DO ALUMNI MATTER TO UNIVERSITIES?
By NEVILLE WEBB

Despite the very belated, and as some suggest, partly illusory allocation of additional Government funding to universities in the recent budget, the Higher Education sector continues to be a poor relation compared with those in many other countries. It is no surprise then if our universities are seeking to increase support from their alumni. It is evident from the Government’s reduction in funding relative to other sources over its term of office that it wishes to turn Australian Higher Education into an imitation of the American system.
The area of alumni relations, however, is one of the many problems associated with this concept.

American universities have centuries of a tradition in which they have assiduously cultivated their alumni. After welcoming their incoming students, they immediately endeavour to foster their loyalty, which they hope will be lifelong. University Unions are vital centres of campus life, since most students are college residents. Sports, particularly the representative teams, draw huge amounts of support and loyalty from both students and alumni. For example, the state-supported University of Oregon, with a student population of about 20,000, increased its stadium capacity from 40,000 to 51,000 a few years ago, along with large subsidies to the museum and the Faculty of Arts, from one year’s alumni donations. The remarkable numbers of alumni who regularly attend games allow the university to maintain a strong positive connection with its graduates, to whom it can continue to look for financial assistance.

US college concern with alumni is in marked contrast with Australian institutions. It was not until the mid-eighties that our universities began to set up alumni offices, which generally have a very small staff and little influence on university policy. It is said in the USA that investment of every dollar in alumni contact returns ten dollars, and colleges therefore give high priority to maintaining connections. Many of them have an Alumni Centre where alumni and other visitors are welcomed and the headquarters of the Alumni Association and the offices of Development and the Foundation are housed. The grossly inadequate staffing of Alumni offices in our institutions, by contrast, reflects the pressure universities are under to provide sufficient funding to maintain basic academic programs.

Some fifteen years ago the Higher Education Council Report entitled “The Quality of Higher Education” recognised the importance of alumni as stake-holders in their institutions. They noted that the judgements of graduates were particularly useful because of their experience. Further, “they are in the best position to assess the extent to which their higher education has equipped them with transferable generic skills which support lifelong learning and adaptation to changes in their own careers, and in the world of work generally.” In the USA it is accepted that alumni support their college or university to help maintain the status of their degrees and to gain connections with other alumni through networking. Nostalgia for the good times on campus and the friends they made there, the benefits of various kinds such as the use of facilities and business discounts, and opportunities to assist undergraduates and postgraduates through mentoring and developing future contacts are also significant. Of particular importance is the influence of graduates on course content, research and the allocation of finance.

The importance of alumni in policy-making is seen as vital. Alumni have long-term loyalties to their university that non-alumni appointees to the Council do not, hence the significance of the number of alumni on American Boards of Governors and Trustees. A glance at publications and websites of American universities and colleges will reveal the importance that alumni chapter presidents and their committees have for their institutions. A feature of their alumni magazines is the listing of significant donations received each year and their appreciation of the donors, who are named. In contrast, it is generally the Australian practice not to recognise donors publicly or to publish the extent of alumni support and bequests received. In view of our universities’ indifference to their graduates apart from the annual begging letter, it is not surprising that the tradition of benefaction has been slow to develop.

Some years ago the writer was present at the Harvard Commencement, where a campaign to raise two billion dollars was in progress. The investiture of the incoming alumni chapter presidents was the subject of a two-hour presentation on Boston television, and there were fifteen thousand people at the Homecoming. The concern for alumni opinion and the support it engenders is not confined to the Ivy League but is characteristic of colleges throughout the country. Governments in Australia, on the other hand, have legislated to reduce or even abolish representation of graduates on university councils. Effectively they have little or no voice in policy-making. We now have smaller councils dominated by people with business backgrounds, which is understandable in the present climate. However, many of them are not alumni and appear to be notably lacking in feel for what universities are about. For them “education” is principally a matter of marketing. It is well known that in several of our institutions the entrepreneurial activities initiated by these experts, some being Vice-Chancellors appointed because of their business background, have been disastrous.

Nevertheless, few heads have been seen to roll. The present Government, unlike some of its Coalition predecessors, has failed to support universities adequately. In March 1996 the Coalition’s election manifesto “Higher Education: Quality, Diversity and Choice” promised to “maintain levels of funding in terms of operating grants.” In the budget following their election the Government cut Higher Education funding by over six hundred million dollars, on the grounds that Labor had left a large deficit. This mysterious black hole swiftly disappeared, but despite a succession of multi-billion dollar surpluses that followed, the manifesto promise was never honoured.

The Government’s attitude to universities was amply illustrated in the Senate Report on Higher Education entitled “Universities in Crisis” (2001). The section written by Labor and Democrat senators consisted of 359 pages in ten chapters and contained a close analysis of all the principal aspects of university activity and their future directions. The report of the Government senators was of twenty pages, belittling the problems identified by the other members.

Recent figures confirm the unsettling trend towards a reduction in Government support for higher education. In the period 1989-2005 Commonwealth grants fell from 77% to 42% of university income. Sources such as donations and bequests, trademarks, licences, consultancy contracts and contract research fell from 18% in 2000 to 16% in 2005. Of seventeen First World countries surveyed in 2003, Australia ranked fifteenth in government support for higher education. The OECD average was 76.4%, while Australia’s figure at that time was 48%. The percentage of 25-34 year-olds with tertiary education ranged from the Russian Federation with 56% and Canada 53% to Australia 36%. PhDs in the work-force ranged from Switzerland with 27.5 per thousand to Australia’s 7.8.

Student–staff ratios reflect the general decline in funding. Here are some examples of increases from 1996 to 2004: Macquarie 17.4 to 23.3, Sydney 11.8 to 17.6, Queensland 13.5 to 19.3, Tasmania 14.5 to 21.3, Ballarat 16.7 to 25.9, CQU 21.2 to 35.7. The mean ratio in 2007 is probably close to 27. In some places so-called tutorials contain more than fifty students. In the light of the innovative program restructuring undertaken by the University of Melbourne, it is disappointing that the university intends to reduce staff, particularly in the Faculty of Arts, because of low student-staff ratios.

The abolition of many courses in the Faculty of Arts, or indeed the dissolution of the Faculty itself as has been observed in some universities, is hardly calculated to encourage the support of many well-to-do older graduates, a significant proportion of whom are themselves graduates in Arts. Nor does it give the community reason to believe that the Higher Education sector is not more concerned with becoming a superior or more expensive brand of vocational training than with developing future statesmen who possess analytical skills and deeper understanding of society. It is noteworthy that most of our current leaders have benefited from the latter mode of education.

The Government has finally seen the light to the extent of voting additional funding of 1.7 billion to higher education, much of which will probably go towards neglected maintenance. Concerns exist that the recently established Higher Education Endowment Fund may only be a rebranding of already allocated finances. There will be a need for transparency and perceived fairness of distribution.

If Australian universities are to be highly regarded internationally, however, a number of matters need to be considered. Firstly, there should be general concern over standards. Far larger numbers of students are enrolled than in the past, student-staff ratios have escalated, and there is not a lot of evidence that teaching has been markedly improved. It is therefore surprising to find pass rates of 88%. In the view of many academics and interested outsiders such as employers, the standard of graduate literacy is mediocre, and this is not confined to overseas students who come here hoping to be effective communicators in English. Such perceptions again discourage alumni of previous generations from feeling connected to current students or their institutions.

Have students been passed in order to maintain numbers and hence funding or even survival of a discipline? With the increasing practice of submission of group assignments in order to reduce the volume of marking and encouraging habits of cooperative working, one is interested to know what means are employed to recognise strong performance and reward excellence. After all, employers need this information, not only an assessment of student capacity to be effective team members.

Secondly, with the emphasis on research devoted to economic profit, universities are in danger of losing sight of what education is about, by training rather than educating. It has been said that education is what we retain when all the facts we have learned have been forgotten or are no longer relevant. It consists of a set of attitudes and habits of mind which guide us to make well considered decisions in the light of change and to assist us to have insight into our own lives and the desirable directions of society. In the past few years too many documents have been produced in which the only time the word “education” is mentioned is in the title “Higher Education”.

Thirdly, it should be regarded as fundamental that academe has three strands: scholarship, teaching and research. All are entwined. Every academic should have research interests, even if they are not specially funded. Some areas by their nature require very substantial funding, others very little. As is evident in the United States, however, significant research is not confined to the leading institutions.

In the history of science and culture many of the most important insights have appeared out of the  blue, generated by previously unknown thinkers. All our universities contain academics capable of highly original research. An excellent example of this occurred recently when archaeologists from the Universities of New England and Wollongong, neither of which at the time were regarded as research leaders, discovered “Hobbit Man”, which made headlines worldwide.
If our universities are to prosper, funding must be substantially increased both from public and private sources. It is obvious that business is an essential partner in higher education and must be prepared to go well beyond supporting its own projects. Governments must realise that graduates of high quality are not simply benefiting themselves, as one former Minister suggested, but are vital for the welfare of the whole community. They should raise their support to the level of other countries competing in the global economy. Universities should not be seen merely as training institutions which generate credentials, but rather as places of learning that provide a significant and indeed necessary stage in the life of our future leaders. In such environments both vision and innovations are born.

Our alumni, many of whom have cherished memories of their alma mater, can make a very substantial contribution to the advance of higher education in Australia, but only if they feel that their opinions are considered in decision-making. “Friend-raising before fund-raising” is a cliché in those bodies concerned with alumni. University councils may consider themselves to be boards of corporations, but their real share-holders in their millions are alumni and members of the wider community, who are generally treated with indifference.

It is only when these share-holders feel ownership that the alienation fostered by long-term attitudes of governments and institutions can be overcome and the massive potential support of alumni can be tapped.

Dr Neville Webb AM is an Executive Member and former President of the Australian University Alumni Council.