A troubled future for the University of Tasmania

If then a practical end must be assigned to a university course, I say it is that of training good members of society... It is the education which gives a man a clear, conscious view of their own opinions and judgements, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought to detect what is sophistical and to discard what is irrelevant.

So spoke John Henry Newman in the middle of the 19^th century and it is hard to find a better summary. It is also compatible with Stephen Schwartz's On Line Opinion article of Tuesday, October 4, titled "Everything palls, everything passes, everything perishes", especially his argument that a true community of scholars has an intrinsic moral core. Many would see this core as a shared belief in the pursuit of truth, however difficult.

The UTAS crisis began soon after it appointed a Vice-Chancellor who plans to turn it into a self-funding business. Because he is also chief executive and in practice guides the University Council, this can only be stopped if the Premier is prepared to change its governance structure. In recent times the Vice-Chancellor has reported the purchase of enough city properties to move the Sandy Bay campus to the CBD. This frees it to build and then sell or lease 2700 'homes' on the campus and become a property developer. To fund this scheme it quietly issued a bond to borrow five hundred million dollars from Dai-Ichi, a Japanese life insurance company. It is the first time an Australian public university has issued such a bond.

This explains why the University Council has refused to negotiate with critics and why the Vice-Chancellor had to get his appointment extended indefinitely to see the plan through. These properties, as well as the campus, are the security for the loan. If so, the past months of debate have been a waste of time because the university was already locked in. If this is true one can hardly blame critics for seeing it as a breach of faith bordering on false pretences.

The present Vice-Chancellor Rufus Black has an impressive background. After winning a Rhodes Scholarship in 1992, he obtained an Oxford Master of Philosophy in Ethics and Theology in 1994 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1996. His DPhil thesis was entitled Towards an Ecumenical Ethic: Reconciling the Work of Stanley Hauerwas, Germain Grisez and Oliver O'Donovan. For those interested, this puts him at the cutting edge of Natural Law theories, along with distinguished Australian constitutional lawyer and former Oxford Philosophy Professor John Finnis. The latter's book Natural Law and Natural Rights argues for a modern version of the theory based, not on theology, but on principles of natural philosophy sourced from Aristotle, Aquinas, Bacon and others.

Before joining the University he was Professor of Enterprise in the Department of Management and Marketing, and a member of the Programs Team at the Centre for Ethical Leadership at the University of Melbourne.His public policy work included leading the Budget Audit of the Department of Defence in 2009, the Accountability and Governance Review of the Department of Defence in 2010 and the Prime Minister's Independent Review of the Australian Intelligence Community in 2011.

So far there has been no reaction from the world of business and industry, not even from developers. This is surprising given the financial power of the university as a competing business backed by a half-billion dollars from Dai-Ichi and further billions worth of what was once public land but which it has somehow acquired at no cost. How this was done is still shrouded in mystery. However that may be, this is not a one-off venture but a serious business threat; its members now face a permanent and financially privileged competitor in development projects, property leasing, home building, banking and money-lending markets.

Residents of Sandy Bay, an expensive and leafy suburb, likewise seem untroubled, judging by the modest turn-out at s recent Save-UTAS rally in Salamanca Place. One wonders if they realise the residential plans call for ninety rental buildings varying between five and eight stories in a concentrated area not far from the present law building and a short walk from the tennis courts near the Sandy Bay Road. Since it is impossible to judge this project until a mock-up video is available, the University should use a fraction of the Dai-Ichi money to show what it looks like. It should also explain why it will not undermine Sandy Bay property values.

All this raises a question: Since the scheme rests on Utas' success as a business, how is it possible the University cannot find one Tasmanian economist to support its claim of a viable business plan? Even the newly created Vice-Chancellor's Fellow, arguably the state's most distinguished economist, has not lent support. By contrast, prominent economist John Lawrence trashed the plan in his analysis published in The Mercury in September 2020, reminding us that universities are now the 'fourth tier of government', a serious political force. His submission is a lengthy and largely technical list of unacknowledged problems.

At the same time the leaders of twelve student societies and associations - including the law, medicine and engineering students societies, have condemned the city move as detrimental to the education of present and future students. They say there has been a lack of "genuine and proper consultation" and argue that a decision to refurbish the Sandy Bay campus would be to the "benefit of students and staff for decades to come".

It is now obvious that a governance structure which gives so much power to one person needs reform. The present system is set out in the University Act 1992 and later provisions, many of which are unclear. What is clear is that the Council, with fourteen members, is the governing body and the Vice-Chancellor is its chief executive, responsible for both administrative and academic staff. He exercises this power through officials he appoints and is expected to define its vision for the future. How, then, can he be prevented from going off on what lawyers call 'a frolic of his own'?

There is, in fact, a statutory ordinance requiring the Chancellor to report to the Council on his performance. It does not entail a duty of supervision, however. Nor would it be possible given her residence in another State, her many directorships and her support for his policies. The Academic Senate, by contrast, has a responsibility to advise the Vice-Chancellor on all academic issues. This would by definition include teaching and research standards and, by implication, a duty to protect the institution from ideological agendas which serve political or commercial interests. It did not, it seems, meet to consider the funding plan, the move to the city, the sale of the Sandy Bay campus or the decision to become a real estate business. Nor did it meet to find out what buildings and how much space, what equipment and organisational changes, might be required. This called for ongoing discussions with senior academic staff responsible for teaching and research.