Opinions

The end of one annual university cycle typically sees numbers become clearer about what the next will bring. Grants are awarded, promotions decided, targets set in performance plans, after details are confirmed of outcomes in the year just ended. 

Sharpening works for some tools but not for others. The phrase that if “all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail” is often used to encourage us to recognise multiple tools are needed to get complex, diverse and unpredictable jobs done.  

The immediate reactions by many Australian universities to the events of 2020 have been just that, reactions. It could not have been anything but a reaction really, could it?

The 39 Australian universities operating through 2020 have had a year unlike any other, however long each of them has operated, and whatever their origins have been. Their students, staff, leaders, and partners have never encountered anything quite like this.

Professor Pascale Quester | The Australian: Much has been written this year regarding the havoc COVID-19 is wreaking on Australia’s higher education sector, as well as the plight brought on our universities by the travel bans and sudden disappearance of international cohorts who have sustained them for decades.

Anna Patty | The Sydney Morning Herald: Students frustrated with remote learning are unhappy about paying full fees while battling with expanding online tutorials as Sydney’s universities work towards bringing more classes back to campus.

One of the first impacts of a coronavirus pandemic being declared was the immediate closure of Australian international borders, coming soon after the Lunar New Year. It came when so many of the international students planning to come to Australia in 2020 were taking their chance to visit their families and embrace their culture in their homelands.

Michael Rosemann & Martin Betts | The Conversation: Current education providers, as well as new entrants, have the chance to replicate the business models and innovative practices of Spotify, YouTube, Uber, Airbnb and other disruptors of other sectors.

What is our concept of engagement in a post-COVID Australian university world? Can we still afford it? Does it still matter? Is anyone out there wanting to engage with us?

Marguerite Dennis | University World News: The virus has put the spotlight on higher education’s antiquated financial models, rigid admissions and registration procedures and dismal student progression and graduation rates. But COVID-19 has also presented higher education with opportunities to replace inefficiencies with reimagined solutions.