PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING MP
SPEECH AT THE LAUNCH OF THE AUSTRALIAN GOOD UNIVERSITIES
GUIDES 1996, PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA, 6 JULY 1995
E& OE PROOF COPY
Well thank you very much Paul ( Kelly]. It is good to see you back in the portals
of Parliament House after all those years here. But still having an influence on
the debate as Editor of The Australian and, of course, a very particular
influence in terms of the coverage by The Australian newspaper of education.
As you say, your Wednesday supplement which is the place where I am sure
most people in Australian education go to read about their industry and what is
happening with it.
But could I acknowledge Dean Ashenden and Sandra Milligan who are with us,
the authors of the Good Universitis Guides; Professor Logan' Vice-Chancellor
of Monash; Professor John Hey, from Deakin; Pfofessor-Seqeantson, the
Acting Vice-Chanicellor of the ANU; and, Professor Wilmoth from the RMIT,
where I was yesterday. It is good to hae you -alo, ll of you-.
I am very pleased to have the opportunity to do these two things launch the
Good Universities Guides and to present the 1995 University of the Year
Award. I am particularly impressed with the Guide, it says at the first line,
" All nformation needed to answer the two big questions. Which course?
Which campus?" and then it goes through to describe the universities, the
courses, how you get in, how difficult it is for entry, what sort of courses on offer
and, if you have completed a course, what sort of standing it has. These sorts
of issues.
And I think what is particularly pleasing to me about it is that a decade or so
ago you wouldn't have needed this Guide because there just wasn't so many
people in the system and the fact that we have recognised that Australia's great
comparative advantage is its education system and that our greatest resource
is the creativity of our young people, of our students.
Just knowing that fact, just a country coming to terms with that particular fact, is
important in itself. Rather than, perhaps, the sense of the cargo cult with
another paddock full of wheat, or another mountain of iron ore will do the trick.
Rather, we are saying no, no, what will do the trick is to exploit the thing which
is of greatest value to all of us and that is the creativity of our young people and
the growth of our education system and focussing the very great ability of our
educators and putting a premium on their capacity to educate.
I think it is this, the notion that we wish to be a clever country, but more than
that, rather than simply the amenity of technological capacity or wealth.
Just this question about the liberation which education brings, the sense of
democracy, the inter-generational opportunities. It is the great bridge in
Australian society from wherever one is from, in socio-economic terms, to
wherever one wants to go. You can go there by crossing this bridge and that is
why there has been such a singular commitment by the Government over 12
years to education.
As a consequence, we have now got just on 600,000 people in higher
education, compared to 325,000 in the middle 1980s a 60 per cent increase.
It is just a phenomenal number. One of the things which pleases us about it,
and part of the reason we can keep the numbers up is that we have made big
financial commitments and by introducing quite revolutionary schemes like
HECs equitable, democratic schemes like HECs where we are asking
s-tu6dents to refund, when they reach average weekly earnings, 23 per cent of
the cost of the course. When it comes back 100 per cent of it goes to other
students. I noticed yesterday there were a group of students demonstrating against HECs
and other things at RMIT, where I was. But a third of them out the front
wouldn't have been there Without HECs, which is a point lost on them I am
sure. But it is, I think, a very great innovation and many other countries are
now coming to pick it up. And it is equitable, it works through the tax system,
you don't need to pay anything until you get to average weekly earnings and,
yet, all of it goes back into higher participation rates in education.
I think that the option of higher education, something that is within the view of
most students, is a great thing. When I went to school, when I completed the
Intermediate Certificate in New South Wales, there were only very few students
I went to school with who had any expectation of going to universities. In my
day, people didn't know about them and despite the scholarships which were
around and many people in this room would have been advantaged by the
scholarships of the day, the Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme, it was in the
end, nevertheless, a fairly elite system covering too few people. And, hence,
you know something like this Guide would have been basically unnecessary
because there wasn't the sense that everybody had the opportunity of going.
I think the other thing that pleases me about the change in participation rates in
schools and higher education, is the opportunities it has brought to women, to
young women, to girls to stay in higher education and then join that throughput,
so that we are now getting about the same throughput out of the higher
education system that any comparable industrial country, like Australia, would
have. And part of that stream, which is about 40 per cent I think of the people who
complete and graduate from Year 12, about 40 per cent of that stream go
through higher education and, of course now I think a majority of them are
young women, which is ~ a great thing. It means that whatever people think
about the glass ceiling, the reality of it, the prejudice in the system, or the
absence of opportunity, the mere fact that education is going to be spread so
widely amongst women and the higher education opportunities are going to be
there, it means there is no ceiling which will contain them. In other words, they
won't be looking for the favour, they will simply take it and that is what I think is
important giving them the capacity to go and grab it.
So this is a very revolutionary change for us all and one that is now powering
along in the society we have, making it stronger and fairer and more equitable,
and giving us a chance to, in fact, see the universities become not simply
providers of education, but businesses in themselves.
I know there is a debate about this, but I am sure we are well able to keep this
balance between the core responsibilities and core tasks of a university and
their capacity to do things, which at the same time advance the economy and
advance their place in it.
I noticed yesterday at RMIT that being shown through the IT areas of
university, one can see that what was on offer was something that was likely
not to be repeated in too many places, not only in Australia, but around the
world. And you can see the obvious commerciality, or the commercial
opportunities, that the courses have on offer. And we have seen this in so
many other ways and in so many other fields as we have seen universities
change over the period.--
I would like to also just mention that just in terms of through-put in the
Budget of this year, we added another 11,000 places to higher education, and I
think that commitment, again, just underpins the fact that there is no
complacency on the Government's part about the challenge with higher
education, and keeping resources up to it. The other area, I think, that we in
the Government are particularly interested in, and I know higher education
institutions are interested in too, and that is the inter-face with TAFE. And
again, at RMIT yesterday we saw Universities and TAFE vocational education
sitting beside one another. And the capacity for people to stream themselves
through TAFE to University, to undertake Diploma's, to gather for themselves
accreditation for particular courses in Universities is, I think, a very welcome
trend and it means that the traditional ways we thought about higher education
are going to change, and that the career paths of students, or the paths of
students rather, is going to be different than it has been in the past.
The Cinderella of Australian education, of course, has been TAFE, and it is a
great challenge now before us with the training agenda so " much on the
Government's minds through Wyorking Nation and th," 4raineeships etc to be
able to lift the capacity of vocational educational so that the 60% of people who
don't go to higher education are not cascading into a labour market to which
they are unsuited where job opportunities are curtailed, or constrained, and
where the large majority of them are untrained, which not long ago was the
case still the case, in fact. We're now getting to a point where, we have now
the Commonwealth since One Nation we have put $ 1.2 billion into TAFE, into
vocational education, and through ANTA, we expect to be able to tie the TAFE
systems of the State's together with vocational certificates, which will then have
currency across the country. And where, at the same time, outside the
formality of the state TAFE systems, develop a private training market, where in
particular areas, we can see private trainers being provided, and in particular
localities, where industries need a specific focus for training needs, we can see
them coming together and operating the training market. Getting business
involved in vocational education is, I think, the way for us, so that the labour
market demands have far more influence on the product of vocational
education, than does simply the providers the traditional providers of
education. This is, I think, a very exciting change for us, and I was pleased to
see the take up in vocational education in the last year as well, so that there is
a lot of discernment out there on the part of students about what may be
advantageous to them and the labour market, whether they are, in fact, they
are better off in higher education, or they are better off specialising through
vocational education. I mean, they are getting very canny about those choices,
which means the sophistication of the system is rising.
Now, I think again, this is where the guide will matter, because I am quite sure
that the most interested student just can't know about the courses which are on
offer, the choices, the combinations that are on offer around the country. And
with such a great stock of people now seeking a place in higher education, we
really need to have, I think, this sort of information available so that the whole
panoply of opportunities is made clear, and at the same time, I think though I
haven't read it comprehensively there is also some guide in here to vocational
education as well. I think that's very good...
In looking through the Guide, for instance on a University talking about a
University how they rate and compare status and standing, they have stars.
Quality committee views stars; research track record stars; getting in,
toughness to get in, and there's a guide; flexibility of entry there's a guide;
places for school-leavers; there's a guide; admission for TAFE graduates
there's a guide; the global connection, international students there's a guide.
And then it goes to teaching quality committee view, teaching innovation,
library holding, graduates course ratings, and then what's on offer the breadth
of offering: a vocational orientation, external study. And then the payoff
getting a job, proceed to further studies, starting salary etc. In other words, it's
the sort of guide that a young person needs or not even a young person
coming to look at a university. So I think it's a terrific piece of work, I really do,
and congratulations for it.
I have got two pleasant duties to do one is to launch this, the other is to
announce the University of the Year. Now, we boast now a great number of
Universities. In 1995, the focus of this award has been on the integration of
information and communications technologies into undergraduate education.
Now, I think the information highway which we hear about now every day,
more than one time a day most days has enormous potential as an
educational tool. And I suppose it is probably in Universities and in educational
institutions where there is a fascination with the information highway because
of the amenity which it can obviously provide for teaching. We can use it to
increase the curriculum choices offered to students, and we can use it to
transport ideas and knowledge around the country to people who live on the
margins of our society, and it is obviously one of the instruments in Open
learning. Some Universities are already exploring it I mentioned RMIT
yesterday with a raft of courses and the ANU has created a sophisticated
network which is fully accessible to undergraduates a virtual campus in itself.
But the University making the best use of the new technologies, and the winner
of the Good Universities Guide 1995 University of the Year Award is Deakin
University. Deakin uses the information highway to provide world-class
distance education when the student can't come to the University, Deakin
takes the University to the student. Deakin students work from mines and
factories and offices, as well as from classrooms and lecture theatres, but
through the use of computers and e-mail and faxes and printed materials, they
engage in the dialogue that is the hallmark of the traditional university
education. Deakin is an unconventional university, but of course, a good one.
And I might say, that it is an illustration of the success of the Government's
higher education reforms that the Australian University of the Year in 1995
doesn't have a single block of sandstone to its name.
So, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to extend my congratulations to Deakin,
the Vice Chancellor is here, of course, to acknowledge that, and also again,
repeat my appreciation and congratulations for the publication of this
document. Let me again repeat those congratulations to Dean Ashenden and
Sandra Milligan, and also to Paul Kelly, the editor of The Australian, because I
think no newspaper has tracked the course of Australian education quite like
The Australian has, and now with these continuing innovations coming through
in higher education, in vocational education as we are seeing such a ferment
and flux in our higher education and vocational institutions having the national
newspaper chart it, record it, talk about it, debate it, is, I think, the sort of thing
that newspapers are there to do. To be papers of record, to put information put
there that people genuinely need and gamner, and where they can understand
better about what they are doing relative to other people. So, perhaps I can
conclude my remarks by saying that in recent times I never seem to be out of
universities and vocational institutions. It is a great pleasure to me that we
continue to just power on in this area, and let me assure you that the
Governiment will be keeping the resources up to the sector, because it is our
great comparative advantage it is our great hope, it is our great liberating
force, it is one of the most democratic tools we have in our society, and I am
delighted to be involved again with some of the key people who are fashioning
this change in Australia. Thank you.
ends. A,