Time for a royal commission into our corrupted universities

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For years, The Australian’s Judith Sloan has been one of the few mainstream commentators to call out the chicanery and corruption afflicting Australia’s universities.

Yesterday, Sloan published her magnum opus on the issue, outlining in detail why the university sector should be subject to its very own royal commission:

On Sunday the Morrison government announced it would launch an inquiry into foreign interference in Australian universities, but it needs to be broader than that. Obvious issues include the recruitment and treatment of international students, the dilution of educational standards, the casualisation and underpayment of staff, the feeble commitment to free speech and the selective take-up of tied funding.

International students have been the cash cow for universities and in the decade from 2009, international student fee revenue rose more than 250 per cent. On a per capita basis, we have had the highest number of international students of any country…

Most are recruited by overseas-based, essentially unregulated agents… Some recent material related to Indian students studying in New Zealand has been revealing. It’s clear that some agents use coercive tactics and add large dollops of misinformation to secure enrolments – promises of well-paid employment and an easy pathway to permanent residence…

And there is clear evidence that pass marks have been adjusted to ensure international students do not fail. Cheating is common, with students buying assignments undertaken by third parties, as is the practice of contrived group assignments in which international students are placed in groups with able domestic students.

The dip in standards is not confined to international students…

Then there is the growing casualisation of teaching staff… In recent months, it has become clear that there has been significant underpayment of casual staff members…

The commitment to free speech within many universities is very dependent on who is talking and what is being said…

A mixture of language teaching and propaganda, the Confucius Institutes appoint their own staff members and are essentially unsupervised. The fact that some universities have baulked at the conditions that these centres demand is telling…

The bottom line is that much of the conduct of Australian universities does not meet the ethical standards our community rightly expects. Rather than serving the core mission of universities to provide excellent teaching and research, too many practices lack any moral basis and are undertaken to raise money.

Of course, the federal government has contributed by providing international students with easy entry and pathways to permanent residence…

The result is extraordinarily well-paid senior university managers, growth of non-academic staff numbers at the expense of academics, and excessive investment in campuses and glittering new buildings, many of which will not be needed in the digital age.

The fact that many ordinary folk neither trust nor care about universities should come as no surprise.

A royal commission into higher education would be very revealing.

Brilliantly said. Australia’s universities have lost their social license to operate and deserve a royal commission into their misconduct examining universities’:

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  • Links to the CCP;
  • Over-reliance on international students and the networks behind this recruitment;
  • Collapsing entry and teaching standards, both of which have been dumbed down for foreign kids;
  • Persecution of whistle-blowers (e.g. Gerd Schroder-Turk and Drew Pavlou);
  • Over-casualisation of academic staff and endemic wage theft from these same staff;
  • Growth of well-paid non-academic staff numbers at the expense of academics; and
  • Putting dollars ahead of lives by incessantly lobbying to open Australia’s borders throughout the pandemic.

These institutions now operate like the very worst blood sucking corporations.

It’s time to drain the swamp.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.