Over the last 25 years the process of corporatisation has decreased the autonomy of Monash University as an education provider, and has decreased the opportunities for students and staff to meaningfully participate in the university.
‘Corporatisation’ in this context refers to the process of introducing business management techniques, organisational structure, strategy and profit-focused rationale to public institutions. Corporatisation of universities started in Australia with the Dawkins reforms of the late 1980’s. These reforms involved the introduction of HECS, the conversion of colleges into universities, and the introduction of corporate managerial strategies for deciding how universities would be run. Since then, we know that HECS has been periodically changed and increased, generally becoming less regulated and dearer for the student. The past and continuing success of the corporatisation of universities relied on the close coordination and interaction of these reforms.
Changes to university governance, investment in questionable infrastructure projects, funding with strings attached, and the treatment of students as customers; these are four examples of the corporatisation trend that is undermining the central academic and educational purpose for which Monash University exists.
University Governance
In October last year, the Victorian state government passed legislation making democratically elected student and staff representatives on university council non-mandatory; removing the last vestiges of democracy from university governance. Since then, Monash University Chancellor, Alan Finkel, has refused to appoint elected representatives to university council. Instead, council will appoint representatives based on an interview process. This is not only undemocratic; it undermines the intelligence and trustworthiness of students to decide who can best represent them.
Senior management have turned the screw again with a recent proposal to change University statute regarding Faculty Boards. Faculty Boards are the governing bodies for Faculties, made up largely of academics as well as some students. Presently, Deans are required to report to and are directed by Faculty Boards. Under the changes, Deans are to be made into ‘Executive Deans’ with the members of Boards reduced to advisory status.
Thus, at the time of writing, the transition to a top-down model of organisation is all but complete. Apparently, there is little or no room for staff or student input in the formal decision-making process at any level.
However lamentable such a situation would be for an employee of a corporation, it is that much worse for students and staff of a university that had hitherto maintained a tradition of limited democracy. We are now in a situation where senior management at Monash enjoy all the decision-making power of their corporate counterparts, but without the accountability mechanisms which have been built into corporate governance. Put simply, the new, undemocratic top-down organisational structure is inappropriate at Monash because it allows for the unbridled pursuit of the interests of managers and government.
Questionable Investments
The extremely urgent and vital work being undertaken on the facade of the law building is an example of a questionable recent investment at Monash University. The rationale behind the project demonstrates how the interests of management do not intersect with educational or research interests. Law is a prestigious course and attracts desirable students to the university. From the manager’s point of view, when prospective students come on open day, they will be shopping for the best university. One way to convince them that the Law Faculty at sunny Clayton is the right choice for them is to make the building look nice. Of course, it is questionable to what extent this will actually work to increase enrolments. More importantly, the boob job on the law building will not improve the quality of education at Monash for current or prospective students. It is an attempt to “build the Monash brand”. What it will surely mean is that there is less money for teaching and research. For the (exorbitantly) renumerated manager whose job security revolves around the bottom line, the end result of a building investment is (hopefully) an increase in student numbers and corresponding revenue.
Funding With Strings Attached
In the past, autonomy of the university was preserved because funding was almost entirely from the Commonwealth government at arm’s length. At present, a large percentage of university funding is contingent on student enrolment and retention numbers. To supplement existing funding, Monash has looked without discretion for further funding. Two current examples are the Microsoft lounge, and grants for clean coal research. The millions of dollars of government funding for clean coal requires academics to work with CSIRO and the power generation industry to make Victorian coal power more sustainable. Instead of researching the best possible solutions, academics must narrow the scope of their work to suit a self-interested industry.
With the present situation of volatile funding and the subsequent turn to industry-funded or related research, staff and students have less autonomy as to the direction of research and curricula.
Students-as-Customers
Since the Dawkins reforms the student has been reformulated as a customer who must directly take on the cost of education through HECS. Management is obsessed with increasing “customer satisfaction”. For example, a 2010 presentation given to management entitled ‘The Customer Focus’ advocates the role of customers in “evaluating and improving service quality and value”.
The surveys we fill out at the end of semester are an attempt to work out if the customers are happy. Imagine you give the subject a bad rating simply because you found it was a lot of hard work. If enough people respond in this way, it is likely the university will come down hard on the academics involved and seek to dumb down the course. This is because the highest priority is volume of students who enrol and stay in courses.
The obsession with retaining customers has also seen a trend to soft marking which gives the appearance of better pass rates and results, but is often only achieved by lowering the real standard. A law lecturer who I will not name mentioned this in a lecture one day, telling us that getting an HD did not mean what it used to, given the faculty must give a certain percentage of students this grade. In the Arts Faculty, the staff are not required to follow the grading curve, but if they choose to ignore the curve, they must justify their decision at a special meeting. Clearly the message to staff is keep your head down, keep the customers satisfied. All this masks and subverts what should be the real question for students: how much we have objectively learnt.
The issues of governance, investments, funding and students-as-customers are interrelated and feed off each other in the process of corporatisation. Without the combination of top-down management structure, government reforms and passive customer-students, the process would not be possible.
So where to from here? In the spirit of Lot’s Wife, we cannot look back, we need to look forward from the situation we find ourselves in now. As students we need to see the economic rationale of corporatisation has left us paying more for less education. A lot of that money pays university bureaucrats who have contributed little, if anything, to academia. If universities can be changed by government and managers, then universities can be changed again by students and staff.
