I’ve had reason to reflect during the past week or so on the state of education in Australia and on how it compares to education elsewhere. The fact that one of the hats I wear is an academic one won’t have escaped many of you. This gives me some insight into education policy – how it is shaped, how it might change, and how it enables or disables learning and “success”; but I’m also interested in your thoughts and perceptions on what Australia needs to do to remain a clever country. The Bradley Review of Higher Education in Australia makes some important recommendations, but does it go far enough? If the recommendations are fully implemented, will it “fix” things in the tertiary sector? What else needs to be done? One thing that we all have in common is the opportunity that education has given us. We also have in common a commitment to lifelong learning – as enshrined in our continuing professional development requirements. A decline in funding in real terms for the tertiary sector – as measured against most other OECD nations – has clearly impacted the education sector in many ways. Those of us who are the beneficiaries of a proper education and who, with knowledge and reason, fixate on the many ways in which education develops and sustains an economy have long held concerns about access to education and on the effect that cuts in funding may have on educational quality. What value do you place on the education you’ve had? Where do you see opportunities for improvement in funding and policy?
Richard Petty’s blog
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July 28, 2009 at 9:19 am |
It’s fantastic to see a professional body valuing education so highly, especially given the apparent continual slip in standards amongst Australia’s universities. In so many other parts of the world education is not viewed as an isolated pursuit, removed from the fabric of commerce and culture. It is treated instead – and much more valuably so – as something integrally linked to the ‘real’ world; something that is seen an ongoing instrument of life rather than a box to be ticked off early on as is largely the case in Australia. It seems to me that one sure way to spur change in Australia is for the professional sector to initiate debate on the topic – so it’s great to see the ball starting to roll…
July 30, 2009 at 12:38 am |
Hi Roberta, thanks for sharing this view. I agree. CPA Australia is a leading provider of high quality education to a range of professionals – not just accountants. Delivery of this takes place through the CPA Program that is constantly (and recently) reviewed, revamped, improved and upgraded, through CPD requirements, and in other ways. CPA Australia is committed to the concept of “lifelong learning” and to the renewal that it brings.
July 28, 2009 at 11:27 pm |
May I suggest a reading of Chris Bonner’s The Stupid Counctry – How Australia is dismantling public education. The argument that government is moving far from its responsibility to provide equitable educational outcomes presented is hard to question. Across all levels of education in Australia we are witnessing a privatisation of education and the transformation of education into a commodity is almost complete. We are seeing the first reprussions of this in Melbourne at this very moment as shonky providers of vocational education courses to international students are being exposed. Here in Australia we have lost to value the intrinsic value of education in developing a cohesive society. I fear the corporatists who dominate our public life see no ‘value’ in government genuinely committing to a fair educational system.
July 30, 2009 at 12:39 am |
Hi Peter, we’ve been reading the same press! … but not the same book(s). Thanks for recommending Bonner’s book – I shall obtain a copy and read it with interest.
July 28, 2009 at 11:57 pm |
It is pleasing and at the same time troubling to see that the President is turning his thoughts to questions of education. Pleasing, because a leading professional body such as CPA Australia should be deeply engaged in the fabric of business and accounting education, troubling, because one cannot help but wonder whether there is a subtext to his remarks, given the high profile revelations of the past few weeks. I suspect that in offering his musings, Prof Petty may have erred very much on the side of being excessively diplomatic. Perhaps as a person not shackled by office, I might offer some more direct observations.
In essence, there is much to be troubled about in the field of business education in Australia today. A range of institutions, some deeply respectable, others for whom the veneer of quality extends no further than well constructed marketing collateral have learned that there is much gold to be won through the expedient of expanding the volume and range of their offerings, particularly to full fee paying students.
Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with the expansion of offerings to reach a greater audience, nor, in my view from generating a return on the investment necessary to sustain this activity. What is problematic, however, is the basic business model upon which all of this activity has been constructed. This flawed model is evident, to one extent or another, in essentially every degree conferring institution, large, small, great and no so great.
The mathematics works something like this. Imagine a Commonwealth funded undergraduate place in a B.Com or similar degree. Take the Commonwealth subsidy for this place and add to it the contribution required of the student on whom the place has been conferred.
In today’s dollars, we can call the total cashflow to the institution which holds the place quota something in the order of $10,000 per annum – mostly out of the pocket of the student (the Commonwealth subsidy for business and similar degrees being very small).
Next, deduct a reasaonable portion of this for whole of institution shared services (HQ, Library etc etc) – the funding is intended, after all, to cover both the direct and indirect costs of offering the place. Next, deduct a slab of cash which is not a contribution to central shared overhead, but rather, funding intended for a direct cross subsidy pool. This money will find its way to higher cost teaching faculties – Science, Medicine, Engineering, Languages and so on.
What this leaves the business schools – the places upon which we as a profession have been relying to turn out well trained graduates, would be in the order of $3000 – $4000 per full time Commonwealth funded student per annum. (I know from personal experience that many of the large professional services firms in the accounting space spend several times that amount on training and development for each of their staff, particularly recent graduates once they have been brought into the fold.)
Now, a similar exercise occurs in relation to fee paying places, at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level, but generally, as a form of incentive to the business faculties to seek higher volumes in these segments, the internal taxing arrangements are more generous – that is, the business faculties will typically retain a greater proportion of the total fee take for fee payers than they will for commonwealth funded places. However, the absolute dollar value of cash scooped of the top (in some university funding models this is known as “top slicing”) is far higher in the case of fee paying students than in the case of Commonwealth supported students.
What does this all add up to? Essentially this. If you wish to understand where the brute force of the university underfunding phenomenon which has been widely remarked upon is most accutely felt, look no further than business faculties. It is these faculties which are in effect forced to ramp up volumes, often without adequate regard to intake quality, in order to generate the cashflows necessary to prop up the remainder of the institution’s financial framework. My guess would be that it would not be at all uncommon for in excess of 50% of discretionary money available to Vice Chancellors to flow from just one source – Business schools.
Yet the massive ramping of volumes has introduced a raft of problems into B.Schools. As anyone with any experience knows – most businesses are only scalable to a certain point. Keep pouring in volume at one end – and at some stage, things start going rapidly wrong. In the case of the B.Schools, the problems manifest in myriad ways – but extend to legacy administrative systems which cannot keep pace with the transaction flow, decreased admission standards, lack of talented human capital to effectively lead the educational process, lack of resources to monitor and sanction matters such as academic misconduct, lack of resources for effective curriculum build and innovation, higher student to staff ratios – and within that, greater proportions of lesser qualified and casualised staff………the list goes on.
Faced with the added pressure of being seen to be active on the research front, the hard truth is that business schools have travelled further down the route of compromise by slashing contact hours (not too long ago, 4 and sometimes more contact hours per week per subject was the norm in undergraduate accounting study – now 3 hours is the norm – and this tends to be dominated by large group teaching modes – so a 2 hour lecture in the company of hundreds followed by a 1 hour tute – usually “led” (if that is the term) by an unqualified, inadequately trained or supervised instructor – is the norm), and other forms of economy.
While the rhetoric of teaching quality is bandied about, the truth is that teaching effectiveness is not routinenly monitored, rewarded or, in cases where it is manifestly inadequate, sanctioned. Indeed, it is a little known fact that there are clauses in the enterprise agreements of several universities which specifically prohibit performance related disciplinary action being taken against faculty members on the basis of poor teaching evaluations. Research performance is rewarded (it being easier to measure) – but the product of this activity may be a series of arcane pieces directed to a closed audience and motivated not in truth by societal gain or the infusion of fresh knowledge into the classroom, but rather, the getting of personal benefit (promotion, salary loadings, teaching relief, overseas conference attendance funding etc.) In other words, the frank truth is that very few students directly (or in my view, indirectly) benefit from a vast portion of the research activity undertaken in business schools.
Now – there is much much more to tell. With additional time, I could delve into the role of the twinning college and foundation program arrangements which have sprung up around the country – and their effect on quality – needless to say, the picture there is equally grim.
The point that seems pertinent, in light of all of the above, is this. It is my view that by shining a torchlight into the murky waters I’ve described a little of above – and by more directly and actively engaging with the process of education – CPA Australia will be doing a service not only to the accounting profession – but also to the community more generally. The notion that this territory ought be the sole domain of the universities is in my view indefensible, principally because the hard truth of the matter is that many cases, under the pressure of business and funding models which poorly serve business and accounting education, they have in many cases failed to deliver to an adequate standard – to say nothing of a world class standard.
Thanks Richard for showing leadership by opening up this line of discussion. I think it is vital for CPA Australia, I think it invites some very deep thinking on the part of our organisation – and I hope that we as an organisation take the initiative to set, rather than accept the agenda in accounting and related education. This can only be to our collective benefit as accounting professionals.
July 30, 2009 at 12:40 am |
Hi Andrew, many thanks for taking the time to communicate these detailed and insightful observations. You hit on the nub of the matter – CPA Australia hopes that through its participation in a range of educational activities, and by providing increased options and opportunities for individuals to access high quality education, it will do “a service not only to the accounting profession – but also to the community more generally”, as you so capably put it.
July 29, 2009 at 2:34 am |
If nothing else, the most important task of our education system, and of our educators, is to stimulate and preserve the interest and importance of learning.
Who remembers today the meaning of Efebia, the public program that trained all young citizens of ancient Athens in preparation for their right and duty to take part in the affairs of the city? Just as Athenian democracy required that great importance be placed on education and its role in the formation of the individual from an early age, Australia too needs such a vision and practice. To this end, Australia has lost considerable ground in recent years (OECD measures, etc), but I think the Australian Government’s higher education reform objectives of building and ‘stronger and fairer’ Australia are a step forward.
Australia’s higher education system is now be better resourced in terms of EIF funding and policy development to achieve Government’s reform goals around attainment, access and engagement. These goals will demand a new architecture for managing higher education, but my hope is also that this might also entail the creation of more effective and appealing learning pathways between primary, secondary and tertiary education sectors. Along that path continuing professional development is included.
More locally, if Australian educators across our education sectors do their jobs well, CPA students – for example – will be well prepared to take from their CPA training not only a professional accreditation, but a respect and appreciation for values and ideas, intellectual openness and rigour, practice in civil discourse, and a sense of civic and professional responsibility and competence, something that is essential for professional training. Indeed, CPA students will have developed the habits of mind that can be applied in any profession – and this idea, perhaps radical to some, should enrich the mission of CPAA rather than threaten or diminish it.
July 30, 2009 at 12:39 am |
Hi Victoria, very well put – I’d be surprised if anyone disagrees with your view. I think it reasonable, not radical, to seek real-world fulfilment of the idea(s) in your comment. I hope you are in a position to influence policy!
July 30, 2009 at 1:17 am |
Hello Richard
Having followed the education sector for many years, I welcome your comments and interest in education and education policy. In relation to your blog, one issue that I would like to comment upon centres upon the need for professions to stand alongside educational institutions in shaping an ongoing and feasible education and research framework.
In response to the Bradley report the government has claimed that it wishes to build Tertiary education pathways across the VET sector and higher education. Given the paucity of dual-sector higher education institutions, it is hard to envisage a world devoid of vested interests (eg universities versus private-sector providers) once the hard work of fashioning the detail underpinning VET-higher education pathways begins. Potentially adverse outcomes may result. Here, the profession and professional associations have an important role to play on an education front – ensuring connectivity, alignment and the preservation of duty of care to current and future accounting students
And its not just about education but an innovation system. The review of the Australian innovation system and recent policy responses is replete with rhetoric about bringing researchers, innovators and end-users together. While the detail of how this is best achieved can be debated extensively, it is hard to argue against a simple truth of bringing together (in our context) business and accounting education and research together with the profession and their respective professional associations.
July 30, 2009 at 6:20 am |
Hi Vinod, you are right. The sad part of it is that for 20 odd years I’ve been hearing and reading that “we” need to do exactly what you suggest in your comments – that is, to paraphrase you, ‘innovate and bring together business/accounting education, research, and the accounting profession’ – and not enough has happened. There are many moving parts to the equation, and progress has at times been way too slow. CPA Australia has long supported research through grants, and by collaborating on, or commissioning reseach projects; education through its own programs and the support of others, and innovation (in myriad ways… see wwww.cpaaustralia.com.au!). Our goal now is to take things a step further by creating even greater professional learning opportunities and meaningful research and innovation – in ways that support our members and advance the profession. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
August 25, 2009 at 4:26 am |
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Margaret
http://grantsforeducation.info
September 15, 2009 at 11:22 am |
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