E&OE

JOURNALIST: There have been a number of very high-profile cases of leadership and governance failures in universities in recent times. Do you agree there is a crisis in governance and leadership in universities? If not, why not? And if so, why has it emerged at this point in history?

PROFESSOR CAROLYN EVANS: I think there have been problems in some universities, absolutely. I do not think there is a generalised crisis in governance in Australian universities. I do think that the term governance is starting to be used in quite a wide sweeping way. And I’m sorry, I’m going to give a slightly long answer to your question, but it’s a really important question. So, there have been failures of governance. There have been people underpaid. There have been conflicts of interest. There have been allegations of bullying which have been proved. They’re unacceptable. They’re unacceptable in any sector, in any industry. They occur in most sectors and industries, and they need to be dealt with and on the whole, they are and can be dealt with by existing mechanisms. So, where we failed on that, we need to look at that pretty hard, and we have tried as a sector to do so. The second set of things that sometimes get swept into a notion of governance failures is disagreements about what governance looks like in a university. How many staff members have you had, how many student members have you had? That’s not a governance failure; that’s an intellectual disagreement about what university should look like in terms of its governance. There is a reason that universities moved away historically from such strong representation that was internal and started to say actually the people in our governance bodies should represent the broader community and the range of skills and ideas in that community so that universities didn’t become too insular. Now, you can have a reasonable debate about that; you can disagree about it, but that’s not inherently a governance failure. The third thing that tends to get swept up here is that universities have not been able to solve all of the really difficult social problems that no level of government, no institution, no sector has been able to resolve. We have had instances of gender-based violence. That’s not good enough. We’ve had racism and issues and problems there. We’ve had antisemitism. You can look around; it’s very hard to see any other institution or sector that has worked as hard to deal with those problems as we have. And certainly, they’re ones that it’s very difficult to say that just because you haven’t dealt with them as some people would like, that constitutes a failure. The final and the thing that really troubles me is that what would generally be considered good governance in most ordinary understandings of good governance is now beginning to be held against universities as a sign of poor governance. And in particular, it is governance 101 to say that when revenue goes backwards, you have to do something to cut costs. And yet that sort of fundamental basic principle of good governance in the normal world is starting to be held against universities as an example of bad governance as long as there’s enough disruption and noise about it. That troubles me deeply. And I think that when you throw all of those things together, it creates the impression there’s lots of problems with governance. Actually, there is a small number of serious problems with governance and many of those are going to be addressed by the new standards on governance. And then there’s a much more complicated range of issues.

JOURNALIST: I wanted to pivot a little bit onto funding arrangements, if that suits you. I’ve been watching the Universities Accord inquiry with interest, and as you’ve said, more or less everybody is agreeing that at least that $800 million a year in university funding needs to be restored in order for the transition to managed growth to work effectively. One of the bigger disagreements that we have seen is what the correct balance between student choice and system stability is. I just wanted to invite you to talk through that a little bit from Universities Australia’s perspective.

PROFESSOR CAROLYN EVANS: So, the current legislation before Parliament has two major elements. One is need-based funding, and that is a recognition that it costs more to teach students from educationally, economically disadvantaged backgrounds from the regions and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. And I think there is a good deal of agreement across the sector that that’s important and welcome. There are some disagreements about exactly how we should deal with regional students, but I think the recognition that you need additional funding to give a good education to those students is something that we’re all agreed on. The second element is creating more of a system and less of a free market in higher education. Now, when I talked about university autonomy, I did want to recognise that when government is funding a limited number of places, and even in my wildest dreams, we’re not expecting that they’re going to be able to fund an unlimited number of places, it has some legitimate role in determining how those places might be distributed. This current legislation absolutely does reduce student choice. I think we shouldn’t shy away from that, but as you rightly say, it does so in the name of student stability or system stability, and that’s important too. Now, there are other ways you could achieve the same outcome. While it’s often fun to pit the Group of Eight against regional universities, what have you, when I’ve talked to our members, including the leaders of large metropolitan universities, every single one of them has said we must protect our regional universities. We must find ways to make sure that they continue to play an absolutely critical role in the regions that they play, and that the current system doesn’t do that properly. There is of course room for debate about what the best way to do that is. This legislation is one of the ways the government is trying to use it to do that. I think we’re going to have to wait to see whether that works or doesn’t work, but of course you’ve got to expect a little bit of tension between members on that point. Thank you very much.

JOURNALIST: Hi, Professor Evans. I’d like to take you back to your speech. So, you’re saying the institutional autonomy of Australian universities needs better legal protection. So just last week, Australia strengthened a law, it’s called the Foreign Relations Act, which requires universities to notify the government about agreements they have in countries where universities are deemed to lack institutional autonomy because the governments have too much control over their activities so that our Foreign Affairs Minister can decide whether those agreements need to be scrapped. So, if that institutional autonomy test was to apply domestically, would Australia pass?

PROFESSOR CAROLYN EVANS: That’s a fair question and it was one asked even about the law in its original manifestation. Craig Fowler has done some really interesting work using the European University Autonomy Scale, which is a recognised global scale for looking at university autonomy and has tracked over the last couple of years and what will happen with legislation if it passes over the next couple of years. Australia is slipping out of the group in Canada, the UK, the US, pretty brilliant countries when it comes to universities and moving down more towards countries like China, Singapore, Japan, actually also brilliant countries when it comes to higher education, but countries where vast investment of money by the government sits alongside greater control of what universities do. So yeah, I think that’d be a pretty fair question to ask about the autonomy of our universities there. And that Act itself is probably an example of where if we had better protection of university autonomy, there might have been some more questions asked. We are all very serious about national security. We want to do the right thing on national security, no questions asked about that. That is absolutely important. And this is why the government and universities put together the University Foreign Interference Taskforce (UFIT). We want to renew and refresh that and make sure it does a good job. We are more concerned though about nebulous concepts like national interest, who gets to define what the national interest is, does it change from minister to minister, from government to government? Does it depend on what was on the front pages of the paper the day before? That is much more troubling when it comes to university autonomy, and it is what it is in terms of legislation, but I think it’s another example of the general point that I was making.

JOURNALIST: Thank you very much for your address. Just on autonomy as well. At a time when Artificial Intelligence (AI) is turning the university sector upside down, is it time for a rethink and for the development of national strategy in terms of AI use in universities? And if not, why not?

PROFESSOR CAROLYN EVANS: No, it’s not. It is time to consider nationally what our strategy for AI is and that universities will play a role in this, and this is what, for example, Singapore has done. But again, at a time when things are so turbulent and so disruptive, the idea of central authority simply deciding at a moment in time, and it’s very difficult to change these things at government even when the times change with them, that this is how universities would deal with these issues, I think that would be madness. I think we need to trust the fact that our universities have a lot of experts in AI, have a lot of experts in teaching and assessment, and they’re doing some good work and sharing the knowledge between one another. We do talk to each other; we share best practice. That is a much better way of going than trying to have some bureaucratic, centralised approach to the issue.

JOURNALIST: I wanted to turn to the question of research agreements, particularly with the People’s Republic of China. We’ve seen the Foreign Minister cancel a few of those recently and some growing concerns in the United States about research collaboration between universities in that country, but also in Australia with the Chinese state and possibly with the PLA. Do you think there is a need for a broader rethink in Australia? Do you think that these debates are getting too out of control and that it’s perhaps affecting genuine scientific research?

PROFESSOR CAROLYN EVANS: Well, first of all, I think we should not outsource our foreign policy to the United States ever and now, in particular. Second, I want to acknowledge that the Minister for Foreign Affairs will have access to information that we don’t necessarily have, and we do have to accept that, and sometimes they will know more than we do. But we do need to be careful. Again, this is about thinking about both sides of the story. We have to be careful about national security. We have to be thoughtful in that respect, but we do also have to understand that we are a tiny fraction of the world’s population. We produce about three per cent of the world’s research, which means 97 per cent of the world’s research is produced elsewhere. There’s a bit of a mentality in Australia to think about research in China as though it’s very substandard, just waiting to steal intellectual property from Australia. China invests in research infrastructure and research capability and outstanding scientists at a rate that would absolutely shock most Australians. If we work with them, we actually get often to be involved in some of the very best research in the country, and we create new intellectual property that potentially neither side could have produced by itself. And so, I’m going to come back to the University Foreign Interference Taskforce, UFIT, as the way that we try and square that circle. I was around when UFIT started. We had some really productive discussions with the intelligence services. We learned some things by doing that. There are things that sometimes universities can be naive about. They learnt a few things too, and that helped us to work through both the risks of failing to engage and the risks of engaging. So, rather than coming out with some blanket statement, we should never research with China, we should always research with China, we need to have these bodies that bring together all of the relevant bits of government, all of the relevant leaders in the sector and make a much more sophisticated set of decisions. And Universities Australia are certainly looking for a revamp of UFIT to be better able to do that.

JOURNALIST: Do you acknowledge there has been some naivety as you have mentioned just now in the recent past where some researchers perhaps compromised our own military?

PROFESSOR CAROLYN EVANS: Look, 10 years ago, I think as a sector, there were some fair criticisms to be made. I don’t think we have a sector-wide problem anymore. Can we account for the actions of every single individual researcher? No. And there have been a couple of researchers who have probably done things that are a little bit silly, but does that create a national emergency that needs dealing with in some significant or substantive way? No. I’m going to say it again. I think UFIT is a really sensible body to deal with this, and universities are doing far more now, far more now to track foreign relationships, research, and agreements than they ever have in the past.

JOURNALIST: Thank you for your address, Professor. I want to return to Artificial Intelligence. You used your speech to make a case for the enduring value of university education, even as this technology upends a lot of what we think about when we think about education. You spoke specifically about the value of critical thinking skills and deep analysis, and those sorts of things. Obviously, if they are to be maintained, it’s going to require universities upholding rigorous academic standards and assessment standards. My question is kind of twofold. First of all, do you think that universities are doing enough in that space now? Have they acted quickly enough? And secondly, when you take up your new role, what are some of the specific measures you plan to implement to make sure that AI use among students is moderated?

PROFESSOR CAROLYN EVANS: Thank you. The Tertiary Education Quality Standards Authority (TEQSA) has been working very closely with universities around ensuring sufficient rigour in our assessment. Different universities have chosen different pathways to do that. Melbourne University, I have to say at the moment looks to me from the outside like it’s been pretty rigorous with half of the assessment in all of the subjects requiring some sort of AI-proof assessment that might be oral presentation, it might be written exams and so forth. But other universities have other ways of doing things. If I think about my current university, we have a lot of mature age students, a lot of parent students, and a lot of students who are required to be online. It would be very difficult for us to use the same sort of approach as the University of Melbourne. So, we’ve been continuing as a sector to work this through with TEQSA. It’ll never be perfect, and as soon as it is perfect, AI will change and it will become imperfect again, but I think that is the appropriate way to deal with these issues.

JOURNALIST: And if I may, you mentioned oral assessments, and I think that’s a really interesting idea. Are there other ideas being thrown around on how to rethink what an assessment is?

PROFESSOR CAROLYN EVANS: Absolutely. And look, this was all happening before AI. In some ways, many of the people who are excited, interested, and involved in assessment have been saying that this is great because it’s an excuse for us to now make sure that we push forward on more authentic forms of assessment. And again, it depends on the subject. The students in my conservatorium or the musical theatre are playing their instruments; they’re singing their songs. There’s nothing much that AI could do to help them with that. But many of our health discipline subjects have a lot of hands-on assessments that might be in hospitals and healthcare. It might be in simulated environments, which we are getting much better at. AI has created some interesting opportunities for creating even more sophisticated, simulated environments for people. We have clinical programs in law and tax, and all sorts of areas. So, there are lots of opportunities to assess students in a way that’s not just a take-home written assessment. Although I have to say, as somebody who’s been a long-term law lecturer, I would like to see a way that we can also save deep thinking and analysis that is part of writing a long essay. I actually think that is a valuable skill. It’s sort of pushups for the brain. Even if you don’t ever write a long essay again, it’s got those muscles working. And one of the big social issues we’ll have to face with AI is this level of cognitive risk or cognitive degrading. We need to find ways of ensuring people don’t outsource our capacity to think to the machine, and universities will have to be a serious and important part of that.

JOURNALIST: My question comes off evidence from the current University of Melbourne Vice-Chancellor (VC) to the Antisemitism Royal Commission. He was being asked about responses to the occupation of an administrative building, an academic’s office, and the encampment. And he explained that the University of Melbourne brought in new rules so that they can remove outsiders, people who aren’t staff or students from campus. They have banned camping on campus, and they have made it a rule that any protest has to be outside the buildings, not inside. As the incoming VC of University of Melbourne, are you content with these rules? Do you see more to be done? And as the Universities Australia Chair, do you think that all universities should adopt this kind of regime?

PROFESSOR CAROLYN EVANS: Yes. So again, I’m going to refer you back to my speech. I am not so keen on all universities should have to adopt an approach. We have had universities that have had no protests, no encampments, no occupation. That’s probably actually the majority of Australian universities. They simply may not need to do so at this point in time, though I know my current university would be in that position. We have certainly looked at lessons to learn. Look, I think the University of Melbourne is in a very difficult situation has tried to balance the rights of freedom of speech and free protest while ensuring the safety and lack of harassment of members of the University of Melbourne community. Now, as somebody who works in human rights, I’d say on the whole, changes to free speech that focus on what we sometimes call manner and form, where you can protest and so forth, they’re much easier to justify than things that target particular types of speech. So, I think the University of Melbourne has tried to focus on those issues. You can still protest, but you can’t necessarily do those inside buildings disrupting other people’s work. You can still have your views on a whole range of things, but you’re not necessarily going to be able to encamp on the property overnight. It seems like a pretty sensible balance to me, but I’m happy to look at that when I get there in a bit more detail.

JOURNALIST: One of the things you touched on is that trying to incentivise which degrees students take up is a flawed model that we can’t predict the future, and we’ve failed too so far. You did say though that humanities degrees and spaces where people are encouraged to think are becoming sought after even in tech spaces. So, how do we incentivise ultimately students to broader degrees perhaps? How do we change the funding model? What do we do?

PROFESSOR CAROLYN EVANS: I actually don’t think we should be in the business of incentivising students to make determinations about what they’re going to study because they are passionate about it, because they love it or what they are indeed going to do with their life in terms of professions. What we have got to do is stop disincentivising them, and Job-ready Graduates create a huge disincentive, particularly for people in disciplines like humanities. So, I would prefer to take that hurdle away. And then if students choose to study arts, they choose to study arts. If they choose not to, that’s absolutely fine too. And if workforces see the need for people with those degrees and qualifications, they should absolutely let students know that and understand that and counter some of the negative publicity that’s out there in the world.

JOURNALIST: Don’t you think it should be easier for students to be able to study across a range of disciplines and a range of students, so do arts and physics and music and just follow…a lot of degrees make it very difficult for that to happen.

PROFESSOR CAROLYN EVANS: Yeah, they do. And there’s a good reason for that in the case of many degrees. Many people studying in Australia are studying professionally accredited degrees to become nurses, engineers, lawyers, and the professional accreditation does require limitations on that. And look, what you’re talking about here though more generally is the toss-up to a liberal arts degree with a wide variety of different sorts of things that people can study and become more focused. Australia’s a bit in the middle in global terms. When I used to teach at Oxford, people would study history or they would study physics very narrowly. At least here they tend to study sciences or humanities. And again, some universities offer great double degrees where people can do these things or multiple majors. Others have chosen to be more focused. Let’s give students a variety of options in a diverse sector.

JOURNALIST: I have a question about AI, but more around the commercials. The data centre principles were released earlier this year, and number five talks about favourable access for research and innovation. Now with the mainstream use within universities of the amount of AI consumption that’s happening, there are two questions. One, do you have thoughts on that principle and any detail that you might be aware of? And secondly, how do universities future-proof the costs on AI consumption when it is quite unknowable, at least right now?

PROFESSOR CAROLYN EVANS: Show me anyone who knows how to future-proof the cost on AI and we will happily learn a lesson from them because it is one of the big challenges that things are comparatively cheap at the moment, but they’re getting more expensive and doubtless once it’s fully integrated into all our systems, it will get a lot more expensive again. That’s certainly what history would tell us. I think it’s important that when we are thinking about our national strategy for AI, we do, as you say, have principles that prioritise the use of that AI for life-changing research. The opportunities to accelerate drug development, for example, to create treatments and therapies that will be much more specific to specific groups of people. There is enormous potential there, and that is an opportunity, I think, both for the private sector and the public sector to come together for the benefit of Australians. And when the government’s thinking about the principles they have, I respect and I’m glad to hear that they have focused on that opportunity. Thank you.

JOURNALIST: You spoke about academic freedom and value for money, but I want to ask about Universities Australia and its advancement of identity politics across the sector. And with taxpayers contributing over $21 billion annually, how does this partisan agenda represent value for money?

PROFESSOR CAROLYN EVANS: Well, thank you for that thoughtful and considered question. I don’t think Universities Australia is in the business of advancing identity politics. Universities Australia has taken very seriously the fact that there are groups of people who have been excluded from our universities, in particular First Nations people, and that was something where Australia was well beyond even other Commonwealth countries, even other members of the British Empire. There was a long period of time when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have been excluded from our universities, and we are unapologetic about the fact that we are working with our First Nations colleagues to try and make sure universities are places where First Nations people can thrive. And we will always look at the experience of those in our universities as we saw at the respective university survey who have been harmed by the actions of universities and try and limit that harm. I don’t see that as being the same as identity politics.

JOURNALIST: How about Chinese students here in Australia? How welcome do you think they feel in the current situation?

PROFESSOR CAROLYN EVANS: We saw, I thought, some really shocking racism against Chinese Australian students during COVID, and I think it is an example of why when we think about racism, we need to think about principles that apply to different groups of people over different periods of time. My experience with our Chinese students now is I think they’re feeling much more welcome, which is a great thing, but that’s something that we always need to keep a close eye on.

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