Australian higher education is so ¡°broken¡± by ¡°years of poor policy¡± that only a ¡°major renovation¡± can save it, a new book argues.

Cultural studies doyen Graeme Turner says policies that put universities at the mercy of the market, initiated under 1980s education minister John Dawkins, relegated them from publicly oriented educators of citizens to workforce training institutions serving economic interests.

The legacy of these changes is evident in the steady dismantling of humanities education, as the cornerstone courses of an ¡°educated civil society¡± become uneconomic to run. It is evident in the gradual succumbing of regional universities, ¡°the institutions with the most direct connections to the needs of their communities¡±, to market forces that will ¡°eventually wipe some of them out¡±, he said.

Most of all it is evident in the predicament of academics, from sessional teachers who cannot land steady work, to tenured lecturers battling mounting class sizes and administrative load, to reluctant heads of school getting ¡°squeezed from both sides¡±.

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¡°None of them can see a future for themselves within the contemporary Australian higher education system,¡± Turner writes in?.

¡°We are rapidly burning through our next generation of teachers and researchers. Students are dropping out, academics are burning out, and governments have been tuning out for decades.¡±

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Turner, an emeritus professor at the University of Queensland, has served on the Prime Minister¡¯s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council and as president of the Academy of the Humanities. In a landmark 2014 ¡°¡± study he outlined threats to the humanities and social sciences from federal government policy settings, funding practices within universities and ¡°the increasingly market-oriented system¡±.

Eleven years on, his latest book ¨C part of Monash University ±Ê³Ü²ú±ô¾±²õ³ó¾±²Ô²µ¡¯²õ??series ¨C tackles a broader subject. ¡°Our university system is in serious trouble,¡± Turner warns.

¡°As a sector, they are less comprehensive, less diverse and less innovative than they were before the 1980s. Whole departments and even some disciplines have disappeared under the pressure of reduced funding, market competition and corporate rationalisation. We are witnessing the gradual dismantling of the traditional concept of the university, along with its commitment to the generation of knowledge and the contest of ideas.¡±

The Australian Universities Accord ¡°only captured the tip of an iceberg of dysfunction¡±, he says, advocating a complete overhaul so that individual universities can embrace ¡°different purposes and trajectories¡±. ?

Elements could include regional subsidies, more flexible research funding arrangements ¨C including a revival of large-scale block grants ¨C and support funds for endangered disciplines. A genuinely independent coordinating body, with a far broader remit than the?Australian Tertiary Education Commission, could inject ¡°a non-partisan articulation of the national interests¡± by monitoring the patterns, quality and geographic spread of course offerings.

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Most crucially, ¡°the idea of running the whole show as a competitive marketplace¡± should be ¡°jettisoned¡±, Turner argues. ¡°There is no need for Australia to treat chunks of the higher education sector as potentially expendable. These are parts of our national institutional infrastructure.¡±

He said it was a ¡°waste of time¡± to expect salvation from a funding windfall. ¡°The government¡¯s not going to put lots more money into universities,¡± Turner told?Times Higher Education. But existing funds could be applied far more effectively ¨C for example, the Research and Development Tax Incentive programme, which provides over A$11 billion (?5.2 billion) in tax offsets for companies that undertake R&D.

¡°It¡¯s been in place for 30-odd years. There is no evidence that it¡¯s increased industry investment in research...collaboration with the university sector [or] so-called productivity. That¡¯s a choice that government could make that would change the sector completely.¡±

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He said the government could reduce universities¡¯ wasteful spending by relieving them of the need to compete for limited pots of funding. University administrators could also make better choices, Turner said.

¡°It¡¯s up to them to work out ways that they can spend their money better and support their staff. Do they spend more money on infrastructure? Do they spend more money on promotions? Do they spend more money on their mid-level executive? The answer to almost all of those possibilities has been ¡®yes¡¯.

¡°It¡¯s still possible for them to decide ¡®no¡¯: teaching is our most fundamental activity [and] we will resource it as much as we can as the top priority and do the other things if we can manage them.¡±

University leaders have been too ¡°compliant with government policy¡±, Turner said. ¡°The brutality of some of the cuts over the last 20 years has worn them down. They¡¯re not a tough sector any more.¡±

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john.ross@timeshighereducation.com