{"id":78024,"date":"2025-08-26T00:31:27","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T04:31:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=78024"},"modified":"2025-08-26T00:31:27","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T04:31:27","slug":"universities-have-lost-their-way-but-cost-cutting-and-consultants-are-not-the-answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/universities-have-lost-their-way-but-cost-cutting-and-consultants-are-not-the-answer\/","title":{"rendered":"Universities have lost their way, but cost-cutting and consultants are not the answer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Last week in Sydney, we saw a melodrama acted out that could stand in for the state of Australian universities more generally. Inside Sydney\u2019s swish Fullerton Hotel, a glittering cast of vice-chancellors, politicians, public servants, journalists, and consultants deliberated at a\u00a0higher education summit<\/a>, sponsored by the Australian Financial Review and consultancy Nous Group.<\/p>\n

Teaching-only casual staff, who do the\u00a0bulk of teaching in many universities<\/a>, were not represented in the\u00a0official line up of speakers<\/a>. Instead, academics and students remained outside, protesting in the rain against\u00a0staff cuts<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0governance issues<\/a>\u00a0facing the sector.<\/p>\n

It started with the public good<\/strong><\/h4>\n

This is not where the modern Australian university began. The expansion of the system in the decades after the second world war was animated by a profound sense of the university\u2019s mission of\u00a0pursuing the public good<\/a>. New universities were established to advance nation-building but also to strengthen civil society and a common culture.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Robert Menzies, who played a crucial role in this expansion,\u00a0expressed this vision eloquently in 1942<\/a>. He saw universities not as \u201cmere technical schools\u201d but devoted to<\/p>\n

the preservation of pure learning, bringing in its train not merely riches for the imagination but a comparative sense for the mind, and leading to what we need so badly \u2014 the recognition of values which are other than pecuniary.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We seem to have arrived at the antipodes of that vision.<\/p>\n

There is a steady stream of stories about\u00a0exorbitant executive salaries<\/a>, and universities across the country are currently\u00a0cutting courses<\/a>,\u00a0jobs<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0research<\/a>, mostly on the grounds these endeavours are not financially \u201cresponsible\u201d.<\/p>\n

Three ways out of the crisis<\/strong><\/h4>\n

If there is any way out of the present crisis, it it unlikely to come from current university leaders, who have shown\u00a0little capacity to manage complex change<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Many vice-chancellors are on\u00a0million dollar-plus packages<\/a>\u00a0and have the job of advancing the corporate interests of their own institution in competition with others.<\/p>\n

Scholars and researchers apply a different lens. They tend to identify three ways of thinking about the current problems of the sector, and the way out of them.<\/p>\n