QUIETLY spoken and mild-mannered as he is, Richard Larkins sometimes struggles to stop himself interrupting what you are saying. He knows where you are going, he is already there and he is anxious to tell you what he thinks.
But as long-time friend, fellow endocrinologist and Victoria's Governor David de Kretser says, he always hears you out. "You always feel you have had a fair hearing, even if you may not have got what you want."
At the end of this week Larkins will retire as Monash University's vice-chancellor after six years, during the last of which he was also head of Universities Australia. And we are in no doubt what he thinks.
In a farewell interview with journalists Larkins mentions what few are prepared to talk about, the need for fee deregulation in the absence of a significant future boost in public funding. As welcome as the Rudd government's commitments to restoring indexation and better covering the indirect costs of research are, the measures aren't enough in the longer term, Larkins warns.
And, with a characteristic mix of principle and pragmatism, he believes if the government won't pay for quality then the next best option is for students to pay while equity is protected by fee remissions for the disadvantaged.
"I think by international standards the private contribution by Australian students is already high and that is why I say that given our current environment it would be better for the public funding to increase ... but it just seems unlikely, even in the out years, that the government will be able to do that or wish to do that," Larkins says.
He says the government's present measures and forecasts for the next four or five years don't build on the sort of substantial increases that ultimately will be needed.
"In that event I think the alternative of deregulating fees would be a better outcome provided it was accompanied by those equity requirements and measures."
Indeed, Larkins believes that if packaged with such measures, fee deregulation could help the government achieve its participation and equity targets by providing the market signals for new low-cost providers to emerge.
"I think you can safeguard against it being a privileged environment for the rich. I think it can actually work in a reverse direction."
While there are doubts over how well price signals can work in a market where students can defer costs through income-contingent loans, Larkins notes that fees in the deregulated postgraduate and international student markets haven't blown out. Instead, he says, they have simply better reflected actual costs.
But whether it is politically possible is another matter. "It is a highly sensitive political issue and it would be a courageous government that did it," he says.
But he warns that even after the government's staged funding boost for universities, the sector will continue to be reliant on cross-subsidies from international student fees.
"What the Deputy Prime Minister in the budget outlines is the arrest of a progressive decline in funding, which has occurred over the last dozen years or so, rather than a substantial increase," he says. "The universities are still prevented from changing the fees they charge to Australian undergraduate students, so the only possibility of really increasing income per student is through the international students providing some cross-subsidies or through increased philanthropy." That means the sector will continue to be vulnerable to any big swings in international student demand, whether caused by currency gyrations, global health scares or, more recently, bad publicity over attacks on Indian students.
"I think it is very hard to manage a risk when the whole system is dependent on income from that source and there are factors outside our control," Larkins says.
On providing for international students, he says increasing the availability of accommodation on or near campuses should be a priority, but that overall universities, by and large, are doing all they should be doing.
He says it is inevitable that the furore over attacks on Indian students will do some damage to the sector's reputation, given the sensationalist media coverage in India and the questionable practices of some small private providers. But he notes that so far demand for second semester and first semester next year has been "pretty strong."
Larkins warns that the government's participation and equity targets, while achievable, nevertheless will be difficult and expensive. For reasons of costs, much of the expansion will likely occur outside of traditional universities in new and lower-cost providers.
"Our campus-based universities will continue to deliver high-quality education to a proportion of (the expansion target) but there will be a wider array of providers using more distance technology and enhanced online education," he says.
The government is aiming to raise the proportion of 25 to 34-year-olds with a bachelor degree or higher qualification from 32 per cent to 40 per cent by 2025. By 2020 it wants to raise the participation of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds from about 16 per cent to 20 per cent.
Larkins warns that in the long term Australia's economic prosperity will be put at risk if we don't begin to match the investment in education and research happening to the north of us in Asia. But he says it's a message that is still hard to get through in Australia, which he says has yet to fully shake the complacency nurtured by mineral wealth and the tariff barriers of the past.
"The current leaders in Canberra do recognise it and do speak about it a lot, but because of the global financial situation and partly because of other pressures they haven't yet made the quantum leap forward in investment that will allow us to be truly competitive," he says.
Larkins was appointed vice-chancellor in 2003, a recruit from cross-town rival the University of Melbourne, where he had been dean of medicine.
He took charge of a university where confidence had been shaken the year before when his predecessor David Robinson was forced to resign in disgrace because of plagiarism allegations. Larkins gradually instilled a new self-confidence built around research and international horizons. Says his friend and successor as a dean of medicine at Melbourne, James Angus, Larkins didn't spend time "looking back over the Yarra" at Melbourne.
While Monash's move to build campuses in Malaysia and South Africa pre-dated him, he joined when there were serious doubts over the future of the high-cost South African venture, which was behind on its targets. Within a month of his appointment he was in the country for the inaugural graduations but also to make a decision on what do.
Larkins freely admits that, given the risks involved, he wouldn't have given the go-ahead for the South African campus if he'd been in the chair at the time. But once he was there and had witnessed the enthusiasm of the graduates and the quality of the facilities, he knew it wasn't something Monash should go back on.
Although the campus has been a financial drain, it boasts 2500 students and, according to Larkins, this is a key point of difference among the world's research-intensive universities that he says tend to be more stay-at-home.
"Monash has built its reputation around doing things properly on an international scale and I think that is a unique position for a research-intensive university around the world," he says.
Nor was Larkins tempted to look across the river when Melbourne's vice-chancellor Glyn Davis brought in the Melbourne model of postgraduate professional education. Instead Larkins was determined to maintain the popular double degrees and introduced a renewed focus on honours while offering students greater scope to study overseas.
"It is to provide choice and variety rather than to differentiate ourselves from Melbourne," he says.
Larkins has been linked with a role at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory Australia once he leaves Monash and is set to remain active on research boards. He is also talking to the Victorian government on his plans for further encouraging co-operation between universities, hospitals and medical research institutes.
Larkins leaves office on Friday but will be in the office on Sunday to welcome his successor, Ed Byrne, who flies in the same day.
14/07/2009
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