Obiter dicta by Professor Gavin Brown AO

Commutative Macro

6 August 2004

During the happy melee which was the Swans' after-match function last Saturday night, Brisbane's Lions having been tamed, I was asked a simple question, "How did we go in the rugby?" When I replied that we won 29-21, someone nearby instantly corrected me to 30-26. In fact I had answered my interlocutor appropriately. His concern was the Sydney University game with Gordon, not the Wallaby test with South Africa.

The moment was charming and I thought, at once, of Izumi Aizu's dictum, "Think local, act global". To be honest, given the general jollity of the occasion, I couldn't remember whether it was "Think global, act local" and then I failed to work out if there would be a behavioural difference distinguishing the two slogans. I still can't.

Either way the phrase applies to our University and relates to two major events of the last week. The first was the international conference of Academic Consortium 21 (AC21) and the second was the visit of the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) (The latter acronym being almost as irritating as that of the fashion house, French Connection UK).

The principal reason that governments world-wide are embracing systems of quality audits of universities is a desire to guarantee minimum standards. Generally speaking this is less important the more prominent is the institution. The pressures on Oxford or Harvard to protect their own reputations are already very powerful and the value of a tick from a process audit by a government agency is less than such approval for, let us say, the University of Portsmouth.

As a consequence, the methodology which has evolved gives feedback within the context of each university's stated goals -– the higher the aspiration the more exacting is the measuring stick. Despite some obvious pitfalls, this has the considerable advantage of ensuring relevance for every institution provided both parties take the evaluation seriously.

In this regard I am very happy with our AUQA visit, although, at this stage, there is only informal feedback. I am grateful to staff throughout our organisation and to friends and alumni with whom we interact for their exceptional willingness to work very hard in the engagement. I am grateful also to the evaluation panel who spent many hours working through masses of documentation then testing our claims in a thorough and long process of interviews. We made it clear that the University seeks to benchmark process and progress by international standards while operating realistically in a local context. The panel commented favourably on development over the last five years which has generated positive momentum.

The Academic Consortium for the 21st century, of which I am now President, has lofty goals for combining global thought and local action. Linked with this year's general assembly in Sydney we had satellite fora, each tackling some aspect of the theme 'Universities and their cities'. In the period before the 2006 meeting, expected to be held in the UK, the 26 member universities will engage in a series of benchmarking activities led by the University of Sydney. Of particular interest is an exploration of how student response questionnaires can cross cultural boundaries. Must one pose entirely different propositions in Asian countries than in those with a Western tradition or is some global instrument capable of being designed?

Meanwhile we are in the final stages of preparation for another major international conference to be held at the University of Sydney. Under the aegis of APRU (Association of Pacific Rim Universities) this will bring together postgraduate students from a wide range of universities in developing and developed countries.

In summary, we are an international university in an international city.