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ERA about Australia, not the race for reputation
Campus Review, February 08, 2011
Article by Bruce Muirhead (CEO, Eidos Institute)
Research needs to be driven by collaboration, not competition, writes Bruce Muirhead
As an institution, universities have always existed as something of a paradox.
Born out of the religious scholarly fervor of the Middle Ages, blooded among the humanist ideals of the Enlightenment and ultimately emerging as a powerful symbol of revolutionary youth, universities have remained a global fixture and remain among the oldest institutions of any type continuing to flourish and operate to this day.
This kaleidoscope of competing historical influences directly contributed to the formation of a uniquely academic culture that has birthed entire social movements, produced generations of well-educated and politically active youth and championed the values of knowledge, research and universal education.
In today’s mix of globalisation and economic rationalism under which the modern university operates, modern-day higher education often struggles to locate its position and purpose amid a flood of conflicting political, ideological and market- driven viewpoints.
Despite historical foundations of universalism, competition between universities remains a strong institutional focus within the Australian (and global) higher education sector.
This holds particularly true when viewing universities through the lens of the production of research. When 18th-century European universities first began to publish their own research journals, it was only a matter of time before university rankings began to dot the academic horizon, gaining popularity and mass appeal (most notably in the US) until exploding on the global education landscape during the past decade.
Their recent popularity has been greatly enhanced by what has been dubbed a “global brain race” as unprecedented numbers of students traverse the globe in search of world- class education, fuelling competition between universities seeking to compete with the world’s best in terms of attracting the highest calibre researchers, staff and students.
The recently released 2010 Excellence in Research results are testament not only to this competitive mentality between universities but to the continuing existence of competing ideals within a 21st-century university context.
While the front-page headline associated with the release of the results was a negative framing of the data, decrying the fact that more than two-thirds of Australia’s universities have an overall research performance that does not reach international benchmarks, closer examination (and indeed, wider university comment following the release of the report) reveals that many of the newer Australian universities ranking below par actually had world-class research in various disciplines.
James Cook University, for instance, is a world leader in research on fisheries, science and environmental science and management yet in its overall average was ranked below par.
Criticisms of ranking systems extend beyond that of process. Many have argued that the “reputation race” has led not to greater diversity and an overall improvement of standards but to system of hierarchical differentiation based on inequalities and a greater social stratification of students.
The results also double as an effective argument for abandoning traditional “ivory tower” competitive mentality and embracing humanist tones of collaboration. The quarter of Australian universities at or well above world-class research standards were all members of the Group of 8, a coalition of research- intensive universities solely focused on maximising the potential for collaboration in a competitive environment.
Cross-institutional research collaboration in the broader sense, however, continues to remain a relative taboo among disparate higher education institutions, particularly smaller and newer Australian universities, a reflection of the fact that it’s hard to do and sustain, particularly when independent thought and influence is positioned as an aspiration.
With open source technologies and the co-creation of innovative networking platforms transforming many other aspects of university operations (most notably in the delivery of teaching methods and student administration), it seems curious that this attitude has not extended to support sustained long- term collaborative research.
Like any major institution operating under the shadow of globalisation, the modern university must work out how to continually engage with the rapid increase in our collective knowledge regarding the state of the world and utilise this constant flood of new information and data to its best advantage.
As the interface between public and private continues to fracture, and relationships between universities are continuing to evolve to new and varied heights, a healthy atmosphere of competition between universities is only to be expected. In order to continue to evolve as players on the global research scene, however, Australian universities need to leverage off the increasing need for connectivity between political leaders, public servants, academics and the private sector and walk further down the path of research partnership and collaboration.
The framework for the current debate surrounding the 2010 ERA results should not be viewed simply through the lens of the intellectual capacity of disparate universities, but rather as providing a platform for establishing the intellectual capacity of Australia as a country.
What would be our collective intellectual IP as a nation? How can we best utilise the pockets of excellence among our smaller regional universities and use them to contribute to the overall research capacity of Australia?
As ivory towers, universities are only as effective and powerful as the next skyscraper. As a collective, they can transcend place card rankings.
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