UC Vice-Chancellor Bill Shorten wants a practical, responsive university. Photo: Ian Bushnell.
Bill Shorten looks like getting the job done at the University of Canberra.
Or at least getting its financial house in order.
The former alternative Prime Minister must be relishing the opportunity to be Mr Fixit, with fewer of the complexities that his former political life threw up.
Better, he believes, to get the pain out of the way quickly, lose some staff and courses, but retain a working university that can redefine itself for these difficult times.
That was his main message this week, updating the community about the progress at UC, and what was most interesting were his hints at what had gone wrong and the way forward under his leadership.
While he did not want to dwell on the past, it seems UC was an institution looking backward, and had failed to understand its market and where its strengths lay.
Always colourful, Mr Shorten threw in a few tart observations about the traditional university model being out of touch with the realities of modern life and the modern student, apart from the idle classes who can afford to spend leisurely hours on the quad lawn.
In Bill Shorten’s mind, UC won’t ever be a sandstone university with ivory towers, but a practical university with a job at the end of it.
It will still invest in quality research, but a leaner UC will be a more flexible institution that welcomes mature-age students by recognising their prior experience, and appeals to working people who don’t have the resources or time to embark on a three-year block of study.
“We want to make sure that we engage with industry, that we’re very good at providing micro credentials; in other words, students can enrol in subjects as opposed to full degrees,” Mr Shorten said.
“There’s a lot of Australian adults who’ve got a lot of experience, but universities shouldn’t be asking someone in their late 20s, 30s, or 40s, what might they got at year 12, we should be instead saying what have you done in the last 10 or 15 or 20 years, how can we recognise some of that and make it an opportunity to connect their knowledge with that of a university.
“We want to try and give you credit for that, so coming to study is actually not as long and not as expensive as you might have always thought it was.”
Universities had to play their role in boosting productivity, and he sees this as a winner for the students, the economy and UC itself.
The new UC could deliver education in many ways to suit the student, not just how ‘arrogant ‘ institutions had been doing for 170 years.
It should also be easier for students to move between university and TAFE, depending on their needs, something the new CEO of CIT, Dr Margot McNeill, also advocates.
Mr Shorten said universities had relied on the glory years of the baby boomers and Gen X, and the conversation was often about prestige.
Today’s students have a much tougher deal, juggling two or three jobs, struggling to attend classes regularly, and facing higher HECS debts and houses they cannot afford. They didn’t have time for any of that.
That’s the reality that UC needed to accept and embrace.
“Our university wants to be where the people are,” Mr Shorten said.
Some might say that all seems bleakly utilitarian, but as Mr Shorten said, there was no point building courses and hiring staff for students who never came, which UC apparently did.
Mr Shorten is simply saying UC needs to know its place in the market as a second-tier university that is responsive to the needs of its customers, and particularly serving the ACT and southern NSW.
And do what it can do well.
The proof will be as ever in the pudding, but Mr Shorten is no seat warmer and seems laser-focused on turning around UC’s fortunes.
But he is also not about to make commitments he can’t keep.
Under-promise and over-deliver is the goal. Let’s hope so because a viable and vibrant UC, as an integral part of a higher education ecosystem, is vital to the economic and intellectual life of the Canberra region.
