One of the key issues we explored in the review was the question of the extent to which the courses taught in tertiary education were relevant to Australia’s social, economic, and cultural needs. We argued in the report that in many of the areas taught the courses did not adequately serve those needs: that the development of curricula appropriate to Australia’s needs was not always of paramount or even major concern in many institutions. Other goals were frequently seen as more important – pursuing individual research goals, achieving international recognition. At the same time we found that the situation was complex and problems varied from discipline to discipline. We found, for instance, that the way history and literature departments were structured made them, in some institutions, almost battle grounds of competing interests in which Australianists too often lost out in a struggle for ascendancy. It was put to us in number of submissions that not enough Australian history and Australian literature was offered. Students were denied an adequate choice of Australian topics. Of all the submissions we received, more singled out the two areas of history and literature for criticism than any others. Those two subjects were said to be most likely to be dominated (in universities in particular) by a Europeanist perspective. It was not uncommon to find in those two areas attempts to keep the lid firmly down on the expansion of Australian studies. Here too, while the restraining factors are of great significance, the pressures for the development of Australian studies are also very strong. And there does appear to be a real shift taking place – with more Australian material being taught.

In those areas the fundamental problem does not seem to me to be a resource problem but a one of academic attitudes and departmental arrangements. Historians did not argue that they were prevented from reorienting their teaching towards Australian studies primarily because of an absence of texts or a scarcity of accessible published material, at least at tertiary level (though others talked about an absence of historical material in their disciplines or vocational study areas and there may be a case for the lack of appropriate historical resources at school level). The expansion of publishing in the Australian history area, in fact, has made it a much more interesting area in which to teach and much more attractive to students. In literature, however, it was argued that resource problems existed; that there were difficulties, for instance, in the provision of material, in the unpredictability of supply and in the size of print runs. The Committee’s report, Windows onto Worlds, drew attention to the improvement in the availability of Australian texts in the last decade but also commented on the need for scholarly editions, for better edited texts, and the shortage of critical and biographical studies of Australian writers. The lack of texts in the area of fugitive writing was also discussed – that is the more ephemeral work of significant writers which often remains hidden in library stacks. The report also looked at some problems with the buying policies of tertiary education libraries.

My feeling, in looking at these case studies which were done during the life of the Committee, is that the situation I have been describing in literary studies is really only the tip of a very big iceberg. Beneath the surface is a much bigger and relatively undiagnosed resource problem: that is, the provision of appropriate Australian resource material and teaching texts for the non-humanities areas – for science and technology, and for the whole range of vocational and professional study areas in which the majority of students in tertiary education are enrolled.

We found that in most areas of professional and vocational studies teachers were dependent on overseas material which was often inappropriate. Frequently they described themselves as having to translate this material in the classroom. The word ‘translate’ appears with such frequency in teachers’ descriptions of their classroom experience that we came to believe that what we were seeing was a common, though seldom fully articulated problem. It is a problem not articulated because, perhaps, teachers do not expect to do otherwise. They accept, as part of the natural order of things, that many of their teaching resources will be American or British books and that part of their role as teachers is to stand in front of the class and adapt them to make them less inappropriate.

In our report we argued that this situation could only be tolerated as long as institutions failed to put a high value on preparing students for Australian society and for work in the Australian workplace. That situation is changing. In an education context in which there is increasing pressure being placed on institutions to respond more quickly to social and economic needs, much more attention needs to be paid to the undergraduate curriculum and to the adequacy of teaching materials. What is striking about the present debate about producing a more relevant tertiary education is that two words are seldom mentioned – one is Australian and the other is curriculum. Both are key words, without which a relevant education cannot be produced.

It may seem obvious that a more relevant education must also be one that is more Australian – that is better suited to our needs. To ask why our tertiary system in the past has often been so remote from our social and economic needs is to raise questions about both the nature of our education institutions (particularly the universities) and their relationship with the community and with industry, and also about our history of importing educational models, resources, and personnel.

Universities in Britain and Australia have traditionally been somewhat removed from the communities in which they are located and which fund them. They have often looked to an international community of scholars rather than to their own local community or region. Australian universities, however, have had a double problem. They show many of the signs of colonial dependency as well. Both attributes combined make it less likely that they will be able to respond quickly to the new demands being made of them. Even so, those demands for a more relevant education are there. And that must mean – eventually – a curriculum that is more Australia-centred and which uses more Australia-grounded resources.

Our work suggests that in many teaching areas there are big gaps to be filled. In looking at professional and vocational areas we tried to examine whether students were being prepared for working in Australian society. We asked the following questions:

• whether students acquiring skills learnt about the social and economic context in which the skills would be used
• whether vocational training gives students a broader understanding of the meaning of their trade or profession, its practices and traditions, in the Australian environment
• whether what is distinctive about the Australian practice of a vocation or its setting is explored in teaching
• whether vocational studies, when embedded in an academic context, become overly abstract or keep a close relationship with the world of work.
• and whether the resources to develop teaching of this kind exist or are adequate.

In answering the last question we found that the resources for this kind of teaching were not, for the most part, available. There were stories from a number of areas which illustrated the problem. We saw, for instance, the classic quick fix in management education in which British material was ‘adapted’ for Australian use with minimal change – little more than the translation from dollars to pounds and the addition of references to the Australian arbitration system. We saw the absence in the same field of case studies based on Australian experience. We noted the absence in areas such as welfare and childcare of Australian practice texts and the dependence on British and American material. In a Victorian study commissioned by the Committee, all social work educators interviewed agreed that there was a virtual absence in all practice areas of Australian texts. While teachers ‘translated’ overseas material there were considerable fears that students’ dependence on this material led them to assume parallels where they did not exist. The different values in American early childhood education materials were said to encourage ‘aggressive competitiveness’ in students and to run counter to the intentions of Australian educators. Yet Australian texts were not available. Teachers were said to be ‘desperate’ for Australian material.

Part of the work of C.R.A.S.T.E. was to create an environment in which educators ceased to be satisfied with these inadequacies and stopped thinking that it was a fact of life that they should work with inappropriate, imported texts. Instead, we encouraged people to become aware of these problems and to begin to develop and to share Australian material.

In the last year of our existence additional funds allowed us to develop a number of projects directed towards creating new Australian curricula and teaching materials, as well as raising the awareness of educators in particular subject areas of the need for such resources. In the process we learnt a lot more about resource needs in a number of areas.

We found, for instance, that it could be useful not only to support the development of a book in a key area (or a video) but that the creation of the resource itself could also involve the development of a bigger market for the text, increasing the viability of the project. A Monash law text, designed to educate students about the needs of the Aboriginal and migrant community, was produced with some assistance from the Committee. One thing we were able to do was to publicize the project and enable it to travel so that, by the time it was produced, it had an assured market, and a number of law faculties had some input into it. Similarly in other areas our role was to develop a network of potential users for a resource, people committed to the project sometimes drawn from a professional association. In fact, we found it was very useful to produce resources in association with a professional body – such as the Maths Teachers, the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, the Master Hairdressers.

This is not the world of the single author/academic pursuing an individual publication with an individual publisher. It is more organized, more cooperative, less hit-and-miss, and it enables projects to be developed which are to be targeted towards a real educational goal – that is, towards redirecting the teaching within a discipline or a profession. It is based on the idea that a good book can shift teaching into a new direction, and that academics will follow a new direction if they know about it and if the resources are available.

I would like to make it clear that this resource problem which I have been talking about is not only a publishing problem. It is much more complex than that. It arises from the fragmented and autonomous nature of tertiary education; the lack of shared knowledge and information about what is taught, of what resources are available; from the lack of discussion about teaching which takes place within some disciplines. Professor John Hay’s paper on introducing Australian studies at tertiary level, commissioned by C.R.A.S.T.E., showed how little communication between academics existed in these areas. The problem of the provision of resources in Australian studies is also about the size of the market and the conception of the size of the market. The question of the absence of rewards and incentives for academics is also central. Few tertiary institutions in Australia value or reward sufficiently either teaching or the production of teaching material. Promotions do not come by this path.

We have argued that there is a pressing need at present to tackle all these problems if we are to create curricula appropriate to Australia’s needs.

We believe that, from the responses to our report, there is a growing pressure within tertiary institutions for a more Australia-centred curriculum and for more teaching about Australia across the disciplines. We believe, too (although this has not yet been fully articulated), that it will not be possible to achieve the goals of the Green Paper in Higher Education without a reorientation of tertiary teaching at undergraduate level, and that will require new Australian-based curricula and teaching resources. This, in turn, will require tertiary institutions to revalue teaching and pay more attention within appointment and promotion procedures to teaching and curriculum development. We have also argued that the Commonwealth ought to play a greater role in curriculum development in higher education, that it should act as a catalyst, but not be a producer or a publisher in this area. This is one low-cost way of redirecting tertiary teaching without impinging on institutional or academic autonomy; it is a carrot rather than a stick. Without such a strategy there are few other ways of refocusing the curriculum. We were delighted to see the moves that Mr Dawkins has taken to ensure that the Curriculum Development Centre will in future be concerned with higher education as well as with schools.

Finally, I think that the development of better Australian resources for tertiary education will require more communication between publishers and educators. We need better information at a national level about what is being taught and where, about new directions and about resource needs. We proposed one strategy in our report for creating these links: a national centre for Australian studies which will undertake to establish a database, to prepare bibliographical material, survey subject areas, and liaise with publishers. The major question today is the question of how to establish a closer relationship between educators and publishers so that the resources for Australian studies across the curriculum can be produced. What strategies can we develop today to achieve this?