Saturday Extra

Professor Donald Markwell has spent three months visiting some of the world's best universities and has come up with six clearly identifiable features common to all.

His other important observation is that the best higher education systems are ones that recognise and promote diversity within the sector.

Transcript

Geraldine Doogue:.I don't know whether you're entirely comfortable with all the talk around education as a product, with ranking tables and statistics about its huge success as an export earner, which I might add is second only to the mining boom for Australia, incidentally.

But the fact is, that's the way it is these days, and this week Australian universities have been digesting a particularly significant winners' list. The London Times Higher Education Supplement ranked the world's top 200 research institutions a week ago. I'm afraid most Australian universities slipped down the table, but two, the ANU and the University of Wollongong, actually improved their position. The ANU was rated our top university, but I'll save the details of that interesting list for a bit later.

As it happens, my next guest springs from within the bosom of the Australian sector, Melbourne University, and he's recently returned from study leave, examining what makes a great university in the 21st century? Not just a good enough one, but a truly high quality institution in the modern sense of the word.

Donald Markwell came up with six clear features. He's been Warden of Trinity College, and next year he'll take up a Deputy Vice-Chancellorship in Education at the University of Western Australia, my alma mater. And I'm delighted he can join us now. Welcome to the program.

Donald Markwell: Geraldine, thank you very much indeed.

Geraldine Doogue: Where did you go to explore this?

Donald Markwell: Well I spent three months visiting universities and liberal arts colleges in the United States, places such as Stanford and Berkeley, Princeton and Harvard and Amherst, and some other liberal arts colleges and universities. I spent quite a bit of time in Oxford, where in fact I'd spent 14 years previously, and visiting Cambridge as well. And then in China, spent a little bit of time at Fudan University, and Shanghai Jiao Tong Universities. So I was looking at institutions in the two great higher education centres of the English-speaking world, and then in China, which is trying very hard to catch up.

Geraldine Doogue: You focused on undergraduate institutions, didn't you, rather than post-graduate?

Donald Markwell: Yes, that's partly because I think that undergraduate education is of course the basis of higher education. It's what leads most people who go to university into employment. It leads on to post-graduate study for others. And I think if we don't get undergraduate education right, then we're not going to get anything right.

Geraldine Doogue: Were they exciting places to be, these universities? In other words, I'm looking for not just how you thought about them, but how you felt about them when you were there.

Donald Markwell: Geraldine, the most exciting place I visited, I have to say, was a women's liberal arts college in Boston, Wellesley College. It's produced people like Hilary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and many other very distinguished women alumni. And as soon as one gets there, one realises that this is a place different from any other. It's a place which is offering women students higher education, liberal arts education, at the very highest level, in a way that is extremely affirming of women. The slogan, if you like, of the college is 'Women who will make a difference in the world', and I think that's exactly the kind of student they try to produce. And I found going there an extraordinarily exciting thing.

Geraldine Doogue: You see they sort of specialise to that extent, do they?

Donald Markwell: Well I think one of the points which our new Education Minister here in Australia, Julie Bishop, has picked up on, is that the great higher education systems of the world are very diverse. They have institutions which aren't all seeking to conform to one model, but in fact have a very diverse range of institutions, and so in the United States, you have liberal arts colleges, you have research-intensive universities, you have community colleges which often may be a two-year degree which is a starting point that people can go on to. And I think that's one of the things that we in Australia need to learn, particularly from the United States, is the importance of a more diverse higher education system than we have at the moment.

Geraldine Doogue: OK, let's go to your features. You name the first as accepting the need to enter the 'war for talent', it's a McKinsey consultancy phrase. What are you getting at there?

Donald Markwell: Well I think the great universities of the world are very focused on seeking to attract the highest quality talent into their leadership positions, as teachers and as researchers in their institution, and as students.

Geraldine Doogue: Does that mean turfing some people out, then, who aren't at the highest quality and paying these other people more?

Donald Markwell: Well, both of those things do happen in some of the great institutions. Of course getting tenure in a leading American institution is the crucial point at which you either make it or you don't. And yes, there is flexibility about pay. But I think perhaps more important than that, there's a fundamental mindset which is asking the question, Who is the best person in the world for this position, and how do we get them here? I think of that as the Harvard question, and I think that's a question we, when we are filling university leadership and teaching, research positions in Australia, we ought to be asking that as well, and not confining our searches in any parochial way.

Geraldine Doogue: Second thing: the need for funds. You acknowledge this, and there was an emphasis on domestic fees, and the role of philanthropy in these fine institutions.

Donald Markwell: Higher education is expensive. High quality education costs a very large amount of money, partly because really high quality higher education, being interactive, has to involve a close interaction between academics and students. And higher education suffers greatly if there are too many students per academic. And one of the problems that we've had in Australia has been a very considerable deterioration in that student-staff ratio. So if you're going to have a really high quality higher education, you need to put an enormous amount of resource into that. I've been very pleased that the Federal government has 4stablished now an inquiry into how we can encourage a culture of philanthropy towards universities here in Australia. I think we have a great deal to learn from the United States, but not only from the United States, but also from the growth of educational philanthropy in Britain, and in countries such as China, where it is increasingly very important to providing that, if you like, margin for excellence in the universities.

Geraldine Doogue: Reviewing areas of interest, aligning the courses to the modern needs, now this is very controversial, isn't it?

Donald Markwell: Yes and no Geraldine. I think that it was controversial a few years ago. I think there's increasing acceptance that with developments in science and technology, with the rapid growth of globalisation, that there is a need for universities to review areas in which they are teaching and the areas in which they are researching. A very important part of that is taking the view that with the growth of specialist knowledge and the very rapid change of specialist knowledge, it's important that students and researchers have the background knowledge f other fields so that they can see the specialist areas in context, and can understand the interactions between their specialist area.

Geraldine Doogue: So this multi-disciplinary sensibility which does seem to be growing: Melbourne University's shrunk I think it's 900 courses to I think 48, I think it was; you're saying this is the way to go.

Donald Markwell: Well I think that what Melbourne is doing is one very attractive and very desirable way to go. Essentially adopting a model of liberal undergraduate education with a small number, in fact six basic undergraduate courses, leading then into more specialised professional postgraduate work. I'm not saying that every Australian university should do that; that's the Melbourne model, but I think it aligns very much with the kind of thinking that one's seeing in great universities in the United States and in the United Kingdom.

Geraldine Doogue: The focus on broader student experience you say, is a key marker-buoy of these places. What in particular are you talking about?

Donald Markwell: Geraldine, there's been criticism even in the great universities of the US and the UK, at Harvard, very intense criticism of the quality of what they offer their own students. And yet by almost any measure, that quality remains very much amongst the best in the world. So there's been renewed focus, even in the very top institutions on how do you enhance the all-round student learning experience? How do you get more interaction between students and academics? How do you get students engaged in the broader life of the university, so that they have a sense of belonging to it as a community, so that they are engaged in intellectual and public debate, and in extracurricular activities, community service activities, sporting, musical, other cultural activities.

Geraldine Doogue: Which typically happens here with the smaller universities and a bigger ones, a lot of students will tell you, they're just anonymous places. Even if the quality of their academic offerings are still good, they're anonymous, they don't make the average student feel welcome.

Donald Markwell: Well I think that it is true that Australian universities in general are much bigger, have many more students than the major universities of the United States, the United Kingdom, and I think one of the things that we need to do as some Australian universities are thinking about, is think about whether we can in fact make our universities somewhat smaller in student numbers, and whether we do that or not, how we can create within what will remain quite large institutions, a sense of community, a sense of belonging to the institution, a sense of engagement of students in the life of the institution.

There was a study done a few years ago based at Harvard, but involving a number of American universities, which asked about 1600 American students what was the most important learning experience they had as undergraduates. And four out of five of the students gave as their most important learning experiences, something which had happened outside the classroom. It was something that had happened in their debating club, it was something that had happened in conversations in their residential college with other students, with students from different backgrounds. Four out of five said something which did not happen in the classroom, and I think that we in Australia need to take that out-of-classroom experience much more seriously as part of what we offer our students.

Geraldine Doogue: So you also talk about the need to grapple with poor student behaviour successfully too, and you talk about the jock culture in the US. They're acutely conscious. The equivalent for us would be, as you say, the 3Fs: Fosters, football and fornication. Now ought we to take this seriously? And what can universities do, in a sense, about individual poor conduct?

Donald Markwell: I think that the more that universities act as communities in which students are fully engaged, for example the more emphasis they place, which I believe is extremely important, on residential experience, students living in the university, living in its colleges, the more they will unavoidably be exposed to the 24/7 life with all of its problems as well as its benefits. And yes, there are issues in American residential universities, and there are issues for Australian commuter students and for residential students of excessive alcohol consumption, sexual harassment and so forth. Some of this is a reflection of course of a blokey culture, which one encounters in universities as much as one encounters in the wider community. I think that universities have a particularly important role in taking the lead in trying to overcome that kind of culture.

Geraldine Doogue: I wonder if we can hop over from that and go on to your final point, which is a strong focus on internationalisation.

Donald Markwell: Yes. The great institutions of the world think of themselves as global institutions. That's been one of the major developments in recent years, the development of a super league of institutions which think and act as global institutions. They are looking at the quality of what they do by global standards. They are thinking about everything they do as being 'What do we do if we are a genuinely international institution, rather than simply what do we do as a local, as a parochial, even just as a national institution. They welcome staff, they seek to attract staff from around the world, they seek to attract students from all around the world. They encourage their own students to travel overseas on student exchanges, they encourage language study. They are very focused at the present time on making sure that they are strong in the study of all of the major regions of the world. There's a big increase in universities, in emphasis on the study of China and of India and of the Middle East. There's a big increase in emphasis on the study of major religions, because one of the realisations of the last five years or so, has been that you can't actually understand the world today unless you understand religion, which of course Geraldine, you've known that for a long time. But our universities have been a bit behind in recognising the importance of that.

So it's universities acting as genuinely global institutions and making sure that they are exposing their staff and their students to an understanding of the world at large.

Geraldine Doogue: Well Donald Markwell, thank you very much indeed, and good luck with the new job.

Donald Markwell: Thank you very much, Geraldine.

Geraldine Doogue: And Donald is the Warden of Trinity College, but he's about to move to UWA to be Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Education.

Now I did say I'd give you some details of that 'Times' Higher Education Supplement benchmarking on universities. The ANU was rated Australia's top university this year, it was up from 23rd to 16th place, ahead of the University of Melbourne at No.22, not too far behind luminaries like Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and Yale, 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th consecutively. Sydney was No.34 by the way, Monash No. 38, UNSW was 39 I think, and Queensland 45. I've just realised I've left out one, I'll double-check that UNSW one.

Guests

Professor Donald Markwell
Warden Trinity College, University of Melbourne

Story Researcher and Producer

Geraldine Doogue