This text formed the basis of an article that appeared in The Australian on 10 October 2007
Focus on performance
There is always controversy when processes designed to reward performance are turned into rankings. The allocations and rankings from the Commonwealth 2008 Learning and Teaching Performance Fund have drawn the usual criticism from those who did not fare well in the analysis.
Institutions that took out full page advertisements touting their success in previous years now criticise the same fund when they have not done well.
You might expect support for the fund from an institution that ranked equal first in learning and teaching performance (the Australian National University, the University of Technology, Sydney, and Wollongong University topped a revised ranking table drawn up by HES commentator Gavin Moodie).
But my support for a performance-related fund of this type goes beyond this. To us at UTS, the LTPF has somewhat repaid the enormous investment we have made over the last few years.
We have invested heavily in student systems, in student support and retention schemes, especially among the disadvantaged; in a curriculum review and a commitment to a "UTS model" which involves an emphasis on work integration with industry and the professions in our teaching and learning programmes.
We have invested in enhancements to e-learning, students' experience of groupwork, assessment and feedback, and in communication skills. Correspondingly the main area of improved performance in this year's LTPF was student outcomes, where we were the only university to rank in the top 5 across all 4 categories.
Likewise, the University of Wollongong has invested in precisely the areas that support and improve teaching and learning outcomes. Take away the LTPF and you diminish the investment in these initiatives and the only losers would be our students.
An argument against this fund is the following: How can it provide an incentive to perform when there are such large shifts in the rankings each year? The answer is that with the exception of two cases, there was not a lot of movement in the last two years. The two exceptions are the University of Queensland and Macquarie University.
UQ suffered a decrease in 18 of the 28 categories, and Macquarie had decreases in 12 out of 21 categories. Whatever the reasons for this, if performance is not decided by hard evidence such as data, what can it be decided by?
Even had the data stayed the same, we are now in an environment where everybody else is lifting their performances, precisely because of the incentives this fund has given; staying the same is equivalent to going backwards. The LTPF has been in existence for three years and the methodology has been refined and improved each year. This year there were three changes to the methodology.
First, universities were not allowed to use so-called 'imputed' data where student survey responses are lacking. This gives much greater uniformity in the data and much greater data integrity; this alone would have changed the rankings. Second, there were changed fields of study, and disaggregated data within each cluster was used to give much greater meaning to the comparisons. Third, the adjustments made were on a reduced set of indicators (although the LTPF expert committee indicates that this did not affect the results in any way).
There is no doubt that each of these three is an improvement in this process. If the methodology is stabilised we can prevent erratic shifts in the future by use of moving averages, in much the same way as is done for the research block grant schemes.
The university sector has been working in the last few years to come up with adequate performance criteria for learning and teaching, and while the measures are not perfect no one has come up with a better system. To stop rewarding learning and teaching performance would send a very bad message to the sector, because then only research would be rewarded through performance funding.
This would substantially undervalue the teaching and learning environment, and disenfranchise 800,000 students who are owed the best that we can give them.
The debate over the LTPF has mimicked the debate over the research block funding schemes, where the sector has torn itself apart arguing over minutiae. Since these schemes represent less than 10% of government funding, it is time to stop arguing against performance funding and concentrate on performance. We then have a stronger base to convince our stakeholders to invest in us.
Indeed, in my view there is not enough funding driven by performance, and performance funding should be extended into other areas of university activity including regional and community engagement. If we are to have a first class university system in Australia, then substantial performance funding is a necessary, although not a sufficient, condition. We owe it to our students.
