It is instructive to reflect on the fact that there has been no tradition of ‘whistle-blowing’ in the Australian public universities sector. And yet, as we see from time to time, scandals and serious irregularities within the corridors of these venerable institutions have come to light.
A couple of years ago, the Vice Chancellor of Queensland University was forced to resign his post when it was revealed that his daughter was given a place in UQ’s undergraduate medicine degree she did not warrant…it turned out that she was made an offer ahead of 343 better qualified applicants, and despite her having failed the university’s MBBS admissions test! Strings do get pulled in the loftiest climes of Academe, and in this particular matter, the misdemeanour went before the Crimes and Misconduct Commission.
Did the VC subtly or less subtly ask for special family treatment? Or was it just a sycophantic senior underling acting on his “Pat Malone” trying to rack up “brownie points” by doing his boss a very big favour? We’ll never really know where the blame lies for sure…but either way it amounts to a gross abuse of privilege and power! I know of other instances, not quite as blatant, where senior academics have sought to exert influence on the process, making special pleading cases to their university’s admissions office on behalf of their unqualified relatives.
Australian universities are able to give offers to applicants in this way without the need for the applicant to demonstrate that he or she meets the required academic standard. These are called ‘forced offers’ and although intended to be used only for exceptional circumstances, are quite discretionary in their application. Twenty years ago, a leading university in Sydney gained the opprobrium of its competitor institutions when it made a large number of forced offers for nursing to current Year 12 students prior to their HSC results being known. This was a very irregular occurrence indeed, because the concept of forced offers, intrinsically, was designed with non-current Year 12 applicants exclusively in mind. But it does happen, even (or especially) at the biggest universities.
In addition to the issue of admission irregularities, its interesting that a lot of what goes on in Australian universities behind the doors, in their allocations of monies and their practices, manages largely to avoid in-depth public scrutiny. Large media outlets in this ‘democratised’ age of university admission and the high demand for access, have been known to assign specialist reporters to cover higher education (the quaintly-named Abel Contractor was one such reporter employed by the Sydney Morning Herald specifically in this role several years ago). Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, a lot of what goes on within the executive portals of Australian universities is still the exclusive domain of a select few and often flies under the radar. The media usually gets no further than to scratch the surface of juicy scoops.
Many of the dubious practices that occur, and I’m talking about mismanagement and misallocation of revenues as much as out-and-out corruption and nepotism, remain in-house and thus out of the gaze of the media. Occasionally, the news outlets will run stories about the ultra-generous perks of office enjoyed by the “fat-cat” VCs, things like the UNSW Vice Chancellor having the use of a mansion as part of his package; Sydney University’s lavish entitlements that come with the job of VC; a Macquarie University VC’s clandestine special deal to secure an associate professor’s salary for life of part of the termination package…but the story doesn’t usually probe deeper than this. Just sometimes, like the Queensland vice chancellor’s appallingly bad judgement in apparently seeking to influence his daughter’s undergrad application, the high office-holder goes beyond the Pale and everyone eventually finds out. The registrar of UTS in Sydney in the 1980s was gaoled for embezzling funds from the university, and the key office of university registrar was abolished so that with the position off the books, the unsavoury incident would hopefully be forgotten (the office was eventually restored about 12 years later!)
The vice chancellor’s post, as well as being highly lucrative, commands a tremendous amount of power within the university, and considerable influence in the wider tertiary education sector. Sure theoretically there are checks on that power, not from the chancellor which is by and large a ceremonial leadership role, but from Senate and Council. But a determined VC can exert pressure on these committees or alter their membership to bring about his or her desired outcomes. The inordinate and exceptional power of the vice chancellor is evident in all spheres of university life. Vice chancellors in Australia normally have a discretionary fund, a seemingly bottomless pit of disposable money in a university climate of ever-tightening financial strictures. The VC can choose to use these funds however he or she deems fit.
Years ago, the vice chancellor at a university I used to work for decided to spend the bulk of that year’s VC’s discretionary allowance (purportedly a quarter of a million dollars) on the purchase of a rather grand and extremely expensive pipe organ. The organ was imported from England, along with the owner of the organ company who was put up in a 5-star hotel while he personally oversaw the safe delivery, setting up and tuning of the huge organ*. When this task was completed, in the middle of first semester enrolments, the VC in a characteristic display of self-indulgence, called a temporary halt to enrolments, took over the enrolment venue for a night, got security to clear out all the enrolment booths and then rolled out the red carpet (literally) for 36 select, invited VIPs…the beneficiares of a very exclusive organ performance. The whole enrolment process put on hold for a elite soirée of privileged mates at taxpayers’ expense – democracy in action university style!
The said organ was purchased supposedly to be played on the occasion of graduation ceremonies in the main hall. The problem with this idea was, even to the visually-challenged, painfully obvious. To be able to play it in the graduation hall meant knocking out about three rows of seats in a hall that was already too small to adequately meet the increasing demand of graduation seating. As a result, it couldn’t be played during graduations! Eventually, it was carted over to the University Theatre, an interior with unsuitable acoustics. In transit the organ was knocked out of alignment and had to be retuned to restore the corrrect pitch. After precious few performances in the theatre, some time later this expensive ‘white elephant’ was returned permanently to its original, dust-gathering location in the hall. Now, I ask you, does that sound like a good investment in and allocation of public funds?
To nepotism, mismanagement and misallocation of funds and resources, can be added corruption. I mentioned the registrar at UTS before who embezzled university finances. At the same university as the hardly used, exorbitantly-priced pipe organ, there was also fertile ground for fraudulent activities. The vice chancellor had her favourites among the various business units and departments of the University. In the aftermath of the fallout experienced by universities due to the ‘Razor Gang’ cuts on tertiary education expenditure, and the resultant need of universities to self-fund, first among the favourites was the International Office. Because international students were a burgeoning area in universities in those days when the A$ was undervalued, and because international students are full-fee payers, it is no surprise that the International Office was so popular with a VC desperately looking for alternate sources of funding. All public universities do this, get the internationals in at all costs, get them through at all costs (this is a whole other story), then replace them with more of the same. On-going income generation.
A grateful VC rewarded the International Office with increased staffing and resources (more than their student workload required), and gave its director tacit acquiescence if not carte blanche (certainly no scrutiny) for his idiosyncratic approach to managing his unit. Freed of any financial controls or apparent accountability, the director felt no compunction about gifting the juicy contract for the International Office’s extensive array of glossy publications, uncompetitively tendered, to his daughter-in-law’s printing company in Melbourne. In a work environment with deep-seated abuse of office like this, it does not surprise that waste and extravagance was also endemic. One such instance involved professors, dignitaries and directors of exchange programs from overseas tertiary institutions. When they visited the International Office, staff thought nothing about hiring taxis on a routine basis to ferry round the visitors on sight-seeing trips to Newcastle, Wollongong and the Blue Mountains.
Other areas of this university were equally prone to misuse and mismanagement of public funds. In the 1990s the University moved to introduce a new student system, it committed to a particular vendor and followed through to the extent of sinking $6 to 7 million into the project. Then, the University project team discovered at that advanced stage that what the provider was offering wasn’t compatible with the University’s student administration requirements, and so the University pulled the plug on the project. $6 to 7 million! And nobody was sacked, nobody was asked to account for this gross business systems blunder. Of course not, because the University Executive had given the project the green light, they were implicated! So, the whole thing was quietly swept under the carpet, and never mentioned again. It beggars belief! But I marvel over what appropriate use this wasted sum of millions could have gone toward, eg, legitimate core academic objectives such as improving learning outcomes.
That public funds allocated to universities in Australia are misused in the ways outlined above, and that many of those financial misappropriations are not acted on by the university itself or by the higher ed authorities, taints the higher education system. The lack of accountability makes universities appear as if they are ‘sacred cows’ that cannot be reined in. This, and abuses of office by the powerful elements in universities, make the sector cry out for much needed reform.
¤ I have not concerned myself with uni incompetence in this blog piece. Instances of the sheer incompetence of tertiary ed institutions have become the stuff of legend over the years…such as the time the University of Sydney mailed out the mid-year results to all of its 44,000 students, listing all the subjects completed or attempted in Semester One perfectly correctly…just the one little hitch – the administration had omitted to include any grades on every one of the mailed notices…they were all blank!!! I wonder at how many pairs of wayward eyes this blundering mistake had to pass before someone at USyd unbelievably green-lighted this monumental, embarrassing oversight?
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* He was a cheery, middle class English chappie by the name of Clive and just so intent on getting the organ 100% perfect to please his generous benefactor…one day he waltzed up to me and mentioned how ‘helpful’ it’d be if “all that noise and ruckus in the hall!” (ie, enrolment preparation) could just stop, so that he could concentrate on the crucial task at hand, HIS organ-tuning task for the VC! I responded politely to him, the way you try to placate an aberrant, irrational child with soothing words, I told him that I really did understand his concerns…(with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek) I went on, no, more than that, what he said was an excellent suggestion! Clive’s face brightened! (mischievously I couldn’t help baiting him!)…but there was just one little catch, I explained – once the students found out (that it was Clive who was responsible for cancelling the semester’s enrolments), it would bring the wrath of approximately 10,000 new and re-enrolling students anxious to sign up for their uni subjects squarely down on his singular head! The cheerful demeanour quickly drained out of Clive’s face and he waddled off, but not before reassuring me that “Di (the VC) was very happy with the job he was doing!” Hallelujah!