Current and proposed higher education reforms of the Nelson era have managed a good showing of the Education Minister’s ability to keep the most contentious schemes afloat, despite much opposition.
Last month, the legacy of Nelson and his far-fetched reforms was extensively appraised in a confrontational paper by Professor Max Corden, titled “Moscow, Markets or Trust: The Uncertain Future of Australian Universities”. In it, he dubs the education system the “Moscow of the Mongolow,” also comparing the extent of intervention by Nelson to 1980s higher education reformer, John Dawkins.
There have been five Ministers of Education between Dawkins and Nelson. But there are four ministers that matter for this story, namely Comrades Dawkins and Nelson and Adam (for Adam Smith) Dawkins and Adam Nelson. Both ministers have moved the system both towards Moscow and towards the market.
In the case of the Dawkins Revolution, the first three legs were brought about by Comrade Dawkins and the last two—HECS and the opening to foreign students—by Adam Dawkins. Recently both Adam Nelson and Comrade Nelson have been busy. Adam Nelson has improved the HECS scheme by establishing a direct connection between the fees universities charge and the fees students actually pay, and also by adding FEE-HELP. At the same time Comrade Nelson has been micro-managing.
Professor Simon Marginson takes on the “Nelson Revolution” in a similar tone:
The Labor Party’s John Dawkins created larger and more business-like universities, selected fees and the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS), and ramped up enrolments by 50 per cent. With incentives to grow so as to maximise public and private incomes, universities took on an ever widening arc of teaching, research and service functions. New universities found themselves in an unfamiliar world of research training, venerable ‘sandstones’ sold themselves to thousands of overseas students. All were competing against each other but were protected from outside competition by protocols confining funded HECS places, and the title ‘university’, to the established comprehensive institutions.
The Dawkins assumptions have now been knocked away by Nelson. The Nelson system is not about uniformity, growth and access. The one-size-fits-all formula no longer applies. Access is scarcely discussed. It’s all about mission diversity, status differentiation and debt.
Lines of connection between Dawkin and Nelson can certainly be traced. In particular, both hold in common a trend towards greater centralisation. Funding towards research has already overridden in importance all other issues that might ensure the quality of teaching and services. In the coming year, Nelson will also want to claim authorship of US-style generalist degrees, an increase of universities in the private sector, and finally ram the timeworn VSU bill through the Senate. Obviously, Nelson’s list of reforms will not run dry in 2006.
