Universities punished in unbalanced efforts to improve school education in Australia

By Ruth Skilbeck

The Australian Labor government has announced its proposed plans to increase funding to schools by 14 billion and to cut funding to universities by 2.8 billion. This is in response to the Gonski review, conducted by David Gonski chancellor of the University of New South Wales, and a businessman. However the funding to schools by the Federal government is contingent on the State governments also contributing on a ratio of two federal dollars for every dollar states put in, with different overall targets allocated per state. The way the government proposes to implement and fund the recommendations of the Gonski Review looks decidedly unbalanced.

Slashing 2.8 billion from the Universities budget, to divert into schools is surely a nonsense. One does have to wonder why Gonski was appointed to make the report which has led to this "reform" - when I saw him give a presentation about it at UNSW the first thing he admitted was that he was a businessman who when he was appointed to lead the review did not know about schools education, except that it had helped him, and he wanted to help schools. He was disarming and charming, but...look at the results. Of course no doubt this was not what he intended. 
Yet this is only one of the follies that is resulting in the decimation of the Australian university system. The focus on economics is rapidly destroying its "value". And it is not working in its own, economic rationalist and neo liberal terms. Seen economically, University education is supposed to be, and has been, an "investment" in our time and energy and increasingly money, that we make in ourselves (and our children) to improve our futures and enable us to earn more- to use economic terms. 
But, the way it is being managed now in Australia it is not working like this. One problem is that it doesn't lead to better paid jobs- look at all the casual and contract academics who live in poverty and now there will be more of them. Often they have PhDs. Meanwhile universities are charging increasing fees to students saddling domestic students with lifelong debts and using international students as "cash cows'- they then take their educational advantage out of the country with them.
 How does any of this benefit Australian culture, society and prosperity? It is all highly incompetent. And one would have to say- bad business (except for international business perhaps and that seems to be an overriding focus of management). The problem is the wrong people are now running the universities, as if they are "businesses" and this is not sustainable. Let alone being far from the true value of scholarship and research, and teaching and learning. 
The people who are behind the recommendations to increase funding to schools, we would like to assume no doubt had the best intentions. But why are academics being punished again? This will, once again, most severely impact those who have least, as these cuts will only lead to more "casualisation".
 Why does the government not do what was promised, and raise money by increasing mining taxes? 
The government should  give the universities sufficient funding so that they don't have to become inhumane corporate businesses, "edufactories" and treat their employees as "casual" and disposable.

Time, too, to shift the focus in universities back to what does count, learning, and knowledge and- wisdom. Now there’s a word that we don’t hear much of in the days of “knowledge and power” and chasing the research/funding dollar.