Urge to merge needs a rethink

The funding crunch raises the spectre of combining institutions; remember to consider all options when going down this path. By Andrew Vann. It’s hard to picture now, with the mercury over 40 in parts of the country in recent weeks, but many people in our communities were bitten hard by late October frosts last year. Severe frosts in the middle of October are rare enough, but warmer-than-normal temperatures at the start of spring had crops budding and sprouting weeks earlier than they normally would as well. What looked like a great start to the growing season eventually left crops and producers exposed when the cold snap hit. The damage bill will be in the hundreds of millions. Grain producer Tony Flannery, from Galong near Yass in NSW, summed up both the size of the challenge and the local response to it in an interview with the ABC. “For an operation the size of ours, we have an overdraft of around $800,000, so we’re not even going to go within a bull’s roar of covering that to put a crop back in next year,” he said. “But honestly, there are a lot of people worse off than me. You’ve just got to grin and bear it.” Regional and rural communities around Australia have been built, and continue to thrive, on that sort of grit. On that sort of gumption. And that calm, determined approach to life’s challenges is one of the many things that make living in a regional or rural community great. It’s a way of life that more and more people are enjoying. In 2012, almost one Australian in three lived outside a major city. In the five years to 2012, the population outside major cities grew by 7 per cent. There are many reasons for people to make a tree change. Rural Australians report feeling happier, safer and more connected to their communities than people living in metropolitan areas (which may or may not have something to do with the fact that the average commute in Sydney is now more than 70 minutes each day). Rural Australians have also been found to be more satisfied with their relationships and their financial position, and to be happier at work than their metropolitan peers. But whilst children growing up in rural and regional communities spend more time outside, are more likely to have a preference for active pastimes, and are more likely to play team sports, they also face more challenges in education. These challenges lie not only in accessing the highest-quality teachers and facilities, but also in aspiration. In 2010, young adults were significantly more likely to have attained Year 12 if they lived in major cities (81 per cent) compared with regional areas (67 per cent) and remote or very remote areas (64 per cent). Unsurprisingly, this has significant implications for employment and income potential. People aged 20 to 64 in 2010 were more likely to be employed if they had attained Year 12, more likely to be working in white-collar jobs, and far more likely to have personal income in the highest quintile. Lower rates of Year 12 attainment also affect the expectations families have for tertiary education. Parents in major cities have relatively high expectations for their children’s education, compared with parents in rural and regional areas. All of these factors translate into a much higher concentration of people with university-level qualification in the major cities (27.3 per cent) than in the rest of the country (14.8 per cent). A common justification is that industries in the regions do not require the same level of education as those in the cities, but this is fundamentally mistaken. Regional Australia is critical to the financial health of the nation. The Regional Universities Network quotes figures showing that two-thirds of Australia’s export earnings come from regional areas. Increasing agricultural and resources productivity and finding solutions to the challenges of distance in regional health require highly skilled and innovative professionals. Yet the distribution of people with university-level qualifications translates into significant workforce shortages in regional Australia in health, engineering and other areas. At Charles Sturt University (CSU), we work with schools in our communities through our Future Moves program to build aspiration for tertiary study rural and remote areas. The program includes school visits, and visits by the schools to CSU campuses. Students get the chance to conduct some simple experiments in a laboratory or use the physiotherapy rehabilitation equipment, or sit in on short lectures. It’s about connecting with students and their families to show them university study is a realistic, and attainable, option. These approaches have seen a success, with significant increases in participation following the introduction of the demand-driven system. But what about the future, particularly in an environment where finances are tight? Some would say, considering the distances sometimes involved, online study solutions are the answer. Indeed, some commentary has suggested that all we need are metropolitan institutions to provide education over the internet and we could dispense with regional universities altogether. As a long-standing successful provider of distance and online education, CSU certainly believes in the opportunities they can provide. However, they generally work much better for mature students than for school leavers. We find online education is so much more powerful when students have the option to mix their study modes, attend residential workshops and meet their lecturers or use university facilities when it suits them. And those benefits are realistic only when a physical campus is close enough to visit. Regional campuses contribute to local economies, produce regionally relevant research, generate a skilled labour force and work with local business, government and community organisations. More important from an economic and equity standpoint is that students at universities in regional Australia are predominantly from surrounding regional areas. These students are more likely to be women, more likely to be caring for dependants, and more likely to be Indigenous. Students who complete their studies at regional universities also tend to remain there for employment or further study. And regional institutions do a great job. Students at these universities are just as engaged and satisfied with their studies as those in the cities, and they’re more likely to report that their studies have prepared them for employment. They are also more likely than metropolitan students to feel that their courses integrate employment-focused work experiences into study, and more likely to report that they have developed industry awareness and acquired job-related knowledge and skills. But students from regional areas who aspire to attend university are often prevented from doing so by the cost of study and accommodation, and are much more likely to defer commencement for financial reasons. Government budgets are tight across all sectors, meaning funding support programs for students aiming to study at a regional university and providing more regional facilities won’t be easy. There have been suggestions that we might improve economies of scale by rationalising across regional universities. But in regional Australia, scale also brings geographical stretch, and this reduces the ability to release efficiencies. However, if we look at international experience, there are examples where mergers have released value, creating a reputational and academic payoff. At an LH Martin workshop on university diversity in early 2013, Franz Van Vught from the European Centre for Strategic Management of Universities spoke on the diversity of Australian universities and global comparisons. He pointed out that one of the most successful examples of a university merger was that between the Victoria University of Manchester and the Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in 2004. In addition to operational efficiencies, the merger allowed valuable city-centre land to be sold and the proceeds reinvested for research capacity. As a result of this, the University of Manchester increased its position in the ARWU rankings from 53 to 38. Is it too much to think about the possibilities in Australia? Australia’s major cities contain a number of universities, often with very similar missions of global research excellence and overlapping capabilities. If we think that one important aim is for some institutions to place well in international research rankings, perhaps we could think about this Manchester example of rationalisation. A cursory examination would suggest that the University of Sydney and UNSW, and Melbourne University and Monash University might offer significant opportunities to achieve the same kind of result. Of course, in regional Australia, we recognise that taking a narrow, economic rationalist view of things does not always produce the best outcome. There are always losses through mergers and, quite rightly, there are longstanding and deep affections for institutions. However, if as a nation we are unable to consider protecting adequate funding for higher education across the board, it is important that we do not automatically expect regional students and communities to be those that are affected first. Professor Andrew Vann is vice-chancellor of Charles Sturt University.