Academic unions: conferring with Dawkins.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Hinkson, John
• Date: 22 March 2002

Twenty-five years ago when the Martin Report laid the basis for an expanded system of higher education in Australia, the academic unions drew their limited strength from the relatively small number of institutions to which they were, in the main, tied as local staff associations. *(1) Certainly the national union had little significance compared with the local association. Similarly, there were few expectations that the university would contribute directly to the 'national effort'. As some see it, this was the era of the ivory tower institution, a setting so framed by academic principles that the university seemed unrelated to 'reality'. It was as though the life of the mind could only exist in carefully nurtured settings differentiated from the broader society. This differentiation, often simply equated with elitism, seemed to be confirmed even in the mode of staff organization.

Thinking Ahead, the Federation of Australian University Staff (FAUSA) and Federated Council of Academics' (FCA) 'blueprint' for growth in Australian higher education, (2) signifies a radical change of circumstance. In part a reply to Canberra's demands that tertiary education respond to 'national objectives', the national unions also respond to perceived changes in the larger education--society relationship. The growing perception of the dependence of the economy, and more specifically the export-led recovery, on higher education reflects structural changes which have been unfolding for some time in the education-society relation: the new relevance of science and educated workers for a high-technology society. It is this connection which comes to allow tertiary education to be conceived of as an arena of industial relations, 'tertiary workers' now being organized within powerful nation-wide unions which substantially displace the local staff association.

It is not that Thinking Ahead, any more than the Green Paper which drew it into existence, reflects on the meaning of the change which has overtaken both tertiary education and society. This is not surprising, for the very developments which make education a national preoccupation today are a condition for the heightened significance of the national unions. It is not easy to step outside the bounds of one's formative conditions. Thinking Ahead, like the vice-chancellors, assumes much of what is assumed by the Green Paper; it can be said to confront it largely on its own terms. FAUSA and FCA do raise significant objections to aspects of the Green Paper, but as discussed below, their criticisms are constrained by what is commonly assumed. The critique of the Green Paper's attitude towards knowledge is illustrative.

Thinking Ahead sets out to defend academic scholarship in all its varied forms. The irreducible element in the argument is the 'creation and transmission of knowledge' which 'requires an environment of scholastic (academic) freedom in order to be fruitful and effective'. (3) Upon this academic foundation a number of functions depend. These include training and certification, research, advice, and public comment. This defence of varied functions within higher education is employed to criticize what is said to be the excessive instrumentalism of the Green Paper.

The long-term success of higher education depends on maintaining both its immediate utility in training and research, and its role as intellectual critic. Ultimately the two cannot be divorced. The most practical economic and social innovations usually began as apparently far-fetched ideas. Those ideas would never be allowed to arise under a purely instrumental approach to higher education policy. (4) In other words, knowledge at the most general or abstract level can make the greatest contribution in terms of economic and social change, so the rise of a narrow instrumentalism as applied by the Green Paper is likely to be self-defeating. This defence of 'far fetched' ideas, however, blurs rather than clarifies the questions raised by the Dawkins strategy, for it conflates general ideas in their technical innovative role with general ideas as interpretive critique. For Thinking Ahead, a high-tech export-led recovery is best achieved by a broad rather than a narrow instrumentalism; and, it hopes, cultural critique will be carried on its back.

A similar emphasis can be found in its comments on vocational training. The concern is that the Green Paper is so preoccupied with the relation between higher education and the economy that the government will expect a more specific reflection of vocational expectations in the courses offered by educational institutions. Much of the comment of the business world has favoured this more specific emphasis in course offerings. It is an expectation which devalues much of what is taught and researched in the humanities and the social sciences; it is also affecting work within the sciences. The response in Thinking Ahead is to defend generalist courses as crucial ways of forming the workforce. Drawing on the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee (AVCC) and the OECD, the report points to the wrong-headedness of an over-emphasis on specific training. The OECD puts it in the following way:

Outside a fairly narrow range of curricula, amounting to perhaps one-third of total offerings, there is no specific market for most arts and science degrees. Such graduates are employed on the basis that their three and four years of systematic study will have identified and made manifest their potential, taught them how to learn, instilled...