The committee’s finding is that in view of the relatively tiny number of submissions received, from the hundreds of thousands of students who are said to be affected, there can be no basis for arguing that universities are under the control of the Left and that this is reflected in course content and teaching style. If there is a Left conspiracy to influence the direction of the nation’s affairs and its social and economic priorities through the process of subverting a generation of undergraduates this is not yet evident.

It must be said that the committee processes of the Senate are not at all suited to the kind of inquiry that might have been imagined by its instigators. That is probably less important to them than the fact that the inquiry was held at all. On the other hand it might be argued that as even the most intensive specialist research would be unlikely to reach any conclusion as to the incidence of biased teaching, this inquiry has been as useful as any.

Elsewhere: John Quiggin and Terry Flew.

Of course we will continue to teach professional skills – accounting students will still learn to keep books – but we will also ensure that each of our students learns how to analyse scholarly papers, criticise research methods, solve problems and integrate information into coherent arguments.

Some universities which are not going down this route are moving to a broader focus on core subjects and workplace learning for undergraduates – in generalist as well as vocational degrees. Sometimes this is driven by a desire to find a point of differentiation – for instance with Griffith’s emphasis on social enterprise as part of its Arts degree – which is, in part, a recognition that QUT and UQ have the vocational and sandstone/comprehensive humanities angles covered in the eyes of many students. Griffith Arts students also do first year courses like “Great Books”, which must gladden the hearts of the educational traditionalists (I don’t know what’s actually on the curriculum, I should add). And at ACU, all students must do “mission” units – particularly in ethics and to expose them to aspects of the Catholic intellectual tradition (as well as fostering social responsibility).

Slattery notes that some of this is driven by the international market – including the 3+2 Bologna Process for standardising tertiary qualifications across the EU where a bachelors degree is followed by a masters degree as a matter of course. There is probably some benefit – aside from considerations of the international export market – in maintaining the standing of Australian higher education, reducing the over proliferation of degree courses (itself driven by now superceded marketing considerations) and in fostering scholarly and critical skills across all disciplines in the academy. But it needs to be noted that far more mundane factors are also important drivers of change.

Making full fee postgraduate degrees a normal expectation has obvious implications for the cost and accessibility of education, and is one way (perversely perhaps) universities are trying to make up revenue which will be lost through the Rudd government’s phasing out of domestic full fee undergraduate degrees. They can do that because of the FEE-HELP program the Howard government introduced which extends a version of Hecs to postgraduate coursework qualifications (and a proliferation of private higher education providers at both undergrad and postgrad level). Student income support, inadequate as it is, certainly hasn’t caught up with a normative expectation of five years at uni.

Similarly, the managerialist attack on disciplinary training and identification is fostered through what goes along with the massification of first and second year undergraduate classes – the culling of small and specialised courses (and often of the academics who teach them). There’s a cost advantage here for universities, as expensive senior academics who aren’t “research intensive” (or in many cases who are) can be replaced by casuals with a few massively overloaded junior academics coordinating. In some instances, UWS for one, huge first year classes are being taught in what is effectively distance ed mode disguised by all sorts of web bells and whistles like podcast lectures which are never actually delivered to any actual class – and this is web often without the 2.0.

Finally, as appears usual with the Australian higher education sector, differentiation seems to last just as long as all the other unis can rush to copy the first movers.

And the Bradley Review will be scrambling to keep up with the implications.

Incidentally, one of the problems with Julia Gillard’s super portfolio is that it’s difficult to identify what her thinking on all of this is – research policy seems to have been outsourced to Kim Carr and the venturousaustralia crew, while the rest of the Higher Ed issues are left for Denise Bradley and her review to sort out. While we can certainly do without some of the day to day ministerial interference which particularly characterised Brendan Nelson’s tenure in the portfolio (and to a lesser but still significant extent Julie Bishop’s), it would be nice to have more than waffle from the Rudd government on what’s happening to the “core university business” of teaching.

Disclosures: I knew Stephen Schwartz in his previous incarnation as President of the Academic Board at UQ when I was an undergrad rep on the board in the early 90s. And I teach at Griffith and ACU, as well as at QUT.