Page 341 - Week 03 - Thursday, 1 June 1989
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As well as a carrot there has been a stick, and that stick has been a threat that funding allocations might be less generous to unamalgamated institutions than to amalgamated ones. That stick has been necessary, Mr Speaker, because, broadly speaking, the amalgamations have not sold themselves on their own merits which, in academic as opposed to financial terms, have been extremely difficult to identify.
The argument for amalgamations has it that big is beautiful, that larger tertiary institutions will be more efficient and cost-effective. The evidence for this is scanty. In fact, an analysis shows very little correlation between the size of tertiary institutions and their efficiency. A research fellow at the ANU, Robert Hill - no relation to the senator - has examined the figures used to support the case for amalgamations. On average, he has found, Australia's five largest universities are 10 per cent more expensive - that is, less efficient if you like - on a student to dollar ratio than the nine smallest.
The "efficiency" of an institution is a feature of many factors, including the nature of its courses, its location, the age of its teaching staff, its student market and its status in the academic community. To assume that better quality education, or higher achievement, comes from great size is fallacious. Many tertiary institutions in the world are small yet are big achievers. One primary example is the California Institute of Technology which is known as Caltech. It has only 1,800 students, including graduates, yet it has to its credit some 12 Nobel laureates. It is much smaller than either the ANU or the CCAE. Under Mr Dawkins's unified national system Caltech would be shut down.
Another argument put forward to justify amalgamation is that bigger institutions offer wider course options to their students. There is some truth to this claim, although the benefit of wider choice can be more illusionary than real. In the case of the ANU-CCAE merger, how many law students, for example, would want to study engineering? How many foresters would want to study journalism? To the extent that there are such students who would want to engage in unusual cross-disciplinary studies, why can their needs not be accommodated merely by better course enmeshing and accreditation between the university and the college? I believe that is entirely possible and should be pursued.
I should point out that there is already considerable cooperation at this level between the institutions. Amalgamation, in my view, is not a necessary ingredient to achieve more of this. The savings that amalgamation is supposed to achieve, Mr Speaker, are relatively small and relatively long-term. It is estimated, for example, that the amalgamation will entail an outlay of some five and a half million dollars to cover costs such as the linking of
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