it was the best of times, it was the worst of times: bridging the core and the periphery in the...

Higher Eduarion Quarterly Volume 46 no. 4, Autumn 1992 095 1-5224

It was the Best of Times, it was the Worst of Times: Bridging the Core and the Periphery in the Australian University Research System

Antony Marsh and Tim Turpin, University of Wollongong

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only (Dickens, 1962, p. 1).

Abstract

This article explores the emerging research cultures at some of Australia’s newly amalgamated universities. The relationship between existing research ‘cores’ in established research institutions and ‘peripheral’ but connected research concentrations an the new organisations i s examined. Data from a series of case- studies are presented to illustrate the emergence of different variations of such network characteristics. It is concluded that the implications of these developments are considerable and should be taken into account in the formulation of government and institutional management policies.

Introduction

Since 1987 a substantial and rapid restructuring of higher education in Australia has taken place. The changes brought about by this have been unprecedented. The binary system that prevailed from 1965 to 1988 has now effectively been replaced with a Unified National System (UNS) (Meek, 1990). Policy instruments that have been used to achieve the UNS

The Australian University Research System 339

have steered the higher education system towards institutional amalgamations (Harman, 1988). In 1987 there were 24 universities and 47 colleges of advanced education (CAEs) throughout Australia. There are now 32 universities and 3 university colleges in the new Unified. Further negotiations are still under way for institutional mergers among the remaining CAEs. The period during the late 1980s when these reforms and institutional amalgamations were introduced has come to be known as the ‘Dawkins reform era’, after the then Minister for Employment, Education and Training, John Dawkins (Harman, 1991).

In some cases this pathway to institutional amalgamation has required the bridging of considerable geographic space between previously separate institutions. In others it has necessitated bridging a gap between disparate corporate objectives, and in others it has required bridging a gap between long and established philosophical views about teaching, research, scholarship, or the ‘practicing of a craft.’ The new institutions are faced with the daunting task of building successful research projects that may have no antecedent in the previous institutional structure. Further, government and university strategies are steering them to attract external funding and become competitive with research enterprises in the older universities.

In Australia the introduction of the Dawkins reforms have been met with varying degrees of support and opposition, but for better or worse, the new system is firmly in place. Now that the system has had some time to ‘shake-downy it is appropriate to start to ask: ‘HOW unified and how national is the new system?’ This article explores one aspect of that question; the emergence and adaptation of research cultures within the changed landscape of the Australian university system.

The British higher education system has also been moving away from the binary division, and in a similar way to the situation in Australia, their universities are entering an increasingly competitive funding environment (Meek, 1988; Brown, 1992). Shattock has suggested that a radically altered system in Britain is still taking shape. In his analysis the changes will lead to a more stratified system. As he puts it:

. . , the financial cuts of 1981 followed by the further reductions of 1986 have bitten deep into the fabric of universities and have significantly redistributed resources but they have not yet fundamentally altered universities’ shape or character. But it is difficult not to believe that the further selectivity review in 1989-90 will not make the stratification of universities more pronounced and in doing so, will confirm a change in the shape of the university system (Shattock, 1991, p. 64).

340 Higher Education Quarterly

As the British Further and Higher Education Bill becomes an Act of Parliament later this year the pace of change is likely to increase. The changes this will bring to research funding and institutional relationships is likely to reflect many of the changes currently being experienced in the Australian system. The findings of the Australian study reported here may therefore also carry some important messages for research policy makers in Britain.

The ‘Season of Darkness’

The changes in the higher education system in Australia, described above, have during the past year brought forth howls of outrage from many academics. At the deepest level there has been a swing away from traditional conceptions of the university as a world of scholars, alarming many academics. The model research strategies are now those that most closely reflect previously ‘working class’ technological universities, not concerned so much with an academic ethos but rather with solving the immediate problems of industry and government and obtaining increasingly competitive research funding (see Zinberg 1991, and especially Bugliarello 1991). As Bernd Huppauf has noted, this process has been going on for some decades, and is international, occurring in most western democracies (Huppauf 1989, p. 31). Certainly many Australian academics are concerned about these changes, and the profound consequences for research in universities. As two Australian academics have put it recently:

Academic standards which people like myself hold dear have been debased and corrupted (Steele 1991a).

I regret the loss of good scholarship and generalised research in universities - sacrificed to specific knowledge (Interview).

Such outrage has been directed not just towards this deep seated change confronting universities but also towards the Australian government’s general policy thrust in this area. Comments of this latter category suggest that the government’s policies are leading us towards a ‘Season of Darkness’.

[Olfficers within the Department of Employment Education and Training and other departments are still trying to achieve their goals by administrative stealth, no doubt hoping this will degrade morale within the university (Steele 1991b).

The culture of managerial contempt for real academic activities is not coming from rank and file union members, but from DEET (Schuster 1991).


[W]e have been badly let down by our university leaders , . . they appear to have been hijacked by Dawkins . . . [and] . . . I believe that he [the Minister] is the most dangerous man in Australia (Higher Education Fighting Fund 1991).

One is reminded here of Max Gluckman’s recollection of the Barotse village headman in Central Africa who said, as he tapped an ulcer on his face: ‘It’s the government, it’s the government, it’s the government’. According to Gluckman his informant meant by this remark that he was the recipient, in the course of his ‘headman’ duties, of the government’s bad magic. (Gluckman 1973, p. 51).

In a way the headman’s explanation carried an important message. He was, as it were, at the threshold of two different systems: one articulated through the rules and regulations, enshrined in the legislation of the state and the other articulated through the values, expectations and behaviour associated with village life, enshrined in the cultural symbols of every day life. It was the government that established the new set of State controlled rules and obligations but it was he who occupied the structural position between the implementation of these rules and the cultural system that constituted his village. The two were in considerable conflict. At a structural level, the relationship between the higher education research cultures from which the above comments were drawn, and the new management structures that organise them, is not dissimilar to the problem of the relationship between Barotse political system and the culture of village life. In the Australian higher education system the conflict is represented through social ‘eruptions’ at various campuses; in the Barotse system the conflict is represented by the physical ‘eruptions’ on the headman’s face. In both cases the representations imply the imposition of a ‘season of darkness’.

The ‘Season of Light’

At the same time, however, the new system has been acclaimed by others as providing the ‘best of times’. For these people the new d i e d system has offered new opportunities to engage in research and to confront the research and development ‘market’. With the enhanced institutional status of a university behind them and, in many cases, with the status of professor in front of them, they are able to make new inroads into the academic research market, where they are encouraged to forge links with industry. Desh Gupta has described the advantages of the new system for those in what were the old CAEs, pointing out that at least they have a chance of competing with academics in the traditional universities for a slice of the research funding pie (Gupta 1990).


One university Vice-chancellor, for example, has noted that the changes provide new opportunities for ‘. . . selling university services to industry and stretching out to industry’ (Smith, 1991). The Chairman of the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee, Professor Ken McKinnon, has said that many of the things the Education minister brought in were necessary and desirable. ‘A great deal has been achieved - the jolt to complacency and the subsequent widespread self examination in institutions, stemming from the Dawkins agenda, are in themselves no mean accomplishments’ (McKinnon, 1990). He has even gone further to say that the Dawkins reforms ‘faltered a few furlongs from the finish’ and called for a ‘willingness to go on with the race’ (McKinnon, 1990). Further enthusiastic comments have come from the newly amalgamated universities. For example, a Vice-Chancellor of one of the new universities, constituted through the amalgamation of three rural colleges of advanced education (CAEs) has described his university’s benefits from the new UNS system in the following terms. ‘Our university is the great beneficiary of the Dawkins reforms . . . we now have a chance to develop our own ethos building on the achievements of the CAE style’ (Blake, 1991). An academic respondent in the study reported in this article (at this same university) referred to the changes as bringing ‘manna from heaven’. And, another respondent at a different university referred to the benefits derived from their new University status in their dealings with outside bodies.

People started to talk to us on the day that we became a university. Whether we had just reached a critical stage in development or it was due to the superficiality of the title - I’m not sure. But suddenly, people wanted to know us! I’m confident we’ve got everything we’ve asked for and more. (Interview with faculty head)

From a more studied view of the system as a whole Harman has noted that we should recognise that, in spite of the costs involved, there have been many benefits that can be directly attributed to the new system. According to Harman these include the enforcement of important and needed structural changes on institutions, the introduction of improved and more effective relations with business and industry, the development of a new impetus to institutions to become more entrepreneurial and innovative, and a push in higher education to becoming more central to the economic and social life of the nation (Harman, 1991).

It seems then, from these varied comments, that the Australian authorities have ushered in both a ‘winter of despair’ and a ‘spring of hope’. Many questions emerge about the implications of these different perceptions for the research carried out by academics working in this


vastly rearranged system. Has their academic world entered a new stage of adjustment and adaptation to a new range of institutional demands, expectations and rewards? What are the implications of the restructuring for research boundaries associated with discipline, faculty and collegial support? What are the implications for the relationship between teaching and research? To what extent are such changes creating new clusters of ‘cultural meaning’ that might steer or shape the production, communication and application of knowledge through research?

The ‘spring of hope’ or ‘the winter of despair’?

One of our research tasks at the Centre for Research Policy has been to explore this ‘new’ academic landscape. We have recently completed a study that examined organisational and cultural change in research structures at some of Australia’s newest universities. Our data are throwing into sharp relief different sets of institutional strategies being adopted within the system to meet the economic and organisational challenges of the 1990s (Turpin and Hill, 1991; Marsh and Turpin, 1991). But our data are also emphasising significant struggles between these ‘enterprise cultures’ and a range of research cultures embedded, variously, in different forms of discourse and symbols.

We have argued elsewhere that ‘the worst of times’ experienced by researchers in the new system are largely a product of the inappropriate alignment between various forms of research cultures and the administrative or management structures within which they are embedded (Marsh and Turpin, 1991). We seek to elaborate here on the factors that promote ‘the best of times’. There are pockets of new research activity and concentration emerging in new universities. Where they had previously been discouraged they are now, as it were, a product of the ‘spring of hope’ for many academic researchers. A truly Unified National System should to some extent reflect increased cooperation between researchers in the system, rather than unproductive competition. It is important, therefore, to find out where these emerging research clusters are fitting in to the national academic research system, and to explore their role in the production of new and innovative knowledge in Australia.

Research culture and perceptions of change

The implications of the changes in the higher education system, outlined above, were explored in the present study at five universities in Victoria and New South Wales.’ During 1991 we carried out interviews with


informants across different levels of the administrative system in each university. These included interviews with Vice-Chancellors, Pro Vice- Chancellors, research committee and sub-committee chairpersons, and research managers. Our ‘base’ level comprised interviews with individual active researchers ranging from senior research fellows and professors ‘down’ to PhD students and research assistants. This multi-layered level of analysis provided insights into conflicts of management and research cultures from a wide range of perspectives.

The base interviews were semi-structured but held within a framework of selected issues built from questions that emerged from earlier interviews. Through these discussions we explored perceptions about research, and the various factors that steer its direction, experiences in the present employment context and expectations about directions for the future, In particular we endeavoured to identify respondents’ forms of communication with other researchers and their sources of information and support.

The interviews were recorded in note form and transcribed soon after the interview took place. The data we generated were principally qualitative and were developed and interpreted using a Geertzian ‘thick description’ technique that tacked back and forth between respondents on small but ‘densely textured facts’ (Geertz, 1975). Close to one hundred such varied interviews recorded during the project form the empirical base for the study.

It is not suggested that these groups provide a body of data from which generalisations can be made across the system. Rather, as case studies, they provide an opportunity to examine in some detail the emerging consequences of the present policy across a range of research fields and different types of institutional setting. In short, the studies provide ‘snapshots’ of the research lifeworld of some twenty diverse groups of researchers in the higher education system.

In order to record and analyse the qualitative data we made use of the Richards and Richards Nudist software. This software has been developed with the capacity to manage qualitative data and allow for the exploration of emerging themes and patterns that lie embedded in a wide variety of observations from formal and informal data sources. The program provides for unlimited indexing, retrieval, and reindexing in a way that can build on and test theoretical systems. As the authors point out, the system organises not just the original empirical codings but allows for the development of a concept-bused system that ‘. . . expresses the user’s tuxonomy of concepts’ (Richards and Richards, 1991).

By using this system we were able to integrate new themes and


concepts, not previously envisaged in our original theoretical framework, and to test various hypotheses and propositions about configurations and patterns within our sample. As we describe below, this method of recording, retrieving and analysing data allowed us to develop a procedure for allocating respondents to positions on sociometric maps that we have called ‘social space’ and then to explore for coherent patterns of shared values and perceptions within such groupings (Marsh and Turpin, 1991). For this analysis we have focused on commonly recurring themes concerning positive and negative perceptions about the changes brought about through institutional amalgamations.

From the research groupings we have analysed we have identified a number of key factors that underpin their research coherence and that promote the emergence of identifiable research cultures. At least four factors stand out:

- a significant reliance on what we have called ‘core/periphery’

- a dependence on research leadership, particularly in multi-disciplinary

- a symbiotic dependence on teaching and research links; and, - the emergence of cultural boundaries that emphasise broad fields of

science and industrial or social policy ‘problems’ rather than traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Our discussion in this article will focus, in particular, on the first two issues because these appear as the most commonly recurring features in the emerging research cultures. In what follows we describe the nature of the corelperiphery relationships that we have observed and suggest that they are of particular significance in the evolving Australian research system as a whole. A range of implications follow, and we argue that these are not all positive. The extent to which the period of consolidation within the UNS becomes the ‘age of wisdom’ or the ‘age of foolishness’ will depend on how effectively we are able to respond to these implications. Before discussing that issue, however, it is necessary to illustrate the nature and significance of these cordperiphery relationships.

networks;

areas;

The core and the periphery - a unified national system?

‘We had everything before us, we had nothing before us’

The following examples of emerging research coherence are provided to show the significance of two factors in developing such groups; these


are networks and leadership. The network factors are concerned separately with the communication of knowledge or ideas and with the application of those ideas. That is, they are concerned with the two dimensions of academic life that have been described as knowledge and market (Ziman, 1991). In our present study we have identified networks that act as communicative bridges between ‘core’ or ‘cutting-edge’ research activity at major Australian universities or research institutes and ‘peripheral’ or ‘embryonic’ research activity in various departments or centres at newly amalgamated universities. The leadership factor is concerned with ‘steering’ such communication and application in the absence of strong disciplinary or faculty oriented group boundaries. The two cases studies described below illustrate these factors.

Parallel processing

This is the case of a parallel processing group that was initially established in 1989 at a rurally based CAE. At that time it provided a focus for the interests of a number of academics in the Department of S~ience .~ For one member of the group its establishment provided an opportunity to apply an interest in theoretical physics; for another it provided a focus for an interest in statistics and simulation modelling; and, for another member it provided the opportunity to integrate an interest in mathematics and image analysis. The leader of the group was able to work, as he put it, on the central theory of parallel processing and utilise the academic networks that he had built up over the years. All respondents in the group pointed out that what they initially lacked

was space, equipment and institutional support (encouragement through the allocation of time and financial support). There was a general recognition that the only way to get such support was not through the college, as it then was, but through collaborative work with industry. Payment for this work was in the form of donated research equipment.

A range of links with locally based industrial groups were nurtured by the research group and these l inks supported their initial development. Initial links with industry included collaboration with a large pet-food manufacturer, a cement producer and a technical instrument manufacturer. The group’s descriptions of these projects emphasise the importance of localised commercial links in developing their market potential and for setting research priorities.

We can say to industry: ‘What are your specific operational problems?’ Using our parallel processing techniques we can address your production line ‘speed’ problems (Interview).


A local pet-food manufacturer with a large international market identified a particular problem associated with the inadequate sealing of cans of food when the production line was accelerated. The company provided the research group with a conveyer system that they were able to install at the university and experiment with parallel processing techniques to control the computer monitoring of the sealing process. The group’s Director explained that this form of ‘bargaining’ (the exchange of laboratory equipment for expertise) was the only way for them to get extra resources.

By setting up a prototype and demonstrating how the industrial process can be improved we were able to show potential clients that we do have sufficient expertise for solving these sorts of problems for industry . . . Because we are a group we have the potential to hold workshops and seminars. This helps to promote our potential among potential industry groups . . . company papers or newsletters are a good way of keeping people in touch with the sorts of work that you are doing. We have continued with our own group’s informal meetings and included outside people from industry in these meetings (Interview).

While these networks were significant for the development of their market potential the group also depended, in a similar way, on networks for the communication of ideas (or knowledge). One respondent noted the importance of their Director’s role in developing these academic networks. ‘It is important to keep up regular contact with other researchers and he [the Director] is a key person for this’. It is instructive that the academic contacts that he describes as the ‘most important’ are those where their Director completed his post-graduate work. This institution is regarded by the group as a whole to be where the centre of these types of activities in Australia are located. As one in the group put it: ‘most departments around Australia, that are doing work in parallel processing, are networked in some way or another to academics who have gone through that university’.

The group also relied on a set of secondary networks at two other universities. These were both universities where at least one member of the group had completed (or was presently engaged in) postgraduate work.

The present Director has been the driving force in the centre and is seeking to develop these networks as far as possible. I’ll go anywhere to develop research networks, that is one of the most important tasks in developing a group like ours. But, you can’t have research associates that are too far apart. Sydney is OK - I’ve got used to regular travel between here and Sydney (Interview).

Another respondent remarked that for himself, his most important research contacts stem from his previous employment at the CSIRO


(Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation - Aus- tralia’s largest government-funded research institution), with the NSW Department of Agriculture, and the university where he is currently enrolled for a PhD. ‘These people have the capacity to attract a strong post-graduate field. This is the sort of model we need here.’ He refers in particular to a key figure in the NSW Department of Agriculture. ‘I regard th is person as a world leader - he has a network of colleagues that covers all of Australia’.

For this respondent his university connections seem to be most important for developing ideas.

With the exchange of ideas through the computer centre at one university we are developing a strong link. Next year they will have a major grant for developing a permanent computer link. I don’t particularly care where individuals are located, it is what interests they have in common that is important. We are trying to draw on the strength of these networks and share the concepts that are being developed in both centres (Interview).

From th is person’s point of view his industrial links are important for the development of the group’s market potential but his links with the three universities are the most important for his own particular conceptual contribution to the group’s research effort.

There are three important points here: firstly, the peripheral links to other universities and research institutions have been important for the communication of knowledge and ideas; secondly the links with regionally based industries have been significant for finding initial applications for t h i s knowledge. The third point is that in both cases the group’s leader has played a significant role in steering and developing these networks. A second case is described below to further illustrate the significance of these points.

Image analysis

This Centre brings together a range of people to form an inter-disciplinary centre for image analysis and remote sensing. The main emphasis of the Centre is on providing short courses on the techniques and applications of image analysis, providing a teaching facility with computer and software support and providing a base for research and consultancy. The research could, in this sense, be described as teaching led. The majority of staff have had little practical research experience, but for those who have, it has been at universities other than where they are employed at present.

Most of the group’s research projects are carried out in extra staff time and there is little in the way of financial support beyond some agricultural


consultancies. The Director is endeavouring, however, to build up the capacity of the Centre by engaging in partnership projects that will provide equipment for the Centre in exchange for consultancy.

One of our Centre’s contacts in Canberra has developed a major project for the cotton industry. Using remote sensoring we can find out how best and when to apply water to the crops; when to apply fertiliser; when to apply pesticides; and, how best to deal with salinity. We have developed a similar project for the Riverina argicultural area . . . One of our most pressing needs now is to acquire a geographic scanner - one that is airborne. We know someone who is building one of these for use in the mining industry. We are collaborating with him in its development. At the end of the day, in return for our work and assistance we’ll get the thing up and flying and we’ll finish up with regular use of an airborne scanner (Interview).

The group’s research coherence seems to rely on three principal factors: first, the priority of the teaching task and its determination of research direction; secondly, the local opportunities that are emerging in the region; and thirdly, the strength of enthusiasm developed by the group’s Diector.

The Director plays a leading role in bringing together people with expertise from different disciplines. He invites people to join the Centre and acts as a driving force for steering the research activities of individuals toward a common vision. One respondent noted that the Centre was at the boundaries of teaching in many disciplines: creative arts; physical science; agricultural science; computer science; and geography. The GIS remote sensing is the focus of research and provides the subject of a ‘vision’, but many other aspects of research ‘are fitting into’ and developing this technique for generating and analysing data.

The Centre’s work is integrated with teaching programs and is linked closely with various regional agricultural industries. Most of their research programs that have received funding are tied in some way or another to teaching issues. For example, the New South Wales Department of School Education is currently funding them to assist in the transfer of distance learning materials to schools. This is part of a larger project and their Centre has a contract component. In another case they have recently been undertaking work with digital imagery for mapping crop patterns and soil deficiencies. Staff are encouraged to be self-reliant and develop their own projects but group cohesion is sought through the publication of a newsletter and the sharing of information through a seminar series. Teaching, however, provides the most significant and continuous form of communication.

This direction is toward the adaptation of skills and technology to deal


with local rural problems. Small groups within the Centre have been established to work on particular problems that have to date, all lead to the development of a geographic information system at the University. For example, an algorithms group carries out activities related to the computers and software used by the centre. The main activity of this group has been related to the development of a low-cost farm geographic information system. Thus it would seem that the focus of research that is emerging is one based on market opportunities located in the region.

According to most respondents in this image analysis group the most significant contribution they have made has been to do with the transfer of technology and encouraging people to make use of new technology in the field. ‘It has been important to develop it in such a way as it is easily accessible’. This is noted in their newsletter in the following terms.

The key feature of this work is not the development of new technology but the transfer of present technology to cope with real problems in the field. Our aim is to provide software suitable for a farm based personal computer so that individual fannerdfarm consultants, as well as extension officers, can all make use of this cheap technology to improve management and decision making. This, in turn, will support the long term goal of increased profitability within a system of sustainable agriculture (Image Analysis Newsletter, 1991).

Networks seem to be important to the group as they develop directions and opportunities. The Director refers, in particular, to a remote sensoring group in Western Australia and a research laboratory within the CSIRO. ‘These contacts are important because they help to keep us at the forefront of current developments’. As with the research group described previously they have a clearly articulated strategy for using locally based industrial networks to set research directions.

It is also important for us to maintain contacts with industry and users of our product - they are the ones who will be applying our work. It’s therefore better to do collaborative work; then the users are better placed to use the technology. It’s not wise to go out and do your own work without sharing it with others. We try to work as closely as possible with both these sets of people [industry and other research institutions] (Interview).

The research group, however, perceive themselves as being at the periphery of research activity in their field.

There is a problem in getting to be taken seriously by other academic groups such as those at the University of New South Wales. The trouble is that as yet we don’t have the runs on the board. They say - ‘who have we got here’? And, I guess they see us as a group of enthusiastic amateurs (Interview).

The Australian University Research System 35 1

Finally, for this group, their coherence comes from a blend of individual interests, and opportunities as they emerge in their academic and regional environment. The position is eloquently put by the founder of the group.

There is not a great scope for oceanography in Wagga [an inland pastoral region], but there are opportunities for the practical applications of some of the skills required of oceanography in a region like the Murray/Darling Basin. I believe that it’s the theoretical problems that are the most interesting so I’m still able to work on these problems - but in a different context. I believe that ultimately all research is driven by individuals and their interests - but of course we mostly have to make the best of the context in which we are working. What the Centre does is to provide opportunities and support for people to get started. I would prefer to be working in the area of oceanography but that is just not possible here. The same theoretical problems still emerge in the remote sensoring work so this is a good opportunity (Interview).

There are many other examples that show how research coherence is developing around a combination of market and knowledge based networks and the visionary leadership of enthusiastic specialists. In almost all cases the current work projects were developed as extensions of existing projects at other more established universities. In one case, for example, a statewide educational project led to a regional contract for an appropriately located campus. In another case, a senior researcher’s links with his almu muter led to the allocation of a regionally specific component of a major national research project to his department. These projects were secured not because of each research group’s competitive edge on other research institutions but rather, because of their strategic position in a system of known and respected network affiliations and because of their strategic regional location in Australia.

Research in the UNS is becoming increasingly competitive. Although research funding has increased in total across the entire system there is now an increasing number of researchers competing for these resources (Murphy and Hill, 1992). If the newly emergent groups, of the sort that we have described above, relied solely on their cosmopolitan reputation and their level of infrastructure support for winning research contracts, their chances of success would be slight. Yet many of the researchers are clearly people with considerable expertise, enthusiasm and ideas and they are managing, in spite of great odds in an increasingly competitive research world, to establish innovative clusters of research activity. Such activities are far from the cutting edge of scientific breakthrough yet many are linked in some way or another to more mainstream research agencies. What then, is the significance of their role in the overall national research effort? We discuss this and the implications that follow in the concluding sections of this article.


‘Going direct to Heaven’ or ‘direct the other way’

From our case studies we have described research cultures that are emerging out of core/peripheral research and development networks. There are at least three implications that follow as the Unified National System ‘shakes down’. Firstly, there is the problem of diffusion, or the ‘thinning out’ of existing research clusters; secondly, there is potential for the development of an enduring and mutually supporting research system based on regionalised research problems; and thirdly, there is the potential for a segmented research system based on a greater differentiation but symbiotic relationship between teaching and research.

Diffusion - ‘the epoch of incredulity’

The UNS, as it has developed so far, has increased the level of competition for funds and has thrust most universities deeper into the market place, both with each other and with other institutions (Hill 1992). At a recent conference of University public relations staff the Vice-chancellor of the University of Queensland emphasised this trend when he remarked ‘We are clearly in the business of selling ourselves’. According to one participant at the conference the Vice-Chancellor’s comments were greeted with enthusiasm by other delegates.

They urged universities to develop a marketing approach because of competition for funding, population trends, public accountability and support, and also future viability of the new universities (Bitomsky, 1992, p. 16).

Such competition has led to some of our emerging groups attracting researchers away from the central core or ‘cutting edge’ of research. In one of our case-studies a self-defined peripheral research group announced with excitement that they had just been successful in attracting one of Australia’s leading researchers in their field away from the CSIRO. The CSIRO was the group that they considered to he at the cutting edge of such research in Australia. We don’t wish to imply any criticism of the individuals or groups associated with this move; we just seek to point out that such a move is in direct contrast to the aim of concentration inherent in the government’s policy. Programmes such as the Cooperative Research Centres Program (CRCs), the Special Research Centres and Key Centres of Teaching and Research, and the priority setting exercise undertaken to the CSIRO (see Australian Science and Technology Council, 1991, p. 18), are intended to promote concentrations and set priority directions rather than the diffusion of key research staff. There are, at present, no coherent


mechanisms in place to promote the reciprocal flow of researchers between industry, government and universities; such arrangements are possible but they are often achieved only with great tenacity on the part of determined and disillusioned academics. One of our respondents, who has had publications in prestigious international journals, indicated his frustration with the fact that he received virtually no research support from his university. He informed us that his only contact with other ‘serious’ academics was, as it were, ‘in the dead of night’ or in remote university libraries while he was on vacation. His choice for the future was, as he put it, between maintaining tenure at his present university and having few opportunities to carry out research, or moving to a research position in another university but having only slight chance of gaining a tenured position. His case illustrates the imposition of eitherlor choices for many academic researchers when their only way forward is ahead of ‘burned bridges’.

A further product of the pressure on universities to develop direct commercial relevance and become more competitive is the move to the university’s commercial arm of those academics who are likely to be the most commercially interested or experienced. Where there are institutional boundaries around this activity, the academics are drawn into an activity for which they are often relatively inexperienced and out of teaching where their influence could affect large numbers of students.

As research cultures develop at the periphery of established research concentrations there is a danger that they will promote greater uniformity across the system and greater competition for staff and scarce resources. While a certain amount of competition may be healthy, a system that is expanded and diffused is likely to become weaker. From our analysis the increasing competitiveness in the system is, in some cases, promoting this diffusion. Such a move is in direct contrast to the Australian government’s expressed intention of setting priorities and developing research concentrations (Ramsay et al., 1989, p. 7). How is it then, that research activities are emerging, and in many cases gathering momentum, in institutional settings where competition would seem to preclude such new development? One possible explanation is that the networks we have described above have the capzcity to transcend these negative effects of competition.

A Unified National System?

Hubert Brochier in 1970 attempted to come to grips with the question of how it was that in Japan so many small fxms persisted in spite of a highly competitive market place. He noted that during the 1960s and 1970s, a


period of enormous economic growth in Japan, small businesses employed nearly 70 per cent of the workforce, produced 58 per cent of manufactured goods and accounted for more than half of all exports (Brochier 1973, pp. 421423). The problem, as he saw it, was how to explain the persistence and survival of the Japanese small fumy ‘often with wretched and poorly equipped workshops’ in the face of a highly competitive market-place dominated by huge industrial powers. Brochier went on to argue that the explanation lay in the mutual benefit available to both large and small firms through cooperation rather than competition. This mutually supportive system is known in Japan as keiretsu and is still described as a major component in Japan’s economic success (Legge, 1992). The system is, in essence, a strategy whereby small suppliers cooperate with large corporations in order to maximise the advantage of each.

The two Japanese sectors, chusho-kigvo (small groups) and dui-kigyo (large groups), together form the basis of Japanese production and marketing; the latter forms the financial and productive core nf the enterprise and the former provides a peripheral arrangement of producers, suppliers and innovators. Both sectors are culturally unique and have markedly different production assumptions, ideas, and organisational principles. The key to the success of the system lies in the management of the boundaries between the two rather than the monolithic management of both.

From our own data there is mounting evidence that in academic research circles we are not far removed from the Japanese keiretsu system. That is, there are powerful ‘core’ components of research activity and there are secondary suppliers (often operating in poorly equipped and ‘wretched’ circumstances). In the present, increasingly competitive, circumstances the peripheral groups have the potential to provide researchers at the core with an extended and locally applied arm to their research activities. In such a scenario the endurance of both the core and the periphery would, like the keiretsu, be in the best interests of the system as a whole.

’

The ‘epoch of belief

The third possible scenario is a variant of the previous one. In this case a segmented system could develop that links technical reaching, development and application of technology to specific and appropriate regions to a highly specialised basic research core at major universities. There is already evidence emerging from our studies to show that such a system


would have considerable potential for integrating teaching and research across the entire research system. The recent announcement of the CRC for Wine and Grape Production is a good example of how this might proceed. In this case one university in the CRC will be principally responsible for providing ‘highly trained wine-makers and viti-culturalists’. This group (included among our own respondents) will, as a result of the established CRC, have institutionalised their network links with the core of research activity in two other Australian States and have enhanced opportunities for the communication of knowledge and staff across the system.

The potential for the development of a system, of this sort rests on a capacity to identify the ‘core’ and the ‘periphery’ and appropriately link the distinct cultures of each. Such links would promote the communication of knowledge across the network through the interchange of research and teaching staff between the core and the periphery. This does not necessarily imply a two class system but rather a differentiated system; at the periphery work would be underway on highly localised and specific problems and at the core longer term and more complex research problems would be addressed. This latter activity would further the stock of knowledge for future research and the development of technical training programs as well as steer the application of new knowledge to deal with specific commercial and human problems.

There is little for Australia to gain as a nation if we are unable to manage the production of a technically competent workforce that is not trained to deal with sorts of technology we are producing (Hill, 1988). There may be much to gain, however, if we establish cooperative research strategies that distribute teaching and various components of research across a range of institutions and manage the flow of staff between them.

Conclusions: the ‘age of foolishness’ or ‘the age of wisdom’?

From our analysis of research cultures emerging at some of our newer universities it is clear that they are, in their initial development, depending on what we have called core and periphery research links. These research and development links rely on networks with academic research institutions as well as on networks developed with local commercial and policy innovators. Government and university strategies should be aimed at trying to enhance and maintain these links, rather than weakening them through unproductive competition.

The university system in Australia is now considerably more competitive and more widely dispersed throughout the country than it was a decade


ago. There is some evidence emerging that suggests the links between institutions will become increasingly competitive over time, as universities penetrate deeper into the market place. This is likely to increase not only competition between universities but also between universities and industry. The result could well be further diffusion and a general weakening of research concentrations within universities, industry and government research institutes. Such an outcome is likely to erode the unique and inherent strengths of each institution or ‘sector’.

An alternative outcome would be one that celebrates the diversity of knowledge and market potential. This would best be promoted through a strategy that celebrates the strengths of particular organisational and research cultures and seeks to link them to a national system rather than steer them toward competition and mutual emulation. Our research demonstrates so far that the most effective links with industry are created not by institutional and managed enterprise on the part of universities, but through informal personal relations. During interviews with major Australian industrialists we have been told that they experience universities as a culture of individualism - partly because of the present nature of career and teaching organisation - so institutional relations from industry are very difficult to maintain. The task ahead should be to nurture these links rather than allow them to degenerate into rigid boundaries between competing institutions.

A recent comment from Britain is that the most obvious casualties of the structural changes in higher education there will be the ‘isolated researcher with a bright idea’ (Bown, 1992, p. 20.). In our own evolving system we have the opportunity to build a truly unified national system if we can build bridges for such people to move between institutions and between sectors. Our research is showing that within the new U N S there are new pockets of research potential emerging, many of which are linked to more central ‘cores’ of research activity through personal networks. In many ways higher education in Australia is at a point where we can consolidate and build on the strengths of the broader system providing we are able to effectively manage links across the cultural boundaries. This is an urgent task if we are to truly move into the ‘age of wisdom’.

The critical mistake will be to turn universities ‘upon’ themselves and ‘upon’ industry. It is unlikely that there will be any long term ‘winners’ to emerge from such competition. Rather, it is more likely that such perverse competition will usher in an ‘age of foolishness’ and ‘a winter of despair’.


Notes

1. The Centre for Research Policy is a Special Research Centre of the Australian Research Council. It is located at the University of Wollongong and commenced operations at the start of 1991.

2. The universities were: La Trobe University; The University of Technology Sydney; the University of Western Sydney; the University of New South Wales; and Charles Sturt University.

3. The authors wish to acknowledge the cooperation and assistance provided by the management and academic staff at the case study universities. At each university we established a collaborative research contact. These contacts provided valuable advice and suggestions throughout the project and we acknowledge their contribution to the study and the findings we are reporting. We, however, take full responsibility for the content reported in this article. The contacts were: Professor Jock Collins at the University of Technology, Sydney; Professor Phil Price and Dr Len Parmer at Charles Sturt University; Dr Roger Wilkinson at La Trobe University; Professor Neil Baumgardt at the University of Western Sydney; and John Merson at the University of New South Wales.

4. The group were all male, which reflects the gender bias that existed in most of the science departments in the previous college sector.

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