‘Restructure’ is not a dirty word

Irrespective of a University’s status, the statement of a “high likelihood of being run better” is a naive statement since being “run better” has nothing to do with better quality teaching or research but rather meeting budgetary constraints “better” than before. This is at a time when Australian Universities are not funded to be sufficiently competitive relative to the growth in the region and are clearly in trouble as a consequence (perhaps each with its particular flavor of problems). Traditionally such constraints mean that the changed priority has always led to a decline in quality and capacity to be competitive (for example, the destruction of workshops on campuses as a result of budget cuts from the government at the time led to a real decline in instrument research, an area Australia led the world in and which has not recovered from) since these are by their nature expensive – why this would be any different now is simply not justified above. Further, it is clear that such environments filter out the best and favor those who have the time to spend on strategic politics to ensure their personal survival – the basic reason why Australia (or any country that goes down this path) keeps losing its best scientists but not necessarily its best politicians among them. Therefore one of the difficult things for higher education in Australia is that not only is it competing against better funded and improving organisations overseas, it has to contend with diminishing local funds and increasing local agendas, much of which appears to be increasingly constrained by budget cuts arising from a lack of understanding of how the world actually works. This leads overall to more insider fighting and grabs for power not necessarily better egalitarianism and better working teams rising above the constraints to still hug each other cheerfully. There are undoubtedly things that can always be improved at any organisation (and must be) but this risks the obvious caveat of ultimately being the reason broader cuts and worrisome restructuring hides behind rather than admitting a lack of reasoning that requires more dialog – perhaps too much of Kahneman’s fast thinking so to speak.