Growing Esteem

Submission to the Vice-Chancellor on Growing Esteem

The Committee of Convocation devoted most of its August meeting to discussion of the Growing Esteem paper, and agreed that the following comments should be submitted on behalf of the graduates of the University.

• The quality of the degrees and educational experience that the University offers is its most important asset: any threat or risk to that quality should be treated very carefully, and the continued growth in student numbers is considered a high risk to quality. The University needs to specifically determine an optimum size for its student body and the appropriate proportions of its components to further improve quality, rather than have these emerge as a consequence of other decisions. We need to protect and enhance the student experience on campus, deal with growing student disengagement, and find ways to better integrate our local and non-local student groups
• The University needs to improve its outreach to its immediate communities: our actions do not adequately reflect our words regarding the interdependency of great universities and great cities. The finest universities in the world have a stronger emphasis on their external relationships. Our strategies need to ensure that we continue to meet the needs in our immediate community for graduate professionals, especially in those disciplines where we are the sole supplier.
• The University should be the intellectual leader of public discourse in Australia.
• We should continue to strive for the highest level of excellence, but possibly in a reduced number of fields. identifying our strengths and consolidating on those, while retaining the capacity for an increasingly multidisciplinary approach. The finest universities in the world don't try to do everything. A focus on excellence is the best counter-measure to the risks the University faces.
• The University should obtain maximum benefit from its resources by extending the period of utilisation of existing infrastructure.
• In coping with the reductions in government funding, the strategies of other Australian universities should be monitored and any opportunities for collaborative action (including systematic lobbying) taken up. For example, how is Sydney managing to fund its salary levels, facilities, student numbers, etc?
• The Melbourne Business School was substantially funded by the business world, Trinity alumni are funding its capital works - what aren't we doing, given our pre-eminent situation, history, etc?
• Whatever the outcome of the Commonwealth Government's VSU legislative program, the activity of planning student services in a scenario of no Amenities and Services Fees has been very instructive: the Committee wonders if there would be benefits in looking at how the University would cope if there were no Commonwealth funding for tertiary education.
• It is regrettable that there is scant mention of alumni or graduates in the Growing Esteem document.

Whilst supporting the openly inclusive collegial process of ‘Growing Esteem’, the Committee of Convocation believes it would have been more productive for the University to have tabled a ‘possible strategy’ plus an examination of its ‘pros and cons’ and also those of alternatives considered.

The document reads relatively negatively in that it raises a vast range of problems and only a lesser number of positives.

The Committee found that these factors made it very difficult to constructively focus on practical potential strategies.