"THE AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES"
It gives me both official and personal pleasure to present to the House the valuable report on the Australian Universities made by what I will refer to as the Murray Committee.
Last year, when in England, I approached Sir Keith Murray and asked him whether he would preside over an investigation of the problems of our universities. He agreed to do this, subject to the approval of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Great Britain, an approval which was willingly given.
The Committee appointed was very well balanced.
Sir Keith Murray himself is the Chairman of the University Grants Committee in Great Britain and is highly skilled in assessing the financial needs of universities, the wisdom and practicability of university development programmes, and the part that Governments can play.
Sir Ian Clunies Ross, the Chairman of C.S.I.R.O. is, of course, familiar with our national need for scientists in a wide variety of fields and has an intimate knowledge of the problems of our universities.
Sir Charles Morris, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds, is a practising University administrator, familiar with the Universities' day-to-day problems.
Mr. A.J. Reid, the Chancellor of the University of Western Australia, is a former head of the State Treasury and a Member of the Commonwealth Grants Commission. He, therefore, has a special knowledge of both University matters and Commonwealth-State financial relations.
Mr. J.C. Richards is Assistant General Manager of the B.H.P. and a former Rhodes scholar. He was able to bring to the enquiry a considerable knowledge of industrial interest in and requirements of the Universities.
To this strong Committee, we gave a wide charter which included the role of the University in the Australian community; the extension and co-ordination of University facilities; technological education at University level; the financial needs of Universities and appropriate means of providing for them.
In less than the three months - July to September 1957 - the Committee visited every University institution in Australia, received the views of large numbers of people and bodies, including Government Departments, and has prepared this extensive report.
We are grateful to the Committee for its remarkable speed, thoroughness and grasp of the matters involved in their task.
The Government has also had the report of the Australian Academy of Science on Scientific and Technological Manpower Supply and Demand in Australia.it is a very valuable analysis of one aspect of the problems investigated by the Murray Committee and indeed reinforces much that is contained in the Committee's report.
This is not the appropriate time to comment in detail on the Academy's findings, but I do take this opportunity of commending them for their contribution to an understanding of one important aspect of the total problem.
To-night I have the privilege of presenting to the House a statement of the decisions which the Commonwealth Government has so far taken. Some matters have yet to be finally dealt with; but we considered that there should be no delay in dealing with the main recommendations, having regard.to what the Committee has described as "the need for immediate action in 1958,1959 and 1960 if the position" (of the Universities) "is not to be catastrophic".
But before I announce the particular decisions, I should make some remarks to explain the setting in which the problem is being looked at and the reasons for what may be regarded by some as a departure from normal Commonwealth practice.
It is of course true that, under the Australian Constitutional division of powers between Commonwealth and State, education is in the State field. It has been dealt with in a progressive manner by State 1Governments and Parliaments at a rapidly growing cost; this cost being very naturally a material factor in the steep increase in tax reimbursements and special grants to States in recent years. We are not promoting any idea that the legislative power over education should, by a Constitutional amendment, be transferred to the Commonwealth. The idea of uniformity can be carried too far.
In both primary and secondary education each State, with highly varying conditions of climate and occupational opportunities, is in the best position to judge for itself its own most suitable educational curriculum and organisation. Such matters are not best or most flexibly dealt with from one national centre. Experience has shown the advantages of local policy and administration in the educational field.
Why then has the Commonwealth Government come into this matter at the tertiary or university level? That it should do so in the Capital Territory is, of course, inevitable. The Australian National University and the Canberra University College are clearly its responsibility and not that of any other Government. But we have pursued an active policy in relation to the Universities generally for reasons which have .seemed to us to be of inevitable and special importance and urgency. Our view of their urgency has been much sharpened by the report of the Murray Committee.
Since this report and the decisions of the Commonwealth Government mark, as I hope and believe, the beginning of a new and brighter chapter in the history of the Australian Universities; and as our acceptance of much greater financial responsibilities should, if it is not to lend itself to loose generalisation, be clearly related to its own special circumstances, I will take a little time to summarise the particular elements which justify and seem to us to require special Commonwealth action.
The whole feature of University education is that, upon the basis of a general mental training achieved by the primary and secondary systems, it provides, for those willing and able to undergo it, special and higher training. Such training leads to the acquisition of recognised degrees, the attainment of high professional qualifications, the entrance to higher research, particularly but not exclusively in science and technology, and the securing of those immeasurable and civilised benefits which flow or should flow from the study of, or association with the students of, humane letters.
The University is not a professional "shop", though in my day we used to identify our own by that mercantile name. As the word implies, the University must not be narrow or unduly specialist in its outlook. It must teach and encourage the free search for the truth. That search must increasingly extend to, but is not to be confined to, the physical resources of the world or of space. The scientist is of great and growing importance, and what we propose to do will, I believe, enable many more scientists to be trained in proper circumstances and with improved tuition, buildings and equipment.
But I hope that we will not, under current pressures or emotions, be tempted to ignore the basic fact that civilisation in the true sense requires a close and growing attention, not only to science in all its branches, but also to those studies of the mind and spirit of man, of history and literature and language and mental and moral philosophy, of human relations in society and industry, of international understanding, the relative neglect of which has left a gruesome mark on this century.
Let us have more scientists, and more humanists. Let the scientists be touched and informed by the humanities. Let the humanists be touched and informed by science, so that they may not be lost in abstractions derived from out-dated knowledge or circumstances. That proposition underlies the whole University idea. It warrants and requires a great variety of faculties and the constant intermingling of those who engage in their disciplines.
To perform these vital tasks our Universities must be equipped in a very practical way to meet the challenge which, both in quality and quantity, becomes more urgent and insistent every day.
I have indulged in these general reflections, not because the Government has any reservations about the urgent and growing need for more scientific training, a need which has been more and more clear in recent times, but because it would be unfortunate for the Universities themselves if the balanced conception of higher education came to be regarded as out of date.
I will not take up time by making extensive quotations from the report. I will content myself by pointing out that the Committee has detected and clearly stated some of the most important elements in the problem of the present and future of our Universities.
They make it clear that we are suffering from a grave shortage of University graduates. They refer with great force to the fact that even 25 years ago there was a theory that most nations were over-producing graduates and that the pattern of the future might well be "that industrial communities would be run by machines and unskilled labour, the whole direction and control being in the hands of a few very brilliant and well-trained experts"-. This illusion has disappeared. As they say: "The post-war community calls for more and more highly educated people all along the line, and in particular for more and more graduates of an increasing variety of kinds. Industry and commerce call for more. graduates, government and public administration call for more graduates, and all the services of the welfare state call for more graduates. The proportion of the population which is called upon to give professional or technical services of one kind or another is increasing every day and the proportion of such people who have to be graduates is increasing also.
They sum that matter up in a few words:
"High intellectual ability is in short supply, and no country can afford to waste it; every boy or girl with the necessary brain power must, in the national interest, be encouraged to come forward for a University education, and there must be a suitable place in a good University for everyone who does come forward."
They emphasise that education is only one of the two central aims of the University, the other being research. They make an interesting and important comment upon the nature of our population growth, a growth which is accompanied by the characteristic concentration of population in the cities.
"Not only has the rate of increase outpaced the capacity of the schools and universities, but it is also weighting the younger age groups to an extent that is not experienced in countries whose population is not growing so rapidly; *this is a factor which entails a relatively greater deployment of resources into the building of schools and universities than would be necessary if the population were more evenly distributed among the age groups."
Again there is the most practical consideration that the enormous development of, and capital investment in industry, both primary and secondary, has been accompanied by relatively high production costs. If our capital resources are to be used to full advantage, there must be more expertise and a growing demand on the Universities.
It is, therefore, clear that the demand for all Universities' graduates is bound to rise. There are, the Committee finds, shortages of graduates in Arts, of economists, lawyers, doctors, dentists, agriculturalists and veterinary scientists, no less than of scientists and industrial technologists.
In addition to these, the secondary schools, providing an education to matriculation standards, are making a heavy demand on Universities for graduates in Arts, Mathematics, and Science. That demand is unsatisfied, with the result that we find ourselves in something of a vicious circle, the University students being numerically limited by the supply of teachers in the schools, and the supply of teachers in the schools being limited by the insufficient number of University graduates. For 1960-61, Government and non-Government schools will .require an annual intake of 450 mathematics and science teachers. But -the output of science graduates from all Universities in 1957 for all purposes is likely to be little more than 500.
Another striking fact of the very many set out in a report which I hope will be widely read is this: There are today 36,000 University students in Australia. The numbers are growing. The size of first-year classes already presents overwhelming difficulties, resulting in many cases in the adoption of quotas. Yet the Committee has reached the conclusion that the total number will, if provided for, grow to 70,000 in 1965 and possibly to 80,000 by 1967, which is only ten years hence:
The position would be slightly less disturbing if we were getting, if I may use the expression, "full value" out of those who are or become undergraduates. But we are not. The failure rate is alarming. Thus, of the 1951 first-year entrants only 61 per cent passed first year in 1951; only 35 per cent graduated in the minimum time; and only 58 per cent are expected to graduate at all. This failure rate is, in the words of the Committee, "a national extravagance". It reduces the efficiency of the Universities, and it grievously lessens the national resources of trained graduates.
What are the reasons for this waste? The Committee did not find any reason to suppose that the matriculation standards are lower than they used to be. It seems to me that they regarded as the effective reasons several large and significant matters.
Classes are much too big. The personal contact with the lecturer is greatly reduced at the very time when the disciplined school-boy becomes a self-reliant adult and needs to have guidance as well as freedom.
There is clearly far too low a proportion of staff to students; much lower than in Great Britain where, incidentally, the failure rate, for a variety of reasons, including a more selective admission of students, is much lower.
The pressure of work, particularly in the science faculties, has been greatly increased by complex modern discoveries and the opening of an immense variety of new avenues of knowledge.
Building and equipment are alike inadequate. Lack of accommodation extends to class-rooms, laboratories, libraries, common-rooms, and those student amenities, including sporting facilities, which are an essential element in a full undergraduate life. There is gross over-crowding and many make-shift buildings. The shortage of equipment and materials becomes more acute every year. In the physical sciences, out-of-date equipment represents a grave handicap. This no doubt has something to do with the finding that there is a serious general weakness of honours and post-graduate research schools. This is not due to any lack of general aptitude, for Australia has produced more than its due proportion of distinguished research workers. It is primarily due to lack of encouragement and of facilities.
Staff salaries are too low to attract and retain the necessary number of first-class lecturers and instructors.
Scientific and technological education and research are naturally but increasingly most expensive as compared with other faculties. Thus, in the Melbourne University, the Faculty of Law with 702 students costs at present £27,381; the Faculty of Engineering, with 482 students, costs £187,301.
All of these considerations seem to us to mark out the University problem as one which possesses special difficulty and urgency, which call for unorthodox Commonwealth action. On the machinery side, the Committee is of opinion that there is inadequate liaison between the academic body and the policy-making and controlling Senate or Council. The Vice-Chancellor, in their view, should become the academic leader as well as the Executive
Officer for overall policy.
The Committee recommends that there should be an Australian University Grants Committee, to develop a national policy, to co-ordinate the work of the Universities, to co-ordinate the work in this field of the Commonwealth and State Governments, to examine proposals for the creation of new institutions, and to plan University development generally.
Finally, on the financial side, the Committee has been inevitably struck by the ever-increasing budgetary difficulties of the Universities, difficulties which beset and hamper the mere carrying on of their present activities. They have also reached the conclusion that the capital provision for the Universities must be dramatically increased if the future is to be looked at with anything less than despair. They recommend that the Commonwealth should enter the field of capital provision.
They sum their view up in one sentence. "State funds are no longer adequate to meet the existing situation. If the States' financial resources have not enabled them *to meet the Universities' needs up to the present, they will certainly be inadequate to put things right and get ready in time for the inevitable expansion which lies ahead. The efforts of the States require to be supplemented and speeded up.
The Commonwealth Government has, in fact, been finding increasing sums of money for the State Universities. The annual grants for recurrent purposes have risen from £1,103,000 in 1951 (when the scheme began) to £2,300,000 in 1957; in addition to which we pay through the Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme, the fees of no less than one-third of all the full-time students in the Universities. The State Governments have also devoted increasing attention to this problem.
The Murray Committee states the position concisely in paragraph 67 of its report:
"The States have endeavoured to afford special treatment to their Universities in the allocation of their funds. Between 1950-51 and 1955-56, the States' revenue from income tax reimbursement grants, State taxation and special grants rose by 77 per cent, but their grants to the Universities rose by 123 per cent."
Nothing could more vividly show how the Universities' problem has grown and is growing and how inescapable it is that the Commonwealth should accept an adequate share of a financial burden which probably no State could support by itself. It is, of course, (and I think I Should say this clearly) unfortunate that the Universities in Australia should be overwhelmingly dependent upon the financial goodwill of Governments. But private benefactions have been isolated; endowments in total provide only a small fraction of the total income. The reason for this is pointed out by the Committee. In paragraph they state, and quite truly, that there are large sections of public opinion which are not yet aware of the facts and do not yet appreciate their implications.
"Certainly they are not as much alive to the needs of the future in this country as they are in the United Kingdom and the United States. Indeed, they are not as sensitive in this matter as might have been expected. Australia has already benefited in quite spectacular fashion from the application of science in the primary industries; there is common agreement that, with a very high standard of living, secondary industry can only maintain its present promise of great achievement by technological and managerial skill and enterprise of the highest quality; and behind all this is the basic need to drive ahead with the development of a whole continent, vast areas of which, but for the benefit of science, must remain unproductive bush and barren desert All this is becoming more fully recognised. What is not recognised is that this requires not a small number of very clever people, but a very large number indeed of very highly educated men and women, and that nothing short of this will do With this sketchy, but, I think, necessary preamble, I now turn to the decisions which the Government has already taken. Some of those decisions, as will be seen, relate to recommendations for joint action between the Commonwealth and the States. We are at once putting in hand discussions with the States on these matters, for it is only by close and true co-operation that the desired results can be secured. But we think it proper that we should at once indicate quite clearly our own willingness to co-operate along the lines which I will indicate.
Our decisions are as follow
1. We accept, in principle, the recommendation for the setting up of a permanent Australian Universities Committee. We are not satisfied that it should be called a "Grants" Committee, since that word may be thought, on Australian precedent, to indicate its functions too narrowly. We reserve for future but early consideration the composition of the Committee and its terms of reference. So that it may function to the greatest effect, and give the best guidance in co-operation between Governments and Universities, we would wish to have some discussion with the States before determining both composition and charter.
2. We agree that this new body cannot be expected to function with sufficient knowledge and experience to make recommendations for an earlier year than 1961. We, therefore, accept the view that the special needs of the Universities for 1958, 1959 and 1960 should be dealt with by decisions now taken; these years being regarded as an interim and, in a real sense, emergency period.
3. On the side of recurrent expenditure, which covers day to day running, the present Commonwealth grant to the States for their Universities is, as I have said, million. Broadly, the basis is Commonwealth for each £3 of State grants, plus fees. We accept the recommendation that the Commonwealth grants (on the same terms) be raised 10 per cent. each year for 1L958, 1959 and 1960. This will raise the Commonwealth grants to
1958 ..... £2,568,500
1959 ..... £2,825,400
1960 ..... £3,107,900
This makes a total of £8,501,800 for these three years compared with Commonwealth Grants totalling £.6,040,930 in the three years 1955, 1956 and 1957.
4. The ordinary Commonwealth Grants to Canberra University College will also increase by 10 per cent. each year. This will raise the grants from £341,735 in total for the last three years to £-582,000 in total for the next three years.
5 As to the Australian National University as with the Canberra University College, we will, of course, continue to face up to our own responsibilities. The Committee has recommended that grants to the Australian National University be increased and, bearing in mind the Committee's words that some modification may be required, we accept their figures which total £4,396,000 for the three years 1958, 1959 and .1960, compared with a total of £2,804,500 for the years 1955, 1956 and 1957.
6. As an additional unmatched emergency grant, not conditional as in the case of normal recurrent expenditure, we will grant to the States for their Universities, as recommended
£lm in 1958
£1.5m in 1959
£2m in 1960
or a three years' total of £4.5m.
7. Similarly, an emergency grant will be made, as recommended, to the Canberra University College of £67,000, spread over the three years.
8. We accept the view that University staff salaries should be increased. We think that there is merit in the Committee's recommendation that there should be an increase of £500 per annum in professorial salaries, with appropriate rates of increase in the salaries of other academic staff. The estimated total cost of this, on existing staff establishments, would be £750,000 per annum. Our share, under the existing formula, would be £187,500 per annum. We are willing to find this.
9. Apart from this, we will provide for similar additional allowances for salary increases in the Australian National University and the Canberra University College. The estimated cost of this is roughly £150,000 for the three years.
10. The total cost to the Commonwealth of decisions 8 and 9 will be of the order of £712,000 over the three years.
11. We do not at present contribute to the cost of State University buildings and major equipment. The Committee has recommended a building programme for each University over the next three years, and has suggested that in each State, except Western Australia and Tasmania, the cost be divided £91 for £1 between Commonwealth and State. In the case of Western Australia and Tasmania they recommend Commonwealth for £1 State. We accept these principles.
12. Before setting out the financial implications of this acceptance, I want to make it clear that capital provision by the Commonwealth assumes, and is indeed conditional upon, the carrying out by the States of their normal contemplated programmes. The Commonwealth capital grants are to be, in nett terms, additional and not by way of replacement of State expenditure. Only in this way can the fullest benefit be conferred.
13, If Honourable Members will look at Table 11 in paragraph 408 of the Report, they will see the figures. We expect the "Possible State Contributions" there set out to be realised. Except in one case They represent a continuance of the present level of State capital expenditure. If the State contributions set out in Table 11 are in fact made, we accept the recommendation that, in 1958, 1959 and 1960, the Commonwealth should contribute to capital expenditure (a thing we have not hitherto done) a total of £E6,270,000.
These figures, of course, relate to the State Universities.
The Committee also recommended that there should be a contribution by the Commonwealth Government for the equipping of new buildings calculated at 16 per cent, of its share of the cost of the new buildings (£6,270,000), or £1,003,000, leaving the universities to find the balance from additional State grants, from gifts from industry and other non-State sources. We accept this recommendation.
14. Recommendations about capital expenditure on the *Australian National University have been made, and we note them to be not very different from the present rate of capital expenditure. The general order of the recommendations, which is for £1,070,000 over the next three years, appears acceptable but, in any case, as I have said we will continue to meet our responsibilities in relation to the Commonwealth Universities.
The recommendations relating to the Canberra University College are deferred pending a decision on the special question as to the future development and association of these two bodies. The answer to this question has not been fully worked out by the Committee. We propose to examine it promptly.
15 We have considered the residential University Colleges, to which the Committee and the Government attach value and significance. We accept the recommendation (in paragraph 196) that the Commonwealth should offer, for the next three years, capital grants for the building and equipping of, or extensions to, such Colleges, on the basis of £21 for every £21 provided by State Governments or other sources, with the recommended limitations that total Commonwealth grants so given should not exceed £2200,000 in the first year, £400,000 in the first two years, or £9600,000 in the whole three year period.
16. We have noted that the Committee was of opinion that various aspects of the Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme should be the subject of further investigation. We will take the necessary steps to put the investigation in hand.
17. It may assist a clear understanding of the magnitude of these propositions if I say that over the next 3 years the decisions I have already announced will, if acted upon by the States as well as by. ourselves, raise the Commonwealth expenditure in relation to the State universities from about £6,000,000 in 1955, 1956 and 1957 to about 2~0,0 n15, 99ad16. In addition to this increase for the State universities, we shall be increasing our provision for the Australian National University and the Canberra University College on the lines I have indicated.
I would like to make one final general observation. In my own undergraduate days, students were either scholarship holders, at a time when scholarships were few and difficult to 'win, or students maintained by relatively poor parents prepared to make great sacrifices for their children, or (in probably a minority of cases) students whose parents could readily afford to sustain them through their courses of training.
I can well remember a wry smile on hearing a Member of Parliament describe the Melbourne University of my day as a "bear garden of the idle rich." Old conceptions die hard. It is not yet adequately understood that a university education is not the perquisite of a privileged few. It is not to be thought of merely in terms of the individual student. It has become demonstrably clear that a complex and highly industrialised modern society has claims upon the universities which must-be met, and has great responsibilities for seeing that those claims can be met.
The social, scientific, economic and industrial complexities of Australia today are largely beyond the imagination of 40 years ago.
Great skill achieved after high training is no longer to be regarded as something to be admired in a few. We must, on a broad basis, become a more and more educated democracy if we are to raise our spirituhi, intellectual, and material living standards. Viewed in this way our universities are to be regarded not as a home of privilege for a few but as something essential to the lives of millions of people who may never enter their doors.
This new charter for the universities should serve to open many doors and to give opportunity and advantage to many students. They will, I am sure, not forget that under all the circumstances I have described, the community is accepting heavy burdens in order that, through the training of university graduates, the community may be served. This represents a challenge to the whole future student body to take the fullest advantage of the chances which come to them; to see that future failure rates are not their fault; to realise more than ever that the contribution that they have to make to this great social effort is to be willingly and effectively made. A university may look to governments, and perhaps primarily to governments, for land and buildings and equipment. But its ultimate achievement will depend, as ever, upon the zeal and quality of its staff and of those who train under them.
It is, I think, a happy thing that we should have had the Opportunity of reviving our conception of the universities and their work by the presentation and discussion of this brilliant and provocative report.