Australia¡¯s higher education review must focus on?the broader purpose of a?university sector that has become ¡°preoccupied with thinking internally¡±, a?Sydney conference has heard.

Sharon Bell, former deputy vice-chancellor of Charles Darwin and Western Sydney universities, said the Australian universities accord¡¯s terms of?reference must not be?allowed to?prevent consideration of?the sector¡¯s responsibility to?address the ¡°existential questions of?our time¡±.

She said ¡°community¡± risked becoming an afterthought in a review focused on issues such as accountability and governance. ¡°Accountability is very important, [but] it doesn¡¯t exactly spark the imagination,¡± she told the Engagement Australia Conference at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).

The sector faces a ¡°real challenge¡± in opening up the accord conversation, she said. ¡°What is our legacy? How are we collectively addressing those existential issues? How can we take what looks like a fairly utilitarian accord concept and turn it into a truly transformative process?¡±

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Professor Bell said post-war Australia, ¡°not a wealthy country at the time¡±, had managed to find the resources to educate its neighbours¡¯ citizens through the Colombo Plan. Now, international students were viewed as a ¡°market¡± that helped bankroll the sector.

¡°How is it that we were able to do that then ¨C thinking of others, thinking about our region [and] our place in that region ¨C whereas now we seem to be preoccupied with thinking internally?¡± she asked.

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Verity Firth, pro vice-chancellor of justice and inclusion at UTS, said the accord was an opportunity to ¡°start speaking bravely to government¡±. Professor Firth said a decade of ¡°not being particularly valued¡± by the previous government had left the sector with a sense of ¡°timidity¡± and defensiveness.

¡°We do need to turn it around because we are at a particular moment in history where we need to have our voices heard,¡± she said.

Kelly Pearce, first assistant secretary of the federal Department of Education, said the review¡¯s terms of reference were ¡°big¡± and could ¡°fit anything¡±. She urged people to use the accord to assess whether the Higher Education Support Act (Hesa), the key piece of federal legislation governing universities, adequately reflected ¡°where we are now¡± and ¡°what we want going forward¡±.

But Paul Harris, executive director of the Innovative Research Universities mission group, said the Hesa had been amended more than four times a year since 1988. He said the sector should use the accord to reassert universities¡¯ role as public good institutions.

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¡°Over the last few years, we¡¯ve seen more of a focus on the private benefits of higher education and research. We¡¯ve seen it through JRG [Job-ready Graduates] with the shift from public funding to the individual student. We¡¯ve seen it in the way government funding has shifted away from public education institutions towards private schools. We¡¯ve seen it in a shift in research to a really strong focus on research commercialisation. And we see it in how we talk about international education as an export industry in a market.

¡°We need to think about our role as public institutions in delivering public value¡­and what the right public policy is for that public value.¡±

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com