BUSINESS/HIGHER EDUCATION ROUND TABLE SUMMIT MEETING

Educational challenges for future Australia
31 October 2001

Professor Michael Barber
Secretary (Science Policy), Australian Academy of Science

The Academy has recently released a document entitled Priorities in Research and Innovation for the Next Australian Government, which makes eighteen focused recommendations.  It is not my intent to discuss all of these recommendations but to focus on the four that are particularly relevant to the theme of this meeting - education.

I would like to begin by making some more general remarks on science and technology.  Before the last election, the Academy released a booklet similarly titled Science and Technology Priorities for the Next Australian Government.  Four years on, most of the recommendations we made then have been implemented.  I say that not to emphasise the influence of the Academy, although I would like to think that we were listened to as a respected advisory body, but as a measure of the commitment by the Howard government during its current term. At the launch of Backing Australia's Ability in January, our President, Professor Anderson, said of the Government's initiatives: 'These actions touch our businesses, our schools, our universities. They target excellence and they target national priorities, areas where we can do better and/or ought to have been doing better: biotechnology, and information and communications technology.  The policy changes should pay immense dividends in the future...They are hugely important symbolically too, declaring to all Australians what is crucial for our future.'    We stand by those comments today. We have however also been consistent in warning that Backing Australia's Ability must be only a first step.  It should consequently be no surprise that the Academy's first recommendation is:

'Policy initiatives in Backing Australia's Ability need to be implemented at a much faster rate than under the current arrangements that see most of the funding becoming available after the federal election in 2004.'

Backing Australia's Ability drew critically on two very substantive reviews - The Chance to Change by the Chief Scientist and the Miles' report on the Innovation Summit. Those reports, along with the earlier Wills' report on medical research, have significantly affected the policies of all parties in Australia over the past year. The Academy applauds this bipartisan recognition of the importance of science and technology for Australia's future. 

That said, the Academy is concerned that science and technology appears to have been swept from the political agenda in this campaign. 

The Academy recognises that the world did change on 11 September and we are not so naive as to believe that the events of 11 September and the ensuing war on terrorism can leave Australia's public policy in science and technology untouched.  We also recognise that those events could have a significant impact on Australia's future financial and economic health.  While it may not therefore be a time for lavish unfunded budget commitments, further investment in higher education and in the research and innovation enterprise of Australia is something that the next government cannot walk away from if it wishes Australia to have the future to which we all aspire. 

Our concerns are apolitical.  On the Government's side we are concerned that the Government believes that Backing Australia's Ability has done the job.   This may only be a perception but we worry that if the job has not been done at the end of the five years of the investments - as outlined in Backing Australia's Ability - then the science sector will be the scapegoat. That is, failures in the science sector, in universities and by scientists themselves, will be seen as the reasons for our national failure to deliver on the rhetoric and the aspirations of Backing Australia's Ability. Even if that is not the case, the Academy worries that without additional investment, sooner rather than later, the not insignificant investment of Backing Australia's Ability may come to nought.  $2.9 billion sounds an awful lot of money but it pales in comparison to the sums being invested by other nations with which we are inclined to compare ourselves. 

Before Minister Kemp leaps to the conclusion that the Academy is weighing in on the Labor side of politics, let me assure him that our criticism extends to the other side of politics as well.  Yes, we have said that Knowledge Nation is a 'bold vision for Australia'.  We also commended Knowledge Nation for recognising the complexity of Australia as a knowledge nation and the need to ensure that all elements are effectively linked.   Despite being now less than a fortnight from polling day, Knowledge Nation remains very short on specifics and on costed programs.  This has been disappointing.  The Academy's view is rather simple.  We do not have ten years for Australia, under whichever party forms the next government, to take significant steps towards the only future that Australia should have in the 21st century.  The next Government must build on Backing Australia's Ability to achieve an Australia that is economically and environmentally sustainable; an Australia that is linked constructively to the globalised economy, and one that offers lifestyle and opportunities to which young Australians can aspire.  Such an Australia will only come through the development of an knowledge economy based upon a healthy education sector, a vibrant science sector and an innovative business community that is willing to build long-term wealth on the basis of science and technology.

Let me turn now to the Academy's recommendations and priorities for the next government that pertain specifically to education.  There are four.  The first is Recommendation 2:

The next Australian Government must encourage a shared vision for Australian higher education, in which government, universities and the private sector work for the common good of Australia.  This may be effectively achieved through the establishment of a Higher Education Funding Council.

The absence of such a shared vision in Australia for the role (or roles) of its higher education sector is of great concern to the Academy. Recent comments by Rupert Murdoch and the President of the Business Council of Australia, Dr John Schubert, who is here today and will address us later, are encouraging.  On the other hand, we are concerned that the Government itself seems to be unable to even concede that there are serious problems and strains in the higher education sector.  You may be right, Minister Kemp, that the behaviour of the higher education sector and the examples you or your department see as you go around the campuses belie a 'crisis' in higher education.  But it is certainly the case that the Australian university sector is ailing: class sizes are too large, salary levels are too low, workloads excessive and morale too low.   Since 1990 student:staff ratios for example have risen by over 50 per cent from just under 13:1 to nearly 19:1.  A crude measure, yes, but a measure nevertheless of the strain under which universities are currently operating.  And, dare I say, a measure of a significant productivity increase.

The root cause of this malaise is not difficult to locate.  Australian universities are attempting to produce internationally competitive graduates and research outcomes on a fraction of the funding per student that our international competitors receive.   The comparison made recently by the University of Sydney is very telling and, I am afraid, gives credence to Rupert Murdoch's warning that Australian higher education runs the risk of global irrelevance.

Universities have over the past decade diversified their sources of funding dramatically but much of this increased funding has come with increased activity.   The Academy is concerned that the balance between private and public contributions in higher education has swung too far towards private contributions, particularly student contributions.   While total Commonwealth funding for higher education has risen 9.4 per cent since 1988, at constant price levels, this is reduced to a decline of 7 per cent when the amount of HECS receipts is discounted. The Commonwealth Department of Finance itself has predicted that Commonwealth expenditure on higher education as a percentage of GDP will decline from 0.59 per cent in 2000-2001 to 0.52 per cent in 2003-2004 continuing a long term decline that is hardly symptomatic of a real national commitment to building a truly innovative Australia.

University funding must increase and must increase in per capita terms.   It is also time that future funding is indexed in a way that better reflects the cost drivers that impact upon the sector.   The AVCC recently calculated that if 75 per cent of university operating grants (ie, the proportion devoted to salaries) had been indexed at nothing more than average weekly earnings, universities would collectively be $540 million better off - not an unreasonable basis for indexation and very welcome relief.  Thus the Academy recommends (Recommendation 3):

,The next Australian Government should restore the balance between private and public contributions to higher education, for example by restoring the "missing 7 per cent" in funding to universities and put in place indexation arrangements that adequately maintain an agreed level of government funding.'

While Backing Australia's Ability had several welcome initiatives, the Academy believes that they all came with increasing compliance costs in application and accountability.  The Academy would urge the next government to simplify the multiplicity of small programs in which universities unnecessarily compete for relatively limited resources. Instead the Government should look to increase core undergraduate per capita funding particularly in science, engineering and technology.

Turning now to the funding of research and research training, the Academy is concerned that the current funding mechanisms of the Research Training Scheme and the Institutional Grants Scheme are largely devoid of serious quality assessment.   They often seem more about the redistribution of already inadequate resources as a means of attaining policy initiatives than recognising that new policy initiatives require additional money.  Perhaps even more seriously, the current mechanisms have a pretence to quality assessment with an excessive compliance cost.  It is even possible that the current push to evaluate research on the basis of simplistic publication counts, with little reference to the quality of that output, is adversely affecting Australia's relative citation impact.   In a recent study, just published by the Academy, Linda Butler uses data from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) to highlight a number of notable trends in Australia's presence in the global scientific literature. For example:

  • Australia's share of the major scientific journals indexed by ISI increased significantly in the 1990s - from 2.2 per cent to nearly 2.8 per cent with much of the driving force behind this increased publication share coming from the university sector; but

  • the relative impact of Australia's publications as measured by citations continues to fall further behind most other comparable OECD countries.

This is yet another suggestion that Australian science is being seen as less relevant globally than it once was.   Thus the Academy recommends (Recommendation 4):

'The next Australian Government should reassess the possibility of introducing a research assessment exercise to influence the allocation of research-related funding to universities.'

Our final education-related recommendation concerns the critical need to improve the quality of science teaching.  Australia will suffer because it is not attracting sufficient higher ability students into the enabling sciences of physics, chemistry and mathematics at secondary school, and hence as a consequence, at university level.  Teachers are a key to change.  Some of the best science and mathematics graduates need to be attracted to school teaching and adequately remunerated and resourced.

While school science education is primarily a state responsibility, there are a number of actions that the next federal government could take to assist in creating a stronger education sector.  Addressing the HECS level of science graduates who become teachers is one. It is perverse that science teachers pay higher HECS than humanities teachers but do not receive higher salaries. Thus the Academy recommends (Recommendation 5):

'HECS-exempt scholarships should be provided for students commencing science teacher education and a percentage of the HECS debt of science and mathematics teachers forgiven for each year of teaching service.'

Assisting schools and science teachers is something that the Academy and the business community could do jointly.  I recently received an email from Ms Rebecca Hack.  Rebecca was one of 28 science teachers the Academy invited to attend its 2001 Science at the Shine Dome Teachers Program as part of our Annual AGM.    Rebecca was keen to bring a 'real live scientist' into her classroom.  One problem was that her classroom was in Emerald, Queensland!   At the Academy I introduced her to Professor Leslie Rogers from the School of Biological Sciences at the University of New England, who arranged to have Rebecca's biology students participate in a videoconference with herself and several of her PhD students.    All this was made possible through the generosity of Kestrel Coal who transported the Emerald High biology students out to the boardroom at their mine site and allowed them to use their videoconference facilities.   Rebecca wrote: 'the students found it a very rewarding experience.   It promoted science, the Academy and partnerships between businesses and schools all in one hit!'   Imagine the impact on science education if that was replicated in every school!

Let me conclude by returning to the key question of why we should care about the health of our universities and particularly the science departments within them.   The argument was put persuasively by Peter Wills and Robin Batterham in their reviews: Only through science and technology flowing to innovation can Australia build the wealth upon which our future depends so critically.

Australia does have a record of building new companies on the basis of science and technology.   Not as many as we need but perhaps more than is often appreciated.  Cochlear and ResMed are two of the most visible and best known but there are others, albeit more embryonic.  One is a little company, Advanced Nano Technologies (ANT), in Perth.  ANT is a joint venture between Samsung Corning of Korea and a spin-off company from the University of Western Australia.   This month ANT will commission a pilot plant - in Perth - to make nanopowders based upon patents derived from ARC-funded work by Professor Paul McCormick at UWA  It will also hire its 25th employee - not bad for a company that is less than 18 months old.  The nanopowder applications field is a high-growth materials industry fundamental to nanotechnology.

Incidentally, Graeme Clark, Colin Sullivan and Paul McCormick whose work established Cochlear, ResMed and ANT respectively, are all Fellows of the Academy - showing that excellent science does lead to successful business outcomes.  Indeed, a recent study by Francis Narin in the US has shown that work of the most highly cited scientists are much more likely to be patented than that of less cited scientists.  Yet another reason to be concerned at the recent findings of Linda Butler is that Australian scientific citations continue to fall compared to other OECD countries.

Cochlear, ResMed and particularly ANT show that the aspirations of Backing Australia's Ability can be realised.   What is also true is that the basic research that underpinned them came from our universities. That is why we need to recreate in Australian universities strong, vibrant science faculties that are undertaking excellent science.  The economic gain will come from that science but if there is no science there will be nothing in which to invest.  And if there are no science teachers there will be no science students to become the innovators of the future.  That is why the Australian Academy of Science believes that revitalising Australian science education is vital to the long-term national interest and one of the greatest challenges, not only for the next Government, but for all of us.