Australia’s Universities Accord must not neglect global equity and impact

Australia’s Universities Accord interim report, released on 19 July, contains important suggestions. It would benefit from further reflection on global engagement.

The accord usefully recommends ending the rule that prevented students who failed 50 per cent of their examinations from continuing – a measure that disadvantaged students from socially marginalised backgrounds. It extends funding for Indigenous students and recommends the establishment of regional and suburban education hubs. It calls for improved university governance, such as through increased student participation.

The report impressively includes reference to improving First Nations’ input into tertiary sector governance, supporting lifelong learning, and ensuring that the research and education of Australian universities is relevant to Australia.

The report makes repeated reference to funding. It signals interest in addressing the problem of a lack of government financial support for universities’ research.

A particular strength is the accord’s focus on place, noting that universities are there to serve “local, regional, and national communities”. This recalls the land grant university model in the US, under which universities serve as “anchor institutions” for their communities. They become beacons for the surrounding population, who become enrolled formally or informally in the activity of “their” university.  

But all this focus on universities’ engagement with Australian communities risks overlooking their international relations. To be sure, “the global engagement role of Australia’s higher education providers” is referenced, but comparatively briefly. Moreover, where the report mentions that Australian universities are helping to address social and environmental issues abroad, the flow of expertise is primarily imagined from Australia to other countries.

Two dimensions of Australian universities’ global role might be of particular importance. The first is international access to university. The report is underpinned by the idea that postcode should not determine educational chances. But this point is crucial at the global level, too. Across the world, socially marginalised groups and minority populations are often excluded from opportunities to be taught at university, a situation exacerbated by global economic change and Covid-19. It is harder, not easier, than it was in 1990 for the world’s poor to access quality higher education. The accord is an opportunity to reflect on how Australian universities can help remedy this situation.

Higher education institutions in Australia already recognise the importance of this issue. Contemporary Australian university strategies frequently refer to the moral responsibility to engage students from disadvantaged backgrounds globally. More pragmatically, universities know that enrolling such students allows them to identify and partner with brilliant people, since talent is evenly distributed across the world.

A socially inclusive global approach would require thinking even more carefully about concerns related to international student well-being that are mentioned in the report. The government could usefully support the work that is already being done on this issue by universities across Australia. Food security is an area that merits particularly close attention. Access to food has been a critical problem for many international students in the early 2020s, partly because Australian universities have dismantled the mechanisms that often existed in the 1970s and 1980s for students to receive subsidised nutritious meals.

Diversifying the recruitment of international students economically and socially would also entail reflecting on further internationalising curricula. This would include ensuring that when Australian universities teach issues such as business or health, they include examples from outside Australia and that resonate with the lives of marginalised people globally. It would also mean enhancing global immersion programmes so that students – whatever their background – can travel globally to the communities of their peers. Monash University’s Global Immersion Guarantee is an excellent example of such work.

Second, the report could focus on global social impact. Many Australian universities have argued through their strategic plans that their “engagement with place” does not end at the boundary of the continent. Australian universities are increasingly committed to addressing the social, environmental and educational challenges that exist across the world through their research and teaching, and doing so in partnership with academics, communities, businesses and governments.

Universities’ emphasis on global social impact extends the ideas of universities as moral, public-service institutions geographically. Australian universities are deeply engaged in diverse global locales via their research, educational partnerships and efforts to recruit students. As such, they acquire commitments and responsibilities to global places. “The local” has been stretched imaginatively and practically.

Universities’ growing investment in global social impact is also founded on an awareness that key issues, such as climate change, public health and social inequity, cannot be addressed in Australia without also understanding these problems internationally. “Local” issues within Australia are often also global.

The report’s emphasis on developing community-embedded university hubs in regional Australia could be extended to similar hubs abroad. Like their counterparts in Australia, these hubs – be they in Bangalore or Bangkok – could be engaged with government, respond to the needs of local communities, and produce locally relevant research. Such an initiative could distinguish Australian universities from their counterparts elsewhere.

The Universities Accord Interim Report has many strengths. Commitment to global engagement is an important next step.

Craig Jeffrey is a geographer and anthropologist whose research focuses on young people and education globally, with particular reference to India. He will commence as Monash University’s new pro vice-chancellor (international) on 31 July.