Tensions in the Evolving Australian Higher Education System: A Complex, Evolving Mix

Year 2020, Volume: 1 Issue: 1, 32 - 48, 30.06.2020

Anthony Welch

Abstract

The Australian university system, originally based on the Oxbridge model, has largely outgrown its British roots, and now confronts a very different context. A significant challenge stems from tensions between its history, with a rich indigenous heritage, and establishment as a series of British colonies; and its geography, at the heel of South East Asia, with all its major neighbours from East and Southeast Asia. Reflecting the growing trend of greater engagement with Asia, and greater migration from the region, Asian academics now form a significant proportion of academic staff, but it is argued that while their disciplinary expertise is recognized, their additional cultural and linguistic skills are often not acknowledged, and their Asian cultural capital undervalued. A trend towards greater managerialism and increasingly intricate and burdensome regulatory architecture, is traced and critiqued, in relation to governance, at both system and institutional levels. The distinctive makeup of higher education funding is explained, notably the innovative income-contingent loans scheme, and the longstanding underfunding of the higher education system, which pushed universities to diversify their income sources, particularly via international student fees. The extreme dependence on the latter is argued to have been dramatically highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with huge losses predicted across the system. It is argued, that while there are considerable strengths evident in the overall system, major challenges of underfunding and an overly entrepreneurial approach to internationalisation, as well as increasing casualisation, and substantial inequalities of participation, remain as significant challenges.

Keywords

Higher education system, Australian higher education, evolving higher education, tensions of complex system, complex higher education system

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