Yes, but what kind of University? Considering the new MCD University of Divinity

[From the keynote address at the Melbourne College of Divinity Staff Day, November 2 2011]

Many MCD faculty members here undertook a first degree in Australia, most at an institution that was called a University, in an era when that title made a particular statement about the character and quality of the teaching and learning experience, and its relationship to research. Across Australia, students riding on a tram on Swanston St in Melbourne, or in a bus on Stirling Highway in Perth, had the same expectation of taking part in a comparable, fairly uniform, high quality, and relatively exclusive experience.

This changed with John Dawkins' Higher Education White Paper in 1988, and the consequent reforms which, with a few strokes of the pen, expanded Australia's university sector dramatically. Some of this was badge-engineering, but there was a new intention that the former institutes of technology and colleges of advanced education, as well as both new and historic universities, function as research-focussed institutions, as well as maintaining high standards of teaching.

The general tenor of higher education policies then and still today assumes a relatively uniform, but larger and hence more accessible, set of experiences, standards and outcomes. Viewed from far enough away, there is some truth to this; we may affirm that the educational bottom lines for Australian universities are generally good, and most have some high-quality research being undertaken too.

But up close the reality is different, and more like that former world than some wish to admit. The recent Excellence in Research For Australia (ERA) exercise was one indicator. In terms of research, the Group of 8 universities plus a few others succeed in research funding and outcomes across a broad range of disciplines, but most Australian universities succeed in fewer and more specific areas, and a few languish without areas of apparent research excellence. University of Melbourne researcher Simon Marginson observed that this signalled the failure of the research-teaching nexus.

On the other hand, the experiences of teaching and learning may not really be as comparable across institutions as some imagine either. It is sobering that the institutions which get highest ratings for teaching from their graduates in a measure like the Good Universities Guide are usually a quite different group from the research leaders identified in measures like the Shanghai Jiao Tong ratings.

All this is to say that membership of this group called "universities" says something, but not nearly everything, and not nearly enough to substitute for answers we will have to find ourselves now that the Melbourne College of Divinity has been approved for university status.

There are however some ways university status can and will affect us, which we must seize as challenges and opportunities. Two things worth considering are the research-teaching nexus, despite what I have just noted, and the public character of the university.

Among the many institutions teaching theology in some form in Australia, university status is not overly common, and of course there is no other specialized university at all. Under today's regulatory and policy frameworks however, university status does not in and of itself say that we are necessarily better than non-university "providers".

What university status for the MCD does affirm is that we embody the research-teaching nexus that is supposed to characterize Australian universities generally, which is the one distinctive that Australian higher education policy claims, or aspire to, for entities using that title.

The ways this really works for many universities has been questioned above, but this is something we in the MCD actually do quite well, and have been confirmed as doing by the recent VRQA panel in ways that some public universities might actually find it hard to match. Whether or not the VRQA or its replacement TEQSA see it in these terms, it means not only that we have a good research profile (according to the ERA a smaller but better one than the average achievement of most Australian universities, in fact), but that we teach with skill, committment and passion, and inform that teaching by our scholarship.

I think this is one thing that really may be unique about us among specifically-theological institutions, and we ought not merely to celebrate its recognition by VRQA, but consider how to defend and strengthen it beyond what an outside quality assurance process sees. Their approbation is valuable, but not enough.

I also noted the question of a university's public character. We have been a public institution in a sense, since being established under an Act of Parliament in 1910, but it is clearer that a university is by its nature and name a public institution. The MCD has a strong and established ethos of serving the Churches and religious orders, and our individual students regardless of their religious affiliations, but we now have to ask how we serve the Australian public.

We stand historically at a point where Australia's religious illiteracy is increasingly manifest, as we lurch between poles of aggressive secularism and rising fundamentalism in public discourse. We have a massive opportunity and imperative to foster conversations about religion that has the virtues of moderation and circumspection that we tend to assume, but which so many others cannot perceive at present. To fail in this may cost us dearly as a nation.

This means that we need to look hard at the way the MCD is using its extraordinary resources, which for instance could more clearly be seen not just as for vocational or ministerial formation (lay or ordained), but as the basis for a form of "liberal" education, fostering critical thinking and knowledge of cultural traditions. There are many other potential students for us out there, who might undertake bachelor's degrees for such purposes, and who could through that experience become not only religiously, historically and culturally-literature persons, but trained in critical thinking in ways that could serve them well in many forms of employment and service.

So there are some things that could come to us, or be strengthened for us, in gaining university status. There are also some things that we need to consider that are distinctives of our own history aside from that status, and which we must protect and nurture.

The change of name does not change our polity; but the things it exposes us to almost inevitably will. We cannot go on acting as though we are, even in teaching MCD awards, independent entities linked by a quality assurance process, as we are sometimes tempted to do now. And we cannot, on the other hand, abandon the distinctive qualities of our constituent learning communities.

Some will be concerned about creeping centralization, reasonably enough. Is "recognition" (as in the current terminology of the MCD Act, which refers to "Recognized Teaching Institutions") enough to express the relationship between the parts and the whole, however? We need to find new language that affirms our distinctives as a "federated" university but which acknowledges a strong or even organic set of relationships between our learning communities.

The other striking thing we have amid this diverse higher education sector belies our rambling polity, namely a common cause or values base. While it is often hard to discern a deeper vision in particular universities or in Australian higher education generally than the training of foot soldiers in a battle (or the forced march) for greater economic prosperity, the MCD has a strong capacity to engage in conversation about justice, inclusion, faith and other goods which are both spiritual and social.

We thus have a unique opportunity to do one of the things a university should, but many find hard - to serve by asking persistent awkward and deep questions bout the nature of our society and its purposes. Our specifically Christian commitment is something we should treat as an asset, not just in itself but as the basis for an educational process which can be open to all, but takes ultimate questions seriously, and thus inspires and transforms lives, rather than merely offering training.

University status is not the answer, but a new and important question. It does not define who we are, but offers us a set of opportunities to contribute to the Church and to Australian society. I believe the MCD has the commitment, the resources, the history, and the hope, to do that well.

Australia's First Specialized University (of Divinity)

For some years the staff and Council of the Melbourne College of Divinity have been discussing the possibility of seeking University status. In Australia this has quite specific implications; the use of the title "University" is heavily regulated, and carries not only certain quality assurance regimes but the implication of a strong research capacity supporting its teaching and learning processes.

The MCD is one of Australia's older institutions of higher learning, founded in 1910 partly to complement The University of Melbourne, which had been constituted specifically so as to exclude degrees in theology. The colleges (including this one) of that University however were set up as religious foundations, partly to provide theological studies in the university precinct and community, without the problems of determining or examining adequate or orthodox religious knowledge.

The formation of the MCD as a degree-granting body took some time, but was led by local Church  and college leaders; the signature of Trinity's first Warden, Alexander Leeper, is on the deed creating the MCD. It was for the time a remarkable ecumenical endeavour, bringing together Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist and Congregational and other groups. The Roman Catholic Church, Churches of Christ, Salvation Army, Orthodox and Lutherans have all since been added to the MCD structure in teaching and/or governance terms.

In its first decades the MCD functioned, as did some Universities, primarily as an examining body rather than as a concrete community of scholars; it assumed the communities and work of the Melbourne University colleges and their theological schools, and subsequently of others too. Students could sit for the degrees of the MCD - primarily the graduate Bachelor of Divinity degree - without being part of any of these, however. All depended on a set of 3-hour examinations.

The major step towards being something more of a "real" than a virtual college took place in the 1970s when the MCD recognized some specific colleges and consortia as teaching a degree on the basis of continuous assessment (coursework) rather than exams. This Bachelor of Theology became and remains the mainstay of MCD teaching and learning, and is administered through recognized teaching institutions including the United Faculty of Theology, of which Trinity is a constituent.

When in the late 1980s a fairly diverse set of Australian higher education institutions were turned into universities, the MCD was in an anomalous position. Older than most even of the earlier universities, it was not one itself, at least as then understood. It was private (there are only two other private universities in Australia), and taught in only one field, but had an enviable reputation here and abroad. For some time then the MCD remained as a sort of high-quality anomaly, but has benefitted from research funding provided through the Australian Federal government (and performed at world standard, and well above many named "universities", according to the recent Excellence in Research for Australia exercise).

The idea of a "specialized University" was mooted in Federal policy some time ago but has never been acted on until now. The MCD leadership determined a few years ago to seek that status, which reflects its logical - and unique - place in Australian higher education. Today we learned of the recommendation from the state authority that oversaw a review of the application, which is positive. The Victorian Government Gazette dated today contains the following:

Education and Training Reform Act 2006
APPROVAL FOR THE MELBOURNE COLLEGE OF DIVINITY TO OPERATE AS A SPECIALISED UNIVERSITY

1. Authority 

This notice is issued pursuant to section 4.3.30(1) of the Education and Training Reform
Act 2006. 

2. Definitions
Melbourne College of Divinity means the Melbourne College of Divinity continued as a body corporate under the Melbourne College of Divinity Act 1910.
3.    Approval of institution to operate as a University
Pursuant to section 4.3.30(1) of the Education and Training Reform Act 2006, the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority (VRQA) approves the Melbourne College of Divinity to operate as a specialised university under the specialised title of ‘MCD University of Divinity’.
4.    Period of approval
The approval herein remains in force for 5 years commencing on 1 January 2012.

The common seal of the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority was hereunto affixed on the 25th day of August 2011 as authorized by it pursuant to section 4.2.1(3) of the Education and Training Reform Act 2006.

The name 'MCD University of Divinity' will allow the existing reputation and recognition of the MCD to be carried forward into the new entity (although I suspect it will make explanations of the institution harder internationally), somewhat as the former Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (popularly known as RMIT) became 'RMIT University'.

 

This is an important step not only for the MCD community but for Australian higher education - Australia's first specialized university has (almost) arrived.

What Makes a University Great?

In the Melbourne Age recently a number of Australian Vice-Chancellors (University Presidents, for international readers) were asked what might make a University great.

There were some astute observations - these are intelligent people, after all. There were, however, some clangers. Most obvious was the statement attributed to Ian Young, head of Swinburne University and shortly to succeed to leadership at the Australian National University in Canberra.

...if you ask people on the street to name great universities, they would roll off names such as Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard.

''It is undoubtedly because of their research performance,'' he says.

I could hardly disagree more, at least with the reasons given. People on the street are aware of these places because of their enormous contribution to education: to the formation of thinkers, scientists, artists and leaders. Some of these institutions have come only fairly recently to what is usually thought of as "research" in Australian higher education policy.

Throw-away lines are not the basis on which any of us would want to be judged, but I will at least take this as a sort of Freudian slip for the sector as a whole. Australian higher education, or at least its bureaucratic superstructure, has convinced itself that research is its real reason for existence, and in the process has imagined itself a past in which this was always the case (another sign that we need more resources for the study of history!).

Students, however, want education, and so they should. They come hoping to be trained, but also inspired; they come seeking opportunities for fulfilment of goals and dreams, but also still forming them.

Research is not the enemy of this function; there is nothing more inspiring than being taught by scholars of great erudition or scientists who have made great discoveries. This research-teaching nexus has been adopted as the model for Australian universities by our policy-makers and funders, and it is admirable.

There are two problems with it, however, at least in the current form. One is that it is imagined as the only real model. Here as so often the imposition of uniformity has become a proxy for, and indeed the enemy of, real excellence. Australia does not seem ready to sustain liberal arts colleges along the US model, but no state university has been given the means to become or create one. We may hope that fuller implementation of the Bradley Review of Higher Education, which envisages funding following students according to their institutional choices, rather than allocating it to Universities along "command economy" lines, will be a positive influence.

This could mean that students gravitate to institutions which offer quality based on current educational programs and outcomes, not merely those that trade on past glories or present research. It will be interesting to see whether, in time, the offering of degree-level education by historically-VET-sector providers, and by private players such as religiously-based colleges, may threaten the complacency of the larger institutions.

The second problem - not an easy one - is how to make the research-teaching nexus work. The same Age article gave examples of how students can be inspired to become researchers, but that's not really the point. They need to be inspired to become leaders and thinkers in whatever field, not just to supply the succession plan of a research culture. Most university teachers are conscientious, as well as intelligent; but many are encouraged to regard teaching as a necessary evil. There are no all-staff congratulatory e-mails related to teaching that compare to the hushed silence awaiting a new round of ARC grants that offer the chance not to teach. While the AQF battles the demons of minimum standards through the anachronism of uniformity (again!), the pursuit of excellence in teaching is not given the same emphasis or the same resources.

A great university would, I suspect, have great research and great teaching going on. This probably won't get much disagreement. We do have moments of such greatness in many of our universities. What remains deeply and sadly unclear is whether and how policies and funding priorities are fostering that much-valued combination, or merely hoping that the teaching benefit will emerge through benign neglect. Whether we should be seeking our own Oxford or Harvard remains to be seen - but under current circumstances, the horizon may well remain bare.

The Taxi Driver's Guide to International Education

[From an address given at the Dean's Dinner in the Hall of Trinity College, April 24 2010]

If you go to Washington or Canberra, cab drivers are reknowned as pundits and sources of political rumour. In New York, a taxi may be a source of informal reviews of Broadway shows or restaurants. In Melbourne however taxi drivers are a rich source of information about quite different things: cricket, Hindi and Urdu popular culture, Indian restaurants, and international education.

As both locals and visitors may have realized, a large number of Melbourne cab drivers are current or former students, very often from India. They are in my experience a rich source of anecdotal information about local Universities and technical education providers, especially about courses in IT, hospitality and business. They are impressively well-informed and educated people, who have taken on one of the least well-paid or supported positions in local service industry, for the sake of their goal of making Australia a home for themselves and their families.

There were 516,000 international students in Australia in June 2008.  Around 33% of Victoria’s post–secondary students are from overseas.  Although many of these are in the vocational sector, The University of Melbourne’s international enrolment – just under 25% of about 45,000 students – is not the highest among the Group of 8 universities.

The fact that Australia has a significant number of international students is, in the first instance, to be celebrated. It suggests Australian higher education is well-recognized internationally, it provides means for building networks of cooperation in both formal and informal ways, and is of course important to the economy.

Yet the numbers are widely, if not very publicly, acknowledged as problematic. These very large absolute and relative international enrolments in Australian universities are typically driven not by desire for partnerships in development, or even by strategic concerns about Australia’s place in the Asian economy. The numbers in some cases defy even commercial logic; they expose the institutions concerned to huge risks if events such as another SARS or regional economic crisis were to emerge.

There are few Australian higher education institutions that really have a strategy around internationalization that goes much deeper than the revenue international students bring. This myopia has of course been catalysed by the problems of funding higher education; because a University typically loses money on domestic undergraduate enrolments, there is a very deep institutional temptation to set targets for international (and full-fee paying) enrolments that balance the ledger. In a sense, the Universities have had little choice.

During last year’s debate about the safety of international and particularly Indian students, the importance of that economic impact was never hard to see. It was as easy to find articles in the press by searching “$16 billion industry” as by searching for tags more clearly related to higher education or violence against students.

The conversation in the press thus tended unwittingly to reflect a problem, as much as consciously to analyze it. A public conversation about the safety of international students that presented their value and contribution solely in dollar terms reflected an objectification not much more edifying than that exemplified in the tragic and violent events that provoked the whole conversation.

What should we do? The fact of a substantial international enrolment in this and other Universities is a positive thing. These students will play a part in helping Australians understand other countries and cultures, and will take with them, if they return, a deepened sense of Australian culture. All this we may hope will lead to better international relations and partnerships of various kinds.

Yet we should also hope for new funding models in higher education that allow and indeed challenge Universities to take internationalization seriously as an ethical and educational issue, not merely a financial one. Australia’s strong education and research tradition can assist the promotion not only of prosperity, but of civil society itself, in the region. It can also assist Australia to position itself more adequately for coming changes; not only and most obviously the economic power of emerging powers in the region, but even the growth of their respective higher education sectors, which will eventually meet the demand currently driving many students from places like China to Australia.

Australia should also be glad of many of those who will stay, rather than return, such the Indian students undertaking vocational programs. Yet the connections between residence and such programs have been profoundly flawed and need to be reconstructed. Some of the current detours, via taxi ranks and programs students have little real interest in or need for, must give way to programs that international students with ambitions to migrate really want, and Australia really needs.

International Students: More than Money

Stories about recent violence against Indian students in Melbourne and the international response have emphasized the importance of international education to Australia in purely quantitative, dollar-based terms; the phrase "$15 billion dollar international education industry" seemed to be pasted formulaically into every article. None asked whether there was a value to Australia, or to international students, beyond that calculation.

Unwittingly, the press as well as the political leaders who are properly concerned about the situation, doubtless benign in and of themselves, are revealing but not addressing the fundamental cause of the problem.

In the last analysis, there is not such a great difference between opportunistic acts of petty crime in the outer suburbs which target international students, and opportunistic educational policies and practices which target international students. In the last analysis, a government which will not grant international students concessional public transport fares has only shaky ground to stand on when it condemns attacks on those who ride trains and buses late at night. Each objectifies the students concerned, and each involves a short-sighted desire for immediate gain whose ramifications for all involved have scarcely been thought through. When you reduce the talent, the needs and the aspirations of thousands of young people to an industry that generates a certain number of dollars, you treat the individuals involved as less than who and what they are.

Australia is justly proud of its institutions of higher learning, some of which are of world class, and others of which at least do well in providing skills and generating ideas which can serve the greater good, here and further afield. International students have an acknowledged place in them, given Australia's developed institutions and strong traditions of academic quality, which may be hard for many to access, in the developing world particularly. There is no need to be coy about the fact that this engagement has economic benefits for Australia, as well as for students' home countries, when they are able to return and maketheir various contributions with new skills.

Yet the basis for any educational enterprise must be more than economic; or rather the "economics" of education have to be more wholistic, concerned with how the production and distribution of resources can be carried out so as to serve the common good, as all economics should be. The economics of anything by this definition concern the fundamental well-being of all the participants. This recognition is necessary even for the financial definitions of success to be met; a "$15 billion dollar international student industry" is no draw-card; only a desire for excellence, and a vision that education can transform lives, can undergird a sustainable
education sector.

Violence is not the only cause for concern for international students. Can we sustain the institutions and the educational experience we offer, when selling them seems to be the only public concern? Will we convince anyone that the security of individuals matters to us when we are obviously looking harder at "metrics" to do with Australian advantage rather than real people or the needs of developing countries?

While critical attention is fortuitously being given to some of the "bottom feeder" private teaching bodies of the shopfront kind at present, the problem is not just a lack of "quality assurance". When Australia's universities are themselves under-funded and enrol international students based on balance-sheet needs rather than any broader strategy of international partnership and engagement, a whole branch of education policy is revealed as bankrupt. At the high end of the quality spectrum as well as the low, we risk objectifying students and jeopardizing the very thing that makes Australian education attractive: a quality that arises from commitment and from values deeper than those of balance-sheets.

The world we inhabit is not a set of closed systems, but a deeply-interdependent network of communities. Australia is a relatively small player in this small world, but it has privileges and resourcesthat bring great responsibility and some hope of a positive role in a very different future. A country that could speak of that responsibility, and of the need for international partnership and understanding as a basic element of education policy, would have a better chance of being a country that could show partnership and understanding to individual Indian students, present and future, too.

Crisis and Opportunity: Philanthropy and Australian Higher Education

Even before the global financial crisis, there was a growing awareness in Australian universities of the need to look past existing sources of funding. Given the impact of the crisis on the government’s capacity to carry out its desired funding ‘revolution’, educational leaders know that private money will become crucial to the ability of a university to do much more than eke out an existence. It may become necessary even for that.

With the demise (for the present) of domestic full-fee places and the pall cast over on-the-side revenue ventures like Melbourne University Private, philanthropy is attracting more and more attention. The growing number of senior appointments in the higher education sector intended largely or wholly to oversee fundraising is eloquent testimony to this trend.

There is some vestigial scepticism in Australia about massive fundraising campaigns like those familiar for colleges in the USA, but the evidence from Canada, the UK and now here too suggests that individuals, as well as trusts and foundations, will support higher education when a case can be made. This is the resumption of an Australian tradition rather than something entirely new. Despite the dominance of the public purse since the mid-twentieth century, universities like RMIT, Sydney and UWA owe a great deal to early benefactors like Francis Ormond, John Henry Challis and John Winthrop Hackett.

The real difficulties are subtler and more deep-seated than a mere unwillingness on the part of Australians to give. During the last half-century Australian universities have tended to portray themselves as schools for skills, driven and funded by taxpayers as essential services, like roads or pipes. Students participate not so much to change their own or others’ lives, but to take their place in an economy needing high levels of expertise and knowledge. This understanding is reflected in the bland economistic language of government policy, where no higher vision for universities is presumed than that of equipping graduates – if now a larger and more diverse set of graduates – to participate in the production of wealth.

This is not quite the stuff of dreaming spires, or even of the wider social good, and presents a difficulty for those who have to commend universities to philanthropy. Prospective donors might expect benefactions not merely to support a system under strain, but to make important differences for students and society itself.

This lack of vision also affects the unspectacular but important process of gaining support from a mass base of alumni. While in recent decades many graduates have left Australian universities with well-honed skills and critical abilities, fewer have left feeling debts of gratitude for inspiring or transformative experiences. Such a functional or transactional understanding has been exacerbated by the introduction of the HECS scheme; students who have or will make a fairly significant contribution to the cost of their education are even less likely to conceive of a moral debt to the institution, regarding the transaction as complete when the ATO has signed off.

The universities have often seemed content with this. The fact that many have recently had to start alumni programs from scratch illustrates how ephemeral the experience of study and of connection to a university was assumed to be. With its eye on the recurrent public funding that would accompany the hopes of students of the future, higher education has paid scant attention to beneficence from those of the past.

The existing pressure on resources in the sector is a Catch-22 for alumni programs and the sense of relationship with the institution that they require. With larger numbers of students, living and working under greater economic pressure, studying in less adequate facilities, and with poorer services, there has often been less and less about the university for which the graduate might be grateful. This is why the need is great, but a former student of recent decades may wonder about the newly-discovered causes for nostalgia that their alma mater suddenly wants to recall.

This problem arguably cuts deeper than the mere funding challenges of recent years. The former government’s VSU agenda, a contributing factor to the lack of student services, was viable precisely because the level of commitment or understanding in the university sector to student experiences beyond the classroom was at best uneven.

Without signs of a serious dialogue about what a university is for, the efforts of the new fundraisers will often be greeted with understandable scepticism by their targets. Yet this is an opportunity for universities to strengthen more than their balance-sheets. They will have to think more deeply about why higher education really ought to be supported beyond the reasons with which the public purse concerns itself. Perhaps they may still exist to change, and not merely supply, graduates. Perhaps they may exist to generate visions, and not only skills. Perhaps they can foster independent thought, and not merely competence. Fresh (yet very traditional) answers to these questions might be an even more important result than raising money, as well as a necessary condition of raising it.

Trinity Moves

Based on remarks at the Gala Dinner of the Union of the Fleur-de-Lys in the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Victoria, August 11th 2007

It may seem a bit surprising to find a Trinity event being held somewhere other than on Campus, even in as remarkable and inspiring a space as this. Yet our being somewhere else, and here in particular, seems to encapsulate something important about the College as well. In a variety of ways, Trinity moves.

We move individuals, offering them opportunities for growth and transformation. The transition from School education, with its highly-structured and ordered reality, to University education does involve a great step into freedom and responsibility. The value of that freedom depends on the choices available and the resources and influences at hand. This place, which has such a wealth of artistic beauty, exemplifies that process for us. Collegiate education affirms that it is crucial to offer significant cultural, social, sporting and intellectual activities in community life to allow that. We don't judge the success of being at Trinity by whom or what we bring in, but by whom we send out, and how they may have changed.

Second, Trinity itself moves, it changes. To pursue a tradition of excellence across a long period of time necessarily means change as well as continuity. To be justly proud of the College in the future we should not expect it to resemble the College of the past in all respects. I am proud of long standing customs and connections at Trinity; I am also proud of new ideas and practices, of a more diverse student body that reflects our commitment to this experience and to making it available to students on the basis of their ability to gain from it and contribute to it, not their personal economic resources. I am proud of our connection with a world-class University engaged in its own process of change, in which we are partners, seeking to provide experiences the equal of any in the world. I am delighted we have families connected with Trinity across generations, and also students who are indigenous Australians or who have been refugees. The only thing I want you to be prouder of than Trinity's past is Trinity's future.

Finally, Trinity moves because we take it with us. Despite coming here to a different place, being of many different eras in the College, hundreds of us tonight are again immediately "Trinity". We believe that there is something important - about excellence, about community, about values - that moves with us. We are here not just because it was important for 2 or 3 or 4 years once in the past, but because we take something of it with us wherever we go. Thank you for being part of Trinity's past - thank you also for being part of its future.

Singapore Diary (I): With the Academy of Principals

On July 5th I addressed a gathering of the Academy of Principals of Singapore, a peak body and professional development organization covering all Singapore schools. What follows is a precis of my remarks.

There are many differences between school and University education, and not all are to do with curriculum or level of achievement. Regimentation must give way to a kind of freedom or space, a benign “educational vacuum” as it were, which can draw out the potential of students to fill it.

Yet it is not sufficient to provide that absence of imposed order. Students must also be given a rich set of resources, experiences and choices, the wherewithal to construct their own set of skills, interests and values. Autonomy and capacity for critical thinking are only as useful or as adequate as the context in which they are formed.

Remarkably, while there are some University programs where great emphasis is placed on an aesthetically-rich physical environment, the provision of cultural activities, sporting and social opportunities and more besides, others have none of these. The role of a University in inculcating values and pursuing a particular ethical mission is also entirely variable.

Perhaps this variation is an unavoidable element of the Higher Education reality, but there is a real tension between some versions of it, and what a group like this might actually assume education is – not just the inculcation of knowledge or even of skills, but the formation of creative, capable individuals, through a variety of processes and experiences.

My sense is that educators in countries such as Singapore and Malaysia are quite conscious of the challenge of fostering critical thinking and creativity among their students.

However there is still, both in Australia and in countries like Singapore, a sort of supposed “common sense” which sees the purpose of University education as to equip the student for success in a particular vocation or career, and hence holds that it should focus strongly on a specific set of professional skills.

Yet in a rapidly changing economic world, students need to acquire generic or “soft” skills – those of creative and critical thinking, and of effective communication. Specific vocational training may meanwhile quickly become redundant.

When we think of great Universities, we know we are not simply talking about outstanding lecturers and libraries. These are communities characterized by excellence and diversity, where there is considerable scope and responsibility given to students, but also personal attention and mentoring; where there are inspiring elements of environment as well as of curriculum, and where profound conversations take place in dining halls, as well as or perhaps even more than in lecture halls.

Leadership for that educational world means giving attention to curriculum, but also to more. In the increasingly competitive and differentiated Australian educational environment, the question of whether tertiary education is understood to include the development of the whole person, and preparation for leadership in society, will be one of the crucial tests of a genuinely outstanding educational experience.

Malaysian Diary (II): Nasi Lemak

Some will be aware of my interest – scholarly as well as personal – in food and meals. Naturally, interesting food is one of the benefits of being in a place like Kuala Lumpur, where Malay culture and different varieties of Indian and Chinese influence mingle creatively at table. Those of us travelling here have had remarkable meals both in 5-star restaurants and in a local kedai kopi (coffee house).

Our hotel offered breakfast in various forms, and I tended to choose the local Malay specialty, Nasi Lemak – rich or fatty rice, literally. Nasi Lemak consists of steamed rice prepared with coconut, served with a number of accompaniments: cucumber slices, peanuts, fried ikan bilis (tiny fish, like whitebait or anchovies) and some form of sambal seem to be essential, but there are other options and infinite variations. While Malaysians will often buy their morning Nasi Lemak in paper or leaf packages from vendors, I was curious about how best to balance the tastes at a breakfast buffet table. I asked one local host for advice, and he assured me that it was a matter of individual taste – you construct it as you will.

If this sounds already like a culinary metaphor waiting to happen, well yes – but I was beaten to it by one articulate young Malaysian. Trinity sponsors a public speaking contest annually along with a leading local school, Sri Kuala Lumpur, in Subang Jaya (not far from KL). There, fifteen talented high school students spoke on topics chosen from a list, one of which was “The Sugar and Spice of Life”, and one young woman picked up the Nasi Lemak concept – the combination of contrasting tastes and textures, assembled in just the right way for the particular eater – as a Malaysian contextual version of the topic.

She didn’t win, but the metaphor holds, as does the fact of that speaking competition itself, to illustrate how Trinity is contributing to students from Malaysia and other countries in the region. We often find that they have well-developed skills in quantitative disciplines, but have not had the same opportunities to foster communication, critical thinking and creativity that will be necessary for success in the Australian University system and beyond. I have been struck by how often our hosts have focussed on the importance of what are sometimes also referred to as “soft skills”, and how well they recognize Trinity’s Foundation Studies program as a means to developing them. The TCFS experience amounts to the addition of new flavours or elements to the local Nasi Lemak, complementing the existing ones and making the whole even better.

The (Other) Idea of a University

I am beginning this Trinity-related blog by posting a version of a talk also published in TrinityTODAY a few weeks ago...

Debates about the nature of a University usually involve contrasts between the “liberal” model represented by John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University, and a more pragmatic ideal that emphasizes the needs of society and training for the professions.

University education usually needs both (the Growing Esteem strategy for the University of Melbourne establishes a place for each. Its new undergraduate degrees will emphasize “breadth and depth”, including requirements for interdisciplinary study, while professional and research degrees, geared solely to graduates, will serve for vocational outcomes).

Yet an alternative pair of “ideas” of the University might be suggested. In Newman’s era, there were two quite different aspects of the University. One was the experience of “going up” to Oxford or Cambridge, living as a member of a College and reading particular subjects. The other was examination and attainment of a degree, which not all students sought or were even eligible for. This measure of accomplishment assumed, but did not replace, the fundamental experience of being a part of the University and its life.

When Newman asked the question “What is a University”, he emphasized community rather than curriculum; the University is “the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one spot”. Australian Universities, however, have tended to assume the reverse, thinking of the University as defined by examinations more than experience, by curriculum more than community. Educational achievement, and University degrees in particular, are supposed to reflect the examination of knowledge or skill, but say little about the particular experience that might have led there. The degree itself has become a supposed guarantee of standards, a mechanism that promises the supposed parity resulting from widely (or even wildly) different experiences, rather than symbol of one held in common.

One reason for this separation of examination from experience in Australia has been geographical isolation. We have been particularly adept at finding ways to deliver information across great distances, long before the internet ushered “distance learning” or “flexible delivery” into the vocabularies of educators. The need to organize and recognize such forms of teaching and learning added to the distinction between experience and examination Australians inherited from the English tradition.

Another distinctive Australian factor is the unevenness of Collegiate or community life. Since the forms of common life that distinguished Colleges once seemed necessarily religious, they provided a means for the “sandstone” Universities to assert their essential secularity, while dealing with religion in a “co-curricular” fashion. The cost of this approach was the marginalization of community life and the emphasis on experience that Newman and the other great figures of nineteenth-century University theorizing, such as Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Eliot, took for granted.

For Australians, University education thus became the inculcation and examination of a body of knowledge, not the experience of being a community of learners. To an extent that would not so readily have been countenanced in the UK, the USA or Europe, University education in Australia came to be seen as focussed on the lecture hall alone and on the absorption of a canon of knowledge, rather than also on the dining hall and the exchange of views across disciplines and perspectives.

Recent developments in Australian Higher Education have underlined the problem. I myself went through undergraduate education, about twenty-five years ago, without the benefit of a Collegiate experience. I did have access to community life through an active Student Guild, and I was also in the Honours program of a relatively small department where students knew one another, and the most senior academics as well. Now, increases in class sizes on the one hand, and the gratuitous VSU agenda on the other, have threatened the broader forms of community life as well as the narrower academic collegiality necessary to the formation of would-be scholars.

American poet and teacher John Ciardi said that “a University is what a College becomes when the faculty loses interest in the students”. In the American context these words have a slightly different meaning, but there is a message for us here too. A University that does not understand what educational community provides has lost more than just an interest in students. Colleges may yet be part of the answer.