Trinity College THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE
Undergraduate education for the 21st century: Australia at the crossroads A speech by Professor Donald Markwell, Warden of Trinity College, to the Oxford Society in Victoria, Melbourne, 5 September 2002
Trinity Papers Number 20 - September 2002 www.trinity.unimelb.edu.au
Undergraduate education for the 21st century: Australia at the crossroads
September 2002
Abstract This paper – the extended text of a speech delivered to the Oxford Society in Victoria – suggests that it is important that Australia offer undergraduate education which is comparable with the best in the world. It considers the needs of graduates in a 21st century of global influences and rapid change, and argues for an important role – the need for which is perhaps even more clearly evident in the wake of September 11 - for 'large and liberal education' rather than a premature focus on vocational preparation. The speech considers the key attributes of the finest undergraduate education in the world, and suggests that Australian undergraduate education does not, in general, rate well on these attributes. It argues that vision, determination, and a massive increase in resources, including the capacity for institutions to generate resources from fees and philanthropy, are needed if Australian undergraduates are to be offered an education which is amongst the best in the world. The alternative is for Australian undergraduate education to continue to slide into mediocrity by comparison with the world’s leading institutions.
Contents Introduction: Sir Zelman Cowen and Oxford
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The importance of world-class undergraduate education for Australia
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Three central questions
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The needs of graduates in a world of change
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‘Large and liberal education’
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Liberal education after September 11
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The world’s finest undergraduate education
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From here to there: vision, determination, and resources
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Conclusion
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Undergraduate education for the 21st century: Australia at the crossroads A speech by Professor Donald Markwell to the Oxford Society in Victoria, Melbourne, on 5 September 2002 Sir John Young, Sir Zelman Cowen, other distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemenIt is a great pleasure for my wife and for me to be with you today, in the company of others who, like us, have a deep affection and appreciation for one of the world’s finest universities.
Introduction: Sir Zelman Cowen and Oxford Central to my memories of 15 years based in Oxford, from 1981 to 1996, is a deep friendship with Sir Zelman Cowen which developed in his years as Provost of Oriel, and which I am delighted to say has continued with us both back in Australia. I am grateful for this chance to pay a public tribute to Sir Zelman - one of the great figures of Australian academic and public life. As well as being a beacon for liberal values, and much else besides, for us today it is highly relevant that he also symbolises Australia’s contribution to Oxford, and what Australia has gained from Oxford. I am proud to claim him as mentor and friend. Although, like Sir Zelman, I went to Oxford as a post-graduate student, most of my years in Oxford - like most of his - were really focussed on undergraduate education he as a tutor at Oriel in the 1940s, and Provost of that College in the 1980s, and me as tutor at Merton from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. Sir Zelman, as Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Melbourne from 1951 to 1966, and then as a ViceChancellor in the Universities of New England and Queensland, maintained a very clear emphasis on the importance of undergraduate education. My own concern for undergraduate education has continued back in Australia as Warden of Trinity College at the University of Melbourne over the last five years. I think it would be widely agreed that Oxford’s greatest - though certainly not its only - claim to being one of the world’s finest universities lies in the quality of its undergraduate education. This quality, although uneven in places, is extremely high by any international standards, and it is, as we all know, underpinned by the tutorial system and the collegiate system - systems which endure notwithstanding the challenges, strains, and criticisms of the last many years. Given the centrality of undergraduate education to Oxford, the centrality of undergraduate education to the quality of higher education and to any nation’s certainly to Australia’s - social vitality and economic competitiveness, and the fact that - let me be frank - it is one of the few topics I know the first thing about, I thought
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that some discussion of undergraduate education for the century on which we have recently embarked might be of some interest to you.
The importance of world-class undergraduate education for Australia These issues are especially topical with the present review of higher education initiated by the Federal Minister for Education, Science, and Training, Dr Brendan Nelson, under the challenging but, I think, accurate title ‘Higher Education at the Crossroads’. I have no doubt that Australian higher education is at the crossroads, and that decisions taken by government and by institutions of higher education in the next year will significantly determine whether Australian higher education will continue to slip, and perhaps irretrievably slip, into a morass of mediocrity when compared with the world’s leading universities. We are at the crossroads in undergraduate education, I believe, fundamentally because a long period of tightness in public funding of universities, and the inability of universities to gain sufficient resources from private sources, including from student fees, has meant a significant deterioration in the quality of our university education. Our universities are simultaneously under-funded and over-regulated. Any measure or assessment will be controversial, and needs qualification, but for me the striking figure is the shift in the ratio of staff to students in our universities from one staff member to 12.9 students in 1990 to one staff member to 18.8 students in 2000. Let me repeat those figures: from one staff member to 12.9 students in 1990 to one staff member to 18.8 students in 2000. This is a deterioration, and a huge one. Although it may have been accompanied by some sensible economies, it is nonsense to regard it as essentially an ‘efficiency gain’. It has meant overcrowding, the effective abolition of real tutorials in many cases, and even less opportunity than before for meaningful direct contact between students and academics - what Oxford knows in its bones is the essence of good education. At the same time, of course, many of the world’s leading universities have been further enhancing their offerings to students. I think especially of the top US universities, which have all the flexibility, financial and otherwise, of private institutions, and which focus sharply on providing a high quality of education for students. We in Australia face a very considerable challenge if the quality of our undergraduate education is not to continue falling behind the best in the world. Leaving aside the cultural significance of this, it is now widely understood that a high quality of undergraduate education is crucial for Australia’s economic well-being in an increasingly competitive and global ‘knowledge economy’ where an economy’s performance is determined by the quality of its so-called ‘knowledge workers’. In such a world, the career opportunities for individual Australians - for example, for jobs in international financial institutions and other businesses – will be determined in competition with graduates of the world’s most prestigious and finest universities.
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Undergraduate education seems to me especially important - as the prelude for the majority of students to entry into employment, as the prelude for many to postgraduate education and professional training, and as an important part of the preparation of many of the future leaders of our society for their roles of leadership, including simply for roles as active citizens in a world which desperately needs active citizens. I would like to discuss undergraduate education with particular focus on Australia, but viewing Australia very much in international context - which we in this country do too rarely. In discussing Australian undergraduate education, I do not wish to discourage students from looking and, indeed, going to Oxford and other leading universities abroad: indeed, quite the opposite. It seems to me profoundly important for Australia that as many as possible of the future leaders in all fields of endeavour - business, the professions, politics and public service, academia, and more - gain international experience and the very best education they can; and this must mean as many as possible spending some of their university education in universities such as Oxford, dare I say it? - Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and the like. But it also seems to me profoundly important that we in Australia offer our university students the very best education we possibly can here, and that to do this, we must look in an informed and judicious way at what is done in the world’s finest universities, such as Oxford. I also wish to stress that - as someone who has seen how well so many Australians do in Oxford and elsewhere abroad, and who chose to give up a permanent position in Oxford to come home to lead an educational institution in Australia - I am very much aware of the strengths as well as the weaknesses of Australian higher education. Continuing to speak personally, I believe that the undergraduates in residence in my College gain from it and the University of Melbourne a very fine all-round undergraduate education. My College also has over 800 international students doing courses with us which prepare them for undergraduate degree courses in the University of Melbourne. I have no doubt that what Trinity College and the University of Melbourne offer them is something of real quality, and well worth their coming to Australia for. But there are still unpleasant facts to face about Australian higher education, and if we do not face them they will become more and more unpleasant.
Three central questions I would like to consider three central questions: • • •
First, what sort of undergraduate education is needed to help prepare students for meaningful and productive lives in the 21st century? Secondly, what are the characteristics of the finest undergraduate education in the world? Thirdly, what would we need to do to provide such undergraduate education in Australia?
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The needs of graduates in a world of change Let us consider my first question: what sort of undergraduate education is needed to help prepare students for meaningful and productive lives in the 21st century? To be well-educated, to be effective citizens, to be significant social and economic contributors, to be all they can be, graduates of the 21st century will need many qualities. Many of these have been spoken of by many others before me, and may even be in danger of being cliches: but let me still say what I believe to be true. Before stressing things that are changing, let me stress that some things do not change. These include: • the need for education to help individuals to live personally rewarding and fulfilling lives, • the importance of education encouraging them to lead lives of service to the community, and lives of active citizenship, • the need for education to encourage students to think about issues of values and ethics, of what is right and what is wrong for the individual and for society, and • the desirability of intellectual breadth so that one is fully alive and alert to the world around oneself - if you like, so that one is a civilised human being. One of the qualities the graduates of the 21st century need is the capacity to cope with, and to make the most of, significant and rapid change in their own lives and careers, and in the ‘knowledge’ they need to master. For individuals to cope with the problems of change and make the most of the opportunities it creates requires personal resilience, an aptitude and inclination towards so-called ‘lifelong learning’, and a capacity to think critically and independently for themselves. It is increasingly commonplace to say that in a world marked by rapid change of many sorts - scientific, technological, economic, legal, social, and other - knowledge changes so quickly that, while students must acquire a great deal of knowledge as undergraduates and in other education and training, what they need more than specific knowledge - which will soon be out-dated - are the intellectual and personal skills which enable them to come to a fresh body of knowledge and master it for themselves - identify its essence and key issues, think it through for themselves, and apply it to the problems with which they have to deal. As well as having a capacity to think through fresh knowledge for oneself is a capacity to work in teams or partnerships with others, to draw on the expertise of others, and to share one’s expertise with them. This places a strong onus on students developing skills of teamwork as well as of independent critical thinking, and on their developing strong skills of clear and effective communication. The graduate of this century needs a capacity to operate in a globalised world - the international and inter-cultural awareness and perspectives needed to succeed in a world where virtually every aspect of human activity is increasingly shaped by forces that cross national boundaries and span the globe. This is true not only of all aspects of business, but also of, say, public policy issues which are increasingly seen in an
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international context of politics and law. We need people able, in the wonderful phrase, to think globally while acting locally - but also able to act locally in several different locations around the world, able to do business in Seoul or Shanghai or Frankfurt as well as in Collins Street. The globalising world in which we live is a world of high competition, and our graduates need the skills, intellectual and personal, to succeed in that environment. One of the great drivers of change in the world today is, of course, scientific and technological research and development. Most obviously, our graduates - all of them need the capacity to work with advanced information and communication technology. Some such capacity will soon be, if it is not already, almost as essential as being able to read and write: it is, or will be, one of the essentials of being able to engage fully in the society and economy in which we live. Not only will we need graduates with specialist expertise in all manner of rapidly-evolving scientific and scientific-related subjects, but for anyone to be able to engage with the great issues of the day, including the great ethical issues of the day, there will need to be some degree of scientific literacy. How is it possible to consider the ethical issues arising in stem-cell research if one doesn’t know what a stem-cell is? We also need people with the capacity to operate in an Australia in which growing social diversity is both a fact of life and a cause for celebration. Australian undergraduates today need to be exposed to the variety of cultures, including the variety of religious faiths, which are increasingly evident in this country. They need to be exposed, as students of my generation and earlier were generally not, to issues of concern to indigenous Australians. A sympathetic awareness of indigenous issues and an inter-cultural awareness seem to me essential to function in the Australia of today, and of tomorrow. The changes that I have talked about are combined with a rapid growth in the scale and depth of specialised knowledge in probably every field of human endeavour – for example, arising from scientific research. The growth of what can be known, and of what needs to be known if one is truly to master a subject, points to the need for very highly trained and educated specialists in every field. And yet the need for specialists exists alongside the need for graduates to have the generic skills I have identified of critical thinking and clear communication, to be able to see linkages between fields, and to have a broad knowledge so that they can see their own field in context and so that they can be properly educated for the world in which they live.
‘Large and liberal education’ How do we balance the need for specialist knowledge with these other needs which point to the importance of what has been called ‘large and liberal education’?
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I believe that an excellent way of producing that balance is in the American system of a ‘liberal arts’ undergraduate education followed by professional or vocational or other specialised education or training. Another way of doing it is in the growth in Australia of joint degrees - of students studying Law and Arts, or Science and Law, or Arts and Science, and so on. Another way of doing it is the Oxbridge way of studying (or ‘reading’) one subject in depth as an undergraduate - be it chemistry, or Classics, or PPE - and then, quite often, preparing for a career in another field - for example, then training as a lawyer. Without wishing to prescribe a model for Australia, I would like to stress the importance of our giving serious attention to this need to balance the specialist and the broader education graduates need. And without denying the importance of specialised education at some point in a student’s education, I believe very strongly that the case for ‘large and liberal’ education is becoming greater than ever. The expression 'liberal education' has various meanings, but at the core would normally be such elements as: • an emphasis on intellectual and personal breadth, including learning through wide reading and debate about a diverse range of human experience and the clash of great ideas, • the encouragement, through such learning, of key intellectual skills such as a capacity to think for oneself, to express oneself clearly, and to interpret the nuances of words and other things in their context, • encouragement to be an active citizen in society, who has thought carefully about her or his values and beliefs, and who has wide and humane international and inter-cultural awareness and understanding, and • a belief that such education should come before, or at very least accompany, purely vocational (career-specific) education. Australian higher education has long been far more narrowly vocationally focussed than higher education in the US or UK, where notions of 'liberal education' have been more prominent. It is interesting that more senior Australian business leaders seem now to be recognising the importance of graduates who have the broad intellectual base and the 'generic' or transferable skills - above all, of independent thinking and clear communication - which a liberal education should develop. If they employ graduates who have the capacity to think for themselves, to master new bodies of knowledge, and to be flexible in their thinking and their working with others, then the employer can help them get whatever vocationally-specific training or education they need. It is interesting to see in Canada, for example, leaders of the IT industry making a public statement of the value to them of graduates with a broader and more balanced education than IT alone. Such statements are made in support of efforts by Canadian universities to encourage recognition of the importance of liberal education. In other words, high-quality liberal education may be - often is - better preparation for a career than purely vocational education.
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What I am saying is not new. Sir Zelman Cowen, in his 1970 Garran Oration, quoted the long-time President of the University of Chicago, Robert Maynard Hutchins, as saying – ‘perhaps’, as Sir Zelman said, ‘a little extravagantly’ – that, in an increasingly technological society, ‘it now seems safe to say that the most practical education is the most theoretical one’. The argument of Hutchins and others was precisely the argument that specialised knowledge becomes out-of-date with ever-increasing speed, and so what it is most important to teach undergraduates, as a basis for a life of learning, is not specialised knowledge, but a broad span of valuable knowledge and generic skills which are transferable from one context to another.
Liberal education after September 11 As I have mentioned, liberal education should also encourage reflection on one's values, and the development of international and inter-cultural awareness, and of a capacity and motivation for active citizenship and community service. Many people argue that the events of and since September 11 last year show how important such liberal education is. Those events seem to have encouraged a growing interest in liberal education in various countries. For example, the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) has, since its founding decades ago, worked to encourage liberal education (as against narrow vocational training). In October last year - note the timing - the AACU endorsed a new campaign - the Campaign for the Advancement of Liberal Learning (CALL) - in which it is urging all US college presidents to pledge to help educate the public - both within and outside higher education - about the value of liberal education for all college or university students in the twenty-first century, whatever their chosen field or vocation. Another person stressing the importance of liberal education is the former Indonesian president, and a long-time Islamic scholar and leader, Abdurrahman Wahid, who argues that the liberal education of young Moslems is a crucial safeguard against Islamic fundamentalism. His words are a great challenge to us. He wrote earlier this year, and I quote him at some length: Most Muslims are strongly opposed to acts of violence in any form, undertaken in the name of religion. Consequently, it hurts us to constantly see the name of Islam, "the religion of peace", linked with international terrorism. ... We face a dangerously schizophrenic approach to educating our young people. At present, tens of thousands of Muslim students, mostly from impoverished developing nations that comprise the bulk of the Islamic world, are sent abroad to study in technologically more advanced societies in order that they may bring back home and apply to their own societies an understanding of modern science and technology. And so it is that every year thousands of young Muslims from developing nations such as Indonesia come of age while studying as strangers in foreign lands. Their education provides for them an understanding of modern technology and science but it is, of course, left to them to reconcile this newly gained knowledge with the Page 9
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faith that, as foreign students in the West, they increasingly come to feel to be at the core of their identity. Because they have not been trained in the rich disciplines of Islamic scholarship, they tend to bring to their reflection on their faith the same sort of modelling and formulistic thinking that they learnt as students of engineering or other applied sciences. Students studying liberal arts are rather better served when it comes to reflect on the place of Islam in the modern world. But precious few young Muslims from developing nations have the privilege of undertaking liberal arts courses in Western universities. This might seem but a small matter, but the ramifications are far reaching. Left to themselves, these future leaders of Muslim societies apply the same intellectual principles they have learned in the classrooms to understanding the place of Islam in the modern society. Many end up going down a familiar path, taking a more or less literalistic approach to the textual sources of Islam: The Koran and the traditions of the Prophet… Grabbing a few verses out of context, they seek to find answers to the challenges facing Muslim society today. The result is that they use these texts in literalistic and reductionistic fashion without being able to undertake, or even appreciate, the subtly nuanced task of interpretation required of them if they are to understand how documents from the 7th and 8th centuries, from the alien world of tribal Arab society among the desert sands, are to be correctly applied to the very different world that we live in today. Analysing problems in a reductionistic fashion and rigorously applying simple formulas may be an appropriate approach to building a bridge, or even erecting a skyscraper, but it is grossly inappropriate and inadequate to the task of building modern Muslim society. Sadly, without at all intending it to be so, we take the best of our young people and school them in such a way that, in the face of alienation, loneliness and the search for identity, they are unable to approach their faith with the intellectual sophistication that the demands of the modern world require of them. Until we begin to value a broad education for our young and face up to the nature of the intellectual challenges that face them, we are unwittingly condemning ourselves to forever struggle with the very forces of violent radicalism that we regard as being anathema to our faith. What a powerful statement for liberal education that is. To sum up my answer to the question ‘what sort of education do undergraduates need in the 21st century?’, it is that they need a ‘large and liberal education’ which also enables them to gain, then or later, the specialised knowledge they need - including
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the skills to update and widen that knowledge as they need to in a rapidly changing world.
The world’s finest undergraduate education My second question is: what are the characteristics of the finest undergraduate education in the world? When I speak of the finest undergraduate education in the world, I am thinking of Oxford and Cambridge in the UK; of the top universities - Ivy League or otherwise in the US such as Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and others; and, very importantly, of the leading liberal arts colleges in the US, such as Amherst, Swarthmore, Haverford, and others. Much could be said of this approach, but let me simply list the 14 attributes which I identify in the finest undergraduate educational institutions. These attributes are: (i)
Concentrations of the very best students. The world’s best institutions will have a concentration of students who are amongst the best in that country and, indeed, amongst the best in the world. Students travel from across the United States and across the globe to study at the top US universities, and similarly from across Britain and across the world to study at the leading British universities. We are seeing some active development of this pattern within Australia, of students travelling around the country to go to what they identify as the best university for them, and of students being increasingly attracted to Australian universities from around the world, and most especially from various Asian countries. An institution of high quality must be clear that it wants to attract the best students from interstate and overseas, and not simply those with the money to come. The leading US universities place enormous emphasis on having a ‘needs-blind’ admissions policy - offering places purely on merit and then, on discovering the student’s financial position, arranging packages of paid employment, scholarships and financial aid so that every student can afford to take up the place which he or she has earned on merit.
(ii)
Residential experience. The world’s finest undergraduate teaching institutions are generally residential. Certainly the ones I would identify most strongly – Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cambridge, and Oxford – all stress the fact that they are residential academic communities, at least at the undergraduate level. The Harvard undergraduate prospectus says that ‘by design, residential living among students and faculty is an essential part of the Harvard experience.’ The residential College is, of course, at the heart of Oxford and Cambridge - even when students live in ‘digs’ out of College. Many of the other attributes listed here are much easier to achieve, or are naturally connected with, residential academic communities in which each individual is known, is supported, is involved, and has a sense of belonging. This also has, amongst many others, the important benefit of students mixing with other students from a diversity of disciplines, whom they would probably
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not meet otherwise, and thus gaining an important element of personal and intellectual breadth. The sense of the student as a member of a community will contribute greatly to alumni feeling a continuing link with their institution and the world’s leading institutions place a strong emphasis on, and gain much from, their alumni. (iii)
Mentoring/‘advising’. Whether formally or informally identified, each individual undergraduate will have an academic of some seniority who watches and helps to guide their academic progress. In some cases, a person tutor, moral tutor, mentor, adviser, the title will vary - is appointed to have this explicit role for each student; in other cases, the contact between students and academic staff is sufficiently close that it just tends to happen. That person will assist in identifying individual strengths and weaknesses, will help them through difficult patches (which are inevitable during undergraduate years), will assist them to make the most of their undergraduate studies through sensible choice of subject options, and will help them to think about possible post-graduate study, and career options. This is an academic who gets to know the individual student, and to act as a mentor, if you like, giving each student a high degree of personal attention.
(iv)
High quality of academic instruction and staff. In the world’s very best institutions undergraduates will have exposure to teaching, in lectures or tutorials, all of which is good, and some of which is amongst the best in the world. This arises both from the quality of the academics employed, and from exposing undergraduates to the finest of them in some ways. The leading US institutions place enormous emphasis on recruiting and retaining nationally and internationally recognised academics of the highest calibre: the new President of Princeton, herself a distinguished science professor, has said that she has been surprised and impressed to see just how great those efforts are. The quality of academic staff is seen as crucial to the educational (and research) performance of the institution. US liberal arts colleges will be much more interested in the teaching capacity and performance than the research capacity and performance of ‘faculty’. For college tutorial positions in Oxford and Cambridge, considerable stress has traditionally been placed on teaching potential. In these universities, and in the research-intensive universities of the US, increasing emphasis is placed on research performance, potential, and reputation of academics.
(v)
Emphasis on small group teaching and individual academic attention. Although the practice varies, the world’s finest institutions place strong emphasis on small group teaching, including – where possible and appropriate – individual attention to the academic work of students. The best example of this, in my view, is the traditional Oxford tutorial or Cambridge supervision, where one or two or perhaps three students would meet with a tutor, an essay would be read, followed by rigorous discussion and questioning – a brilliant method of, amongst other things, honing intellectual rigour. The Oxbridge tutorial has been diluted to some extent in recent years, but still endures. In the
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finest North American institutions, the emphasis is both on maintaining small classes – though larger than the traditional Oxbridge tutorial – and on precepts or small group seminars to supplement or replace lectures. One of the measures commonly used to compare US institutions is the percentage of classes they have with fewer than 20 students. (vi)
Emphasis on mastery of material, independent thought, and clear communication. Each student will be encouraged and challenged and, indeed, pressed to work to master the subject, fully and deeply to understand it, and not simply to regurgitate material for the purposes of jumping assessment hurdles; to think for themselves, to be critical and independent thinkers, questioning, and developing their own approaches; to seek solutions to problems for themselves; and to communicate clearly and effectively, speaking – if you like – in their own voices.
(vii)
Non-vocational education – some form of ‘liberal education’. As I have already discussed, what seem to me to be the best undergraduate courses are not primarily vocational, seeking to train a person to do a particular job in the workforce, but are either general, seeking to educate the student broadly, giving them a broad range of knowledge and helping them develop the generic skills of independent thought and communication which I have mentioned; or the best courses are specialised, but in what for most students will be a subject in which they will not make their career, say classics, or English literature, or history; or the best courses present vocationally useful material in a broader context than the purely vocational – for example, presenting law in a jurisprudential way, asking not simply ‘what is law?’ but ‘why is it so?’, and with some regard to its philosophical, historical, political, and sociological context.
(viii) Natural commitment to the highest academic standards. The world’s finest teaching institutions stand unashamedly and without embarrassment for the highest academic standards. It is part of the natural order of things that these standards are simply expected of staff and students alike, even if they are not always achieved – and of course they are not always achieved. But no one doubts, nor often finds it necessary to explain, that the purpose of the institution is about scholarship of the very highest standards. (ix)
Engagement in a rich intellectual life and public debate outside the classroom. In such institutions, there will be a wealth of significant visiting lecturers giving major public lectures, seminars, and the like, of which students and staff will be readily aware, and in which many staff and students will take part. This rich intellectual life outside the classroom, and a widespread sense of being engaged in an intellectual life and in debate about major public issues, is, of course, unevenly spread among students and staff: but its existence in the world’s best university communities is undeniable.
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(x)
Student welfare and pastoral care. The world’s very best undergraduate teaching institutions will pay attention to the personal (and not purely the narrowly-defined academic) well-being of each student, including having what we may call a pastoral care ‘safety net’ in place. The most obvious example is in a college environment, where each student has her or his own college tutors, and students looking out for each other, and other officers of the college – a college nurse, college doctors, Deans, a Chaplain, an Adviser to Women Students, and perhaps others as well – concerned for the pastoral care of each student.
(xi)
Emphasis on character and values. The world’s finest undergraduate institutions seem often to aspire to contribute to shaping the character and the values of students, and not merely training their intellects. In 1999, the then President of Princeton, Harold T. Shapiro, writing in an article entitled ‘Liberal Education, Moral Education’, asked the question: ‘can – and should – a university teach its students to be better citizens and better people?’ His answer, suitably nuanced, was ‘yes’. To prepare individuals to be able to be and to want to be active and constructive citizens and leaders in promoting the public good, and not merely private self-interest, has historically been a central motivation of many, if not all, of the world’s greatest universities. Cecil Rhodes, in endowing the scholarships which bear his name, wished the most outstanding young men from many countries – women were included later – to come, in Oxford, ‘to esteem the performance of public duties as [their] highest aim’. Even those who stress more narrowly academic concerns are likely to place intellectual integrity as a foremost quality universities should promote.
(xii)
Encouragement to spiritual reflection. Not entirely unrelated to this, at least historically, is the fact that many of the world’s finest universities encourage spiritual reflection. The most obvious form of this is the foundation of most Oxbridge colleges as religious foundations, with College Chapels and Chaplains and sometimes Choirs of exceptional beauty – a presence of religion in the heart of the institution, a presence which does encourage in many some form of spiritual reflection, or in some cases, religious commitment.
(xiii) Extra-curricular activities. There will be opportunities for extra-curricular activities of a high quality – be they sport, choir, orchestras, dramatic groups, debating societies, student community service groups, or a myriad of other activities which students undertake together, and from which they can derive skills of teamwork and leadership, and other skills as well; great opportunities for friendship; a real sense of belonging, and of self-worth; and a great deal of enrichment and enjoyment. (xiv)
Institutional focus on quality of undergraduate education, and on institutional reputation. Although it takes different institutional and individual forms, in the world’s leading institutions for undergraduate education the institution as a whole, and its leaders, are highly focussed - often very consciously so - on the quality of undergraduate education. The
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institutional leaders will regard this as an important - in some cases, by far the most important - element of the institution’s reputation. Such leaders are usually highly conscious of the national and international reputation of their institution - indeed sometimes of their institution’s ranking in lists they may profess to dislike - and will be concerned to protect and enhance that reputation. It is striking to an Australian how openly institutions in the US speak of their mission to provide high-quality undergraduate education and an all-round undergraduate experience, and how important this appears to be to the institutional leadership. Although not usually articulated in the same way, this is also, in general, the highest priority of the leaders of ‘undergraduate’ colleges in Oxford and Cambridge. One aspect of this is often the desire that the institution in which this undergraduate experience is offered not grow too large, so that the key elements of it which depend on being part of a relatively small academic community are not diminished or destroyed. On each of these 14 attributes, it is possible to point to what is done in Australia, some of which is very good. Yet, taken all in all, if we are honest with ourselves, it is inescapable that very few Australian undergraduate students have an undergraduate education which would rate highly on more than a few, if on any, of these attributes. For reasons which I have stated¸ and which I hope are obvious, this is highly unsatisfactory.
From here to there: vision, determination, and resources So I turn, then, to my third question: what would we need to do to provide such undergraduate education in Australia? First, we need the vision to see what is needed and what can be achieved. We need, in our university leaders and in the key public policy-makers, a vision of a quality of higher education which is more - far more - than the ‘mass production’ model of undergraduate education which prevails widely today. Much of the language of higher education debate in Australia today is really the language of bureaucracy or the language of business. We need to transcend the language of bureaucracy and business with the language, and the values, of genuine quality education. We need far sharper focus on the real quality of the education which our students get - a focus on the quality of what actually happens to students, intellectually and more broadly, in their undergraduate years - and an aspiration to offer our students a quality of education which is increasingly comparable with the best in the world. There are some encouraging signs that such vision exists or is coming again to exist in some of our universities. Please forgive me for saying that my own College is committed to providing the best all-round education it possibly can, along the lines which I have talked about, and that we are focussing on the ambitious question of how to make that comparable with the best in the world. This year at the wider University of Melbourne, the senior leaders of the University have given a great deal of attention to two pieces of work which point very much in the right direction.
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One of these is a book by Harvard Professor Richard Light, entitled Making the Most of College: Students Speak their Minds (Harvard University Press, 2001). It draws on interviews with many hundreds of undergraduates at Harvard and other leading US universities to identify pointers - for students, for academics who teach them, and for educational leaders - to how to maximise the undergraduate educational experience. This book is being very widely read in the United States, and literally hundreds of copies of it have been sent to departmental heads and other leaders within the University of Melbourne – and it is having an impact on the way the University works and thinks about what it is offering its students. This is very encouraging. So is the adoption and distribution within the University of a statement of ‘Nine Principles Guiding Teaching and Learning in the University of Melbourne’ - nine principles which go right to the heart of good university education - and then the questioning: are we really doing enough to give effect to our own principles? What more should we be doing? In a higher education system of mass production in this country, it seems to me to be refreshing and encouraging to find such university documents speak of the importance of ‘an atmosphere of intellectual excitement’, of ‘a vibrant and embracing social context’, and of ‘explicit concern and support for individual development’ - and then of our probing what we are doing to ensure that these words are reflected in reality. Secondly, and closely related, we need not only a vision but a determination on the part of public policy-makers to make it possible for this vision to be achieved, and on the part of the leaders of our finest universities and colleges actually to achieve it. The decisions of government are crucial in determining what resources our universities will get from the public purse, and what they will be allowed and able to raise from other sources. Whether there really is a determination – and the courage on the part of government to free our universities to achieve their potential will be determined in the ultimate outcomes of the present Crossroads review. But we also need a determination on the part of university and college leaders to offer their students the very finest education. I think it is very important that the University of Melbourne has a clear objective of becoming, over the next two decades or so, one of the finest universities in the world, and that it has a clear agenda - the so-called ‘Melbourne Agenda’ - for how to achieve this. Thirdly, we need the resources to offer our students the very best undergraduate education. Inescapably, although I strongly encourage a greater expenditure by government on university education, this must involve an end to the excessive reliance on public funding which will never be sufficient, and finding the means to generate the resources without which mediocrity is our certain destiny. It is impossible to see how this can be achieved except with some form of expanded HECS or fees which are combined with scholarships and financial assistance to needy students, and also, amongst other things, through developing a much deeper culture of philanthropy towards universities and colleges. The proposals for university finance advanced by
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Professor Peter Karmel and by Professor Alan Gilbert, among others, are pointing us in the direction we need to go. Much greater philanthropic investment will also be needed to give Australian students opportunities which are comparable with the best in the world. Access to the excellent undergraduate education of which I am speaking should not be governed by a student’s personal or family financial capacity. The best education should be made available to the best students regardless of their means. This requires that any scheme for expanding HECS or fees for Australian undergraduates generally be combined with a well-considered and well-funded scheme of deferred payment options, loans, scholarships, and financial assistance grants so that access to excellence is not denied on financial grounds. But to be frightened - wrongly frightened, in my view - on grounds of equity or access from having a scheme by which Australian undergraduate students, like their American counterparts, make a real contribution to covering the costs of their education is to condemn all Australian students to an increasingly mediocre education. We need also, I think, to accept that different institutions of higher education should have different roles. Some will place a very high emphasis on stretching the very brightest students to excel. Some will place a very high emphasis on giving access to higher education to students who are not yet ready for that stretching or whose potential will best be developed in other ways. The alternative to accepting a diversity of institutions each playing its own particular role is, again, I believe, a remorseless drive to mediocrity. We also need to accept that, in various forms, private or quasiprivate institutions of higher education will, as in the US and as historically in the UK, have to play an increasingly significant role in Australia.
Conclusion It is not possible to lead the institution which I do - Trinity College - without having a buoyant optimism about the quality of the finest young people in this country. I have in my care a cohort of remarkably able, energetic, and positive young people. As I have said, my institution, in partnership with the University of Melbourne of which we are a part, is doing all we can to offer them the best all-round undergraduate education and educational experience that we can. But unless there is vision and determination on the part of government, and very much greater resources become available to our universities and colleges, Australia will be selling short, not only its best and brightest, but itself. Australian higher education is truly at the crossroads, and with it the possibility of genuinely world-class undergraduate education for the 21st century. This, it seems to me, is truly a crossroads for Australia.
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Trinity Papers: This paper represents the twentieth in a series published from time to time by Trinity College which focus upon broad issues facing the community in such areas as education, ethics, history, politics, and science. It is the extended text of a speech given by Professor Donald Markwell to the Oxford Society in Victoria on 5 September 2002.
Further Copies: Copies of this and other Trinity Papers are available upon request from: Tutorial Office Trinity College Royal Parade Parkville VIC 3052 Australia Telephone: 03 9348 7100 Facsimile: 03 9348 7610 Email: enquiries@trinity.unimelb.edu.au Trinity Papers can also be found on the website at: www.trinity.unimelb.edu.au/publications/papers/
About the Author: Professor Markwell has been Warden of Trinity College in the University of Melbourne since 1997, and is a Professorial Fellow of the Department of Political Science and Centre for Public Policy in the University of Melbourne. Rhodes Scholar for Queensland in 1981, he was Procter Visiting Fellow at Princeton University in 1984-85, a Research Fellow of New College, Oxford, in 1985-86, and Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Merton College, Oxford, and a lecturer in the University of Oxford from 1986 to 1997.
Copyright © Donald Markwell 2002
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