Obiter dicta by Professor Gavin Brown AO

Mr Tube and Me

29 June 2001

When the Mayor of Shanghai welcomed delegates to the meeting of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU), he expressed his special pleasure that the president (as he called me) of the University of Sydney was a participant. He recalled, with enthusiasm, the symbolic nature of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games - its recognition of the Aboriginal inhabitants, of the European migrants and of the Asian members of our society. He expressed his confidence that the images of concord, reinforced by the games themselves, reflected a successful meeting of cultures within the Australian community.
This was an unexpected bonus, but I was stunned when he went on to praise the Group of Eight universities. This second accolade was illusory, however, because he had in mind China’s leading universities - the Group of Eight which has been allocated special funds by a government determined to have some institutions of international excellence.

The meeting, hosted by Fudan University, had further surprise in store. I learned that the previous president of Fudan University has just become Chancellor of the University of Nottingham. Professor Yang will continue to work as an ion-beam physicist in Shanghai, travelling from time to time to the UK for council meetings.

The other Australian participant in the APRU conference was Ian Chubb of the Australian National University. It gives me sinful pleasure that phonetic interpretation means that he is known in China as Mr Tube.

There are several exciting distance learning initiatives based on APRU cooperation, with Kyoto University being a leading contributor. That university hosted a major working conference on that theme last May and Ian and I have volunteered that our universities will co-host the next in the series.

A further initiative from the two Aussies was to have each president provide a simple piece of information. The questions asked were: “How many full-time student places?” and “What is the total annual income (converted to US dollars)?”

The answers, necessarily crude approximations, provide fascinating indicators as we rank universities by dollar income per student. Above 50K come Kyoto, Tokyo, Osaka and University of Southern California. Above about 30K come Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, University of British Columbia and the National University of Singapore. The next group is clustered at 10K and comprises Seoul National, Sydney, ANU (faculties) and the University of Chile. Around 6K come the major Chinese universities and Auckland. The universities from Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia range from 3K to below 1K.

One accepts that purchasing power varies from nation to nation but these numbers scarcely encourage complacency for Australia!