Obiter dicta by Professor Gavin Brown AO

Believe it or not

10 August 2001

Last weekend our football team clinched victory in the NSW club championship although one round of rugby matches remains to be played. Earlier in the year our cricket club won their club championship also. These triumphs are very gratifying, particularly as both clubs were, in 1996-7, threatened with expulsion from their competitions.

It remains to be seen how the Sydney Morning Herald will describe these victories as a defeat. The latest ill-tempered attack on our University bears the headline “Uni of NSW ahead in popularity contest” and states that UNSW has edged ahead of Sydney as the institution most students want to attend. The plain truth is that we attract most first preference applicants in the State. We also attract more students with a UAI over 90 than any other university in the state, despite the fact that we do not offer places in medicine to school leavers.

The SMH goes on to claim that “at UNSW staff-student ratios were lower”. This is true - but it is the student:staff ratio that one wants to be low, and according to official government statistics this university has the lowest student:staff ratio of any university in NSW, Queensland or Victoria.

It is stated that “despite the kudos attached to being Australia’s oldest university, the University of Sydney managed only three stars for generating non-government income - including donations, research contracts and student fees”. I find this maliciously misleading because of the major point that we maintain a lower proportion of full fee-paying overseas students.

The SMH is careful to make no mention of the most prestigious research schemes, the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). These competitions, sourced from government funds, show that the University of Sydney leads the nation for research achievement. In particular we blitz UNSW in both schemes. For NHMRC, we gain more than double their amount and for ARC, we garner 14 per cent of the national total as compared with 9 per cent for UNSW, approximately $5 million more.

It is only when provoked that I present our research dominance in this stark way. In fact, of course, it is much more important to seek ways of cooperating with our friendly rivals and to work together to enhance outcomes for NSW and Australia. The sly half-truths of the Sydney Morning Herald do nothing to help this process.

We have set out our current achievements in a handy brochure which is available on request. It places our stunning success in context but does not engage in knocking copy.