Comments on: The real causes of academic staff problems

By: Andrew Norton

Andrew Norton — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:48:10 +0000

In fairness, the ‘corporate’ bit was an embellishment from the report’s authors. The actual survey took satisfaction with institutional management from a composite of questions relating to management issues.

“Composite scale includes responses to these items: ‘How influential are you, personally, in helping to shape key academic policies?’ ‘…at the level of the department’, ‘…at the level of the faculty, school or similar unit’, at the institutional level’, ‘Top-level administrators are providing competent
leadership’, ‘I am kept informed about what is going on at this institution’, ‘Lack of faculty involvement is a real problem’ (reverse coded), ‘Students should have a stronger voice in determining policy that affects them’ (reverse coded),
and ‘The administration supports academic freedom’.’

By: M

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:14:05 +0000

Wait a sec. Academics are going to leave the university system because the management is too “corporate”. Where do they think they are going to go? Government jobs?

No one likes the management system where they work.

I get the impression that academics are kind of like artists (classical musicians, actors, painters, etc…) who think that society should pay for them to pursue their interests because it is more worthwhile than other peoples. There is a tendency to have a sense of entitlement that their research is worth funding because its interesting/advances our society. However if they make a discovery that can be cashed in for lots of dollars they are quite happy to claim most of the money as their right (even if they have enjoyed years of public support). That reminds me of athletes funded by the AIS.

By: Sinclair Davidson

Sinclair Davidson — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 02:03:12 +0000

Very few CEOs (ie VCs) have management experience outside universities or formal management qualifications. This is also true right down the management hierarchy through deans and departmental heads.

This isn’t such a bad thing. I used to be of the view that non-academics could (and should) manage universities, but two high level appointments at my institution have cured me of that view.

By: Andrew Norton

Andrew Norton — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 09:44:00 +0000

The governance and mangagement of universities is very unusual in several respects.

1. There are multiple conflicting organisational goals and no clear principles for choosing between them.
2. The members of the governing body have much less onerous obligations than company directors.
3. Very few CEOs (ie VCs) have management experience outside universities or formal management qualifications. This is also true right down the management hierarchy through deans and departmental heads.
4. VCs and other managers have much less formal power than CEOs, and must exercise their informal power in a context of traditions of individual academic autonomy.
5. VCs must be skilled in managing highly competitive markets and highly bureaucratic government funding.

Arguably university managers have done a reasonable job in the circumstances – only a few unis have hit really dire trouble, and who would have believed 20 years ago that they could create a massive export industry (even if it is not quite as big as the ABS claims)?

But another advantage of opening the system is creating institutions with fewer objectives and better, more business-like, management systems.

By: conrad

conrad — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 09:12:36 +0000

“On another matter, it is interesting and scary that the university sector, a sector that should contain our best and brightest, can blame some as vague and undefinable as ‘corporate management cultures’ and can’t see something as obvious as the failure of central planning”
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The reason for that is obvious. You have lots of hard-left people that think universities should be subject to strong central planning, but that the planning should include funds that make doing a decent job of teaching local students worthwhile. Thus they think central planning should be fixed rather than dispensed with (of course, they’d still complain about the mountain of useless red tape handed to them by the government and the bureaucrats employ to deal with it too, even if it was). You have decent universities in some countries where this happens, so it isn’t impossible, and that’s their ideal system.
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I think the reason management gets blamed so often is that poor management afflicts almost every university I know in Australia (I don’t know any that arn’t hopelessly over micromanaged) and is just something in people’s faces every day. It therefore becomes the obvious first thing to blame (it’s just an availability bias — Kahneman would be pleased). No doubt if you wanted to run universities well, you would probably want to fix both of those things. It’s also hard to see how you can actually manage universities in Australia well with all the government’s crazy rules, and I think this is ignored. That’s not to say that the management of many places would do an awful job even if there wern’t crazy rules (as can be seen by all the crazy loss making ventures many have made).

By: johno

johno — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 06:21:22 +0000

Andrew, I agree with you about the need for teaching only universities. I spent some time teaching causally and would have liked to have made a career of it. I realised I would need to get the ‘union ticket’ aka PhD. Unfortunately in economics that requires jumping through a lot of arcane mathematical hoops to end up saying nothing very interesting. So I headed of to the public service.

On another matter, it is interesting and scary that the university sector, a sector that should contain our best and brightest, can blame some as vague and undefinable as ‘corporate management cultures’ and can’t see something as obvious as the failure of central planning.

By: Andrew Norton

Andrew Norton — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 01:59:07 +0000

I haven’t analysed the 2008 private provider enrolment data yet, but just adding an income-contingent loan without tuition susbidy from 2005 triggered huge enrolment growth rates -indicating latent demand for alternatives to the public universities.

By: Andrew Norton

Andrew Norton — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 01:55:08 +0000

Admittedly on much smaller absolute numbers than today, the low to medium brand name unis did well in the overseas student market before the visa changes – interesting evidence of price competition.

I don’t need to say how common it will be for the teaching model not to work, because it cannot be said with any precision. What I am saying is that if anti-competitive funding biases against teaching only institutions are removed, along with some other barriers to entry (including against foreign providers), I predict growth in the teaching-only market, which will be able to offer quicker more student-friendly courses and full-time permanent teaching jobs to professionals seeking career change and the casuals locked out of work in the research unis.

The US – and Australia until 20 years ago – shows that it is possible.

By: Son of the Ratpack

Son of the Ratpack — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 01:29:59 +0000

University Teaching during summer used not to be possible because the buildings were not air conditioned. That is less of am issue now than before. University teaching could be done on a 3×12 week term but with students only required to take classes in 2 of the three terms and no research academic required to teach more than two terms. Teaching only academics could teach all three.

Rafe, not all knowledge is gettable on the Internet. Historians need to go to archives, anthropologists and archeologists have to be on site some of the time, physicists want to be a certain labs, etc. But the real benefit of sabbaticals is interacting with differerent people, face to face, who are in your field.

By: conrad

conrad — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 01:28:34 +0000

“Well obviously if they are impossible to staff the model won’t work in those cases.”
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You need to say how common this will become — my bet is very (engineering, most sciences, mathematics, business — indeed almost anything with alternative careers to universities that pay more). That’s why I don’t think teaching only universities will make much difference here (even if they could be started easily) — the number of things they can teach is limited if they want to reach a reasonable standard. It’s also the case that unless they can get government subsidies, many things are simply too expensive to teach. Thus, the only way we’ll get them is if some current universities downgrade themselves, which seems unlikely (indeed, universities already can teach all year round if they want — where I work, for example, some courses are done like that already).
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As for vocational stuff, we already have that in the TAFE system.
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“I’m not saying get rid of research unis – just saying that it does not make sense to drive system growth through them”
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It makes sense because (1) OS students want to go to “high-class” universities — and that will be especially important if the visa scheme change; (2) post-graduates want to go to “high-class” universities too; and (3) research brings in philanthropic funds and attracts other external funds also.
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So, whilst I’m happy to admit it’s a market failure based often on incorrect student perception (“my undergraduate degree will be better because they do a lot of research at the university I go to”), it makes a huge amount of sense for universities to do research, and so no-one is going to give it up.
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“BTW, be sceptical of claims of labour market shortages due to too few people with the relevant qualifications”
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I am — I’m also aware that, in terms of this article, people have been offering doomsday scenarios about staff leaving the sector for decades. As long as China, Iran, and India keep exporting large numbers of well educated smart people, and as long as we don’t end up with xenophobic immigration laws, it won’t be a fuss. No doubt that’s true of other sectors also.