October 13, 2015

Independent body could have unintended consequences

We should remember this as we embark on a debate of the merits of establishing an independent commission for higher education.

History shows that buffer bodies can have a range of functions and consequences, not all of them desirable.

In Britain, the origins of higher education commissions go back about 100 years. Lord Haldane’s ideas from 1904 eventually resulted in radical changes to the organisation of research in the Dominions and, after World War I, new ways of allocating funds to universities in Britain.

The University Grants Committee had the sole responsibility of distributing funds. That lasted to the end of World War II. Only then did it assume responsibility for planning the sector.

The shift in policy to give the UGC planning powers was driven by national urgency and the need to organise a rapidly expanding sector. For most of this period the UGC was responsible to the Treasury. Only later did it report to the department of education and ­science.

By 1989 it morphed to become the Universities Funding Council, directly responsible to parliament. The present complex system of national funding councils followed on.

In some of these guises the buffer body controlled funds, in others planning, and sometimes it had both roles. Here we need to be clear on why we may need a new body, what we want it to do and to whom it may be accountable.

The original formulation of a UGC was highly centralised. Once it acquired planning powers, it set out to determine the distribution of academic departments across the sector. For example, in Britain, the provision of “minor” languages was rationalised in the early 1980s by central edict. Within two decades there were short­ages of skilled graduates with language skills relevant to several geopolitical conflict zones. We should not expect commissions to do prescience well.

Across time the role of the UGC has moved back to one of resource allocation. In England, Higher Education Funding Council for England influences the sector in a subtle way and, until recently, it exerted policy direction through the allocation of funds for research, teaching, social inclusion and university: industry interactions. The differential release of funds in each of these streams has created variegation in the missions of universities.

Centralised planning still exists in some places with UGC type bodies. City-states, such as Hong Kong and Singapore, and smaller economies, such as Ireland and New Zealand, have relatively strong controls. All these places are characterised by smaller populations and a national system that can shift with changes at institutional level. So the decision to create, for example, an additional school in a professional area, such as pharmacy or law, may reduce the viability of provision in all other existing locations.

This problem of lack of scale does not apply in economies of the size of Australia where we are large enough to welcome competition and choice.

The alternative model of a UGC with funding responsibility may have merit. This will change the role of ministers in approving funding. It also will generate a debate on the number of “jam jars” within the funding formula. Some will favour a simple research and teaching split. Others will see it as an opportunity to enhance impact, industry interaction and regional development.

Across time, and with population growth, this also will give us a mechanism to fund “cold spots” — places with growing demand and no local university.

There is an irony in the timing of our debate on the merit of creating a buffer body, for just as Australia is heading in this direction, the British press is speculating that the English buffer body, HEFCE, will be closed down. There is a drift towards localising strategy and recognising autonomy.

All this is happening as we contemplate stepping a different direction. If we establish a UGC, how we shape its final mandate will have very different consequences for the sector. As the character Helen Quilley found in Sliding Doors, not all destinations give the same level of certainty for the future.

This article was originally published by The Australian. View the original article. 

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