- by A Carruthers
- The Guardian
- Issue #2121
South China University of Technology south campus. (CC0)
It’s nothing short of a catastrophe. Australian university rankings have plummeted to their lowest ever records in the latest world rankings. While rankings aren’t completely trustworthy – they’re run in non-transparent ways by various large private corporations – they can still reflect systemic problems. This year Australia only has one university in the top fifty, China now has four.
The source of this problem is glaringly obvious: Australia’s slide in the rankings comes off the back of neoliberal austerity measures implemented by management across almost every university in Australia in the past 10 years. The last universities that seemed immune to neoliberalism have now fallen. Funding cuts and austerity reign supreme. In China, funding is increasing by leaps and bounds, especially in Research and Development. China spends almost $7 billion a year on R & D and support for departments across all disciplines with over an 8 per cent year-on-year increase.
Australian universities, on the other hand, spend hundred of millions on external consultants, but they don’t spend money on what matters – workers and students – which is precisely what is leading to this dramatic drop in the rankings (ironically some of the money they spend is on improving rankings). Instead they repeatedly slash staff numbers, steal wages, cut courses and increase class sizes, and even decimate whole colleges, departments and institutes.
CAPITALIST SURREALISM
Universities without colleges or departments. Universities without lecturers. Universities without disciplines. Empty buildings, multimillion dollar carparks, ‘wellness lifelines,’ yet more high-paid senior management than ever before. It sounds absurd; but this is what the capitalist university looks like. Capitalism is unrealistic, hysterical, irrational. It makes no sense.
Australian university bosses will blame Australian government policy for this downward trend, and inadequate funding alongside international student caps is definitely an important part of the picture. At the same time, the real problem is what has been an ongoing policy by both major parties in this country to corporatise university culture and erode democratic governance.
University leadership is stacked with former politicians and CEOs from private industry. The people who make the university, workers and students, have no say. The big bosses are more than happy to take home the big bucks with salaries over a million per year while attacking working and learning conditions, and underpaying the most vulnerable workers.
Some will be asking why the bourgeois capitalist management continue to lead every single university to destruction in Australia? If it clearly doesn’t work, and so clearly fails to deliver, why does neoliberal management continue to do the same thing over and again? For two reasons:
1. The management are part of, and linked directly to, the Australian dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. This dictatorship is addicted to financial capitalist methods of austerity, rather than growth and discipline-building. Vice-Chancellor salaries range in the millions, thus they have no stake in actually improving the university and their interest is directly opposed to that of the people they are supposed to be looking after, students and staff.
2. Government funding has completely stagnated. Successive Labor and Liberal governments, have decided that universities in Australia do not need to have sustainable, expanding or generous funding models, despite Australian universities having international reputations, despite the importance of education to society, and despite the number of workers employed by universities.
NTEU FIGHTBACK, ANU ABOLISHES MEDICINE
A case in point: the Australian National University Vice Chancellor Genevieve Bell, has introduced a plan called ‘Renew ANU,’ which involves abolishing the College of Health and Medicine and will see jobs slashed across the entire university. NTEU estimates that 638 full time equivalent positions are threatened; 638 workers, probably more, will have their livelihoods destroyed. 230 workers came to the NTEU meeting to organise the campaign to protest against management and reverse their decision to destroy the university.
The most revolutionary thing one can do today is defend the disciplines. Once upon a time it was possible to say that one disagreed with, say, the School of Philosophy at Melbourne University. Now, there is nothing to disagree with, because there’s no School left. A typical Australian university now has no Departments, just a ‘Hub’ with two people left over from a traumatic spill-and-fill. Students are left with less choice and a bleak future. Staff workplace relations decline and become cesspits of competition and conflict.
In a worrying trend, biosecurity and weapons technology are increasingly the only areas that see funding and growth.
THE COMMUNIST UNIVERSITY
By contrast, China shows what happens when a government remains committed to expanding the education system, commensurate with the size of the population. China has built a genuinely socialised system of education, taking a sober, calm, rational approach. The university is responsible to society, and society supports the universities.
Universities are also democratised, as part of the larger system of socialist democracy and accountability in China. The Chinese university is about free speech, democracy, freedom, student and staff expression. It’s where China’s bright youth come together to mould the future of socialist China. All students must study at least two compulsory subjects on Marxism. All staff and students have canteens, and accommodation. The university Party leadership is responsible to staff and students. Any breach of responsibility will incur strict punishment.
Meanwhile, ANU sets police on the Palestine protesters and is now attempting to ban postering on campus. ANU leadership knows no shame. This is appalling anti-student behaviour that ought to be mercilessly punished by the government and the people.
At this point in history, socialism is not an alternative, its a necessity. Labor has shown it is completely incapable of fixing higher education. The Liberals may be worse, but then again it seems Labor has been doing the kind of damage nobody could previously imagine. The Communist university is a horizon that is much more sober, sensible, realistic and achievable. It would put an end to the irrational madness, all this capitalist surrealism.
Schools: Albanese ‘locks in a decade of inequality’
The introduction of school funding legislation into Parliament shows that the Albanese government does not understand the reality on the ground of their failed school funding negotiations and the impact that this is having on the wellbeing and morale of teachers and students in public schools.
“While we welcome legislative moves to lock in a floor for the Commonwealth share of the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS), it is beyond belief that the Albanese government is setting this floor at the previous Coalition government’s 20 per cent cap,” said Correna Haythorpe, Federal President of the Australian Education Union (AEU).
With stalled school funding negotiations for the vast majority of states and one territory, the introduction of legislation into Parliament by the Albanese government is premature.
There are a number of key issues:
The setting of a floor is critically important to future-proof the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) against federal governments who are motivated to reduce public school funding.
A floor of 20 per cent is not good enough. It sets the floor at the Coalition government’s cap instead of the full 25 per cent that is needed.
The government needs to answer the question about what the regulations currently allow them to do in terms of delivering funding to the NT, WA, and TAS. Is legislation really needed right now?
The floor should not be set until all states and territories have signed bilateral agreements, then a true floor can be set, rather than cementing in the previous government’s position.
The legislation is silent on the 4 per cent depreciation tax and its removal from school funding agreements.
A ten year agreement locks in a decade of inequality for the next generation of young Australians.
“There has been no genuine opportunity for consultation on this draft legislation. Further, we have the astonishing situation whereby NSW, VIC, SA, QLD, and the ACT have been told that they will receive status quo funding for next year, therefore no additional money for these states,” continued Haythorpe.
“This can only be viewed as a cynical political move against states that have held firm for a full 100 per cent SRS on behalf of their public schools. This approach entrenches inequality for the students, teachers and families of these jurisdictions.
“There is an urgent need for the Albanese government to show leadership and return to the negotiating table with a “better and fairer” school funding offer for states and territories.”
