Survey of universities across the Commonwealth shows consensus over funding and globalisation issues
Comments in a recent survey from vice-chancellors from around the world, complaining of lack of funding and resources, have a familiar ring.
Perhaps not surprisingly, these kinds of problems are felt more keenly by universities in developing countries, where shortfalls in public funding have been compounded by years of underinvestment.
A lack of resources affects all areas of a university, from fitting out laboratories to attracting academics. As one vice-chancellor from the Caribbean said: "Inadequate funding has resulted in a physical facility that requires rehabilitation, an inability to attract and retain highly qualified staff and inadequate learning resources [for] distance education programmes, laboratory and research equipment."
The findings come from a survey of vice-chancellors and senior staff from 81 institutions across 22 countries conducted by the Association of Commonwealth Universities.
Answers revealed a substantial degree of consensus around the issues of principal concern - the overlapping themes of funding and resources, internationalisation and competition, teaching and learning, human resources, research and outreach.
Universities across the Commonwealth face tough new challenges. They must contend with the rising pressure on public resources but as businesses, they also need to sustain themselves in a more competitive, market-oriented and international context.
They are under pressure to generate alternative sources of income, not only through student fees but by research or consulting and from charitable donations.
However, generating funding outside of the public sphere creates its own set of issues. One UK respondent said: "The potential increase in [UK] student fees after 2009, accompanied by students increasingly perceiving themselves as customers, presents a key challenge to all UK higher education institutions in terms of improving their market articulation and the responsiveness of academic process and services."
More starkly, a respondent from Zambia referred to the inability to raise tuition as a particular problem in light of static government funding: "We have trebled the number of students, but infrastructure has not changed since the 1980s … Funding is not available from government for infrastructure and public universities cannot charge economic rates of fees because it will create strikes by students and the government will not allow increases in fees."
Unsubsidised international students have long provided a much needed cash injection to universities and competition for these students is fierce. While comments on the theme of internationalisation and competition extended beyond student recruitment and revenue generation, it is telling that these comments were most prevalent among respondents from countries with a net inflow of international students and where income from cross-border provision is significant – for example the UK, Australia and Canada.
A particular point of contention concerned the increasingly influential role of international league tables, especially among potential students. Respondents from both Australia and Canada referred to these and criticised their methodologies.
One Australian respondent stated: "[International] ranking is here to stay but it remains very problematic….global comparisons should be possible but it is important that we develop relevant and robust methodologies for providing comparisons across the Commonwealth and more widely."
Market forces are shaping the operating context of universities in a way that was simply not the case a generation ago.
Higher education is viewed as a service sector and universities have to demonstrate they are fit for purpose and responsive to the changing needs and demands of the sector whether these arise from an enlarged and diversified student demographic, changing technological capability or an outward focussed research agenda. These are not purely questions of academic integrity and relevance, as has always been the case, but of 'customer service'. As one vice-chancellor from Bangladesh explained, universities need greater flexibility to "open, close, expand and contract courses in response to market demand".
It is no surprise therefore that the other priority areas emerging in the survey, such as teaching and learning, research, and human resources, relate to changes and adaptations in the core functions of the university, and the staff who provide them.
One comment drawn from the UK referred to the need to respond to a range of societal shifts such as "more flexible working patterns, appetites for learning throughout our lives, time poverty and income prosperity, as well as changing demographics".
"All [of which] point to models of higher education provision that shift from an 18-25 intake sitting in classrooms and labs to learning that adapts to individual and targeted circumstances…[and]…demand new approaches to learning and knowledge generation and dissemination.
Universities must be responsive to the multiple communities they serve, whether those communities are local, national or international; how they do so is their unifying challenge. The survey highlights that contexts and missions might vary, but the issues universities face are remarkably similar.
Jay Kubler is the senior research officer at the Policy Research Unit of the ACU