Another 'home' for universities (email sent 5/4/11)

John Armstrong,
University of Melbourne

Re: Calling the humanities home, The Conversation, 4/4/11

Your article drew attention to the fact that there has been a gulf between business and the humanities, and that ‘business’ (through Michael Andrew, Chairman of KPMG, and chair of the BCA’s education taskforce) “wants to see our universities educate people as leaders, as good communicators and as fruitful collaborators.”

May I respectfully suggest that there are other ‘homes’ to which the humanities also need to be called? Senior government officials were long characterized by humanities qualifications. The need for the humanities to now ‘come home’ to government is illustrated by Competing Civilizations (2001) which argued that: (a) differences in cultural assumptions (which are the business of the humanities) are increasingly important factors in world events; (b) the world is running off the rails partly because few have been paying attention to this; and (c) the trend towards postmodern assumptions in Western humanities faculties has had serious practical consequences. Moreover issues that are (or should be) the business of the humanities are also central to Australia’s future strategic position (see Comments on Australia's Strategic Edge in 2030, 2011).

A suggestion (which also amounted to ‘calling the humanities home’) was outlined more fully in A Case for Restoring Universities (2010).

I would be interested in your response to the above speculations.

John Craig

Universities are not just of economic value (email sent 15_4_11)

Julie Hare
The Australian

Re: Universities' value to economy 'overlooked and underrated', The Australian, 15/4/11

Your article commented on presumably valid arguments by Melbourne University vice-chancellor, Glyn Davis, to the effect that universities have economic value that is not always being recognised in current policy decisions.

However universities have potential value to the community in ways that are not simply economic (eg in providing sophisticated understandings of options available to community leaders and to governments), and these also need emphasis (see Another Home for Universities). The latter commented on the importance of mobilizing the capacity of universities in relation to development of public policy options.

In recent years decades Australia’s universities (like its public services) have arguably had their motivation and ability to provide the support needed for competent government eroded (partly because of a political desire to maximize their economic value as pseudo-businesses), and this has contributed to growing crises (see Decay of Australian Public Administration, 2002; Australia's Governance Crisis and the Need for Nation Building, from 2003; and A Case for Restoring Universities, 2010).

The need to do more than mobilize the economic value of universities can be illustrated by the fact that Australia’s international environment is dominated by challenges related to the rise of ‘Asia’ on the basis of systems of socio-political economy that are radically different to, and arguably incompatible, with Western models that Australians are familiar with. Despite the significant policy implications of those differences (see Risks for Asia-illiterate policy making) those who provide support to governments in developing policy responses have no way to properly understand the situation they are dealing with, because universities seem either unable or unwilling to do more than propose boosting the Asia-literacy of children (see Understanding China: Focusing Education on the Under Fifteens Would be Fatal).

Unless the expectations of universities’ contribution are lifted, Australians future prospects will be severely constrained.

John Craig

TEQSA: Will Micromanagement Again Triumph over Government? (email sent 27/4/11)

Brendan Sheehan,
Inter Mediate Government Liaison and Advisory,
c/- Luke Slattery, Higher Education Editor, The Australian

Re: ‘New standards agency loosens grip of states’, The Australian, 27/4/11

Your article suggested that the establishment of TEQSA (Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency) which is being proposed to take over the regulation of universities would finally “crush the states’ residual role in higher education”. Well bully for the federal government.

A reasonable case can be made that an unintended consequence of federal funding of universities since the 1970s has been to limit the need for interaction between universities and regional communities, and that this has been one (but certainly not the only) factor in the increasingly poor quality of government that Australia has suffered in recent decades (see The Advantages and Limitations of Financial Criteria). The latter refers to universities as one example of a general point (ie that, while control of financial inputs has value in many circumstances, this also has limitations, especially in relation to ensuring the effectiveness of the complex functions that governments are involved in). In particular the weakness of Parliamentary oversight of a state administration seems to be due to a lack of practical and up-to-date contributions to state public policy debates, and this arises partly because universities no longer need to be relevant to state administrations.

Establishing TESQA is inconsequential. It merely demonstrates and marginally increases the already massive constraint on the effectiveness and efficiency of Australian government that arises because the federal government lacks the statesmanship to rise above an obsession with micromanaging constitutional state functions.

A back-to-basics emphasis on ‘governing’ by the federal government would probably go a long way towards an across-the-board improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness of governments in Australia – for reasons that are outlined in An 'efficiency dividend' seems an inefficient way to improve efficiency. The latter argues that: (a) large savings are likely from eliminating the complexities and inefficiencies associated with massive federal fiscal imbalances; and (b) trying to improve the federal government’s financial position by ‘penny pinching’ is likely to have the reverse effect, because it will supress the competencies required for governing properly.

John Craig

More on: Will Micromanagement Again Triumph over Government?

A response to the above email was received on 28/4/11 from an observer with an interest in tertiary education.

In brief: attention was drawn, by way of background, to: (a) a general view within government that accountability is tied to public funding; (b) the many examples where universities are working together with state government and industry, particularly in Queensland; (c) the limited government funding of 'public' universities, the high level of government control over their activities, and the extension of this (under TESQA) to private education providers; and (d) a mistake that had been made in the identity of an Australian editor.

In reply, the following email was forwarded to that observer on 28/4/11

Thanks for your observations relating to my comments on Brendan Sheehan’s article in the latest Higher Education section of The Australian. If you have no objection, I would like to reproduce them on my web-site (with TEQSA: Will Micromanagement Again Triumph over Government?), together with the following.

In response to your observations it is noted that:

• While accountability validly attaches to public funding, there are massive imbalances in the availability of financial resources between the federal and state government under Australia’s current tax systems– and the federal government’s efforts to micromanage state functions (because of their fiscal strength) seriously distorts and complicates government activities (see Federal Fiscal Imbalances in Australia’s Governance Crisis and the Need for Nation Building);
• There are many situations where governments are wise not to seek to exert control. For example:
  • Government control over most of the economy (ie activities that are not subject to serious market failures) is counter-productive. Traditional socialist systems under which governments seek to own and control the means of production generally encounter many difficulties – because of: limits to the rationality of central decision makers in dealing with complex situations; and constraints that apply to democratic governments in particular (see Attachment G referenced in Economic Challenges have no purely political solution);
  • Even where governments provide funding for functions, they have often found it beneficial to avoid using that as the basis for controlling operations (eg consider the funding of government auditors / anti-corruption watchdogs, and the attempts often made in the past to establish ‘semi-government’ agencies – whose ability to be freed from political constraints was seen to be essential to their ability to perform their technically complex functions).
  • When the notion of semi-government agencies was scrapped because of the belief that quasi-market mechanisms would be a better way of controlling many public functions, Queensland did not proceed down the privatisation path, but rather favoured ‘corporatisation’ (ie the establishment of publicly owned, but theoretically market-oriented, companies). This generated massive conflicts – because of the expectation that such companies would be responsive to both ‘customers’ and the political pressure from interest groups who wanted outcomes other than those in the interest of ‘customers’ (see comments on Queensland Infrastructure System);
• While there is a heavy interaction between governments and universities (especially in Queensland), this is not constructive in terms of generating better understanding of the requirements for effective government or economic success. Having spent ‘n’ years seeking to stimulate civil institutions to take some serious interest in this, I can assure you that the situation has been and remains bleak. In Queensland the state government has pursued a stupid (and expensive) ‘Smart State’ program – whose aspiration has been to force economic diversification by ‘political push’ (ie by governing funding an increased supply of ‘smart’ economic inputs such as higher education and R&D). This is ineffectual because providing inputs to economic systems that are insufficiently developed to use them constructively is a formula for waste. And government efforts to compensate by themselves providing ‘assistance’ to potential innovators has the effect of stifling real development of the economy (see What’s wrong with government assistance to fill market gaps). The ‘demand pull’ alternative is to boost demand for those ‘smart’ inputs by an initial emphasis on creating effective commercial capabilities to productively use them (see Commentary on 'Smart State': Illustrating Queensland's Lack of Serious Public Policy). Thus perhaps I should have argued that there is a need to change the character of the interaction between universities and state governments (see Breaking the Iron Triangle – ie the relationship between universities as lobbyists for government funding, business who wants to avoid having to take serious economic responsibility and naïve politicians);
• The situation facing universities which you point out involves about 50:50 public and private funding and government attempts to exert 100% control illustrates the need to rethink the way in which such functions are undertaken. In this regard it is noted that (to reverse recent declines in economic productivity and take the pressure off currently-overstretched governments) there is probably a need to democratically empower new classes of entities to stimulate accelerated development in economic and social systems whose effectiveness would depend on being able to avoid political control over outcomes, even though there might be a need for some public funding of the process (eg see A Case for Innovative Economic Leadership);

Thanks for your advice about Julie Hare becoming Higher Education editor. When one relies on Internet sources, there is always a danger of making mistakes

John Craig

Bringing linguistics in from the margins (email sent 15/11/11)

Annabelle Lukin
Macquarie University

Re: The paradox of Noam Chomsky on language and power, The Conversation, 14/11/11

I should like to provide some feedback in relation to your very interesting article concerning the limitations of Noam Chosky’s approach to linguistics (ie the view that language in endowed with a universal structure) which makes it essentially irrelevant to helping in understand real world issues (eg what seems to be the US’s ‘permanent war economy’).

Some comments that I had on a contacts’ views about Chomsky’s Sydney presentation may illustrate what I am getting at:

“With respect Chomsky (and the Occupy the World) movement are full of garbage.

The global financial / economic crisis is as much due to non-capitalistic economic models as it is due to capitalism (see World facing 'Crisis of non-Capitalism': Non-economist). Globalization has increased global equality (because many hundreds of millions were drawn into global market economy – and experienced rising incomes). Free trade is not the problem – rather the problem arises from the inability of some societies to benefit from it because of rich natural resources and cultural constraints (see Problems with Conventional Wisdom) and the general failure to consider those obstacles. Protectionism is not the answer to anything – because all this does is create weak industries and low incomes. A proactive approach to developing economic capabilities is a far better option (see A Case for Innovative Economic Leadership). There are several different types of problems with democracy: (a) a lack of discipline in public spending in some situations – as illustrated by California and Greece; (b) the lack of institutional support to the democratic process – so that half-baked ideas get acceptance (see Challenges to Australia’s Democratic Institutions); (c) political weakening of support institutions in order to prevent overly-simplistic policy options being exposed (see Ill-advised 'Reform'); and (d) the distortion of the political process by powerful self-interested groups (eg the military industrial complex in US).

However responsibility for many of these problems falls on people like Chomsky – because of their ignorance and laziness. In order to change what is produced by the democratic process there is a need for realistic and practical proposals for alternatives. And these simply have not been forthcoming – and neither Chomsky nor the Occupy the World Movement seem interested in or capable of generating such options. A lot of the world’s problems (including economic weaknesses, autocratic governments and conflicts) arise from the failure of the humanities and social science faculties in Western universities (ie people like Chomsky) to consider the practical consequences of differences in cultural traditions (eg see Competing Civilizations ). This is not something that can be done by business and political elites in Western societies (because it is outside their field of knowledge). It had to be done by people like Chomsky (and those participating in the Occupy the World movement) – but they have simply not gotten off their backsides in recent decades.”

Your article pointed to Chomsky’s desire to assume that language is endowed with universal structure – and to other linguists’ contrary understanding. However the problem goes much deeper, because not only are languages different but ways of thinking are dramatically different, and this has massive implications for societies’ ability to achieve material prosperity (differences in which give rise to many conflicts). For example Western societies think in terms of abstract concepts, whereas these tend to be rejected in East Asia (which does not have the West’s classical Greek heritage) – see East Asia in Competing Civilizations. Moreover the use of abstract concepts as the basis of rational discourse only works in Western societies because simplified social environments have been created (eg through a rule of law) in which ‘rational’ decisions are likely to be effective. In more complex environments ‘rationality’ tends to fail (as shown by literature related to management, public administration and economics), and it certainly fails in societies which the simplified social environments needed for individual rationality do not exist.

Other observations in relation to your article are:

• The US failed to save Vietnam from Communism because of its failure to understand the way its people think – and the incompatibility of the US’s ‘democratic capitalist’ ideal with people who think in terms of community rather than individual action. I have recently revisited Vietnam (after wandering around with a rifle in 1968) and found that the ‘shanty town’ feel still prevails and the only noticeable difference is that people ride motor cycles rather than bicycles, and the peasants have better quality black pyjamas. The lack of progress relative to societies that rejected Communism and adopted neo-Confucian models (as China, for example, did in the 1970s) is dramatic;
• It was failure in Western universities (especially in humanities and social science faculties) which left US political elites with no understanding that their methods in Vietnam would be unlikely to work, and that there were better alternatives. Communism was rejected in the USSR when the people understood that it could not work – not because of military action;
• Similarly the US’s efforts to graft democratic capitalism onto Iraq and Afghanistan are unlikely to be effective (eg Fatal Flaws). Once again there were alternatives that could have reduced the security risks posed by Islamist extremists that would have been more effective than military action (eg see Discouraging Pointless Extremism, 2002). And again it was the fault of people like Chomsky that alternatives to military / security responses to attacks by Islamist extremists were not presented to global political leaders (ie alternatives that would have allowed potential recruits to the Islamist cause to understand that Islamism would not work in practice, and that the way Islam tends to be enforced, rather than external ‘oppression’, is a largest part of the problem facing Muslim dominated societies) ;
• Similarly the emerging potential conflict between the US and China is arising because of the failure of Western humanities and social science faculties to demonstrate to Western political leaders the practical consequences of differences in cultural assumptions, and thus that ‘soft power’ techniques would be better than military confrontation in defusing the risks of such conflicts (see Comments on Australia's Strategic Edge in 2030).

I would be interested in your response to the above speculations.

John Craig

It is not only Science that is Under Siege - email sent 15/6/12

Clive Hamilton,
Charles Sturt University

Re: Science under siege, The Conversation, 14/6/12

Your article highlights the abuse that is sometimes directed against mainstream climate scientists, but did not mention the abuse that can be directed against those (such as myself) who advocate also giving serious consideration to (say) non-anthropogenic theories of climate change. I can vouch for the fact that such abuse can be quite vigorous.

The problem here can’t be solved by mere name calling (eg labelling people ‘climate deniers’, as your article did). There is perhaps a need to stand back from the climate-science debate and consider a bigger picture view of the challenges facing science.

A speculation about the limitations of science and the consequent emergence of frictions is in How solid are 'science, reason and critical thinking'? Though this was written with a different goal, it highlights fundamental questions about the reliability of knowledge – and, as knowledge is the primary business of universities, I submit that universities need to do some serious work on the philosophical questions that are raised by this and also by the emergence of post-modern assumptions (which effectively deny the relevance of supposed knowledge) in the social sciences and humanities. Some broader (though undoubtedly inadequate) speculations on the reliability of knowledge are in Confusion of Knowledge in Competing Civilizations while challenges to Western-style traditions of abstract thought have been suggested to be emerging from East Asia's Confucian quite-different traditions (see Competing Thought Cultures).

Problems related to the reliability of knowledge in an increasingly complex environment have also affected governments very generally (see Challenges to Australia’s Democratic Institutions in Australia’s Governance Crisis and the Need for Nation Building). The latter refers to symptoms of confusion about knowledge in terms of trends over the past couple of decades towards: (a) politicization so that public services are dominated by ‘yes men’ who do not point to any limitations in overly simplistic policies; and (b) gaining electoral support on the basis of overly-simplistic ‘populist’ policies.

Some preliminary speculations about what may be needed to overcome the problems facing effective governance in Australia are in A Nation Building Agenda. The latter includes suggestions about making universities more effective by: (a) reducing political demands to do inappropriate things; and (b) addressing confusions that are emerging about the nature and relevance of knowledge such as those associated with: postmodern assumptions; and the limitations of rationality, science and philosophy.

I would be interested in your response to my speculations.

John Craig

The Humanities May be Thriving - But Universities Aren't - email sent 28/4/15

ABC Four Corners

Re: Degrees of Deception, 21/4/15

I was interested in this episode because of parallels that seem to exist between deteriorating standards in Australia’s public services (with which I am very familiar) and public universities. The latter seemed to be to be afflicted by politically-driven ‘reform’ processes that were quite similar to those that led to problems in public services and other government institutions.

The ‘reforms’, intended to improve the political responsiveness and ‘business-like’ performance of such institutions, involved: (a) senior appointments which conformed with what political leaders believed was needed – rather than what experience dictated; (b) a belief in ‘managerialism’ (ie the view that management did not require deep knowledge of the issue being managed) which excused appointing inexperienced cronies to ‘senior’ positions; and (c) an attempt to apply ‘business-like’ methods in institutions whose core functions were not actually ‘business-like’.

An account of the reasons that the ‘wheels fell off’ public services as a result of such treatment is in Decay of Australian Public Administration (2002) while references to numerous resulting dysfunctions are included in The Growing Case for a Professional Public Service (2001+). In Queensland, the newly-elected ALP government seems (about 20 years too late) to have recognised that there is a problem – but is arguably not taking that problem seriously enough to actually fix it (see A Westminster-style Professional and Independent Public Service: Good Idea but Wishing Won't Make it So, 2015).

Some observations about the impact of similar (but not identical) influences in universities are in Restoring Australia’s Universities (2010). The latter drew attention to the impact of managerialism and of attempts to make universities into businesses. It also emphasised the pervasive influence in humanities and social sciences of ‘post-modern’ assumptions – ie that much ‘knowledge’ (which is universities’ main ‘product’) is merely a social construct which reflects political assumptions. That post-modern view:

• closely parallels the politically-convenient managerialist viewpoint (ie that one does not actually need to know much about something) to manage it; and
• has arguably been having a devastating impact on societies such as Australia in many ways (see Confusion of Knowledge). Adverse effects can be suggested in relation to: government effectiveness; communities; liberty; democracy; egalitarianism; the rule-of-law; education; the advancement of empirical knowledge; and human progress generally.

The problems related to the quality of Australian universities that Degrees of Deception identified may be merely the tip of an iceberg (eg consider also A Crisis in Education at QUT, 2007+).

John Craig