The head of a front-rank Australian university has vowed to turn the tide of institutional “corporatisation” which he believes has demoralised staff and undermined leadership. The vice chancellor of Murdoch University in Western Australia says he wants academics to be more involved in decision-making — as the institution prepares for substantial cuts to its portfolio of courses.
Arguing that the “corporate turn” in Australian universities is creating “managers rather than scholar-leaders”, Richard Higgott, who took up the post in August last year, told Times Higher Education he wants to “reboot” the “traditional academic scholar”.
Prof. Higgott, who spent part of his early career as a lecturer in social and political theory at Murdoch, had been pro vice chancellor for research at the University of Warwick for four years when he was appointed to lead Murdoch. “It’s a stark contrast coming back now (to Australia and seeing) what’s been quite a dramatic corporate turn,” he says.
Murdoch now has a senior leadership group which features only one non-academic member of staff, Jon Baldwin, the deputy vice chancellor for professional services, who was previously the registrar at Warwick. Before a shake-up, the group, which meets once a week, had 14 members, only four of whom were academics, says Higgott.
Behind Higgott’s desire to bring Murdoch’s deans “back into the decision-making process” is his conviction that a top-down managerial structure ill serves universities. “(It) effectively stifles innovation… in favour of the revenue-generating activities” as well as demoralising staff, he says.
After his arrival, bonuses for the vice chancellor and deputy vice chancellors were scrapped because, he said, they are “inappropriate in a university culture and specifically distort priorities towards that which can be measured metrically rather than qualitatively”. Bonuses can have a “potentially corrosive” effect on behaviour, he continues. “There are some vice chancellors (in Australia) who see themselves as chief executives,” he says.
(Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)