A U S T R A L I A N
U N I V E R S I T I E S ’
R E V I E W
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.
vol. 64, no. 1, 2022
Ruin or reform and redemption? Reviewed by Bob Birrell
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