, ‘two main themes [have] emerged: inequality and contestation of democratic principles and parliamentarianism’ (p. xix).

The first essay comes from India where the lockdown meant ‘the closure of trains’ (p. 3) ending people’s daily trips to work.

It also indicates that people lost their jobs and income. For others it denoted ‘[being] reduced to begging [which] is so humiliating’ (p. 3). This occurred predominantly in India’s huge informal sector of 450 million workers. Overall, this sector ‘constitutes almost 93% – the vast majority – of India’s working population’ (p. 5). For many, it meant that ‘the pandemic came in the wake of the highest unemployment in four decades’ (p. 6) rendering finding a job next to impossible.

On top of that, ‘it was reported that 100 million workers have lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic’ (p. 9).

Meanwhile in Romania, the grimness of Stalinism seems to have been replaced by the bleakness and hopelessness of capitalism as a most vivid account written by Alina-Sandra Cucu shows. She argues that ‘capitalism survives on people’s capacity and willingness to fall back on their kinship support structures’ (p. 10). One worker, Denisa, said I haven’t worked on a contract since 2015 (p. 14) meaning she only had informal (legally not binding) short-term work. She continued, I paid retirement benefits for two or three months, I think, and I don’t have health insurance (p. 14) – a distinct possibility in post-socialist Romania and not a good prospect in times of the coronavirus pandemic.

Reports from Germany’s informal workers paint a similar picture as Germany has closed its borders during

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the coronavirus lockdown. This made Germans aware that its ‘food production almost exclusively relied on migrant workers’ (p. 20). Yet these workers were also framed as ‘a threat to public health’ (p. 20). The abhorrent situation of Germany’s migrant workers became most evident in Germany’s Pig Belt [Schweinegürtel] where workers from Poland, Romania and Bulgaria were deliberately kept in ‘filthy and semi-dilapidated shared flats’ (p. 21). Coronavirus infections spread quickly.

Meanwhile, Germany’s aspiring Merkel-replacement, Armin Laschet, announced ‘we do what we can in order to prevent [the infection] from spreading to the population’ (p.

21). ‘Migrant workers were obviously not perceived to be part of ‘the population’ (p. 21). Germany’s slaves were never part of the Volksgemeinschaft – mind-set that seems to continue among many conservative politicians. Many food workers are part of Germany’s low-wage ‘precariat’. Yet Germany’s former chancellor, the social-democrat Gerhard Schröder, once proudly announced, we built up one of the best low-wage sectors in all of Europe (p. 22). How can a low-wage sector be good or even ‘the best’? Isn’t the best not to have a low-wage sector?

Back in India, the coronavirus pandemic resulted in the fact that ‘the entire economy, both agriculture and non-agriculture ground to a halt [as many informal and] urban workers were left with no wages, no food and no shelter. Hunger and a fear of starvation drove millions onto the roads’ (p. 28).

This ‘highlighted the visibility of migrant workers: the sheer numbers out on the streets and highways’ (p. 34). Meanwhile, India’s Prime Minister Modi has been among those right-wing populists who have belittled the coronavirus pandemic.

Another right-wing populist, also downplaying the coronavirus threat, has been Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, as Larissa Rose Correa and Paulo Fontes show. When asked about the rising death rate, Bolsonaro barked, So what? (p. 37).

By June 2021, Brazil’s ‘so what’ coronavirus deaths stood at around 500,000 – way above that of let-the-bodies-pilehigh Boris Johnson’s UK. In both countries, the coronavirus pandemic started with a single imported case. In Brazil, it was an ‘impoverished sixty-three-year-old black woman… contaminated by her employer who had returned from a trip to Italy’ (p. 37). In most OECD countries as well as in Brazil, inequality also means that the ‘privileged ones could stay at home [while the poor, as Bolsonaro said] would need to work and go out on the streets’ (p. 38).

We are mistakenly made to believe that the USA was the key country for African slaves, forgetting that Brazil was a very significant slavery country as well. Today, the many descendants of those who survived the horrific conditions of slavery work as ‘domestic workers [numbering] nearly 6.3 million workers: 97% of them are women’ (p. 39). Some are black women like the aforementioned first victim of the coronavirus in Brazil. vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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The second group of workers highlighted are online platform workers. During the coronavirus pandemic, their numbers have ‘increased by 700%’ (p. 41) during April and March 2020.

Yet, ‘the expansion of these services did not correlate with better working conditions and wages for delivery workers: in fact, the opposite’ (p. 41). Similar evidence is delivered for South Africa where, on top of coronavirus-induced misery, ‘over 230,000 people had been arrested, mostly for issues such as being outdoor without a permit’ (p. 44). By April 2020, 77% had ‘run out of money to buy food’ (p. 45).

Surviving the coronavirus pandemic often depends on two groups of people, medical doctors and the roughly 27.9 million nurses that work worldwide. A recent Gallup poll found that nurses ‘are consistently seen as the most trustworthy profession’ (p. 95). Yet nurses are chronically underpaid: earning between €28,000 and €114,000 in OECD countries.

Globally, the density of nurses ranges from Guatemala with 1.2 nurses per 10,000 people to ‘Cuba at the world’s top with 84.2’ nurses per 10,000 (p. 97) This is what socialism can do for you. Meanwhile, the supposedly advanced Europe’s average is 34.1 – not even half that of Cuba.

Worse, neoliberalism and austerity have not only cut funding for hospitals so bitterly needed during the coronavirus pandemic but have also led to the fact that ‘nurses’ wages are reduced [and] their workloads increased’ (p. 100). ‘Since the advent of neoliberalism (Reagan and Thatcher), in many countries [infected by the neoliberal virus] the number of hospital beds has declined, for example, in the USA from 889,600 in 1995 to 641,395 in 2010 and in Germany from 665,565 in 1991 to 497,182 in 2017’ (p. 100). Cutting hospital beds and underfunding and overworking nurses is not a good precursor when entering a global pandemic.

Worse, neoliberalism’s ideology of a global free labour market has resulted in the fact that ‘large numbers of nurses are lured from poor countries to the wealthy, so that the health care situation in the poor countries deteriorates even further’ (p.

101). Welcome to the world of globalised capitalism. Even ghastlier is the fact that by July 2020, ‘3,000 nurses had died from COVID-19’ (p. 102).

Reducing health care costs (now seen as a cost – not a human need!) has also been the policy pursued in Denmark, Norway and Sweden where the first two differed strongly in their response to the coronavirus pandemic. Sweden appeared to have initially followed a Donald Trump-like ‘it will go away’ approach – something Trump repeated a whopping 40-times. Just as in Trump’s USA, and in Johnson’s UK, where this approach was also tried, ‘the outcome was that Sweden ended up with dramatically higher death figures than Denmark and Norway’ (p. 114). The same can be said about Japan; that even though Japan’s conservatives ‘have been hollowing out its public organisations responsible for public hygiene, health and welfare for the past thirty years’ (p. 126),

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Japan’s cumulative coronavirus deaths stood at 14,000 by early June 2021.

Of course, when comparing deaths or other coronavirus statistics from country to country with a view to assessing the relative efficacy of policies, the most useful statistical measures are the numbers of cases divided by the country’s population.

A country with twice the population ought to have twice the cases. For the four countries mentioned in the previous paragraph, by 5 June 2021, Japan had achieved the best outcome with only 10.8 deaths per 100,000 of its population (of 125 million) while Sweden had suffered the worst of the fatality outcomes with 144 people dying of coronavirus per 100,000 of its population (of ten million). Denmark and Norway lay in between these two extremes. (Our thanks are due to Neil Mudford for helping us clarify this).

The story of the above-named right-wing populists continues in post-Brexit UK where Boris Johnson’s government ‘was the last country in Western Europe [that] implemented [a] country-wide school closure’ (p. 138).

Meanwhile, ‘children from the poorest fifth of homes are spending an average of 1.3 hours per head less on remote learning than children in the highest-income families’ (p.

142). The UK is a country where 4.3 million children are living in poverty – up 200,000 from the previous year and up 500,000 over the past five years.

A different kind of poverty exists in ‘one of the world’s poorest regions, the Sahel’ (p. 155) where ‘the coronavirus pandemic now threatens to destroy all the progress made to increase economic opportunities for women’ (p. 156). Indeed, ‘some 300 girls now work producing masks earning circa 0.5 US dollar a piece’ (p. 159). A different impact is reported from North Carolina (USA) where the coronavirus pandemic exasperated ‘the existing strains on everyday work relations in the food processing industry’ (p. 192) and where ‘2,000 poultry workers had contracted COVID-19 by the end of May 2020’ (p. 193).

The coronavirus pandemic had quite a positive impact on ‘sex work in Argentina’ (p. 200) where ‘the Association of Prostitute Women of Argentina’ (p. 202) issued ‘demands including the social recognition of their work as productive and necessary for the economic life of the country’ (p. 204). In addition, at the upper level of the labour hierarchy, is the case of El Al pilots in Israel where ‘the El Al pilots’ union created a special support fund to which those who were able to work during the crisis contributed’ (2009).

The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on working lives was also positive in Germany’s home offices where ‘telework [is] much more commonplace’ today than ever before (p.

222). This is because of four factors (p. 222): a) substantial investments in new digitalised infrastructures; b) a lively public debate on home office work; c) workers, trade unions and management ‘have come to see telework in a more

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positive light’ (p. 222); and d) Germany’s new home office law. The new law gives German workers ‘the right to practise telework’ (p. 223). Overall, ‘managers have discovered that remote working has actually increased productivity’ (p. 230) which might lead to a post-Corona fight over forcing workers back into offices – a move that would sustain managerial power – or allowing workers to use home office for higher productivity.

In any case, the coronavirus pandemic has shown that ‘after forty years of the neoliberal mantra of privatisation, personal liberty and the wisdom of the market’ (p. 234) when weakened institutions ‘met the crisis’ (p. 234), human society and working arrangements did not do that well. The coronavirus pandemic ravaged our societies, killed millions of people (some unnecessarily as a former advisor to Boris Johnson now admits), forced workers into lockdown, led to massive job losses and accelerated global poverty.

During the same 40 years, many governments have staunchly followed a catechism-like belief system of neoliberalism consisting of roughly four elements. The coronavirus has destroyed all four. The first belief is to see the free market as a panacea for social issues. The experience with coronavirus shows that if we let the free market deal with the coronavirus, millions more will die needlessly. The second belief is deregulation – ending red tape! What we need against Corona is the exact opposite. We need regulation on social distancing, on OHS, on industrial relations, etc. The Corona pandemic demands more regulation, not less. Take regulation away and chaos reigns and many more will die.

Thirdly, neoliberalism advocates less state involvement – no nanny state! A society in crisis depends on functioning administrative structures, the police, the operational state and state-run hospitals, doctors and nurses ready to serve everyone – not just the rich. Finally, there is privatisation. Neoliberals like to privatise health. Yet healthcare for the rich is not working just as vaccinating only the rich would not work. The coronavirus has comprehensively destroyed the neoliberal belief-system just as Andreas Eckert and Felicitas Hentschke’s Corona and Work around the Globe makes abundantly clear.

Thomas Klikauer teaches in the MBA at the Sydney Graduate School of Management, Western Sydney University, NSW, Australia Contact: t.klikauer@westernsydney.edu.au Catherine Link is an Adjunct Fellow with the School of Management at Western Sydney University.

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Blinded by science, again (Thomas Dolby, 1982) The best Australian science writing 2021 by Dyani Lewis (ed.)

ISBN 9781742237374 (pbk.), ISBN 9781742238272 (ebook), ISBN 9781742239163 (ePDF), NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, Australia, 293 pp., 2021.

Reviewed by Neil Mudford

When I first opened this book, to begin reviewing it, I was expecting it to contain many articles on COVID-19. I was surprised to find only four of its thirty articles had anything to do with the disease even though most of the articles would have been written in 2020. So, in spite of the science-related fixation on COVID, day after day in the media throughout the last two years, less than a seventh of this edition of the best Australian science writing is on pandemic-related topics.

Additionally, several of these are on aspects of the disease far from the mainstream media’s focus on virus mutation and behaviour and our collective response in formulating efforts to protect people from it.

Thus, the unrelenting public focus on fighting and reacting to COVID seemed at odds with its apparent status here simply as one of many issues.

A moment’s further thought dispels my ill-conceived expectation. The volume has the balanced view, properly aligned with scientific priorities.

First, there are so many other important issues and interesting areas of study being pursued. An emergency in one aspect of existence does not warrant halting all other activities, though plenty of day-to-day activities – handshaking, hugging, travelling, horizontal folk dancing – have had to be wound back. It would be foolish to concentrate too heavily on a single issue, long running though it might be, at the expense of everything else. Second, concerning breadth of coverage, what would be the point of re-hashing the same narrow band of ideas that have been swirling around the public domain for two years now? One of science and scientists’ great strengths is to see issues afresh and uncover a topic’s vital but hidden aspects.

This being an issue of Australian Universities’ Review with a COVID focus, I will consider the COVID articles in detail, highlighting their novel revelations, and then comment briefly on the panoply of the collection’s other creative and insightful articles.

In ‘The virus detectives’, Fiona McMillan presents her and her colleagues’ fast-paced race to understand the new SARS vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

threat that became COVID-19 beginning with the warning being sounded from Wuhan. The advances over the last decade or two in rapid genetic sequencing, the establishment of openly available databanks of the results and the experiences with AIDS and earlier SARS crises showed their worth in allowing the knowledgeable to quickly assess the nature of the disease, recognise the high level of the threat and set about creating the immunological weapons to fight it.

It has been a source of wonder to me, and to others, how it was that the biomedical research community managed to get so many highly effective vaccines created, trialled and available for use in only one year. McMillan answers these questions by taking us through the intricate sequence of events along the way.

The very first question to answer was whether humans could contract the disease from each other or only through exposure to the animals from which it sprang. If the former, then the disease was a tremendous danger and a rapid, massive, international response was required. If otherwise, the problem could be tackled locally.

Recognising the potential dangers, Chinese scientists sequenced the genome as soon as they could and made the results available worldwide. This allowed researchers around the world, with a whole array of knowledge and skills, to examine the genome and deduce its behaviour. The answer was ‘yes’, there will be human-human transmission. Thus, the research community received an early ‘heads up’ and knew they had to spring into action and the story takes off from there.

This didn’t stop the Chinese scientists being criticised for being secretive and even for creating the disease in a secret laboratory. I am glad to see those scientists receiving here due praise for their quick and scientific response.

McMillan makes several points about the research community’s state of preparedness and the scale and intensity of the mighty effort that produced the understanding and the medical solutions.

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One point she makes is that the researchers should be accorded the ‘frontline worker’ status granted to hospital workers and other similarly indispensable folk. Researchers worked incredible hours over that first year and beyond, just as other frontline staff did. They also suffered tension and burnout and the other effects of a stressful, high stakes existence. The suffering is not the central point, of course, it’s the desperate need for what the researchers can contribute to the emergency, undertaking tasks of which few in the world are capable.

As you can probably appreciate, this recognition is unlikely to eventuate. I suspect one of the reasons for this is the public’s image of researchers and the work they do. Most people, at least in wealthy countries with well-developed health services, have seen nurses and doctors going about their business but few people have been inside a research laboratory or a medical computational facility and mingled with these research beings there. I am sure that, to most, a researcher’s working life is a mystery and probably seems relatively cushy. (I consulted a dictionary just now, to check that ‘cushy’ wasn’t too informal a word to use in a journal article. The entry gave the following usage example, ‘he doesn’t have anything like the cushy life you professors have’. I rest my case.)

Another two points McMillan makes is that the experts around the world cooperated magnificently and unsparingly and that the expertise needed for success was wide-ranging and sometimes found in odd pockets. For instance, Kathie Seley-Radtke, a researcher who ‘specialises in the design of small anti-viral molecules’ comments about the origins of her expertise saying, ‘Like many things in science, this began a bit unintentionally.’ This is a lesson in why interest-driven research is needed. There’s nothing wrong with the research that has an identified endpoint, beloved by advertising executive-led governments, but so often its pursuit of the fascinating puzzle that leads to profound discovery. This can arise within a ‘prefocussed’ research project but there would still have to be a willingness there to head off in a ‘risky’ direction which may not be welcomed in that environment.

Then there are the surprise social and environmental sideeffects of COVID. Donna Lu, in ‘Guarding the guardians’, informs us that the advent of COVID has curtailed the usual levels of active environmental protection. The mechanisms of this are complex. For example, in many places, national park funding comes from eco-tourism. Like all tourism, this has declined sharply under travel restrictions and general travel nervousness. Consequently, funding for rangers dries up and poachers move in. At the same time, the extra economic privations in poor countries increase the population’s dependence on items such as bushmeat for nutrition.

Vegetation is not spared. Satellite imaging reveals that illegal forest clearing has risen sharply during the pandemic.

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In ‘The search for animals harbouring coronavirus – and why it matters’, Smritri Mallaparty describes the search for coronavirus in animal populations – wild and domestic. The mutation that facilitated the virus’ leap into humans also gave it an entrée into other animal populations. The worry is that, if it infects these populations, other transmission pathways will open up that would be very difficult to curtail; perhaps impossible if the new hosts are wild animals. Worse than that, the virus could mutate in these populations and then jump back to humans. A fiendish problem.

The fourth COVID-related article is the most harrowing.

This is not because it tells us something new and awful about COVID. Rather, it is because the article also deals with another, more fearsome issue – climate change. Jo Chandler’s ‘The COVID-climate collision.’ looks into how the two crises interact.

It is worth noting that this article was a Runner-Up in the UNSW Press Bragg Prize for Science Writing, receiving $1500 prize money. Meanwhile, Fiona McMillan’s article, discussed above, was short-listed in the same competition.

Jo Chandler writes her article during lockdown in COVIDhit Melbourne. Along with other Australians, she and her family were under great stress over the pandemic itself and the tensions of being cooped up at home for a period that ended up lasting 112 days.

This is stressful enough, of course, but as a science journalist Chandler is brought face to face with researchers at the forefront of climate science relaying their latest findings.

She corresponds with them over Zoom as part of her job of explaining science to the public. Consequently, the terrible news of ever-accelerating environmental destruction and worsening predictions of the climate future we face assail her every day. Ever rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, coral bleaching, glacier melting, the climate modelling predictions of 3 to 4°C warming in the near future are continually on her mind. Climate change progression is far worse than we are told, she says, and she is in a position to know. Chandler points out that journalists are reluctant to report the full horror of the disasters because they would face a barrage of criticism for being ‘alarmist’.

Chandler writes in a such a powerful and evocative way that I couldn’t help being caught up in her horror at what is before us and the anguish this generates. I have never run away from a book I am reviewing but I came within a whisker of it with this one.

As to the interaction of the two issues, the worst part is probably that the focus on COVID has pushed climate change out of the public’s gaze. Yes, the virus is a great concern but the whole planet’s climate disease is by far the greater danger. COVID will not kill us all but climate change might well do just that and put paid to untold other species as well.

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Towards the end of the article, the author takes heart from the world’s response to COVID, saying that we have proved that we can take action against a global threat and therefore we still might act decisively and quickly enough to avoid disaster.

I wonder, though, whether she still holds that view today. The latest of the dates attached to her sub-chapters is November 2020, well before the Delta and Omicron variants hit and while governments were still following health advice.

Now, in early 2022, many of the weapons in our armoury have lost their effectiveness – lockdowns have gone, checking in at venues and contact tracing have fallen away, testing has passed from the province of pathology laboratories to individuals using less reliable test kits (when they can find them for sale).

Arguably we have lost the pandemic fight and must now treat the victims as best we can and hobble along with daily necessities scarce through factors such as illness of supplier company employees. Still, we live in hope.

As ever with the volumes in this series, the articles span a sweeping range of fields and topics. As editor Dyani Lewis says in her Introduction, ‘The best science writing doesn’t just lay out facts, or even simply parse competing theories. It propels the reader forward with a gripping story.’ The articles here certainly do that to bring us exciting developments across the spectrum.

I say, ‘articles’ but they are not always the works of prose conjured up by that term, though most are. There are poems on Einstein’s brain, one entitled ‘10 monostitch poems’ – evocative and about climate change, Enos the chimp fired into orbit and accidentally electrocuted (but uninjured) in the USA space program’s early days and the remains of bush fire.

What more diversity could you want?

When I reviewed ‘Best Australian Science Writing 2020’

by Sara Phillips, Ed. for issue 63(2) of Australian Universities’ Review, I was taken aback by the number of articles in which scientists expressed almost terminal despair in their work.

Most often, these were environmental researchers reporting severe environmental degradation while having their warning calls ignored by those with the power to remedy the decline but refusing to use it.

By contrast, I cannot see similar examples here except for the concern expressed in Donna Lu’s and Jo Chandler’s articles.

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Alice Gorman’s article, ‘Space junk’, could have been a cause for sounding alarm bells. She mentions the Kessler syndrome.

The relative speeds of items in orbit are in the kilometres per second range. Hence, even a small orbiting fragment, such as a nut or an escaped spanner, is like a super high-speed bullet and can therefore destroy a satellite. Each spacecraft collision explodes the spacecraft into many fragments thereby greatly adding to the total items of junk whizzing around up there.

The Kessler syndrome is the term for the ultimate endpoint of this process – such a fragment cloud is produced at the affected altitude that any satellites subsequently launched into it are quickly destroyed making that altitude useless for hosting satellites.

The passage with the direst warning in the article is ‘... we have thus far made little progress in solving the growing problem of space junk. Time, however, may be running out.’

Very quiet language for a warning that a pressing problem exists that would herald the end of satellite-based internet, weather prediction and GPS services, amongst others. Gorman, whose research is in the area of the archaeology and heritage of space exploration, urges that we give consideration to the cultural and historic value of old satellites before removing them. A fair point but time is definitely running out and a resolution of the tension between historical preservation and the use of space is needed. Many other impediments also stand in the way of a solution.

Most of the articles in this edition convey a cheering, upbeat message about science discoveries. This is a good thing. It is an exciting activity, and I am glad that I chose to be a scientist! I don’t expect the absence of despair in the articles of the current volume means that, in the space of one year, environmental problems have been cleared up. Rather, I am supposing it is a statistical fluctuation in science writing or in editorial choices for the series.

Let’s see what next year brings!

Neil Mudford is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the University of Queensland and is an AUR Editorial Board member.

Contact: neil.mudford@bigpond.com

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ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

Decolonising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research Kathy Bowrey University of New South Wales

Irene Watson University of South Australia

Marie Hadley University of Newcastle

There is an important but unwieldy research policy infrastructure designed to engage with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research and researchers. This framework links the key performance indicators and policies of funders and institutions to researchers and communities. In this article, we explain the relevant policies and targets, with a view to showing how sector regulation interconnects in practice and identifying ways to strengthen institutional commitments to meaningful engagement with, and implementation of, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research policy. We suggest next steps that are needed to help researchers comply with funder and institution-mandated obligations and to empower Indigenous Peoples to make informed decisions about the benefits of research collaboration with universities.

Keywords: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, research policy, research integrity, authorship, ethics, social engagement and impact, research collaboration, neo-colonialism

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There has been a great deal of policy activity in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research space. This has come about in response to criticism of existing frameworks that perpetuate injustice and marginalisation of First Peoples’ selfdetermination, in recognition of potential benefits that could flow from respectful collaboration and more ethical research, and in response to, as a minimum requirement, initiatives such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (United Nations, 2007). Policy reform has created new opportunities to better support researcher and community collaboration. The ideal is projects that are First Nationsled, rather than the pursuit of agendas that emanate from contexts that are disconnected from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants and the intended beneficiaries of research. There are many moving parts in this policy space: dedicated National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and Australian Research Council (ARC) funds, NHMRC and Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Research Integrity Policies and Guidelines that apply to publicly funded research, institutional policies and ethics processes that also regulate the conduct of research and IP ownership, ARC Excellence for Research in Australia (ERA) and Engagement and Impact (EI) Assessment exercises that will, in future, link in with the introduction of new Field of Research Codes to better capture research conducted, and data sovereignty initiatives. We provide an overview of these initiatives and show how they interconnect in practice and, in the context where Australiawide mandatory research policies are a useful tool, identify pathways to strengthen institutional commitments.

There is already a large body of scholarly research about the aspiration to decolonise the Australian university landscape and improve meaningful First Nations Peoples’ participation within the learned academies. This paper has a more practical orientation.

Concerning the authors, Professor Watson is well-known from her professional work with the South Australian Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement in the 1970s and for her pro-bono working for Aboriginal Nations across Australia.

While she is currently a member of the Senior Management Group at the University of South Australia as Pro-ViceChancellor Aboriginal Leadership and Strategy, she came to this position having worked through the ranks. Her career spans the last twenty years of Australian university institutional policy development in research and education portfolios to improve Indigenous outcomes. Watson served on the ARC Engagement and Impact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research Panel 2018, and is currently a member of the Universities Australia DVC/PVC Indigenous Group and Indigenous Member of the Universities Australia Research Committee. Bowrey and Watson have engaged in discussions about decolonisation and institutional strategies since 2006. vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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The research presented in this paper was supported by extensive interviews with senior management and researchers across Australian universities, as part of an ARC Discovery project that seeks to understand the tension between research impact and the legal and policy framework that governs the ownership, management, and dissemination of research outputs in Australian research institutions. The project investigates the impact of laws, policies and research practices upon factors such as authorship, open access, and licensing agreements with publishers and libraries, and the way in which researchers and managers make decisions around competing imperatives. This paper seeks to draw together our collective insights and recent research to improve understanding of the opportunities that currently exist to improve practice.

While there has been some improvement in the Indigenous Policy space in the last 20 years, responsibilities lie across several management portfolios with policy connections with external agencies. Policy fragmentation also presents an obstacle to achieving some objectives. There has also been a marked increase in Indigenous leadership in universities in recent years, however, many new appointments have large unwieldy portfolios and limited experience and authority within universities. This paper offers a map of the status quo and suggests pathways to further develop. To decolonise and better centre Indigenous Knowledge there is a need to advance the benefits to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in view of the existing policy settings and continue to improve the infrastructure that facilitates First Peoples’ selfdetermination and participation in research and control over research outcomes.

The policy frameworks The invasion and colonisation of Australia began in 1788.

1788 marked the beginning of the introduction of another way of knowing and recording Australian research. The ancient Aboriginal ways of knowing the continent of Australia became supplanted by another way of telling the story of Australia. 1788 marked the time at which a two-way story of Australia came into being, but universities have not given space to Aboriginal voices in education, research and governance, and to connect with Aboriginal communities, as equal research partners. The Partnership Agreement on Closing the Gap 2019-2029 (Council of Australian Governments et al., 2019) has led to clearer baselines and targets for socioeconomic improvement to be pursued through shared decision-making. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peak bodies and governments are expected to work together to overcome the ongoing colonial legacy experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and achieve life outcomes that give ‘proper’ recognition to the rights of First Nations.

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Heralded in the Preamble to the National Agreement an important initiative stimulating reform across university on Closing the Gap is ‘an unprecedented shift in the way management portfolios. The UA DVC Academic Committee governments work, by encompassing shared decision-making subsequently developed agreed sector initiatives. This has led on the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation to significant activity with improving Aboriginal and Torres of policies and programs to improve life outcomes for Strait Islander participation and retention in education and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’ ( Joint Council, training, and Indigenous employment targets. There has been 2020, p.2)..In the absence of major recognition and reform, no corresponding action plan developed by the UA DVCthe United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Research Committee. After three years only 14 universities Peoples (United Nations, 2007) provides minimum standards have an Indigenous research strategy, despite the UA target as a guide to how we might proceed. for all to have one by 2018. Further seven universities only Many provisions are potentially relevant to university included Indigenous research within the overarching (not activities. Article 4 provides for the right of autonomy in Indigenous-specific) research strategy. Eighteen universities matters relating to internal and local affairs as part of the stated their research strategy was under development exercise of the right to determination; Article 5 provides for (Universities Australia, 2021, p.11). the right of Indigenous Peoples University annual reports to maintain and strengthen routinely profile glossy University annual reports routinely profile their distinct legal, economic, examples of Indigenous glossy examples of Indigenous researchers social and cultural institutions; researchers and community and Article 31 provides that partnerships, without and community partnerships, without Indigenous peoples have the providing information that providing information that breaks down right to maintain, control, breaks down the financial the financial commitment or targets for protect and develop their commitment or targets supporting Indigenous research, researchers cultural heritage, traditional for supporting Indigenous or broader community benefits... knowledge and traditional research, researchers or cultural expressions (and broader community benefits, associated intellectual property as the NHMRC and ARC over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and do. The UA report notes that ‘member universities state the traditional cultural expressions), as well as the manifestations importance of building relationships with Aboriginal and of their sciences, technologies and cultures. In the context of Torres Strait Islander communities. However, the degree to research, such provisions inform minimal standards that set which these relationships are meaningfully developed varies. expectations for best practice, feeding into the work of various Further work is required by some members to meet a standard bureaucracies whose workload impacts Aboriginal and Torres that would be considered ‘robust, respectful and collaborative’ Strait Islander lives.

(Universities Australia, 2021, p.12).

Universities have started to acknowledge the colonial legacy.

In 2021 UA established a PVC/DVC Indigenous subUniversities Australia’s (‘UA’) Indigenous Strategy 2017-2020 committee. A review of institutional governance structures (Universities Australia, 2017) establishes important targets shows only 56 per cent of institutions have an identified on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student participation Indigenous PVC/DVC role. At the time of writing in and employment in 39 Australian universities. Institutional October 2021, five universities or 13 per cent were seeking Reconciliation Actions Plans have provided a focus for to employ an Indigenous-identified senior manager. Thirtydiscussion and implementation of positive actions that could one per cent have no Indigenous-identified senior-level be taken with the support of management and the broader management role. Where there is no provision for a PVC/ university community. New senior executive management DVC level position, Indigenous-identified roles as Directors positions have led to the development of Indigenous Strategies or Managers of Aboriginal education centres are named as in some institutions which set out shared responsibility to providing leadership. make our universities culturally safe places for Indigenous In any institutional setting reporting lines impact the staff, students and communities. ability to influence agendas, set important key performance indicators and allocate significant resources. In many Universities Australia (UA) Indigenous institutions it is difficult to determine reporting lines that Strategy 2017-2020 create a direct capacity for Indigenous leadership to influence senior management decision-making. Only 36 per cent of In 2017 UA launched a sector wide three-year Indigenous Indigenous leadership positions are full members of the Strategy with annual reportable targets for members. This is senior executive management team. Others report directly to

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the Vice-Chancellor, DVC-Academic or Academic Board. A secondary or lower hierarchical placement probably reflects the broad and packed agenda at senior level. However, with many institutions without any Indigenous Research Strategy and for those that do providing uncertain access to key portfolio leaders, there is limited direct capacity to influence what is considered an institutional priority, and especially so without adequate resourcing with skilled personnel and sufficient funds to drive necessary change in practice. As a result, what the principle of shared decision-making and Aboriginal-led research means in practice is largely left to be interpreted by the grassroots research community.

With the current difficulties in advancing Indigenous research policy at DVC level, other pathways to change need to be considered. Australia-wide mandatory research policies are one useful tool. With a growing financial commitment, meaningful targets, and policies and guideline to achieve them, the NHMRC and ARC can play a major role as a driver of real institutional change.

NHMRC and ARC funding opportunities and targets The two major Australian public research funders, the NHMRC and ARC, have funded research relevant to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and by Indigenous researchers. Until relatively recently, the extent of the expenditure and outcomes have not been reliably tracked, beyond reporting the allocation of the Indigenous Discovery scheme. The tracking of Aboriginal research does not measure research from a self-determining perspective of First Peoples. Instead, a population analysis is applied. Relative to population parity, the level of support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research has grown considerably in the past decade. The goal is to advance self-determination and impact outcomes to improve Indigenous health and wellbeing, not to achieve parity in funding. In the 2016 census 2.8 per cent of the population identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Since 2008 the NHRMC has dedicated 5 per cent of funding to Indigenous health and in 2017, 6.1 per cent of funding was allocated (NHMRC, 2020, p.34). This latter figure resulted, in part, from targeted calls for research priority areas in light of the significant health challenges affecting peoples and communities and poor progress in improving outcomes (NHMRC, 2020). The ARC spend has grown more slowly but also significantly, from approximately 1.3 per cent in 2008 to 3.5 per cent in 2018 (ARC, 2018a, Fig.3).

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1 per cent of staff were Indigenous (Universities Australia, 2021). The NHMRC has key performance indicators to monitor improvements in research participation. Where a funding request involves research or capacity building with 20 per cent or more Indigenous Engagement, the NHMRC assessment process includes an Indigenous Research Advisory Committee member assessment of the relevance of the research.

The number of NHMRC grant recipients including at least one Indigenous chief investigator (CI) has risen by approximately 1 per cent of the total recipient number in the past five years, with 4.55 per cent of successful grants in 2020 involving at least one Indigenous CI (NHMRC, 2021). There are Indigenous members of the College of Experts and recently flags were added to the ARC database to make it easier for College members to identify Indigenous expert assessors. Nonetheless, the extent to which there is any Indigenous involvement in assessment in ARC schemes, outside of Indigenous Discovery, remains unclear.

Approximately 1 per cent of ARC grant recipients identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander in 2020 and this figure has been relatively constant over the past three years (ARC, 2020, p.35).

NHMRC and AIATSIS research integrity policies and guidelines The Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research (‘Australian Research Integrity code’) (NHMRC, ARC & UA, 2018), Ethical conduct in research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and communities: Guidelines for researchers and stakeholders (NHMRC, 2018a) and AIATSIS Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research (AIATSIS, 2020a) explicitly and implicitly govern the conduct of researchers with respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge and culture. Explicitly, research agreements translate code provisions into contractual undertakings by CIs and their institutions, where noncompliance with the code entails a breach of the funding agreement by the researchers and their institutions. Implicitly, provisions also bind researchers who are not grant recipients because institutional research integrity codes also mandate compliance with the Australian code and subsidiary related codes. Thus, whether or not research is publicly funded by their schemes, NHMRC and ARC policies with respect to Indigenous research apply to the entire research community.

Both NHMRC and AIATSIS codes for Indigenous research have implementation guides. Codes share normative values such as reciprocity, responsibility, equity, cultural continuity, reflecting the shift in research culture ‘from a model of consultation and participation to an engagement model’ (AIATSIS, 2020b, p.8). These policies aim to

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support research about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples being Indigenous led, benefit those participating, and minimise harms. They acknowledge that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership can be expressed in various ways, through participation in design of research questions and methodology, contributing knowledge, analysis and interpretation of results, expressed in authorship and involvement in research dissemination.

Under the Research Integrity Code and related subordinate policy documents there is an explicit requirement that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples be consulted about their right to assert and retain ownership of cultural and intellectual property and researchers are advised that agreements about the conduct of the research should be recorded. Policies suggest this would normally include an intellectual property clause or agreement, yet there is some ambivalence communicated in policy documents about the appropriateness and value of these agreements.

The language of Indigenous Peoples’ rights as used in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is adopted, acknowledging respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander empowerment by way of self-determination, however, in regard to intellectual property the NHMRC implementation guide editorialises with vague statements about the limitations of Australian law. Keeping Research on Track (NHMRC, 2018b, p.15) advises that: Western law may establish different forms of intellectual and cultural property or protect it in different ways to how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples conceive and recognise their cultural and intellectual property. For example, copyright law’s conceptions of individual authorship, or the requirement for artistic and literary works to be ‘fixed’ in a material form, may not guarantee the appropriate recognition or protection of communal or oral forms of knowledge.

Copyright law may also not provide sufficient protection for secret or sensitive cultural knowledge and practices from its secondary use by individuals other than the research team …

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples have the right to discuss co-ownership or to retain ownership of intellectual property. They also have the right to discuss co-authorship and any shared copyright of published and recorded works and performances where this is applicable.

This information sets up a disconnect between western authorship and (anticipated) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander expectations surrounding ownership, culturally sensitive knowledge and authorship of the research. It provides no practical guidance about how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander interests could be asserted in discussions about information sharing, co-ownership or shared copyright. The Authorship Guide (NHMRC, ARC & UA, 2019) highlights the important principle of crediting contributions of Indigenous people to research but there is

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no further mention of how this applies in the context of sector authorship criteria.

The AIATSIS code is more helpful in setting out how rights could be meaningfully asserted by Indigenous research participants. Section 2.6 of the AIATSIS code advises that joint authorship should be considered in partnership agreements with particular communities or organisations mindful that ‘the threshold for intellectual and scholarly contribution that warrants authorship and specifically includes contribution to design and contribution of Indigenous knowledge’. Section 3.1 of the AIATSIS Guide (2020b) more explicitly informs readers that ‘Authorship is of particular ethical concern given the history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research, where knowledge holders who shared their knowledge were relegated to the role of “informant”’. The advice on publication also explains the significance of open access publishing and promotes its use in the context where the implications of the research being in the public domain is understood. However, none of the information explains that it is only the status as author that provides Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research participants with a direct means to hold researchers and third parties to account for the content of publications, influence choice of publication outlet, determine whether the research should be open access or have publications withdrawn from public circulation.

Funder policies are helpful in highlighting the importance of considering how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander intellectual and cultural rights are treated in research.

However, much of the information does not map well onto university processes. For example, Indigenous collaborators are advised it is normal to have an intellectual property agreement. However, agreement to participate in a research project would normally be sought and field work participation budgeted for in a request for funding from the NHMRC and ARC without any significant formalisation of IP terms with external participants, because without securing funding, the project may not proceed. Even post grant success, universities do not generally formalise any arrangement or issue contracts with external research participants containing intellectual property clauses outside of Linkage partners and commercialisation contexts. Authorship is treated as a matter for the lead or executive author to determine, with negotiations and consent to be included recorded without formality, and no requirement to document why there was non-attribution of Indigenous authorship.

It is routine for research relationships that do not anticipate immediate commercialisation to proceed without any formal enforceable agreement that clarifies IP ownership of research outputs and research data or authorship of publications. Section 196(3) Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) requires copyright assignments be in writing. Informal agreements as to ownership of copyright may not always be

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unenforceable under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) because there may be sufficient evidence of an implied agreement as to ownership, but vagueness creates real vulnerabilities for Indigenous research participants. When creative, educational, and commercial activity operates without recourse to clear intellectual property rules of exchange, the legal default position is that all knowledge is public property or part of the commons of humanity. A loss of Indigenous control over knowledge and loss of authority over research outputs, such as data, publications and wording of key recommendations, is likely to follow.

Funder policy development to date has not been matched by attention to implementation in practice, because the latter is reliant on university process. There are also no independent mechanisms for verification or auditing of sector policy compliance. Institutional ethics processes and research integrity complaints mechanisms are looked to as the primary sites for regulation of research conduct. This can contribute to a more relaxed attitude toward compliance than is perhaps intended, where funder policy obligations are generally perceived to be voluntary and arising indirectly out of ethics processes, masking the essential legal character of all research agreements.

Nevertheless, a researcher who fails to consult with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples about their right to assert and retain ownership of cultural and intellectual property and enter into an agreement with them about ownership of research outputs and authorship, is not only in breach of the Australian Research Integrity and subsidiary codes but of the research agreement. However, at present it is not clear how a breach could be identified by the funder.

For example, there is no mandatory requirement to address how the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research participants were ascertained, what was determined in research agreements or with respect to authorship of publications in a final report to the funder.

Institutional research policies Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participation in research as envisaged by the Australian Research Integrity code and associated policies is held back due to the way the code operates within institutions. There are no institutional pathways to help Indigenous research collaborators and participants understand local governance processes within universities and there is no help available to have policies explained.

Indigenous research participants are usually referred back to the sector policy documents and general third party material on protocols such as those produced for the Australia Council and other government bureaucracies. There is also a very helpful general education book, Terri Janke’s True Tracks ( Janke, 2021). However, there is nowhere to seek specific advice about appropriate agreements suitable to a particular vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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community and research context, outside of reliance on ad hoc pro-bono assistance from intellectual property academics and lawyers already known to communities. In similar circumstances of transacting with vulnerable parties who lack expertise, some funders, such as the Australia Council, set aside a payment so the individual can pay for an independent legal consultation about agreement terms and implications before the project begins.

A relatively modest improvement to existing procedures, with low resource implications, would be to require researchers to produce appropriate documentation of Indigenous participant engagement and expectations pregrant and pre-ethics approval, and before any significant information is shared. For example, recording discussion with Indigenous participants about why they were approached and their authority to act on behalf of others; recording their understanding of the project; anticipated benefits and outcomes; authority over publications; arrangements for data and privacy; and local identification of the likelihood of the project to impact on other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. Whilst it is difficult to determine entitlement to authorship of specific publications in advance, it would be helpful to clarify upfront with participants that Indigenous authorship can arise based on standard criteria in institutional authorship policy, due to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership in establishing the research agenda, knowledge contributions, recommending writing revisions and other substantial oversight roles, as noted in the AIATSIS Code (2020a) and NHRMC, ARC, UA (2019) Authorship Guide statement of authorship criteria.

This original documentation and where relevant, additional more detailed and considered discussion of intellectual property arrangements, could be integrated into ethics clearance processes. In ethics clearance there are three separate interests at stake: the research participants, the lead investigator and team, and the university. Each of these parties has a different status and interests under Australian law.

There is recognition of a potential conflict of interest, which is managed by Ethics Panel review. Often Indigenous Panel members will be positioned as independent authoritative interpreters of Indigenous best interests, whether or not they possess any relevant community knowledge or authority.

Better documentation practice would help alleviate some of the pressure on Indigenous Panel members to do the impossible in making assessments without hearing from the Indigenous participants in person. Additional institutional and researcher benefits could flow from this. Alongside enhancing accountability in terms of documenting compliance with funder ethics policy, recordings of Aboriginal participants may be of value later in compiling a social engagement and impact case study.

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The need for better documentation about the terms of cultural inclusion is starting to be required in some publication policies. For example, alongside requiring full disclosure of all ethics boards, governmental organisations, community leaders or other bodies that provided approval for the study, the Public Library of Science’s PLOS Policy on Inclusion in Global Research 2021 (PLOS, 2021) requires authors to submit information about: written informed consent from a representative of the local community or region before the research took place; details about how authors establish who speaks for the community; how members of the local community provide input on the aims of the research investigation, its methodology, and its anticipated outcomes; the process to ensure that the informed consent documents and other materials could be understood by local stakeholders; and details of how the findings of the research will be made available in an understandable format to stakeholders in the community where the study was conducted. This information is published in the author-approved manuscript, with potential reputational consequences for poor practice.

While the PLOS cultural inclusion policy has a stated political motivation to address the perpetuation of neocolonial research agendas, it is also a development that is in line with provisions in the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (‘CBD’) (1992). A supplementary agreement, the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing (United Nations, 2010) requires free, prior and informed consent and access and benefit sharing agreements with respect to the use of traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources with the expectation that mutually agreed terms are satisfied. Research centres and patent offices worldwide are starting to require disclosure of the source of information about biological and genetic material and methods. Failure to disclosure the use of traditional knowledge, document informed consent and provide for access and benefit sharing could mean material cannot be exported, for example, to permit research with respect to a sample of plant material. It can also affect the validity of a patent.

The Nagoya protocol has 133 ratifications including the UK and the majority of EU nations. Japan and China have acceded to it. Regardless of the failure of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US to ratify the protocol, failure to comply with its provisions is already impacting international research collaboration. In certain situations, there is already an obligation on Australian researchers to be Nagoya compliant such as when they want to export to a country that has adopted Nagoya, or they are working with an institution (university, journal, funding agency) that has decided to only work with people who are Nagoya compliant. Inadequate documentation of compliance impacts the potential for investment in research commercialisation by industry partners.

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There is a current IP Australia (2021) Indigenous Knowledge consultation investigating how to best implement access and benefit sharing terms. However, Australian law is not necessarily what will impact on Australian researchers.

Failure to comply with best international practice in Indigenous research policy will increasingly impact publication, assessment of research quality and impact, and global commercialisation prospects. This alone should give pause to researchers and universities to reconsider how to support and engage with global Indigenous research integrity best practice.

Open Access The Australian Government is increasingly looking for more effective research translation and uptake of taxpayer funded university research. There are multiple government initiatives underway that seek to improve Australian performance with respect to open access publication, engaging and potentially extending the current open access mandates of the NHMRC and ARC. Open access is also a current priority of the Chief Scientist, Dr Cathy Foley. Increased accessibility to knowledge through an open access publication strategy has some potential benefits for Indigenous communities and enterprises, for whom the cost of accessing research publication databases is typically prohibitive. However, even where access is secured, this is no substitute for producing information in diverse formats for different audiences. Moreover, the principle of self-determination and the objective of sector policies with respect to Indigenous research seek to counteract the presumption that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples have no right to be consulted about uses of their knowledge and other resources. This means that a mandatory requirement of open access for Aboriginal research, where there are already recognised problems with research agreements and a lack of attribution of Indigenous authorship and agency, would be counterproductive. This requires more than restriction on circulation of culturally sensitive and confidential information. Advancing an Indigenous open access agenda needs to proceed alongside implementation of a more empowering and decolonising research practice, with intellectual property ownership agreements that allow for decisions identified as being of key importance remaining in the hands of Indigenous participants.

ERA 2023 and EI 2024 In ERA 2018 (ARC, 2018b) the lack of a coherent approach to reporting Indigenous research and dedicated FOR codes made it hard to meaningfully unpack what might be considered relevant to an assessment of excellence in Indigenous research publication. Discipline assessment that

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involved peer review had some indirect capacity to consider who will be consulted on relevant assessment criteria for ERA Indigenous perspectives in assessing research quality, however 2023 and EI 2024 as these evolve. There will also be targeted there was no Indigenous Research Evaluation Committee. It is consultation with Indigenous researchers. At time of writing, not clear if there were any Indigenous Committee members of the criteria for identifying good Indigenous research practice the Humanities and Creative Arts or Education and Human remains very uncertain.

Society Panels where peer review was a significant workload, There are Māori Research Ethics criteria that could be and no data made public on the use of Indigenous researchers adapted to an Australian research assessment context. Whilst as assessors. designed with a view to assisting ethics approval, they share Following the ERA EI review (ARC, 2021a) a working a common goal with Australian research policy of shifting party has been established to review the ERA rating scale, community practice from inclusion through consultation standards for benchmarking and peer review, including with Indigenous informants to best practice engagement of what quality means for Indigenous research. There is one Indigenous Peoples’ research agendas.

Indigenous member of this review. ERA 2023 will adopt the The Te Ara Tika Guidelines for Māori research ethics new Indigenous FOR codes, with a review to follow (ARC, (Hudson et al., 2010) are informed by the Treaty of Waitangi 2021b). principles of partnership, The inaugural Engagement participation and protection Failure to comply with best international and Impact Assessment, EI and identify levels of practice in Indigenous research policy will 2018 (ARC, 2018c), did Indigenous participation in increasingly impact publication, assessment include research assessments research. These provide useful by an Indigenous Panel but baseline normative criteria for of research quality and impact, and global universities could only submit assessing research impact on commercialisation prospects. one Aboriginal and Torres and engagement with Māori.

Strait Islander research impact The Guidelines identify three study for impact assessment. The work of the Indigenous levels of involvement (1) low-level consultation; (2) a good Panel was articulated with that of other panels to some practice of positive engagement (3) best practice or Kaitiaki, degree, which ensured some Indigenous review of impact that is, forming a relationship with Māori. The Guidelines claims about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research establish relevant considerations and minimum evidence of some case studies not submitted to the Indigenous Panel. requirements for each level, applicable to a range of research Research assigned Indigenous FOR codes will be assessed contexts. This means that good practice requires researchers for the first time in EI 2024. At time of writing, although going beyond simply consulting with Māori research the ARC has not yet finalised arrangements for ERA 2023 participants and advancing a research agenda without and EI 2024, it is anticipated that there will be cross-panel any direct relevance to Māori. Substantial and positive assessment, where the case study sits across Indigenous engagement with Māori communities is required, ‘Where research and another disciplinary area. As the number of research is clearly Māori centred and displays a focus on impact studies to be submitted is related to the proportional generating answers to questions that are of particular relevance use of FOR codes in ERA 2023, there may be considerable and importance to Māori’ (Hudson et al, 2010, p.7). Here gaming to avoid using these codes where research projects Māori would be identifiable as significant participants in the have little connection to Aboriginal and Torres Strait research team and as research participants, with the capacity Islander researchers or community engagement where it is to influence research design, and as appropriate, analysis, anticipated that research might be viewed negatively by the outcomes and dissemination. Best practice ‘empowers Māori Indigenous Panel. to take a Kaitiaki role within the research project with a view One of the UA Indigenous Strategy (2017) goals yet to be to ensuring that tangible outcomes are realised within Māori meaningfully actioned was to develop a platform or mechanism Communities’ (Hudson et al., 2010, p.7). to identify and share good Indigenous research practices.

Thus, under the Te Ara Tika Guidelines, the primary However, in addition to needing examples of good practices, interest of Māori is identified through co-construction there is a need for clearer communication of normative criteria of the project, research that is supportive of Indigenous that allow for meaningful discrimination between kinds of worldviews, and using Māori research methodologies. The research practices where Indigenous researchers, and projects Guidelines also provide a comparative consideration of or publications with the capacity to harm or benefit Aboriginal governance structures and relationships with the capacity and Torres Strait Islander Peoples are involved. There is a to cause harm or benefit across the scale from consultation, new UA DVC/PVC Indigenous Committee, comprised of engagement to relationship. This draws attention to research senior Indigenous and non-Indigenous research managers, design that enables meaningful power sharing and control, vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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and a judgement of whether the research advances equity and distributive justice, for instance, through access and benefit sharing agreements.

The development of clear normative criteria for ARC research assessments needs to draw out the governance implications of research practices to continue to drive Indigenous empowerment at all levels of the research process. Assessment processes offer a significant opportunity to reinforce the values nascent within existing policy frameworks, particularly if combined with institution-led best practice examples illustrating how the policy framework can drive excellence in Indigenous research. Whilst there is always a significant management concern for an additional resource burden on institutions in producing evidence data and portfolios, financial accounting also needs to factor in the waste of resources that flows from historically poor practice, which has led to the policy development in the first place.

Indigenous Data Sovereignty The least developed area of sector policy relates to management of research data relevant to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. Poor historic practices have seeded considerable mistrust. There are ongoing tensions created by the enormous research interest in data projects involving mining, matching, machine learning and automated decision making. All have potential to cause harm and discriminatory effects and there is little communication of potential benefits to Peoples. New uses of old data sets and generating new data about Indigenous People has a particularly troubling resonance: Positioning ‘data’ as a resource from which insight can be ‘mined’ perpetuates the conceptual model that economic value can be extracted from data, leveraging the culturally embedded analogy that gold ore mined from the earth (for example, in the American Midwest) delivered untold wealth for colonialist settlers and ignores the unequal power dynamics of the extractive practices that underpin these narratives …

Following existing metaphors like oil and mining, the natural world remains a good conceptual foundation to develop alternative metaphors. One option is to see data as a greenhouse gas, where its uses create harmful by-products that must be limited (Ada Lovelace Institute, 2021, p.27).

Indigenous data sovereignty involves an assertion of selfdetermination and control over data projects, but how this agenda can meaningfully advance is unclear. The tools of the dataverse are not Indigenous authored and data governance models are underdeveloped. There are considerable problems with transparency and manipulative extractive agendas under the guise of data sharing (Rainie et al., 2019; Walter, Lovett et al., 2020). However, there is also an increasing body of

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work that centres civil society stewardship, control and agency and examples of models that facilitate empowerment and active management in decision-making about data governance (Kukutai & Taylor, 2016; Walter, Kukutai et al., 2020). In an Indigenous context, there is a need to develop frameworks for participatory data stewardship. This involves fostering the ‘responsible use, collection and management of data in a participatory and rights-preserving way, informed by values and engaging with questions of fairness’ (Ada Lovelace Institute, 2021, p.4). Governance models that empower civil society actors provide an avenue for extending existing values embedded in Indigenous research policy into data management practice. The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance also provide a normative foundation to inform data governance in practice (GIDA, 2018). International standards such as the CARE principles inform international research collaborations with Australian researchers and affect industry partners, as well as impacting the practices of international publishers. It is likely that in the future issues of compliance and international provenance assurance will arise in relation to other research materials such as Indigenous data, similar to developments arising around the Nagoya Protocol as discussed above.

HERC IP commercialisation In September 2021, the Morrison Government released the Higher Education Research Commercialisation IP Framework (HERC IP, 2021). It seeks to incentivise knowledge transfer between universities and business partners. This includes the requirement that grant recipients receiving public money under numerous schemes, including the new Trailblazer University Program, use mandatory template legal agreements in negotiation with external collaborators.

The proposed agreements do not address Indigenous IP issues at all.

This oversight will impact research in the Government’s Priority Manufacturing areas, in particular Food and beverages and Medical products, where Indigenous knowledge is frequently used. Consideration should be given to developing model benefit sharing agreements that can be used within the Food Industry that comply with the Nagoya protocol and other mandatory sector policies such as the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research (NHMRC, ARC & UA, 2018); the NHMRC Ethical conduct in research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and communities: Guidelines for researchers and stakeholders (NHMRC, 2018a) and the AIATSIS Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research (AIATSIS, 2020a). At time of writing, it is unclear whether or not the government will amend the templates to address this impediment to Indigenous research collaboration.

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Neo-colonialism or a shared commitment?

Today there is an embryonic framework that is supportive of beneficial research engagement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers and collaborations with communities.

However, implemented insensitively, policies can also create a lot of unpaid work for those with the least resources and experience with navigating university bureaucracy; taxed by the need to interpret and translate the good intentions set out in guiding documents into desirable clauses in research agreements in exchange for the promise of material benefits that may or may not eventuate. Well executed and with a shared commitment amongst all institutional actors, the goals behind a number of related initiatives can advance in step with meaningful Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research engagement. Whilst there is no utility in a one size fits all approach, there is more that universities can do to support policy implementation and to assist researchers seeking to collaborate with communities. Processes and support material could be designed to also help individuals and institutions comply with other research reporting obligations in view of the increasing importance placed upon documentation of engagement and impact case studies in sector research assessment exercises.

The self-determination and advancement of Aboriginal led research is everyone’s business and responsibility. However, institutional policies establish the researcher as the party with primary responsibility to abide by relevant policies.

At the researcher interface there is considerable policy fragmentation, a confusion of law and ethics, conflicting sources of authority, and little assistance in understanding what is best practice and how to implement it. The national policy frameworks are sound, but there is a need for policy harmonisation at the institutional level, a reform to ethics processes and research reporting, and best practice guides for researchers and external research participants to assist with implementation and compliance. Some tuning of ERA and EI assessment criteria and practice could also help influence cultural change and draw researcher attention to positive steps they can make to decolonise Australian research.

Development of a sector wide standardised process, an agreed terminology and checklists for collaboration discussion need to be integrated into all stages of the research cycle and integrated into institutional processes and reporting – pre-grant, preliminary ethics approval, ethics approval, publication reporting, and final reports to external funders. This should not be difficult given that the NHMRC and AIATSIS Research Integrity policies are already the authoritative documents referred to by most institutions, whether or not the research is ARC or NHMRC funded. Resources that facilitate clearer communication vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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with potential community participants of what might be within possible scope of discussion matters would assist knowledge and experience sharing about possibilities, and, in time, feedback on what has and has not worked. Producing community resources that centre Indigenous knowledge ways of ethical research conduct and examples of best practice need to be a priority to effect meaningful cultural change, build trust and build lasting relationships and benefits. Without these investments, the default could be to an institutional driven transactional framework that will likely only serve communities with significant prior experience and support in negotiating productive research relationships. The infrastructure for more meaningful research engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples is now there.

The opportunity to develop it and maximise its potential is in our hands.

Kathy Bowrey is a Professor in the Faculty of Law, UNSW, Australia.

Contact: k.bowrey@unsw.edu.au Irene Watson is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Aboriginal Leadership and Strategy, at the University of South Australia.

Marie Hadley is an early career researcher in intellectual property law, with expertise in copyright law and IP norms at the Newcastle Law School, University of Newcastle, Australia.

Funding & Acknowledgments This research was supported by ARC Discovery Project grant DP200110578 ‘Producing, Managing and Owning Knowledge in the 21st Century University’ and in line with ethics approval, QUT Human Research Ethics Committee Reference Number 2000000609 (2020). With thanks to Alan Singh (NHMRC), Sarah Howard, Kylie Emery & Lanfeng Davis (ARC), with data analysis provided by Corey Johnston (QUT) and Jianyang Li (NHMRC).

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ARC. (2018a). Evaluation of ARC support for Indigenous researchers and Indigenous research: ARC Response ( June 2018). Retrieved from https:// www.arc.gov.au/policies-strategies/policy/aboriginal-and-torres-straitislander-researchers/evaluation-arc-support-indigenous-researchersand-indigenous-research-arc-response-june-2018 ARC. (2018b). ERA 2018. Retrieved from https://www.arc.gov.au/ excellence-research-australia/era-reports ARC. (2018c). Engagement and Impact Assessment. Retrieved from https://www.arc.gov.au/engagement-and-impact-assessment ARC. (2020). ARC Annual Report 2019-2020. Retrieved from https:// www.arc.gov.au/policies-strategies/policy/annual-reports-australianresearch-council.

ARC. (2021a). ERA EI Review Final Report 2020-2021. Retrieved from https://www.arc.gov.au/excellence-research-australia/era-ei-review ARC. (2021b). ERA and EI Action Plan: The Australian Research Council’s response to the ERA EI Review. Retrieved from https://www. arc.gov.au/excellence-research-australia/era-ei-review Council of Australian Governments, Coalition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peak Organisations & Australian Local Government Association. (2019). Partnership Agreement on Closing the Gap 2019-2029. Retrieved from https://federation.gov.au/sites/ default/files/about/agreements/partnership-agreement-on-closingthe-gap_0.pdf GIDA. (2018). CARE Principles for Data Governance. Retrieved from http:// https://www.gida-global.org/care HERC IP. (2021). Higher Education Commercialisation IP Framework.

Retrieved from https://www.dese.gov.au/higher-educationreviews-and-consultations/resources/higher-education-researchcommercialisation-intellectual-property-framework Hudson, M., Milne, M., Reynolds, P., Russell, K. & Smith, B. (2010). Te Ara Tika Guidelines for Māori research ethics: A framework for researchers and ethics committee members. Retrieved from https://www.hrc.govt.nz/ resources/te-ara-tika-guidelines-maori-research-ethics-0 IP Australia. (2021). Indigenous Knowledge Project. Retrieved from https://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/understanding-ip/getting-started-ip/ indigenous-knowledge/indigenous-knowledge-project Janke, T. (2021). True Tracks: Respecting Indigenous Knowledge and Culture. Sydney: UNSW Press.

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Retrieved from https://www.closingthegap.gov.au/sites/default/ files/2021-05/ctg-national-agreement_apr-21.pdf Kukutai, T. & Taylor, J. (eds) (2016). Indigenous Data Sovereignty: Toward an Agenda. Canberra: ANU Press.

NHRMC. (2018a). Ethical conduct in research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and communities: Guidelines for researchers and stakeholders. Retrieved from https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/ resources/ethical-conduct-research-aboriginal-and-torres-straitislander-peoples-and-communities.

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NHMRC. (2018b). Keeping research on track II. Retrieved from https:// www.nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/resources/keeping-research-track-ii NHMRC. (2020). NHMRC Annual Report 2019-2020. Retrieved from https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/publications/annualreport-2019-20 NHMRC. (2021). Statistics. Private email from Jianyang Li, Data Analyst, Data Analytics, Reporting and MREA, NHMRC, 6 October 2021. Unpublished data.

NHMRC, ARC, & UA. (2018). Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research. Retrieved from https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/ about-us/publications/australian-code-responsible-conduct-research2018#block-views-block-file-attachments-content-block-1 NHMRC, ARC, & UA. (2019). Authorship: A guide supporting the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research. Retrieved from https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/publications/australian-coderesponsible-conduct-research-2018#download PLOS. (2021). PLOS Policy on Inclusion in Global Research 2021.

Retrieved from https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/best-practices-inresearch-reporting#loc-inclusivity-in-global-research Rainie, S.C., Kukutai, T., Walter, M., Figeuroa-Rodriguez, O. L., Walker, J. & Axelsson, P. (2019). Indigenous Data Sovereignty, in T. Davies, S.B. Walker, M. Rubinstein & F. Perini (eds), The State of Open Data: Histories and Horizons. Cape Town and Ottawa: African Minds and International Development Research Centre.

United Nations. (1992). United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. Retrieved from https://www.cbd.int/doc/legal/cbd-en.pdf United Nations. (2007). United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 13 September 2007: A/RES/61/295. Retrieved from https://www. un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/wp-content/uploads/ sites/19/2018/11/UNDRIP_E_web.pdf United Nations. (2010). Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing (2010). Retrieved from https://www.cbd.int/abs/doc/protocol/ nagoya-protocol-en.pdf Universities Australia. (2017). Indigenous Strategy 2018-2020.

Retrieved from https://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/wp-content/ uploads/2019/06/Indigenous-Strategy-2019.pdf Universities Australia. (2021). Indigenous Strategy. Third Annual Report, March 2021. Retrieved from https://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/ wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Indigenous-Strategy-Annual-Report_ Mar21_FINAL.pdf Walter, M., Kukutai, T., Carroll, S.R. & Rodriguez-Lonebear, D. (2020). Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy. Abingdon & New York: Routledge.

Walter, M., Lovett, R., Maher, B., Williamson, B., Prehn, J., BodkinAndrews, G. & Lee, V. (2020). Indigenous Data Sovereignty in the Era of Big Data and Open Data. Australian Journal of Social Issues 56(2), https://doi-org.ezproxy.newcastle.edu.au/10.1002/ajs4.141

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The 50-year war on higher education AL Jones ‘The real truth of the matter is… that a financial element in the larger centres has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson’. Franklin D Roosevelt, 1933 (p. 373).

‘Few elements of American society today have as little influence in government as the American businessman… truly the “forgotten man”’ Lewis Powell, 1971.

‘Truman made a point of bringing a substantial number of nonpartisan soldiers, Republican bankers, and Wall Street lawyers into his administration. He went to the existing sources of power… to get the help he needed in ruling the country… [In the 60s] this was no longer possible’ Samuel P. Huntington, 1975 (Crozier, Huntington & Watanuki, 1975, pp. 97-8).

This is an account of how, in 1971, a small band of weary, ‘forgotten’ businessmen fought off the enemy – radical academics et al. – and won the day… and possibly the future.

Yes, the forgotten few were mainly pale, stale, male and hale of wealth, but they pulled it off anyway. Education was particularly dear to what they called their hearts. The present article enquires into the genesis and unfolding of the counterattack. Clearly, this short piece cannot make a case for a causal relationship, which would require an extended study.

What happened in the 1960s?

In the 1960s, masses of anti-Vietnam war, civil rights, women’s liberation and gay rights activists took to the streets across the global north. Trust in government had dipped in the 1960s and 70s, said historian Howard Zinn (1980, ch 20), with 40 per cent of professional people and 66 per cent of unskilled workers reporting having ‘low’ trust.

To the survey question, ‘Is the government run by a few big interests looking out for themselves?’, in 1964, 26 per cent of those polled said ‘yes’. Eight years later, that number had doubled. In addition, the less than one fifth who said defence spending was too high near tripled during the 60s.

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(Bowles, 1978). While voting turnout dropped to a 25-year low, other forms of political participation bloomed, including demonstrations and membership of non-party organisations (pp. 71-2).

‘Attack on American free enterprise system’ In the midst of this so-called ‘crisis of democracy’, on 23 August 1971, jurist Lewis Powell – soon to be nominated as an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court – sent a confidential memorandum to his friend Eugene Sydnor at the Chamber of Commerce. Titled ‘Attack on American Free Enterprise System’, the memo urged a full-scale counterattack on the enemy, namely, radical elements in higher education (Powell, 1971): ‘The American economic system is under broad attack…. from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians [that could] destroy the system…. [Polls show] almost half the students favoured socialisation of basic U.S. industries’.

Alarmingly, to Powell, ‘the response of business to this massive assault… [is] appeasement…. Businessmen [are] The 50-year war on higher education AL Jones

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not equipped to conduct guerrilla warfare with those who propagandise against the system…. The Wall Street Journal… drew a parallel: “College administrators learned too late that such appeasement serves to destroy free speech, academic freedom and genuine scholarship”’.

‘The time has come’, said Powell, ‘for the wisdom, ingenuity and resources of American business to be marshalled against those who would destroy it. The… ultimate issue may be… survival of what we call the free enterprise system… and the freedom of our people’.

The ‘forgotten’ businessman

What was driving the alleged attack on free enterprise?

The Trilateral Commission of ‘private citizens’

Who or what was driving the ‘massive assault’? Powell blamed higher education:

In 1973, David Rockefeller founded the Trilateral Commission, a self-described group of ‘private citizens’ of Western Europe, Japan and North America. At its inception, nine out of the ten biggest US-based corporations had top executives on the Trilateral Commission (Mason, 2009, p. 36).

A major initiative of the new group was to commission a joint US-Europe-Japan report entitled The crisis of democracy: Report on the governability of democracies to the Trilateral Commission. Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington wrote the American section of the report. Huntington believed the governability of America was under threat from ‘an excess of democracy’ from all sides, but especially from higher education. After World War Two, he said, too many previously apathetic voters had been educated out of their apathy.

‘The campus is the single most dynamic source…. Every major college is graduating scores of bright young men… who despise the American political and economic system….

They seek employment in… news media… government… education…. regulatory agencies… with large authority over the business system they do not believe in’.

‘To address the campus origin of this hostility’, Powell urged the Chamber of Commerce to establish ‘a staff of highly qualified scholars in the social sciences who do believe in the system… [together with the] most effective advocates from the top echelons of American business’.

The Chamber’s staff of scholars, he said, ‘should evaluate social science textbooks, especially in economics, political science and sociology… toward restoring the balance…. The Chamber’s faculty of scholars [must] publish…. a steady flow of scholarly articles…. The Chamber should insist upon equal time on the college speaking circuit…. exert whatever degree of pressure – publicly and privately – may be necessary’.

As well as targeting college campuses including Graduate Schools of Business, Powell said, ‘action programs tailored to the high schools… could become a major program for local chambers of commerce’.

The media were also blamed After higher education, Powell next turned his attention to the media: ‘The national television networks should be monitored in the same way that textbooks should be kept under constant surveillance…. [by] constant examination of… programs.

Complaints… should be made promptly and strongly….

Forum-type programs [must] afford at least as much opportunity for supporters of the American system… as for those who attack it’.

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‘In terms of political influence’, said Powell, ‘the American business executive is truly the “forgotten man”… The threat to the enterprise system… is a threat to individual freedom’.

‘The first step’, Powell advised, ‘should be a thorough study’.

David Rockefeller, CEO and Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank and billionaire grandson of John D., agreed with Powell. A thorough study was needed. But who were the right people to carry it out?

Who was Samuel P. Huntington?

The director of Harvard’s Centre for International Affairs – and notorious for his racist and supremacist views – Huntington had theorised a hierarchy of civilisations headed by the ‘Christian bloc’ (due, he said, to its commitment to peace and arms reduction).

‘Would America be the America it is today if in the 17th and 18th centuries it had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics?’ Huntington asked rhetorically. ‘It would not be America; it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil’ (2004, p. 59). As well as accusing Asian-, Spanish- and African- Americans of posing a threat to American culture, Huntington said the same of Catholicism, as it lacked ‘the work ethic of WASPs’ (Kearns, 2009, pp. 240-41).

The level of Huntington’s scholarship may be gauged by the fact he was rejected – twice – for membership of the National Academy of Sciences. He was accused of distorting the historical record and using pseudo-mathematics to mislead.

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The Trilateral report: The crisis of democracy

elementary level, but, by 1972, that figure had nearly doubled (p. 110).

The ‘democratic surge’ of the 1960s, said Huntington, had not only caused a ‘substantial decrease in governmental authority’ (p. 64), but had also incited demands from the undeserving:

Expansion of higher education must be curtailed

‘Citizen participation… [saw] markedly higher levels of self-consciousness on the part of blacks, Indians, Chicanos, white ethnic groups, students, and women…. Previously passive or unorganised groups… [claimed] opportunities, positions, rewards, and privileges, which they had not considered themselves entitled to before’ (pp. 61-2).

Scholars Nicholas Lee and Jared Benson (2021) note that, in the aftermath of World War Two, increasing numbers of marginalised people became both educated (including via G.I. education programs) and politically involved.

Huntington summed up this threat: Education raises political consciousness, which raises demands, which make democratic government unworkable:

This ‘excess of democracy’, Huntington said, challenged ‘existing systems of authority, public and private… People no longer felt the same compulsion to obey those whom they had previously considered superior to themselves in age, rank, status, expertise, character, or talents (p. 74). In politics generally, the authority of wealth was challenged and successful efforts made… to limit its influence’ (p. 75).

‘The more educated a person is’, said Huntington, ‘the more likely he is to participate in politics, to have a more consistent and more ideological outlook on political issues, and to hold more “enlightened” or “liberal” or “change oriented” views on social, cultural, and foreign policy issues…. Black political participation was the product primarily… of increased group consciousness’ (Crozier, Huntington & Watanuki, 1975, p.110).

Democracy cannot function in the face of too much marginal-group involvement Huntington went to great pains to explain that a large degree of non-involvement among disadvantaged groups is required for democracy to function: ‘A democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and non-involvement on the part of… a marginal population…. This… is inherently undemocratic, but it also… enable[s] democracy to function effectively (p. 115).

Marginal social groups, as in the case of the blacks, are now becoming full participants. Yet the danger of overloading the political system with demands… remains…. Democracy is more of a threat to itself in the United States than… where there still exist residual inheritances of traditional and aristocratic values’ (p. 114).

To save democracy, said Huntington, democracy must be limited. The ‘excess of democracy’ must give way to ‘desirable limits to [its] extension’ (Bowles, 1978, pp. 67-75).

For example, he said, a better balance must be struck between government and the ‘oppositional’ force of the media. FirstAmendment protection of the media should be re-evaluated in the ‘broader interests of society and government’. The government’s ‘right and ability to withhold information at the source’ should be exercised, and, in the absence of voluntary journalistic restraint, ‘the alternative could well be regulation by the government’ (Crozier, Huntington & Watanuki, 1975, pp. 181-2).

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How should the problem be solved? In Huntington’s view, ‘A decline in their group consciousness and hence their political participation’ would follow from ‘a decline in the saliency of school integration [and] welfare programs’, together with law enforcement (p.110).

Finally, said Huntington, education must be tied to ‘economic and political goals’ either through redesigning programs toward ‘economic development and future job opportunities’ or ‘lower job expectations.’ And, to combat job dissatisfaction, rather than allow workers’ participation in decision-making, employers should ‘opt for job redesign’ (Bowles, 1978, pp. 71-3).

The Australian chapter Throughout the 1970s, the US Government groomed Australian governments and the labour movement for neoliberalism. In this regard, the Americans had a friend in ACTU president Robert J. Hawke, says researcher Cameron Coventry, who recently re-analysed official US diplomatic cables dispatched between 1973 and 1979 (Coventry, 2021).

The evidence shows that American intelligence gathering about Australian political parties and labour organisations was willingly and substantially assisted by Hawke. By the time he left office in 1991, says Coventry, scholars agreed that Hawke’s Government ‘had virtually outdone previous conservative governments in proclaiming its support for Washington’ (p. 2).

In addition, the US Government saw the Australian Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, as part of the abovementioned ‘excess of democracy’ that had infected the west and threatened US interests. Hence, in 1975, Whitlam suffered The 50-year war on higher education AL Jones

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a bloodless version of several US-incited military coups in the 1970s. The brand-new US neoliberal project looked to Hawke as Australia’s future prime minister (Coventry, 2021).

The diplomatic cables, says Coventry, highlight the split between Hawke and Whitlam on the bilateral relationship: Hawke ‘has been a friend of… US officials in Australia’, said the US diplomats, and his ‘personal attitude on foreign policy questions was very close to the United States.’ ‘Hawke’s “little here, little there” approach’, they said, ‘succeeded in gradually undermining internal opposition; causing a de-radicalisation of the labour movement’ (Coventry, 2021, p. 8).

Carter takes control of education

The Carter Administration’s ‘private citizens’

The founders of the Trilateral Commission had looked upon American democracy and deemed it increasingly ungovernable and unaffordable. They wanted ‘a new order to make the world more predictable, and they saw radical intellectuals as contributing to the dangerous disorder’ (Davies, 2006, p. 311).

The signature documents of Powell and the Trilateral Commission indicate how the neoliberal war on higher education was planned and funded. The program to de-democratise higher education putatively operated across America’s global sphere of influence, including Australia.

Many radical academics of the 1970s, says researcher Bronwyn Davies, were slow to grasp that the conservative values underpinning university funding could also be used to withhold it. Few imagined to what extent government and big business viewed their teaching as dangerous (2006, p. 311).

The 1960s, says Davies, had been a time of commitment to education for the betterment of society. Under the Keynesian belief that economic growth depended on improved capital and labour, governments invested in education. In contrast, neoliberal governments saw education as just another commodity.

In addition, where we are now is unprecedented wealth disparity. In the US, the wealth gap grew markedly as neoliberalism took hold after 1979 (Keister, 2000). The rise continued into the first decades of the new century (Zucman, 2019), while real wages for most Americans steadily declined (Mason, 2009, p. 76). Australia saw the same pattern. Whereas wealth disparity had decreased from 1900 onwards (Kelly, 2002), it increased sharply from the 1980s (Harding, 2002).

The war on higher education unleashed by the US establishment a half century ago continues. In Australia, establishment attacks on university history, social science and education faculties persist (e.g., D’Abrera, 2019, 2021).

Everyone in education knows what ‘now’ looks, sounds and feels like. ‘Now’ is the corporatisation of the university, the commodification of education, the job losses and casualisation, special government funding of institutions such as the United States Studies Centre and so forth. ‘Now’

‘After World War II, [the US] was governed by the President acting with the support and cooperation of… the private sector’s “Establishment”’ (Crozier, Huntington & Watanuki, 1975, p. 92).

To return to the Trilateral Commission, founder David Rockefeller believed that ‘the Watergate-plagued Republican Party was a sure loser’ for the 1976 presidency (Zinn, 1980, ch. 21). Hence, Rockefeller selected Democrat Jimmy Carter, and, on Carter’s win, a new wave of Commission ‘private citizens’ flowed into his administration (Bowles, 1978).

Trilateral Commission members in the Carter Government included Carter himself; Walter Mondale (Vice President); Cyrus Vance (Secretary of State); Zbigniew Brzeziński (National Security Advisor); W. Michael Blumenthal (Secretary of the Treasury); Harold Brown (Secretary of Defence); Richard Holbrooke (Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs); Warren Christopher (Deputy Secretary of State); Richard N. Cooper (Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs); Samuel P. Huntington (White House Coordinator of Security Planning for the National Security Council); Andrew Young (Ambassador to the United Nations); C. Fred Bergsten (Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Economic Affairs); Paul Volcker (Chairman of the Federal Reserve); Alan Greenspan (Chair of Economic Advisers, later Chair of the Federal Reserve under Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, and Bush Jr.) (Lee & Benson, 2021).

Noteworthy is that the Trilateral Commission is bipartisan in comprising Democrats as well as Republicans. Whoever best supports business is the Commission’s man. Of the postCarter presidents, George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, George Bush Jr. and Barack Obama were invited onto the Trilateral Commission. Reportedly because of his poor business skills (not his personality), Donald Trump was not (Lee and Benson, 2021). A list of Commission members is published annually (see Donaldson, 2020).

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In 1979, Carter increased his administrative control over all levels of education by creating a separate department. Carter’s Secretary of Education, Shirley Hufstedler, though not a member of the Trilateral Commission, belonged to the more secretive Council on Foreign Relations (Lee and Benson, 2021).

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is the bogus idea of ‘balance’. ‘Now’ is teachers, learners and education treated as commodities to be used or tossed aside as the ‘market’ pleases.

As mentioned previously, it is beyond the scope of this piece to make a case for a causal relationship. Suffice to say, after 50 years, ‘now’ bears a striking resemblance to Lewis Powell’s and the Trilateral Commission’s documented intentions. With their neoliberal prescriptions apparently realised and with the very notion of the intrinsic value of education waning, it’s not at all clear if there’s a way back.

A L Jones, PhD, is a psychologist, writer and educator with academic specialties in educational and gender psychology.

Jones is a series editor at Lexington Books and taught for 15 years as a university lecturer.

Contact: twitter.com/aljones42, aljoneswriter.wordpress.com

References Bowles, S. (1978). Introduction: ‘Can the Trilateral Commission make democracy safe for capitalism?’ (online document missing book title, pp. 67-75). Retrieved from https://www.ppesydney.net/content/ uploads/2020/04/Can-the-Trilateral-Commission-make-democracysafe-for-capitalism.pdf Coventry, C. J. ( June, 2021). ‘The “Eloquence” of Robert J. Hawke: United States informer, 1973-79’. Australian Journal of Politics & History 67, 1. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/341655929_The_’Eloquence’_of_Robert_J_Hawke_ United_States_informer_1973-79 Crozier, M., Huntington, S., & Watanuki, J. (1975). The crisis of democracy. Report on the governability of democracies to the Trilateral Commission. New York: New York University Press. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/TheCrisisOfDemocracyTrilateralCommission-1975/page/n1/mode/2up D’Abrera, B. (2019). The Humanities in Crisis: An Audit of Taxpayerfunded ARC Grants. Melbourne: Institute of Public Affairs. Retrieved from https://ipa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/TheHumanities-in-Crisis-An-Audit-of-Taxpayer-funded-Arc-Grants.pdf D’Abrera, B. (2021). Activism via education. Melbourne: Institute of Public Affairs. Retrieved from https://ipa.org.au/wp-content/ uploads/2021/06/Activism-Via-Education.pdf Davies, B. (May, 2006). ‘The rise and fall of the neoliberal university’.

European Journal of Education 41, 2, 305-19. DOI:10.1111/j.14653435.2006.00261.x Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/229686619_The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Neo-liberal_ University

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Harding, A. (2002). ‘Trends in Income and Wealth Inequality in Australia’. Melbourne Institute, University of Melbourne. https:// melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/outlook/assets/2002/ HardingAnn.pdf Huntington, S. P. (2004). Who are we? The challenges to America’s national identity. NY: Simon and Shuster.

Retrieved from https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/ Who_are_We/6xiYiybkE8kC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq= who+are+we+huntington&printsec=frontcover Kearns, G. (2009). Geopolitics and Empire: The Legacy of Halford Mackinder. Oxford University Press. Retrieved from https://www. google.com.au/books/edition/Geopolitics_and_Empire/rUQTDAA AQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=geopolitics-and-empire-the-legacy-ofhalford-mackinder&printsec=frontcover Keister, L. (2000). Wealth in America: Trends in Wealth Inequality.

Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from https://books. google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=FpkMaxCWUsMC &oi=fnd&pg=PP11&dq=wealth+inequality&ots=mgr58u ybUw&sig=Lg0w-Ln6gmWJzmRsdTdW6UF3IIQ&redir_ esc=y#v=onepage&q=wealth%20inequality&f=false Kelly, S. (2002). ‘Simulating Future Trends in Wealth Inequality’.

National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, University of Canberra. Paper presented at the 2002 Australian Conference of Economists Adelaide, South Australia, 3 October 2002. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon-Kelly-13/ publication/267559864_Simulating_Future_Trends_in_Wealth_ Inequality/links/545c17d10cf2f1dbcbcb0cda/Simulating-FutureTrends-in-Wealth-Inequality.pdf Lee, N. & Benson, J. (2021). ‘The Trilateral Commission’. Transcript of video retrieved from http://revolutionandideology.com/the-trilateralcommission-and-the-crisis-of-democracy Mason, L. (2009). ‘Neoliberal social policy in the United States before Reagan’. Master’s Theses and Doctoral Dissertations. 229. http:// commons.emich.edu/theses/229 Retrieved from https://commons. emich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1228&context=theses Powell, L. F. Jr. (1971). ‘The Memo’. Powell Memorandum: Attack on American Free Enterprise System. 1. Retrieved from https:// scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/powellmemo/1 Roosevelt, F. D. (1950). Letter to Col. Edward Mandell House (21 November 1933) as quoted in F.D.R.: His Personal Letters, 1928-1945, edited by Elliott Roosevelt (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1950).

Retrieved from https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/F_D_R_ His_Personal_Letters_1928_1945_For/swJ4QwAACAAJ?hl=en Zinn, H. (1980). History is a weapon, Ch. 20-21. Retrieved from https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnseven20.html Zucman, G. (2019). ‘Global Wealth Inequality’. Annual Review of Economics, 11, 1, 109-38. Retrieved from https://www.annualreviews. org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-economics-080218-025852

Donaldson, F. (2020). ‘Trilateral Commission 2020 membership list of who really makes national & foreign policy’. Retrieved from https:// freddonaldson.com/2020/01/28/trilateral-commission-2020membership-list-of-those-who-really-create-american-and-europeannational-and-foreign-policy/

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REVIEWS

Well, I remember when I was young (Matt Taylor, 1973) Radicals – Remembering the Sixties by Meredith Burgmann & Nadia Wheatley ISBN: 9781742235899, NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, Australia, 432 pp., 2021.

Reviewed by Neil Mudford Often, we tend to focus on the negative results of growing ‘old’. There is nevertheless, in my view, at least one welcome advantage. As you age, the times you experienced first-hand grow to span many decades. While your memory holds out, you can remember the feel and the detail of those times – the music, the attitudes, the politics, the clothes, the fondue sets – with a richness unavailable to younger people. By contrast, the times before our birth are learned of only second hand; they are someone else’s memories. I was born a few years after Meredith Burgmann and Nadia Wheatley. Hence, like them, I experienced the sixties in my teens and began to awaken to new ideas and attitudes in those times. I take my hat off to them for so vividly evoking those vibrant times of upheaval and change and the promise it held for the world to improve.

Meredith and Nadia have given us a book full of descriptions of the personal development and the memories of the times of some of those who played prominent roles in the successful, multi-pronged upheaval of the 1960s that produced great and progressive social change. It was a joy to be transported back there and relive the excitement of having the sense that applying active political pressure could change things for the better. (Note that I am following the authors here in using given names rather than family names. Also, the book is Australian, and it fits with a theme in some strands of Australian culture, namely, to move on to a first name basis as soon as humanly possible.)

Naturally, change happened because so many people became motivated and active to challenge others and pressure those in power to make changes. The few in the book could not have done it by themselves though they certainly played pivotal roles in it. In some ways, the few ‘led’ the movements but it was leadership of inspiration, creative initiative and being the voices of the many. It was certainly not leadership by command. In fact, the mood of the time was firmly against hierarchical structures. This seems to have encouraged many acts of true, broadly-based, innovative leadership.

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The authors devote a chapter to each activist in which they explore their developmental path towards radicalised activism. Interestingly, they do this by describing the interview they have with them, in an ‘ordinary’ setting, such as in a cafe or living room. This fits well with the original surroundings in which the protagonists’ great deeds were done. Each chapter is then the story of the memories shared with Meredith and Nadia who were, and still are, prominent activists themselves. This way of drawing out the stories and retelling them produces a comfortable and familiar feel to the whole work. The secondary title is ‘remembering the sixties’ and we experience this, with the authors, in the to and fro of convivial reminiscence.

The authors’ storytelling is everywhere buoyant and funny. They are harking back to their youth and they do so in a youthful spirit. Though both authors and all the book’s characters have achieved so much, they are treated with a touch that does away with pomposity and with any sense that the outcomes were inevitable. Meredith and Nadia ensure that the fits and starts of the characters’ pathways and their renewed determination after setbacks are given due attention.

Naturally, the authors know many of the activists of those days, and knew them back then, but this network was not as intimately connected as one might think. For one thing, the activists were spread across this huge country. Interstate travel and electronic communications weren’t as developed as they now are and, as the authors note in the conclusion, ‘Flights were expensive and we all had such bomby cars that they never would have survived an interstate trip. So, we mostly didn’t meet each other.’

Another factor is that there were many strands to the activism. In fact, an important theme in the book is this huge diversity of issues, causes and approaches to them that the activists adopted.

The media release for the book states that, ‘While the initial trigger for the protest [of the 1960s] was opposition

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to the Vietnam War, this anger quickly escalated to include Aboriginal Land Rights, Women’s Liberation, Gay Liberation, Apartheid, Student Power and “workers’ control”’. While Burgmann and Wheatley came to their activism along this path, they emphasise that the 1960s activists exercised their radical politics over this whole spectrum of issues and a few more issues besides.

Opposition to the Vietnam War grew throughout the 1960s. By the end of the decade, it had become a mighty mass movement. It is therefore probably safe to say that, by then, all the activists appearing in the book would have opposed the War. Therefore, the patterns of radicalisation observed by the authors seem to be opposite to that described in the media release. It is important therefore to recognise the diversity in people’s efforts to effect change and the range of issues on which they campaigned. An outstanding example is Gary Foley’s entry into and longstanding participation in the fight for Aboriginal Land Rights and rights more generally.

Though the book is mostly biographical, it is also autobiographical; in the first two chapters Meredith and Nadia describe their own radicalisation and growing participation in protest. A look at these two chapters and the one on Aboriginal Rights activist, Gary Foley, will serve to provide a taste of the book’s content.

Meredith Burgmann: ‘That glorious time to be alive’ I am in full agreement with the chapter title, but I suppose some discount must be applied for both of us in this regard. It was our time of transition to adulthood and moving out into a wider world. That has to be exciting, surely? Nevertheless, I am convinced that decade was especially uplifting in its promise of the possibility of change through mass action.

The authors had a small number of set questions to ask their interviewees, no doubt to help kick-start the conversation and to conduct an informal survey. One of these was whether the interviewee had had ‘aha’ or ‘light bulb’ moments on their path to radicalisation. Meredith reveals that she had her own ‘moment’ when she woke up one day and decided she was a socialist. The next day, she went to the Student Representative Council (SRC) office and said to Geoff Robertson, ‘Geoff, Geoff, I think I am a socialist’. Geoff ’s encouraging(?) reply was, ‘Don’t be silly, Meredith. We’re all socialists.’

One of the proximate reasons for her transformation was reading GDH Cole and Raymond Postgate’s The Common People, an English history text about the trials and tribulations of the British working class over the 200 years from 1746 to 1946. The other was her growing opposition to conscription and the Vietnam War. She characterises her new adherence to socialism as a replacement for her waning religious beliefs but, in many vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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ways, it seems to me it could be considered a natural extension of those beliefs. She says, earlier in the chapter, that she accepted the moral framework of her Protestantism but did not whole-heartedly embrace the supernatural element. If you consider the way of life of the early Christians, holding goods in common, disposing of property and giving to the needy, it isn’t so far from the concern for the general good of the community that is at the heart of socialism. Indeed, the call to care for others seems to be at the core of all religions and moral codes. It is a pity this is missing from many political creeds.

As for many of the other activists, Meredith’s university experience was transformative. She says that she arrived at university with conservative political views but underwent a steady re-orientation under the influence of the intellectual conversations with the people around her, particularly Father Ted Kennedy and tutors and students in the (Catholic) Newman Society. She also involved herself as Arts Women’s Representative on the Students Representative Council.

This is one of the common features of many of the activists in the book – the strong politicising influence of high calibre, earnest political discussion. Of course, those appearing in the book are all Left-leaning but the Left weren’t the only political grouping at the University of Sydney even in Meredith’s time.

The Left may have been in the ascendent then but, according to the authors, there were also plenty of Right wingers there, centred around the Sydney University Regiment and the engineering student population. I wonder whether the Right held their own intense and analytic political discussions and came to reasoned pro-War, anti-Land Rights and antiFeminist positions?

Meredith cites another important influence in her development – the horrific images on the TV from the Vietnam War. As she says, ‘Each night we would see tragedy and lifeless bodies on our TV screens.’ This is certainly a factor that has disappeared from our experience. With Vietnam, there were brave and intrepid reporters out there with the foot patrols in amongst the reality of war rather than embedded with ‘our’ troops. Over the 20 years or so of war in, for example, Afghanistan, Iraq and then Syria nearly all the footage we were shown omitted close up images of the suffering of the victims.

Glimpses of the victims, if they appeared at all, were far too brief for us to develop any empathy with them. Yes, we got the statistics and the flashes and bangs of the ‘shock and awe’ bombing (which should have been called the ‘shocking, awful, totally unconscionable and next up we have the War Crimes Tribunal’ bombing) of Baghdad but we were shielded from the horror of it. While ‘our side’ have not learned the lesson of the futility of neo-colonial war, they seem to have learned the lesson of preventing voters from peeping into their witches’ cauldrons.

The hallmarks of Meredith’s path of learning feature in many of the stories of other activists of the time. So does the

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fact that so many of the causes to which they devoted their talents and their effort produced lasting and beneficial results.

Nadia Wheatley: ‘The girl who threw the tomatoes’ Wheatley had a traumatic childhood. Her adored mother died when she was nine years old and she went to live in a foster family which had its considerable difficulties. The difficulties led her to read insatiably. Like Meredith, her freedom and growth into a wider world blossomed when she went to university. In fact, that is where she and Meredith met and formed a lifelong friendship. This union, founded firmly on political action, also had a positive effect on Meredith’s English Literature studies; Nadia’s insatiable reading meant that she had completed all the required reading long before she enrolled and was able to assist Meredith who rather neglected her studies in favour of involvement in protest.

Nadia’s rise to fame, well infamy initially in the tabloid press and the Sydney University hierarchy, was helped by four cooking tomatoes she purchased on the way to a rally.

They were on special. For the younger reader, we should a say that cooking tomatoes were regular tomatoes which had softened on the greengrocer’s (Google it) shelves or in storage and had become squishy – unsuitable for salads but just right for cooking. In short, they were olden day, untinned, tinned tomatoes. It’s one of those ‘waste not want not’ practices of the past that would be appropriate for today.

Nadia made this purchase because the right-wing students at the University of Sydney habitually harassed left-wing rally speakers by throwing rotten fruit at them. True to form, they were doing it again on this day. In fact, it was even worse on this day – someone hurled a metal garbage bin full of water at Students for a Democratic Society leader, draft resister and speaker of the moment, Mike Jones.

Nadia’s plan, hatched with her friends on the way to the rally, was to use the tomatoes to return the rotten fruit throwing compliment. Standing right at the back of the Left/ Right brawling crowd, she drew two now completely soggy tomatoes out of her bag and chucked them over the top of those in front of her. She couldn’t see where the missiles were headed but, as Luck, or Fate, would have it, one and a half of the tomatoes found their way onto the suit of the NSW Governor, war veteran and Victoria Cross recipient, Sir Roden Cutler, as he walked over to review the Sydney University Regiment cadets on parade.

Consequently, she was pursued by the University and the press as a naughty girl who had thrown the tomatoes at the Governor though, as she truthfully and accurately pointed out, she had thrown the tomatoes but not at the Governor.

The attempted expulsion from the University (for ‘lying’ to the Vice-Chancellor) had a catalytic effect on Nadia. Though

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earlier offending the authorities in minor ways, she was ready to step up the campaign. As she says at the end of her chapter, ‘After the tomato, there was no going back.’

Gary Foley: ‘Fighting for truth Justice and the Aboriginal way’ The title refers to Gary’s invention of the character Super Boong for the 1973 TV comedy, Basically Black.

Gary Foley’s political activism was ignited by the racism he suffered as an Australian Aborigine. This racism was palpable in his hometown of Tenterfield but grew immensely worse for him after he shifted to Nambucca Heads at the age of twelve to live with his grandmother. Shock at the increased intensity of persecution in that town seems to have been a great spur to his becoming active.

Ironically, this shift to Nambucca Heads was a compromise, worked out with his family, when he refused to shift with his father to Queensland where legislation with antecedents in The Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act, 1897 granted government officials pretty much total control over the lives of Aboriginal people. It seems that the technique of using a morally laudable smokescreen in crafting legislation (reduction of opium addiction here) to hide a broader damnable aim (total control of Aborigines) has a long pedigree.

A pivotal discriminatory act that had a searing effect on Gary was being ‘fucking expelled from school’, as he puts it. This was in spite of his being a very capable student or maybe it was partly because of this; Aboriginal people out-performing whites raises white racists’ hackles pretty effectively. And this was in the days when racists didn’t feel obliged to say, ‘I am not a racist.’ In any case, at the end of fifth form, Gary’s headmaster at Macksville High School said to him, ‘Don’t come back next year, Foley.’ Asked for the reason, the headmaster replied, ‘We don’t want your kind here!’ Gary delivers these lines with hard emphasis on each word and a pause between them.

They used to say, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.’ As it so often is with commonly held beliefs, the opposite appears to be the case.

This experience caused Gary to give up on formal education for many years and to recommend others do the same. Decades later, he did recommence formal study. Indeed, his PhD thesis won a prize for excellence, and he went on to become a professor of history. Thus, as Nadia notes, this damnable discrimination robbed the community of decades of the intellectual output Gary would have produced (judging by his later performance). On the other hand, had Gary continued smoothly on with his schooling, further studies and an academic career, we might have missed out on his transformative activism.

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Nadia comments that, ‘Gary’s story is a classic trajectory of radical awakening. An event impinges so personally on someone that it triggers a sense of outrage at injustice. And then there is a theoretical follow-up.’ This follow-up is an important element of many of the activists’ stories. As well as the external elements of their activism – street protests, lobbying, advocating and so on – they build their political wisdom via intense learning from books and much earnest discussion with others. Although Gary abandoned formal education for a long time, he definitely obtained much of his knowledge from books. In particular, he states that reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X in combination with ‘the cop-bashing’, of which he was a frequent recipient, changed his life.

A hallmark of Gary’s activism was the several tangible social initiatives he pioneered. Inspired by the mid-sixties University of California Berkeley uprisings over freedom of speech issues, the social work undertaken by Black Panthers there and the obvious parallels between Oakland and Redfern, Foley and others set up the Aboriginal Legal Service in Redfern. Later, they began to plan a medical centre in the same area. At just the right time ‘this mad, left-wing, mountain-climbing, pipesmoking lunatic New Zealand doctor by the name of Fred Hollows turned up’, as Foley says, and, with his support, they founded the Aboriginal Medical Service.

In her introduction to Gary’s chapter, Nadia mentions that Gary, ‘has always been very funny’. A fine example of this, in addition to Super Boong, is a photograph of him at an anti-apartheid demonstration in Sydney in 1971 sitting holding a sign saying, ‘Forgive me for being born into a racist nation’. In the same vein, the December 5, 1971 issue of the Australian newspaper contained an article on page 11 entitled ‘Black Power comes to Australia’, which no doubt put the wind up a lot of white Australians when it claimed that the Black Panther Party was about to launch a violent campaign to achieve Aboriginal land rights. The photograph in the article showed ‘Black Panther field marshals’, Gary Foley, Billy Craigie, Denis Walker (the only one who really was a Panther member) and an ‘anonymous’ marshal. In it, the long-haired lads are giving black power salutes and looking serious. At the time, the Party’s violence extended to breaking a window and to daubing land rights slogans on a statue of Captain Cook in Hyde Park, Sydney. One of the interviewees (I wonder which?) was quoted as saying, ‘The only reason we didn’t blow up old Captain Cook was that we only have a small supply of explosives at present and thought we’d save it for something important.’ The whole stunt pure Foley, if I am not very much mistaken!

Prime Minister Billy McMahon’s outright rejection of land rights, in his deliberately provocative speech of Australia Day 1972, triggered the creation of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.

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House under an umbrella (the tents came later) by four young activists from Redfern – Michael Anderson, Billy Craigie, Bert Williams and Tony Coorey. Gary joined them soon after and was a prominent spokesperson for the Embassy thereafter.

At this time, it so happened that pitching a limited number of tents and camping on unleased Commonwealth land was legal in the Australian Capital Territory. Hence the government could not remove the Embassy immediately from the lawns opposite Parliament House. In time (dis)honoured fashion, the government passed a law on 20 July 1972 to make such camping illegal. Just hours later, the police descended on the Embassy in numbers and brutally tore it down with injuries sustained by protestors and police and protestors arrested. The Embassy was re-established and torn down again by police on 22 and 30 July in similarly violent confrontations.

The immense effort expended to wipe out the Embassy is a tribute to the effectiveness of the protest. The Embassy was re-established that September when the ACT Supreme Court struck down the July 20 law on the grounds that it had not been correctly notified.

At the time of writing, it is only a few days to the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Embassy and it is being hailed as an important focal point for Aboriginal campaigning, protest and resistance all around the country.

Conclusion In their Conclusion, Burgmann and Wheatley thoughtfully discuss a considerable number of common themes they find in their fellow activists’ stories. All of them were profoundly affected by their experiences. They found meaning and purpose in the issues in which they involved themselves and developed skills and confidence that stood them in good stead in their further works.

The authors round off their book with a series of brief Biographies that summarise the post-sixties trajectories of each of the characters they bring to the fore. These show that the cohort continued to make significant progressive contributions to Australian life and fill important leadership roles over the following decades in direct contradiction to the common ‘wisdom’ that youthful radicals turn into conservatives as they age, partner, start a family and so on.

That last point perhaps expresses the essence of being a Radical – seeing through and beyond commonly-held beliefs and pre-packaged ideas to create your own evidence-based view of your surroundings.

Neil Mudford is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the University of Queensland and is an AUR Editorial Board member.

Contact: neil.mudford@bigpond.com

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Working in 2021 Lost in Work – Escaping Capitalism, by Amelia Horgan ISBN: 9780745340913 (pbk.), London: Pluto Press, vii+166 pp., 2021.

Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer & Meg Young Much has been written about the fact that millions of people have been wasting away while being at work. Amelia Horgan’s Lost in Work starts with ‘there is a comforting narrative of progress about work: the bad old days of horrible jobs – of children working in mines, of cotton mills, of workplace injuries, of cruel bosses – are over’ (p. 1). Indeed, the days of Blake’s ‘Satanic Mills’ (1804) are over in most OECD countries. But the fact remains that capitalism in the Global North has outsourced its Satanic Mills to the Global South.

This does not make them vanish – except in corporate media, most of the time.

As neoliberalism relentlessly advances, ‘a polarisation of the labour market’ has taken place in which, ‘the middle has fallen out, with middling-paid occupations lost’ (p. 4). As the so-called free-market moves in, winners are separated from losers. The labour market is no exception. Worse, many have predicted that artificial intelligence will remove plenty of middle-class jobs by further segregating neoliberalism’s winners from those who are at the bottom. A hollowing out is taking place. In addition, this may hand over even more power to managers and bosses, just as Wood’s Despotism on Demand (2020) has outlined so pointedly.

Yet, ‘before the introduction of the legal apparatus defining the terms of employment, fought for and defended by trade unions, the arbitrary power of employers to hire and fire, to determine hours of work and so on, was immense’ (p. 5). This ‘and so on’ included violence, brutality, rape, the whip, and even killing (Thompson, 1963; 1967). Meanwhile, neoliberal politicians continue to work hard to return to those good old days of outright macho-management and workplace despotism.

In the UK for example, the introduction of so-called ‘zero-hours contract’ – an extremely asymmetrical ‘contract’ between worker and employer whereby, the employer is not obliged to provide any minimum number of working hours to an employee – has been a significant step into the direction of workplace despotism. So far, these contracts have affected ‘about 6 per cent of all contracts [while in] admin and support services, and accommodation and food, [it] rises to around 20 per cent’ (p. 6). This signifies non-standard forms of work.

Meanwhile, working life globally reflects more what is called non-standard work, i.e., not nine-to-five and not permanent.

Globally, ‘most work is actually done outside [this] but also

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outside of the legal and taxation framework of the state’ (p.

6). All too often, it also means outside of state protection and health cover. At the same time, those outside of employment are exposed to ‘the pathologisation of the unemployed’ (p. 8) by right-wing politicians and tabloid-TV ( Jones, 2011). They are also exposed to ‘the violence of the benefits system’ (p. 10) designed to humiliate and torment the poor.

For those in employment, the neoliberal polarisation means that, ‘in the event of job loss, over a third of households would be unable to pay the coming month’s rent’ (p. 11). This is in the UK. For the USA for example, things are even worse, as the US Federal Reserve Bank stated in 2019, ‘40 per cent of Americans don’t have $400 in the bank for emergency expenses’ (Youn, 2019). The coronavirus pandemic has made matters worse disproportionally for young workers as, ‘60 per cent of those who lost their job between June and August 2020…were between 18 and 24’ (p. 28).

Much of this contradicts Bill Gates’ hallucination of a ‘friction-free capitalism’ (p. 29). Worse, in Gates’ wonderland of friction-free capitalism, he and his good-doing elite have concocted (Klikauer & Link, 2021), ‘there are more people in slavery than at any other point in history’ (p. 31). Luckily, corporate media, schools, universities, etc. have made us believe that slavery is a thing of the past – it came and left (almost by itself ).

Treated almost like slaves, Uber workers have recently made some progress when the UK ‘Supreme Court confirmed that drivers, contrary to Uber’s argument, are workers’ (p.

44) ending the managerial fantasy of self-employment. This has also been disguised under the ‘gig economy’ heading (Burtch et al., 2018). The gig economy enhances the everincreasing casualisation of employment. ‘In the 1980s, there were some 50,000 temps in the UK; by the mid-2010s, there were 270,000’ (p. 54), a trend seen in most, if not all, OECD countries and in many industries including universities.

In higher education, ‘two-thirds of UK universities now hire more administrative staff than they do academics. In the US, between 1975 and 2008, the number of faculty [academics] grew about 10 per cent while the number of administrators grew 221 per cent’ (p. 56). The term ‘administrators’ is another word for managerialist and corporate apparatchiks.

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managerialism. Managerialism is also ‘unleashing the power of business’ (p. 56) onto universities, academics and elsewhere.

It is getting worse. [Managerialism and] ‘neoliberalism create perverse incentives. Instead of doing the stated tasks of a job, more and more time is spent recording partially, or totally one-sided representations of that work’ (p. 58). At universities and in many other places, it is ‘no wonder so many of today’s workers are so miserable’ (p. 65).

And of course, ‘all of our jobs have significant effects on our health, on our relationships with ourselves and our relationship with others’ (p. 68). Not surprisingly, inside as well as outside of universities, ‘workload pressure is the single greatest cause of work-related illness’ (p. 69). Worse, many workers ‘spend an average of eight hours a week replying to work-related emails outside of work’ (p. 70). The emphasis is on ‘outside of work’; many will agree.

Meanwhile, ‘high-powered executives take off on multiple holidays, undergo digital detoxing and visit luxury spas to cope with stress’ (p. 73). Self-evidently, this is not for those Karry Hudson (2019) calls ‘Lowborn’. Applying more to the lowborn than to high-flying CEOs, ‘while work can be dangerous, exploitative or even just boring, all work under capitalism harms workers because of the coercion that pushes us into it, and the lack of control we face during it’ (p. 81).

And of course, the lack of control includes the relentless drive of management using performance management against workers. In this ‘we are measured…against standards we can’t meet because there is always, theoretically, more we could be doing [which] is a real source of pain and frustration’ (p.

82). This can very easily lead to burnout, an illness the World Health Organisation says, has three dimensions (p. 85): 1. Energy depletion or exhaustion.

2. Mental distance, feelings of negativity and cynicism; and finally, 3. A sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment.

In a milder form, this creates ‘pseudo-busyness’ (p. 87) pretending to be busy all the time. That applies to many white-collar workers including academics. At universities, ‘the main source of university income is now from tuition fees: they receive money per student’ (p. 95). That means administering students has become more important than research – an unwarranted cost factor. As a consequence, marketing, accounting, operations management, etc. have become ever more relevant for universities.

Worse, ‘this creates a circular logic: grades are inflated to increase rankings; higher rankings mean more students apply and degrees are looked upon more fondly by employers. This doesn’t do anything to actual standards of teaching; it’s a bubble’ (p. 95). Sadly, the neoliberal university is not about standards of teaching nor is it about research. It is about revenue maximisation and creaming-off benefits for the corporate apparatchiks. vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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Of course, ‘as universities move away from teaching and research and towards student recruitment’ (p. 96), academics become ever less relevant and as a consequence, they are treated like assembly-line workers until they can be outsourced or automated away. Meanwhile, a student’s life is getting ghastlier moving from: university, a place where one once wanted to go, to a place to be endured. Today, students ‘take on student loans, debt from personal loans or overdrafts, work several part-time jobs, and at the end of it, the promise of a rewarding or less miserable job quickly evaporates’ (p. 96).

Perhaps even more severe is the fact that, ‘the salaries of professional jobs can decline, as has happened across the public sector (apart from at the level of senior management) where…pay for teachers, ambulance drivers, university staff, nurses and so on, has seen significant real-terms cut in the past decade’ (p. 106). Given all this, it is not surprising that ‘individual resistance’ (p. 115) has increased.

It is not at all surprising to find that ‘the average office worker spends fifty minutes of their working day avoiding work’ (p. 115). Yet, ‘the practice of individual resistance at work is to stave off the boredom that comes from repetitive tasks and the frustration that comes from the brazen stupidity of the workplace’ (p. 116). Someone once said the answer to the question, why is school and university so boring? is that it prepares you for work. Meanwhile, the increasingly recognisable ‘brazen stupidity’ (p. 116) of work is noticeable to some academics while others may not notice this at all.

Those who don’t notice may even thrive in such workplaces.

Some are even promoted from low- level academics to highpower corporate apparatchiks. And some people say ‘stupidity doesn’t pay’; in universities, it increasingly does.

In universities and elsewhere, ‘refusing to love your job, refusing to see it as the most important thing in your life can become a form of resistance’ (p. 120). This can also lead to dismissal, demotion or exclusion when it comes to promotions. Another form of resistance may well be ‘refusing to seriously engage with the most frustrating demands of the workplace’ (p. 121), e.g., not participating in endless work meetings – which are the true highlights of any halfway decent corporate apparatchik.

Even inside universities, ‘work is unable to hold people’s attention; it does not provide them with the meaning that they had been promised it would have’ (p. 124). Deceptively, ‘people still hold out hope (wrongly or rightly?) that their next job will be better, will finally offer them meaning and recognition, a nice boss, a better salary and so on’ (p. 125).

Instead of such false hopes, workers might be better off placing their hope in ‘unions [that] have two goals…the first of these is the immediate betterment of conditions in a given workplace…the second goal is the ever-expanding union, the bringing of more and more workers into unions’ (p. 130).

Amelia Horgan closes her exquisite book with the words, ‘a Working in 2021 Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer & Meg Young

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future without the indignities, petty cruelties, exploitation and misery of capitalist work is possible, and it is one worth fighting for’ (p. 166).

Princeton: William Blake Trust/Princeton University Press (1991).

Thomas Klikauer has 700 publications and writes regularly for BraveNewEurope (Western Europe), the Barricades (Eastern Europe), Buzzflash (USA), Counterpunch (USA), Countercurrents (India), Tikkun (USA), and ZNet (USA).

One of his books is on Managerialism. His next book is on Media Capitalism (Palgrave).

Hudson, K. (2019). Lowborn: growing up, getting away and returning to Britain’s poorest towns. London: Chatto & Windus.

Meg Young (GCA and GCPA, University of New England at Armidale) is a Sydney Financial Accountant & HR Manager who likes good literature and proof reading.

Contact: T.Klikauer@westernsydney.edu.au

References Blake, W. (1804). Jerusalem – The emanation of the giant Albion (edited with an introduction and notes by Morton D. Paley). London &

Burtch, G., Carnahan, S. & Greenwood, B. N. (2018). Can you gig it? An empirical examination of the gig economy and entrepreneurial activity. Management Science, 64(12), 5497-5520.

Jones, O. (2011). Chavs: the demonisation of the working class. London: Verso.

Klikauer, T. & Link, C. (2021). The Good-Doing Elite. Retrieved from https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-good-doing-elite/ Thompson, E. P. (1963). The Making of the English Working Class.

London: Victor Gollancz.

Thompson, E. P. (1967). Time, work-discipline and industrial capitalism. Past & Present, 38(1), 56-97.

Wood, A. (2020). Despotism on demand: how power operates in the flexible workplace. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Youn, S. (2019). 40% of Americans don’t have $400 in the bank for emergency expenses: Federal Reserve. ABC News. Retrieved from https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americans-struggle-cover-400emergency-expense-federal/story?id=63253846

A gig guide for the 21st century The Gig Economy – Workers and Media in the Age of Convergence, by Brian Dolber, Michelle RodinoColocino, Chenjerai Kumanyika & Todd Wolfson ISBN 9780367686222, Routledge, London, xvii+322 pp., 2021.

Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer and Meg Young Written by 33 international authors and organised by four editors, Brian Dolber and his colleagues’ book The Gig Economy provides more than just a contemporary examination of a rather cool sounding part of capitalism – The Gig Economy. Behind the trendy name lurks a reality of work that is everything but cool. The book’s seventeen chapters show as much.

One of the key lessons of the entire volume appears right in the book’s first line when Michelle Rodino-Colocino says, ‘if we don’t band together, it’s only going to get crappier’ (p.

3). That work is going to be crappier defines not only the neoliberal workplace but the gig economy as a whole. Crappy work remains part of the gig economy that, according to the US Department of Labor, is defined as, ‘a single project or tasks for which a worker is hired, often through a digital marketplace, to work on demand’ (p. 4). The resulting and often highly standardised working conditions can create circumstances that can unify workers throughout the gig

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economy to improve them. In other words, gig workers are ‘recognising their common interests’ (p. 4) for higher wages, shorter working hours, and better working conditions.

Yet, unlike many other workers, gig workers also struggle for recognition in a very particular way. They ‘demand immediate recognition of drivers’ rights as employees’ (p. 5). Gig workers are employed under the manageriallegal hallucination of being contractors – not employees – by ‘the captains of data-mediated capitalism’ (p. 5). In that, gig management is aided by the fact that sections of gig management have become algorithmic management.

Algorithmic management relies on mathematical algorithms used as a technical form of control.

As such, management ‘cultivates a comforting sense of technical neutrality’ (p. 7). This is incredibly useful to management. It can setup control systems, engineer surveillance, and discipline workers while pretending that these are only technical and neutral issues. In reality,

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such algorithms are not much more than managerial ideas formulated as mathematical formulas. These do exactly what management wants them to do. One might indeed call this version of algorithmic control, ‘algorithmic oppression’ (p. 8).

Management fancies this particularly when it comes to the ‘Never Never Girl who never takes a vacation or holiday, never asks for a rise, and never fails to please’ (p. 8) and, of course, never goes on strike. The managerial wish of the Never Never Girl is powerfully assisted through the managerial fiction of workers as contracted gig workers because the US National Labor Relations Board, for example, excludes those workers from accessing ‘key labour rights such as the right to unionise and bargain collectively’ (p. 23) – which is a human right covering all workers with no exclusion.

In addition, corporate managers or those that can be called corporate apparatchiks also like to offload unwarranted elements of production onto workers. Economists use the word ‘externalisation’ for this. It simply means, to let someone else bear the cost of what capitalism does, e.g. environmental vandalism, underpaying workers, etc. In the case of gig workers, offloading costs onto workers is pushed through even though ‘four in five drivers [for example, want] health insurance … about 79% would like to receive overtime pay, while 74% would like paid sick leave and access to a retirement plan’ (p. 40).

Yet, ‘gig companies invest hundreds of millions of dollars … to avoid reclassifying their workforce as employees’ (p. 42).

The payoffs for companies and corporations are huge. As long as gig workers can be managed through a platform and kept in the insecure status of being contractors – not employees. This is now a global phenomenon. The situation of gig workers in India, for example, is even worse. In India, digital platforms for domestic workers have ‘grown at a rate of 60% month on month’ (p. 47) pushing Indian domestic workers ever deeper into informal work.

These ‘on-demand platforms provide a short-term service, closest to the Uber-model of the gig economy’ (p. 49).

Of course, the Orwellian language of Managerialism has to remain deceptive when seeking to smokescreen reality.

The language of Managerialism might well be a form of Gaslighting – a term used in propaganda to indicate when fiction and reality become blurred. A good example is the managerialist word ‘partner’. On this a worker said, ‘they call us partners, but that is just a misnomer. Eventually, they do what they want to do and we have no option but to obey. Is that what a partner is?’ (p. 52).

The basics of the gig economy also apply to another group of workers who, in addition to precarious working conditions also experiences ‘stigmatisation as sex workers’ (p. 59) as Lauren Levitt outlines. And indeed, ‘sex work shares many characteristics of the gig economy’ (p. 61). Like ‘gig work, sex work frequently denies workplace rights such as a minimum vol. 64, no. 1, 2022

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wage, maximum weekly hours, or protection against discrimination’ (p. 62). Interestingly, ‘many [sex] workers have day jobs, or on-going employment outside the sex industry …

Liz works as a receptionist in a funeral home part time and at the same time, as being a dominatrix’ (p. 68). Yet, the gig economy not only includes dominatrix but also offers books on how to become a gig worker.

As one might have expected that there is an industry that pretends to help workers into the gig economy. It publishes guidebooks on how to become a gig worker. The key message of these guidebooks is that they ‘conceive success and failure as individuals rather than structural’ (p. 76). In other words, horrific working conditions, insecurity, and low wages are a worker’s personal fault. They have nothing to do with management and capitalism. Instead, gig workers are told to ‘embrace a gig mind-set [which] involves learning to monetise a passion’ (p. 80). The perversion continues with ‘life as a portfolio [and the] life-ing of work’ (p. 82). Much of this is designed for the ‘idealisation of gig work [to eventually] substitute life for work’ (p. 85) with the goal of ‘self-help becoming self-blame’ (p. 86).

Yet, the supposedly neutral term gig economy also impacts negatively on people outside the gig economy, as Brian Dolber and Christina Geisel’s examination of Airbnb shows. The ‘company reinforces racial segregation and gentrification of US housing markets [with] most [of ] Airbnb’s revenue [going] disproportionally to new white residents and speculators’ (p. 111). In other words, ‘Airbnb … perpetuates structural racism’ (p. 112). Beyond that, ‘Airbnb has developed a program, Airbnb Citizen, which mobilises petitbourgeois hosts towards political action in order to protect corporate interests’ (p. 112). On the whole, ‘Airbnb reflects neoliberal and neo-fascist tendencies in mobilising consumers in its interest’ (p. 112).

As one might have expected, academic labour is not excluded from all this, as the process of ‘Uberisation moves academic labour into the sphere of the gig economy’ (p. 125).

Here too, the neoliberal university and the gig economy is ‘shifting its focus from rights to risks’ (p. 126). Increasingly, management shifts these risks onto academic staff which ‘are now expected to be social entrepreneurs and enjoy it’ (p.

126). Perhaps even more than in the case of Uber, academics move from ‘project to project … a determining character of the gig economy’ (p. 127). Meanwhile, ‘over 70 per cent [of US academics] are in non-tenure-track positions’ (p. 128) – signifying ‘gig academia’ (p. 131).

For gig academia too, the neoliberal ideology of ‘being your own boss draws more … workers into precarious careers’– often with no careers at all, but high degrees of ‘financial insecurity’ (p. 160). Beyond the shiny promises of being your own boss, lurks the reality of the gig economy namely, that algorithms and other ‘socio-technical feature of platforms

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reinforce … social inequality’ (p. 162). This works not only in academic labour, it also works in many other sectors as well.

For ‘platform-mediated sex work [for example, this means that] platforms aim to squeeze the most value out of commodel labour … collecting 40% to 70% [of all] earnings’ (p. 168), as Kavita Ilona Nayar notes. Worse, ‘marginalisation of sex work gives platforms more control over their labour and the ability to institute unfair terms and conditions with little pushback’ (p. 168). The setup also feeds ‘the myth that a model can create their own stability’ (p. 170). Worse, algorithms linked to cameras also work their magic as ‘MyFreeCams use “camscores” to rank models’ (p. 170).

Of course, there are plenty of online platforms ‘seeking to incorporate cultural practices into profitable business practices’ (p. 180). Yet, the ‘class struggle has not vanished; it has been remade and masked’ (p. 180). In academia, as in sex work, as in many other areas of the gig economy, what Randy Nichols calls ‘hope labour’ (p. 181) is propagated. Hope labour exists when ‘people provide free labour hoping it leads to employment’ (p. 181) – often an unfulfilled hope.

Virtually all of this depends on a massive amount of data.

This data – big data – feeds digital capitalism. Indeed, ‘data is to digital capitalism what oil or minerals have been to earlier industrial stages of capitalism, for it must be mined, extracted, and refined by algorithms’ (p. 190). ‘Algorithms have enabled us to “datafy” the world’ (p. 190). Perhaps Uber is the prime example.

‘Uber … rents hardware and software from AWS’s Cloud platform and relies on Google for mapping, Braintree for payments, SendGrid for emailing, and Twilio for texting … Uber offloads the costs of transportation to its drivers … Uber engages in what we call data fracking … Uber’s app penetrates deep beneath the surface of everyday life to collect, direct, and leverage valuable flows of data for competitive advantage, often creating public hazards for consumers, drivers, and municipal planners from its data hoarding in the process … with each ride or delivery transaction, Uber amasses a wealth of data’ (p. 192). And ‘Uber often uses data it collects against drivers … Uber leverages data on its drivers to control them [and finally,] Uber’s ratings system makes management omnipresent’ (p. 193).

In other words, Uber – like many other platforms – has established the near perfect system of surveillance capitalism.

George Orwell could have hardly come up with the more evil ‘Big Brother is watching you’ system. The sheer wickedness and perfection of these systems do indeed constitute ‘yet another blow to unions’ (p. 207). In order to fight these blows against trade unions, perhaps what is termed ‘platform organising’ (p. 207) is needed. Platform organising takes on three forms (p. 207): 1. Labour and solidarity organising: this is the online organising of a highly-skilled core workforce of a tech sector company.

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2.

Resistance organising: this is the organising of workers’ resistance to the gig economy, as well as resistance to companies governing the labour forces through digital platforms; and finally, 3. Counter-platform organising: this is the development of specific counter-platforms for workers dedicated to facilitating communication among workers for the purposes of political action, mutual support, strikes, boycotts, and labour organising in general.

Of course, once communication is channelled through online platforms by management, ‘asymmetrical communication regimes’ (p. 209) are established. In that way, ‘management dominates labour communication both externally and internally’ (p. 209) making it even harder for labour and trade unions to organise. Not only because of this deficiency or structural advantage of corporations, labour’s communication is forced to rely on two forms: communication ‘organised through mainstream platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, slack.com, etc.; the second form are dedicated labour-organising platforms that are purpose-built for worker-to-worker communication’ (p. 213).

Yet, trade unions and workers need to make sure ‘that platforms [do not] become seen as the ends rather than the means for developing worker power’ (p. 218). Beyond that, a central theme of the entire book is what Callum Cant and Jamie Woodcock describe in the following way, ‘while a central premise of platform capitalism is that workers are no longer workers but rather independent contractors, the struggles documented here show that whether they are categorised that way or not, workers are finding new ways to collectively struggle’ (p. 266).

Finally, Michelle Rodino-Colocino and Chenjerai Kumanyika end the book by repeating the very first line of the book, ‘if we don’t band together, it’s only going to get crappier’ (p. 277). This testifies to the key message of a brilliant book that brings together a truly global range of insights into the gig economy.

Thomas Klikauer has 700 publications and writes regularly for BraveNewEurope (Western Europe), the Barricades (Eastern Europe), Buzzflash (USA), Counterpunch (USA), Countercurrents (India), Tikkun (USA), and ZNet (USA).

One of his books is on Managerialism. His next book is on Media Capitalism (Palgrave).

Meg Young (GCA and GCPA, University of New England at Armidale) is a Sydney Financial Accountant & HR Manager who likes good literature and proofreading.

Contact: T.Klikauer@westernsydney.edu.au

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Ruin or reform and redemption?

Australia’s universities. Can they reform? By Salvatore Babones ISBN: Paperback: 978-1-922644-81-7 Ocean Reeve Publishing, Brisbane, Australia, 205 pp., 2021.

Reviewed by Bob Birrell

Salvatore Babones will be well known for his opinionated newspaper articles about Australia’s universities. Though an associate professor at the University of Sydney, he has been an outspoken critic.

This book continues in that mould. It is mainly about the Group of Eight (Go8) major research-intensive universities.

Babones argues these universities have focused on achieving top spots in the global ranking systems. To do so they have prioritised research valued in high-ranking international scientific publications. They have largely succeeded in this objective through the revenue they have accrued by massively increasing overseas student enrolment levels. They have used much of this revenue to hire high performing researchers and to finance the kind of research likely to achieve high international rankings.

The proportion of international students at the University of Sydney was 44.4 per cent in 2019, up from 19.7 per cent in 2011. Monash University with 49.4 per cent was the leader in 2019. These proportions are way above those in elite universities in the US and the UK. What is wrong with this outcome given the evident research success? Babones’ critique will be familiar to most readers of this journal. He asserts that the research resulting is largely irrelevant to Australian industrial needs, and that it has been at the expense of the quality of teaching.

It is a pretty devastating attack. About the only area of university activity Babones does not take on is the woke priorities within Go8 humanities and social science departments. Perhaps that is too close to home even for him.

While Babones’ critique is not new, he does add substance to the case. Much of the focus is on university finances. He claims that they are infrastructure starved because overseas students are not charged for the full cost of the service they receive. They are charged at marginal costs rather than the average costs of the revenues universities receive from government funding and fees from domestic students.

The result is an overcrowded and under-resourced teaching service. He focusses on the business courses that attract the bulk of overseas students, where both the overseas and local students get a substandard education. This is exacerbated by

the Go8 reward system which favours successful researchers relative to those focusing on teaching.

Contrary to repeated Go8 claims, Babones asserts that research funding is adequate by overseas standards. It is only underfunded in relation to the huge funds allocated to the big-ticket research projects the Go8 gives priority to. Babones argues that university complaints about inadequate research funding are really about the government’s reluctance to find the ‘big ticket’ research agenda that universities have pursued.

According to Babones, this is not the ordinary research engaged in by their teaching-and-research academics, but bigticket research centrally funded by university management.

Why are universities doing this? It is all about the prestige flowing from high international rankings and the revenue that flows from these rankings in attracting high fee-paying international students – revenues that can be directed at big-ticket research as well as the recruitment of highly cited researchers (HCRs) whose performance influences the ratings. Babones documents the extent to which Australian universities are gaming the international ratings by recruiting such HCRs. Babones is not confident that the universities will reform.

They are too dependent on international student fees.

He recommends a cap be placed on the overseas student proportion of total enrolments.

He predicts a gloomy future for Australia’s universities mainly because he thinks overseas student enrolments will languish in the post-Pandemic era. He focusses on the China case where he thinks demographics (the falling cohort of university aged young people) and China’s priority to have them train in China will restrict offshore recruitment. This is an interesting take that supplements the usual fear that Chinese geopolitical condemnation of Australia will inhibit enrolment in Australian universities.

As noted, Babones has little to say about non-Go8 universities, yet as his own data show many of these have also massively increased their enrolment of international students.

The proportion at Victoria University by 2019 had reached 43.6 per cent and at the University of Southern Queensland, 37.2 per cent.

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Why are so many pursuing this strategy? Babones does not illuminate. Nonetheless he predicts a bleak future for nonGo8 universities as well, because of their financial dependence on international student fees. They primarily depend on enrolments from the sub-continent of India. He thinks that this area may well be tapped out because there is only a limited number of families in the region (relative to China) who are capable of financing an Australian education for their children or relatives.

Elsewhere in his book Babones notes the importance these Asian students attach to the working rights a student visa entitles. In projecting weak future enrolments, he does not seem to appreciate how systematically Australian education policies have been crafted precisely to increase these rights.

They have been designed to encourage enrolment from students keen to work in Australia.

Two measures were crucial. The Labor Government made a two-year post-study work visa available to all overseas students who enrolled from November 2011 and who subsequently completed a degree. It also sharply reduced the financial requirements a student had to attest to in order to be issued with a student visa. It was well understood at the time that this would encourage enrolments from students who had to work to finance their education here.

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This access to the Australian labour market and potentially to stay for multiple years on a temporary or permanent visa will provide a continuing motivation for many Asian students to enrol here. Enrolment is not limited by family wealth as Babones suggests, but by access to loan funds from their home country and work opportunities in Australia (which are then used to fund their expenses here and to repay loans). Given the huge number of Asians anxious to avail themselves of Australian earnings, enrolments from Asia (other than China) are likely to remain strong, Pandemic restrictions permitting.

This book is a lively read. It will please and infuriate but is none the worse for that. University administrators will be in the latter camp. Some academics and administrative staff will be in the former; nodding their heads when Babones concludes that vice-chancellors ought to have resigned for the mess they left their university’s finances in because of excessive reliance on international student enrolments.

Bob Birrell is the head of the Australian Population Research Institute (www.tapri.org.au) Contact: bob.birrell@tapri.org.au

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