Canberra is a funny town. Mostly we're pretty laid-back, but occasionally the citizenry gets stirred up about something. When that happens, look out!
Professor Ian Young, vice-chancellor of the Australian National University recently found this out, to his cost. His proposal to asset-strip (there is no other term for it) Canberra's prestigious School of Music led to a public furore and the biggest university demonstration in 30 years.
The ANU isn't the only university in financial stress. Recently there were loud protests at Sydney University against increasing rounds of staff redundancies. This is the long-term result of the Howard and Rudd-Gillard governments' under-funding of tertiary education and user-pays attitude.
And there is nothing new in vice-chancellors asset-stripping departments, almost always in the non-economics, business and technocratic subject areas. Culture is much more easily dispensed with.
The result of the furore in Canberra has been that the Regional Chamber of Commerce has got a number of local philanthropists together to support the 'continued excellence' of the Music School. Although far from settled, the offer of private money has relieved some of the pressure on Young.
But there is a sinister aspect to this. Young is proposing changes to the syllabus which previously emphasised one-on-one teaching and excellence in performance. He told The Canberra Times: 'The proposed new subject offerings are designed to appeal to a wider and perhaps different group of students' and focused on subjects such as 'music and media technology', 'the music industry' and 'the pursuit of a portfolio of [unspecified] activities'.
That is he wants to move away from the pursuit of excellence to subjects that can be done on the cheap. Young lets the cat out of the bag when he protests that he believes that these 'new subjects' are 'no less profound'.
This is but the latest manifestation of deep-rooted problems in tertiary education. They go back to the Dawkins educational 'reforms' of 1987-8 which introduced what Judith Bessant calls 'the indiscriminate application of market models and values, a commitment to user-pays systems and the widespread application of entrepreneurial language and practices'. From then on only departments that paid their way were favoured.
Dawkins also broke down distinctions between universities and colleges of advanced education which emphasised vocational training. The consequence of