Holding Our Universities to Account
Accountability is often the last thing universities want, and that's sad
Three cheers for the heroic academic, an authoritative voice of integrity in a chaotic and unreliable world. The heroic academic may be out of fashion, but those of us who work at universities hear a lot about “integrity” these days, and some of us actually believe in it. We want our universities to be beacons of incorruptibility, trusted and trustworthy. Many of us believe that the whole point of the “ivory tower” is to insulate us from the pressures that people face — both in the private sector and in government — to compromise with the devil. We have academic freedom so that we can fearlessly tell the truth, not so that we can lie without consequences.
That’s why it’s so depressing when our universities seem to act in ways that deceive the public, seemingly using their insider knowledge to trick people into false understandings. It bothers me so much that I’ve made it a kind of personal mission to call attention to what I consider to be false narratives regarding Australian universities. In fact, I recently submitted a trio of “back to school” op-eds to three major newspapers (the Australian Financial Review, the Sydney Morning Herald, and the Australian). Each one exposed what I considered might constitute inappropriate behavior on the part of the universities’ trade association, Universities Australia (UA). All three were rejected, and it is my belief that someone may have put pressure on editors not to publish at least one of these articles (and perhaps all three).
Thankfully, all three were accepted by MacroBusiness, an Australian website dedicated to publishing “fact-checked, data-driven analysis and opinion.” What’s more, MacroBusiness offered to publish them outside the paywall, without my even asking. But just like the big newspapers, MacroBusiness is a business, and it relies on subscriptions to stay in business. I hope you will consider supporting the site. It really is an important resource for Australia and Australians.
My first back-to-school piece focused on UA’s pre-budget submission to the Treasury, asking (of course) for more money for the university system. Now, I work at a university, and I am all in favor of increased public support for public universities — especially my own. But I am firmly committed to telling the truth while asking for it. That’s why I get so upset when I see what I believe may be “self-serving errors” in the university system’s pleas for more government funding:
MacroBusiness | University financial claims are full of self-serving errors
As I characterize their behavior in these terms, I note that Australia has draconian defamation laws that preclude the kind of colorful language that is often used in the United States.
For an example of a self-serving error, consider the opening bullet point in UA’s budget claim: “educating 1.5 million Australians every year, universities are the engine room training the nurses, teachers, construction managers, engineers and tech workers our economy depends on.”
While it might have been nice for UA to admit that humanities and social sciences students are important too, that’s not the problem. The problem is that Australia’s universities do not educate “1.5 million Australians.” They educate 1.5 million people, of whom roughly 1 million are Australian and 500,000 are foreigners. That’s right: roughly one-third of all of our students are international. And UA must know this; in fact, the data are available on their own website.
OK, errors can creep into even the most carefully edited document. So what about UA’s third bullet point, that international education is a “$52 billion export engine” for Australia? That is also incorrect. And it’s also been a major topic of controversy, so thoroughly debunked that the Australian Bureau of Statistics was forced to issue a clarification on the number. If UA is not aware that the $52 billion figure is wrong, it should be.
The problem is that $52 billion represents the total spending of international students in Australia, without taking into account amounts that they actually earn onshore while studying. Since the overwhelming majority of international students work while they are here, a large portion of their spending is generated onshore, and thus does not represent “export” earnings. Everyone knows this; experts have been pointing it out for at least a decade. So why repeat a number that is known to be incorrect?
In both of these cases (and others cited in my article), UA has chosen to put forward a claim that presents the universities in a positive light, despite the fact that UA either knows or should know that the claim is incorrect. I can’t present my full opinion on this matter because I can’t afford a lawsuit. So you be the judge.
My second piece really was a back-to-school piece: back to school for us, and back to Canberra for UA and its member universities:
MacroBusiness | It’s back to Canberra for education bureaucrats
Every year around this time UA hosts its “Solutions Summit” in the nation’s capital, an event that “brings together more than 1,000 leaders from universities, government, business and the community to shape the policy and partnerships that will guide the year ahead.”
It is a law of nature that the good and the great should meet regularly at networking conclaves, and no one would deny senior university administrators their annual shindig. But an event of this kind is also an opportunity to prod universities to fix some of the perennial problems that plague the sector as a whole. One among several problems featured in my article is the lack of English fluency shown by many of our international students. Simply put, many students, even at the most prestigious universities, can’t communicate in English.
But the Australian government has recently lifted the minimum English test scores required for student visas. Problem solved, right?
Wrong. Universities don’t actually mind the government requiring higher English scores, because most of the universities run side-businesses teaching English. The higher the entry score for university study, the more international students have to sign up for these “foundation” courses before commencing university study. That wouldn’t be a problem … except that students who complete foundation courses don’t have to re-take an international English test. It’s enough just to pass the course.
And nearly everyone passes; the promotional materials assure students of that.
Obviously, if these courses really taught students up to a university standard in English, the universities would be happy to have their students prove it with an international English test. And if the government really wanted to ensure that all of our international students were really able to communicate in English, they’d simply make all of them take the test. So why are literally hundreds of thousands of international students allowed to study at Australian universities without having to independently certify their English skills on an international test? Once again, I’ll let you reach your own conclusions.
To be honest, I wrote my third piece just for fun. I read that UA’s chief executive was complaining about government over-regulation that was costing our universities hundreds of millions of dollars in compliance costs. Now, if you work at a university, you know that administrators have never seen a regulation they don’t like. The kinds of people who go into university administration are generally the kinds of people who revel in regulation: the three pillars of this, the four dimensions of that, the eight principles of no-one-remembers-what, are all included on mandatory reports, collected and collated across the sector.
No regulation or reporting mechanism is more noble than a virtue-signaling one. Disabilities, racism, sexual harassment, you name it, if there’s a group to be protected, university administrators will spare no expense in protecting it — or at least, in loudly and visibly proclaiming their commitment to protecting it. And thus I simply couldn’t resist pointing out some specific examples of the irony of UA complaining about the high burden of regulatory reporting:
MacroBusiness | Over-regulation is the price of virtue signaling
Take for example Australia’s new Higher Education Gender-Based Violence Regulator. The need for this new regulator was (supposedly) demonstrated by UA’s National Student Safety Surveys (more on them another time), UA provided technical support for the legislation that created the new regulator, and the legislation was commended and welcomed by UA.
This, despite that fact that the government estimates that it will cost the universities $173.2 million a year to collect the relevant data and administer the required campus bureaucracies to support this new regulatory behemoth.
The universities never tire of virtue signaling about inclusion. On whether or not they really mean it, you’ll no doubt have your own opinion. Either way, complaining about the costs of complying with regulations that they themselves have demanded is simply ludicrous. But don’t worry. The government agreed with UA to set up a “better regulation” working group composed of “regulators, university peak bodies, unions and student representatives” to make recommendations for reducing regulation and cutting red tape. Good luck.
MacroBusiness describes its mission as bridging “the gulf between the Australian business media and reality.” It’s not only the business media that often shows a gap with reality; it really is a media-wide challenge. Admittedly, we all tend to think that we’re right and the others are wrong, but sometimes that the gaps between what the media claims to be real and what actually is real are clearly demonstrable. And not just the media.
The MacroBusiness mission statement goes on to explain:
That this gap exists without the heavy-hand of a dictator is testament to the power of vested interests, monopolies, weak government, closed ideologies and a perennial culture of populism.
In effect, it means our leadership class can make unaccountable economic and business blunders while being measured against inappropriate yardsticks.
At MacroBusiness we measure our economy and our elite against the lessons of history, reason and ideas to provide a better discussion for your investments and business.
That’s a sentiment with which I can agree. I don’t know that they always get things right, but I’m glad that they’re trying, and I believe that they sincerely are trying. That’s really what integrity is all about: sincerely trying. People of integrity make mistakes. They get things wrong. But they don’t intentionally deceive, and I’ve never had the feeling while reading MacroBusiness that anyone was trying to deceive me. I’m proud to see my work published by MacroBusiness, and if you’re Australian, I hope you will check out the site.
The Salvatore Babones Newsletter will return.