Brand still the main attraction, says Marginson

Prestige will remain the primary driver of student movement in the new Australian demand-driven system, a higher education conference has heard. And that prestige will still be determined by a university’s research outcomes, rather than its teaching and learning quality. Speaking at the Universities Australia conference in Canberra last week, University of Melbourne higher education expert Professor Simon Marginson said elite higher education providers the world over did not expect to meet demand. Instead, they fostered the value of their brand. “They stay selective,” Marginson said during a panel discussion on deregulation. “They are not driven by profit volume or profit rate, and they are driven less by the volume of revenue than by inter-university competition for prestige or status. Revenue is not so much the end in itself, as the means to a more important end.” He said in higher education, where hard data on teaching and learning quality was scant, brand value was determined by research performance and reputation. “And all the evidence we have on student choice tells us that most students prefer a high status institution or program to a lesser status institution or program with better teaching quality,” said Marginson. The demand-driven reform that began here this year established open competition for market share, albeit government funded, but he expected the same truths about brand to hold true in the new system. “I think what the demand-driven reform will do is begin to stratify the system more decisively on mission. Institutions whose brand is less strong than average must work hard to recruit and they will become more customer-focused over time. The map of programs will become more tailored to student demand,” he said. In response to a question by National Union of Students president Donherra Walmsley about the link between educational quality and job readiness, Marginson agreed the sector’s preoccupation with brand was problematic. “At the moment, employers make decisions too much on the basis of brand, just like everybody else,” he said. “They need better information on exit capability … We need to get information about teaching and learning effects onto the table and build it up as far as we can.” He said brand focus also diminished the powerful effects higher education had on individuals and their lives. “Students don’t have that kind of thing in mind enough when they make decisions on the basis of brand, of status, of the pecking order which we all know very well in each capital city,” he said. Marginson did not expect teaching and learning could displace brand competition, but said the nation’s regulators could help make it more relevant. “I guess my point is the more you emphasise a competitive framework, the more you go down the road of brand competition, not competition on the basis of teaching and learning,” he said. Read Professor Marginson’s full presentation to the Universities Australia conference here. Back to full coverage of Universities Australia 2012 conference