September 2009 — Volume 3, Issue 5

Student focus a "great virtue" of Bradley Review

The federal government’s preparedness to invest in education is accompanied
by an expectation that the sector will deliver results and outcomes, says the
new chair of Universities Australia.

Seated comfortably in his light and airy corner office which overlooks the campus adjoining Brisbane’s Botanic Gardens, Peter Coaldrake is outlining his vision for higher education’s peak body. The new chair of Universities Australia and Vice-Chancellor of Queensland University of Technology moves quickly across the national agenda, the Bradley Review and how the nation’s universities can harness their collective intellectual firepower to help shape the national policy landscape.

“Universities probably undertake about two thirds of the research in the country,” he says. “We have in our institutions vast numbers of people with formidable talent and expertise and I think there’s a role for Universities Australia through the scholars in our universities to not only showcase that talent but to demonstrate its relevance. One would expect a peak body to have policy expertise in the areas of its interest. What we’re saying now is that our sector is one that contains people with vast knowledge and expertise on a range of issues, some of which have direct relevance to the government in terms of national priorities.”

His comments reflect a changing mood at the peak body which recognises an opportunity to play a significant role in influencing the agenda at a pivotal time for higher education. And with several new members on the Universities Australia board a different dynamic will likely prevail.

“We have been seen almost exclusively as a foghorn for funding,’’ Professor Coaldrake says. “And while pressing the government of the day and advocating our position in the public arena remains a central role, I do think that Universities Australia ought to think about where it sits in terms of the broader policy space.”

After a stint as deputy chair of the UA board he was elected unopposed as chair, a position he assumed in May this year when former Monash University Vice-Chancellor Professor Richard Larkins retired. That the QUT boss should accept the UA position when his contract at QUT still has another six years to run is in itself unusual: a number of his predecessors stepped from chairing the former Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee into retirement.

He says he had not planned to take the UA chair. When pressed on why he did he says: “I had an interest in moving the organisation into the policy space, an opportunity to shift it a bit; the government environment is a good one for higher education; I thought those things came together at a personal time that was good for me.”

The son of missionaries in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia, Professor Coaldrake spent most of his formative years in Queensland and considers himself a Queenslander. Educated at an Anglican boarding school in Charters Towers and later at James Cook University, he undertook his postgraduate study at Griffith University in Brisbane where he later became a lecturer in political science. In 1980 he was awarded a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship to George Washington University, the first of two Fulbright awards.

In 1990 his career took a different turn, one that few vice-chancellors follow. After the Labor Goss Government swept to power in the post-Fitzgerald era, he was appointed chair of Queensland’s new Public Sector Management Commission which was set up to overhaul the state’s public service. One of the commissioners on the PSMC at the time was Glyn Davis who went on to head up the Office of Cabinet and, in a subsequent Queensland Government, was director general of the Department of Premier and Cabinet. Professor Davis is now Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne.

Professor Coaldrake’s penchant for management reform was later reflected in his appointment to the Higher Education Management Review, or Hoare Committee, in 1995. There he found a similar level of resistance to change – albeit less controversial – to that he experienced as chair of the PSMC. But on reflection, he says while not all the Hoare recommendations were adopted at the time, government initiatives since then have been consistent with the Hoare report.

His role as head of a public sector agency was a good training ground for his next post, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at QUT, a position he held from 1994 until he was appointed Vice-Chancellor in 2003. “I have always thought that that experience in government was quite pivotal to how I was able to operate as a deputy vice-chancellor and as a vice-chancellor because I was a CEO before I was a deputy. And I thought that actually taught me a lot about being a good deputy.”

As the higher education sector prepares for the introduction of reforms from the Bradley Review, standards will be high on the agenda. Professor Coaldrake says it is clear that the federal government’s preparedness to invest in education is accompanied by an expectation that the sector will deliver results and outcomes. The interesting challenge will be how to measure quality and outcomes across teaching, learning and research.

While Australia has an obligation to predict the value of its education system and to advance it internationally, he says it should not be “slavish” to performance measurement because it will not be possible to usefully quantify everything.

Like many of his counterparts he believes that meeting the government’s new national student targets will be one of the biggest challenges to emerge from Bradley, particularly its aim to have 20 per cent of undergraduates coming from low socio-economic backgrounds by 2020 and 40 per cent of all 25 to 34-year-olds to hold at least a bachelor-level qualification by 2025. Other challenges include the new quality and standards agency, the emphasis on cross-sectoral linkages and the move to a compacts regime.

Overall he is upbeat about the Bradley outcomes and says that one of the review’s great virtues was the way it looked at the higher education system from the perspective of those people who would experience it – the students. “The report was written like no other report has been written in Australia – largely through the eyes of those who potentially go through the system.”

Back on campus the earth is moving at QUT where site work has begun on the new $200 million science and technology precinct. Along with the recent restoration of Old Government House at the Gardens Point campus, the new precinct is among Professor Coaldrake’s personal passions. And raising funds for such ventures is, he says, part of what being a vice-chancellor is all about – persuading people to back good ideas.

He will have plenty of opportunity over the next two years to apply those principles in his new Universities Australia role. And for now he seems motivated to maintain the momentum for change: “I still have a lot of gas in the tank.”