When I picked up the newspaper on Sunday morning, my first question of the new Gillard ministry was: Who got education?
Call it self-interest if you will, but the rhetoric of the 'education revolution' would make one think that this Government, or at least its previous incarnation, placed a high value on education, although of course it had previously been lumped together with employment and workplace relations in a mega-portfolio which was meant to keep Julia Gillard busy and not plotting against the PM Kevin Rudd.
Some of us had hoped that education might now be split off into its own ministry, which it deserves. But search as I may I could not find the word education in any of the designated ministries. Schools, yes, but education, no.
Only yesterday, as an afterthought, were the words 'tertiary education' added to Minister Evans' responsiblities. But a clear statement of priorities had already been sent, revealing just where the Government believes universities belong: lumped together under the heading of 'skills'.
'The universities are not going to like this,' I said to my wife.
And so it came to pass that on ABC radio's AM program, Dr Glenn Withers, chief executive of Universities Australia, complained that both education and research had dropped from among the Gillard ministries. The tertiary sector, along with one of its chief raison d'êtres, research, had been rendered invisible.
Withers said: '[The minister] may be overlooking the range of occupations and products of universities that produce widespread benefits of a very generic kind like arts graduates, commerce graduates and so on who don't fit a narrow definition of skills.'
He went on to identify areas such as philosophy and theology as ones which would contribute to a broader education, but not fit into the area of employable skills.
Placing universities under the heading of 'skills' is an indication of the declining understanding of higher education within Australian society. As federal budgets became tight and governments wondered why they were putting so much money into higher education, the university sector pushed the idea that they played an important role in training people, skilling up doctors and engineers, nurses and teachers, all of whom would contribute to the work force and wellbeing of the society.
Governments took them at their word and government policy has been increasingly focused on universities as places where people should learn employable skills.
Now universities are beginning to see the hole