From the Vice Chancellor
The
eighth annual conference of the Australian Technology Network has just
concluded. During 2005 the ATN, UniSA, Curtin, RMIT, UTS and QUT proved
to be a powerful alliance in the policy debate in higher education. The
2006 conference, which brought together senior staff from all five
universities for two days of discussions and planning, underlined how
much the alliance has matured.
Formed more than a decade ago, the ATN was the first formal alliance of Australian universities with shared histories and common purposes. Since then, three other groupings have emerged. The advantage of the ATN is that our history of interaction and, more recently, working together systematically, has built trust and respect. This means we are ready to share confidential information and to speak with one voice on critical issues. It means too that government is ready to provide us with funding for national projects, large Australian organisations are seeking to partner with us on major projects, and international groupings of like institutions are approaching us to form alliances.
As we looked at what we had achieved in 2005 we agreed that our capacity to work together to adopt a shared position on the details of the proposed Research Quality Framework had been our greatest achievement. By working together we have been able to prepare our institutions for the possible changes and to influence the policy debate. While that debate is by no means over as the historically privileged institutions manoeuvre for maintenance of their advantages, our work together in 2005 has prepared us for the next stage. The ATN can mount a powerful argument for the critical importance of the social and economic impact of research being taken as seriously as its acceptance by the academy.
Underlying many of our discussions was a concept with which Professor Greg Craven of Curtin University challenged us on the first day. He argued that it was particularly critical at present for the ATN universities to conceptualise a notion of institutional diversity which went beyond the restricted categories canvassed in the current Australian debate. He suggested that “Nelsonian” diversity has evolved to mean differentiation into three tiers of institutions and said,“If there is one basic policy challenge for the Network, it… is to persuade the new Minister that there is more to diversity than a crude ranking, and that difference is a complex virtue, rather than a simple sorting mechanism”.
Presentations throughout the conference reinforced our sense that in a period of policy “churn” and rapid change, there are opportunities for positioning and repositioning both of the ATN and each of its institutions. The opportunities will come if we use our now established capacity to speak with one voice on important issues. However, we will need to have things to say – we need to be major contributors to the policy debate. If Greg Craven is right, and I suspect he is, we need to bring on the debate about what a diverse higher education system means in Australia; how such a system can serve the country’s future needs; and, most importantly, what universities like ours have to offer.