EDUCATION-AUSTRALIA: Commercialisation Fuels Corruption Concerns

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Mohan Srilal

SYDNEY, Sep 3 2002 (IPS) - The commercially booming world of Australian academia received a rude shock when the New South Wales’ corruption watchdog warned recently that the state’s universities are more vulnerable to corruption than other taxpayer-funded public institutions.

A 56-page report issued last month by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), titled ‘Degree of Risk: A Corruption Risk Profile of NSW universities’, followed a survey of 262 public sector organisations in Australia’s premier state.

This survey showed that New South Wales’ 10 public universities repeatedly underrated the risk of corruption — and that the universities consistently underreported corrupt practices.

The ICAC investigated a whole stag of corrupt practices from ‘soft marking’ of fee-paying students’ assignments, to conflicts of interest between lecturers’ private business and duties to public institutions.

The report identified eight tiers of “corruption risks”. These included cheating, falsifying results, misuse of research funds, financial fraud, accepting bribes, misuse of resources, abusing confidential information, falsifying academic credentials, universities investigating themselves, and a lack of transparency in outsourcing contracts and other commercial activities.

During the last decade, Australian universities have faced increasing funding cuts from the public purse, while they have been encouraged to attract full-fee paying students from overseas and locally.

Thus, today, in most of Australia’s universities, full-fee paying overseas students make up around 10 percent of the student population. Most of these students come from Asia, bringing in an estimated 3 billion Australian dollars (1.64 billion U.S. dollars) a year to the Australian economy.

According to figures quoted in the ICAC report, government funding of universities has declined from 60 to 50 percent between 1993 and 2001.

The steady decline in funding and increased commercial pressure on universities to attract fee-paying students have made these institutions vulnerable to corrupt practices, according to the ICAC report.

Currently Australian students have the option of either paying fees up front or choosing the Higher Education Contributory Scheme (HECS), where they do not pay fees but have a tax liability of about 4,000 Australian dollars (2,193 U.S. dollars) a year for every year of study.

This debt is paid back, through a tax surcharge, once they start employment.

Overseas students have to pay full fees ranging from 12,000 to 25,000 (6,580 to 13,700 U.S. dollars) Australian dollars a year, depending on the course and the university.

In NSW, the University of Wollongong and University of NSW earned over 12 percent of their income in 1999 from overseas students, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) 11.5 percent, and University of Western Sydney 9.4 percent.

Sensing the threat to an important source of their income from the exposure in the ICAC report, the university heads were in an angry mood when they were summoned by the ICAC recently for a five-hour discussion of its findings on Aug. 22

It turned out to be an ill-tempered meeting with heated outbursts and finger-pointing, according to reports.

UTS chancellor Gerard Brennan strongly disputes the ICAC claim that universities have no sense of public duty. “One hopes the role of watchdogs is never used to diminish the reputations of institutions they are there to serve,” he told the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ newspaper after the meeting.

Even before the ICAC report, Australia’s universities have been criticised in the media for lowering entry requirements and standards to attract fee-paying students.

In January last year, the ‘Herald’ carried a front-page story on how universities cut standards in the quest for cash. The claims of “soft marking” in that report sparked a spate of complaints from academics who said they have been pressured to upgrade the marks of fee-paying students.

Among the many complaints was one by a Queensland University of Technology lecturer, who said that business law students were passing subjects they had failed earlier. Business law is said to be a popular course for many overseas students from Asia.

The ICAC also investigated a case at UTS recently, where some Asian students reportedly bribed the university’s graduate student advisor, Toto Sujanto, to change their marks in the university’s computerised system.

This happened 19 times, involving nine students. The advisor has been forced to resign from his job and is to face criminal charges.

Last year, there was the much-reported case of Dr Ted Steele, a Wollongong University lecturer who was sacked “for bringing the university into disrepute”. He claimed that at least two of his honours students’ marks were changed from ‘fail’ to a high grade.

Reflecting on this case, Clive Hamilton, executive director of the Australian Institute, noted: “Academics should no longer regard themselves primarily as scholars in pursuit of the truth, but as employees of organisations that sell a product and have an image to protect.”

This was also quoted in the ICAC report, which says that a fundamental question to be addressed is why some university employees do not identify with the public duty they are supposed to have.

The report says that the university sector is facing an identity crisis because of declining public funding and increasing commercialisation. There is a need for a shift in the culture of universities to accept ‘public duty’ as part of the university work culture, the ICAC says.

This may be a tall order to achieve in today’s economic climate, as the federal government has just released a paper aimed at further commercialising university education.

Student unions plan demonstrations across the country next week against what they call the government’s “100,000 dollar degree education plan”.

The University of NSW council last month decided to allow students with lower marks entry into the university if they are prepared to pay up-front full fees.

According to the university’s admission centre, students with an aggregate mark of 73 have been given admission to its bachelor of arts degree, when the non-fee paying students needed 92 percent to get in.

“What this means is money counts more than merit,” noted deputy opposition leader Jenny Macklin. “Wealthy students who don’t make the grade can buy their way into university,” she added.