Education is Australia’s only real non-mining export industry of the future (as a subset of tourism), but that hasn’t helped it survive Budget rigors in the past few years and the cost is showing. The 2013-2014 Times Higher Education World University Rankings see Australian unis sliding alarmingly. From the AFR:
Australia’s most highly ranked institution, the University of Melbourne, fell from 39 last year to 43. The Australian National University fell from 42 into the 61 to 70 band and the University of Sydney fell from 49 to the same band.
The University of Queensland fell from the 71 to 80 band last year into the 81 to 90 band and the University of NSW dropped from the 81 to 90 band to the 91 to 100 band.
Monash University, which just made the top 100 in last year’s survey, dropped out this year.
“After two excellent years in the reputation rankings, Australia has come down to earth with a bump,” said Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher Education rankings.
Mr Baty said he believed cuts to Australian higher education funding were likely to have been responsible for the damage to Australia’s international reputation.
In its last year in office, the former Labor government cut university funding by $2.3 billion as it struggled to find more money for its school funding plan.
Australia itself retained it number five ranking because it has five unis in the top one hundred.
Perhaps budget cuts are to blame for this recent slide. The survey is based upon 10,000 academics worldwide. Academics are an appallingly entitled lot in general and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Labor produced an outburst of collective revulsion.
But over the past decade there has there has also been a significant push downwards in many curricula (or in the delivery of them) by Australian unis as they cater to the international student market. The general quality remains high by world standards but the cutting edge is being blunted in the scramble for the lowest common denominator of fee-paying students. I have no hard evidence for this but it’s pretty common knowledge among my university teaching friends. I can’t see how it will improve with time.
I’m a big believer in the “education investment builds productivity” argument so this is a long term set back for the country in the name of short term gain.
