Academic Freedom and Commercialisation of Australian Universities:

Perceptions and experiences of social scientists

The Australian Institute May01

Carole Kayrooz, The University of Canberra
Pamela Kinnear, Research Fellow, The Australia Institute
Paul Preston, Department of Sociology, The Australian National University

Discussion Paper Number 37, Mar01 ISSN 1322-5421 THE AUSTRALIA INSTITUTE

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the many academics who contributed to this report.  Their thoughtful input was notable in these days of high workload and ‘survey fatigue’.  We would also like to acknowledge Michael Reakes for providing technical support for the web-based questionnaire.  Special acknowledgement, however, should go first to Gerlese Akerlind of the Australian National University who provided a vital contribution to the study design and survey instruments and second, to Robert Dalton who gave both statistical and substantive advice throughout the various stages of the project.  Both contributions were crucial to the success of the study.  Finally, the researchers would also like to acknowledge the reviewers, Professor Peter Karmel, Professor John Nevile, Professor Grant Harman, Professor William G. Tierney and Associate Professor Jan Currie for their careful and helpful commentary.  Any remaining errors, however, are the sole responsibility of the authors.

List of Abbreviations

AOU                Academic Organisational Unit
ARC                Australian Research Council
Go8                 Group of Eight
SPIRT              Strategic Partnerships in Research and Training
UNS                Unified National System
HECS              Higher Education Contributions Scheme

Executive Summary

This is an exploratory study of social scientists’ perceptions and experiences of academic freedom in Australian universities.  Academic freedom now operates within a financial environment characterised by increasing reliance on industry research funding, fee-based courses and consulting services.  These trends, in turn, involve closer attention to the needs of ‘consumers’ and ‘markets’.  The impact of this environment on social scientists’ experience of academic freedom is a matter of some concern for the quality of public debate and the health of democratic pluralism.  As Australian social scientists’ experience has not previously been explored, this study focused particularly on their experience of academic freedom in an environment of commercialisation. 

The study was conducted in three phases.  The first phase, interviews with 20 key informants, was intended to clarify important dimensions of the topic and to inform the design of the questionnaire.  The second phase, a web-based questionnaire that targeted 1000 social scientists from 13 universities across four university types, formed the primary data source for the report.  The third phase, 20 follow-up interviews with the questionnaire respondents, sought to elaborate on the questionnaire findings.  In total, there were 165 respondents to the questionnaire.  As 833 recipients were located from the target sample, this represented a 20 per cent response rate. 

A key objective of the project was to identify how respondents defined the concept of academic freedom.  Academic freedom was seen to be the right to teach, research and publish contentious issues, to choose their own research colleagues and to feel supported by the institution to speak on social issues in areas of their expertise without fear or favour.  Most respondents interpreted academic freedom in terms of individual autonomy, where they thought academic freedom involved the responsible and disciplined exercise of their expertise.  Some focused on collegial autonomy, where they viewed academic freedom as the peer-based determination of research and teaching standards.  Others focused on institutional autonomy, which they saw as providing the culture and infrastructure that supports individual and collegial autonomy.  Some respondents implied that these three levels of autonomy were interlinked and thought that supporting autonomy at these various levels was essential to maintaining the role of universities as important and independent sources of social inquiry. 

To understand further how respondents defined academic freedom, they were asked to rate the importance of various aspects.  Nearly all of the respondents (92%) rated the freedom to define research topics and methods and to publish without fear of censorship as high in importance.  Most rated the freedom to teach contentious propositions (84%) and the right to choose colleagues for research collaboration (82%) as high in importance.  A slightly lesser proportion (75%) rated the right to seek peer review, the freedom to determine student standards and the maintenance of intellectual property rights in research as high in importance.  The maintenance of intellectual property rights in course design and content was rated least frequently as high in importance.  Nevertheless, 61 per cent of respondents rated this aspect as high in importance.

Respondents were also asked to rate their satisfaction with these same aspects.  Respondents were generally moderately or highly satisfied with aspects that seemed to concern individual autonomy.  When the ‘moderate’ and ‘high’ satisfaction categories are combined, it appears that most were moderately to highly satisfied with the freedom to define research topics and methods (88%; 43% moderate, 45% high), the freedom to teach contentious propositions (85%; 35% moderate, 50% high), the right to choose colleagues for research collaboration (82%; 28% moderate, 54% high), and the freedom to publish without fear of censorship (80%; 42% moderate, 38% high).  Satisfaction was often reported as moderate, rather than high in relation to those aspects of academic freedom that respondents rated as high in importance.  For most items, levels of low satisfaction were relatively stable at around 10 – 13 per cent.  However, a higher proportion of the sample experienced low satisfaction with the freedom to publish without fear of censorship (16%), the maintenance of intellectual property rights in course design and content (22%), and the freedom to determine student standards (27%). 

Commercialisation was viewed as the pressure to market academic work.  At the individual level, most reported a reduced amount of research time due to writing grant applications and tenders and had experienced a change in the choice of research projects as a result of the likelihood of funding.  Many also had experienced a cross-fertilisation of ideas (67%; 22% to a major extent) and the enhancement of the quality of research (45%; 14% to a major extent) through interaction with external funding bodies.  At the collegial level, many reported an increase in competition between colleagues with just over half (51%) experiencing this to a major extent.  A number reported experiencing restrictions on sharing ideas with colleagues due to commercial-in-confidence arrangements.  At the institutional level, almost all had experienced an emphasis on funded over unfunded research and a valuing of courses that attracted high student enrolments and fee-paying students over other courses.

Direct interference with individual academics’ publication of contentious results was not widespread, although 17 per cent of respondents reported that they had experienced being prevented from publishing contentious results, 12 per cent to a minor extent and 5 per cent to a major extent.  Forty-one per cent reported that they had experienced discomfort with publishing contentious research results (13% to a major extent) and almost half (49%) reported that they had experienced a reluctance to criticise institutions that provide large research grants or other forms of support (16% to a major extent).  The cause of this reluctance and discomfort was not clear.

In the interviews and open-ended responses elaborating on their levels of satisfaction and concern, respondents regularly stated that despite being generally satisfied at the personal level, they were dissatisfied with a number of systemic effects of commercialisation on academic freedom.  Respondents outlined several systemic effects:

• Increased workloads, in part arising from writing competitive tenders and developing and marketing commercial courses, were significantly reducing academics’ independent research time;

• The pressure to attract research funding from industry and a range of consulting and other services increasingly channeled research effort into safe, well-defined areas, rather than speculative or curiosity-driven ones;

• The emphasis on fee-based courses, particularly for domestic and international postgraduates, was lowering student standards;

• The emphasis on fee-based courses benefited disciplines that were vocational, rather than speculative and critical, and sometimes redirected academics’ teaching focus to areas tangential to their expertise;

• The drive to market flexible fee-based courses, particularly on-line courses and distance packages, challenged the ownership of course material and had the potential to erode academics’ intellectual capital; and

• The emphasis on ‘market’ demand required more corporate management structures in universities which, in turn, eroded collegial decision-making structures.

The seriousness of these systemic effects was reflected in the quantitative data on respondents’ concern and perception of deterioration in academic freedom.  Almost all of the respondents (92%) reported a degree of concern about the general state of academic freedom in their universities, with over one-third (37%) reporting major concern.  In similar fashion, when asked about changes to the state of academic freedom over the past four years, the majority (73%) reported that there had been a deterioration.  Nearly one-half of the sample (45%) thought that there had been a minor deterioration and over one-quarter (28%) a major deterioration.  Only four respondents (2%) thought that the situation had improved.  The majority (81%) of those who thought that there had been a deterioration in the state of academic freedom related these changes to an increasing commercialisation of their university, 48 per cent to a major extent, and 33 per cent to a minor extent.  In the interviews, respondents generally thought that the situation in universities would become unacceptable if commercialisation directly affected their freedom to teach, research and publish without fear of censorship and their right to associate with research colleagues of their choosing.

These findings add to the debate between government, industry, universities and academics about the directions commercialisation is taking higher education in Australia and the place of academic freedom in this environment.  The consistency of reasons given for systemic concern across the range of disciplines or subject areas and universities (where one would not expect close communication) suggests that some of these issues may be endemic and, at the least, require further investigation.  This raises a number of questions for public and university policy and points to the need to understand more fully the relationship between commercialisation of university work and academic freedom.

source: http://www.tai.org.au/publications/dp37exec.shtml