Pandering in the universities.(Viewpoint essay)

THE ARTICLES by Malcolm Saunders--The Madness and Malady of Managerialism" (Quadrant, March 2006) and its predecessor, "The Bullies and the Bullied" (March 2005)--brought together so much information, and marshalled so many insights and critiques, that it might appear that little remains to be said. But Saunders' story really begins long before the Dawkins Report and its consequences, long before 1988. Might I offer some examples, and an anecdote, from my own experience?

In 1965, I joined the Politics Department in the Economics and Politics Faculty of the new university, Monash. Teaching had only begun a few years earlier in our department, which was still quite small, and intended to be a service department for the Economics departments. I was assigned to a third-year subject in International Theory, and, if I remember aright, to a Pass subject--second-year?--in International Relations. The main recruiting ground was Politics I whence, hopefully, students would proceed to second-year, and even third-year, Politics units. The wastage rate--Politics I graduates choosing other subjects and faculties for subsequent years--was considerable, but treated as normal. For many students, first-year Politics had just been a prerequisite for other things.

Our first-year syllabus, designed and taught by Robert Orr, was a very interesting course, and he a very interesting man. We were to lose him to the London School of Economics, before very long. Robert passed 59 per cent of his students, which, again, seemed quite reasonable. This, after all, should be the year for discovering who can and who can't, who is interested or not, who will enjoy doing another course much more than Politics I, and will almost certainly learn more.

But, the powers-that-be took umbrage at this fail rate. It was too high; second- and then third-year enrolments would suffer. Other departments would pick up "our students": we'd get a bad reputation as hard markers, and we'd lose the mediocrities and the unmotivated. Other, more cynical, departments would acquire them. (Good riddance, I thought.) This is 1965, remember.

But the crowning argument from the "dumb it down" brigade running the faculty and departments went as follows: "Most of our students are on Commonwealth scholarships" (this was the Menzies scheme, following upon the Murray Report, and more than making up for the disappearance of ex-servicemen who had earlier studied under the Commonwealth Reconstruction Scheme). "Canberra expects a bang for its buck, and it doesn't like the 'wastage rates'. It wants more graduates, not fewer--for we, Australia, are developing." So ... QED. We'd better up the pass rate.

Now I have no idea whether Canberra really was putting on the screws. But I guessed our leaders were already dreaming of empires, already viewing suspiciously other empires beginning to form.

AFTER A YEAR at Monash, I was asked to take over Politics I, and remember hearing semi-murmurs about pass rates and about how we mustn't make things too hard for students. Incidentally, at that point, there was no pressure to sanitise our courses in a downward direction, nor were there claims that if students failed it must be bad teaching. That came later.