The transformation of Australian higher education from binary to unitary system

Abstract

The policies of the Australian federal government are clearly intended to bring about a fundamental transformation of the country's higher education system. The Australian case, however, presents several paradoxes. Policy changes are being initiated by a federal government that has no legislative control over state chartered higher education institutions. While the federal government wishes to see a more diversified and adaptive higher education system, it seems to be implementing a reward structure for individual institutions and academics which encourages imitation of the elite universities. Although government claims that its new policy initiatives are designed to debureaucratize the system, a significant proportion of the Australian academic community claims that government is centralizing control. This article explores these and other issues facing Australian higher education, not for the purpose of resolving the seeming paradoxes, but to suggest a particular research agenda for investigating change in higher education.There can be no doubt that over the last three years or so change has been a fundamental characteristic of the Australian higher education system. This does not imply that stability was the distinguishing feature of the system in the past, nor does the statement define the profundity of change: seminal or cosmetic; long-lasting or temporal; revolutionary or incremental. Too often, description of events in higher education assumes implicitly one or more concepts of change -adaptation, evolution, determination, development, etc. -in such a way that the unarticulated concepts are substituted for the object of study. The substance of change and the consequences (intended or otherwise) are first of all empirical questions which themselves demand investigation through a particular and explicitly stated theoretical perspective. It is the purpose of this article to locate the examination of change in Australian higher education within a particular theoretical/conceptual frame of reference.To begin this task, definitions of higher education are in order, both descriptive and analytical.

Institutional Change of European Higher Education: The Case of Post-War Germany

“…Outside Germany, the debate of an "academic drift" already started in the late 1970s in the U.K. (Neave 1979 ). In Australia, the binary system has been formally abolished at the end of the 1980s (Meek 1991 ); similarly, in the U.K. former polytechnics were given university status based on the Further and Higher Education Act from 1992 (Williams 1997 ). However, most Western European countries maintain an institutional differentiation.…”

Mergers and Alliances in Higher Education

“…The Hunt Report broke new ground when it proposed using merger as a systemlevel tool to address problems of fragmentation and institutional size to create HEIs of sufficient scale and capacity to meet future national and globally competitive demands. However, the report also endorsed the binary system, saying "formal mergers between institutes of technology and universities should not in general be considered: this would be more likely to dilute the diversity of the system" (DoES 2011), in contrast to either Australia in the 1980 and 1990s (Harman 1986;Meek 1991;Gamage 1993) or the UK in the 1990s . There was passing reference to the potential for mergers within the university sector; the door was merely left open, should such developments occur where it would advance and improve quality provision.…”

Trajectories of higher education system differentiation: structural policy‐making and the impact of tuition fees in England and Australia

“…[I]ncreasingly it is the state that is setting the priorities for universities and although these priorities may be seen as 'technocratising' the universities, they negatively impact on the autonomy of the university and reduce its role as social critic (1990,457) At a systemic level, for Trow (1998) governments' across the world used "interference in HE system to democratise access and governance" and to make the curriculum more relevant to the perceived needs of employers, thus wielding financial muscle to "increase their influence over size, shape costs and future direction of the sector" (Trow 1988in Meek 1991.…”

“…In Australia the final stage of the Dawkins reform was the introduction of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) in 1989, thus reintroducing selffinanced tuition which had been abolished in 1974 (Meek 1991, 464, Mahoney 1990.…”