Guest HASS column by Dr Alistair Harkness, Head of the Department of Social and Philosophical Inquiry and Co-Director of UNE’s Centre for Rural Criminology

There are oftentimes moments or events from childhood which, for whatever reason, have a degree of significance that remain firmly etched in our minds even decades later. One such moment for me was in 1984 when I was a Grade 4 student at Frankston Heights Primary School, in Melbourne’s outer south east.

On one sunny Spring morning as I was sitting in an old pink portable towards the back of the school, there was a commotion at the door. Navigating up the three steps into the portable was the Principal and Deputy Principal, struggling as they attempted valiantly to manoeuvre what appeared to be a box on a trolley, negotiating it up the stairs and opening the door. In they came, as Mrs McKay arranged us all in a circle on the floor. Into the centre of the circle the trolley was rolled, and we could now see more clearly the box upon the trolley, covered as it was with a sheet.

The Principal, with a flourish, removed the sheet. What lay underneath was an Apple Macintosh IIe computer. Colleagues of, shall we say, an older vintage may well recall such devices: DOS commands; green font on a black background; and with an estimated cost in 2022 money of around $11,000 AUD.

Indeed, such was the value of the machine that it was the first and last time any of us saw it: the school, perhaps wisely at the time, determined it was best kept away from small hands and big inquiring minds.

In 1990, my brother purchased the first computer in our home, an Amstrad 286. In 1993, my first year at university, we were introduced to the wonders and usefulness of the internet. When I re-entered academia in 2011, Facebook was just seven years old; Twitter but five; and nobody knew yet of TikTok and Snapchat.

There has been, without doubt, enormous and seismic technological change over the past few decades, where it has become ubiquitous in our lives. Technology has revolutionised the way we interact, bank and shop, and – in the higher education context – how we teach and research.

Yet, certain activities in higher education must continue and key principles must be retained: the importance of evidence-based scholarship of teaching; of cutting-edge research; of academic freedom; of the inter-weaving of research and teaching; of academic excellence. These things must remain high in our list of priorities even when other matters attempt to take precedence.

Against this backdrop, though, are significant other shifts – macro and micro; internal and external; individual and organisational. For instance, there are challenging financial constraints across the sector; a newish Federal Government with reformist aspirations; and significant competition from public and private institutions alike, competition which has markedly increased in the post-COVID era.

It is vital, I submit, that we pay acute attention to these challenging changing dynamics. But at the same time, we must resist getting sucked into the vortex of managerialism, of metrics alone, of algorithms. That is, we must constantly remind ourselves of our purpose: to create and share knowledge; develop critical thinkers; and engage with our various communities.

And notwithstanding changing technology-influenced socio-economic conditions, there exist scope to do these things – and others – innovatively and creatively. For instance, we can think about how to innovate in terms of modernised assessment design, explore team teaching opportunities, embed work integrated learning into existing units and courses. We can think creatively about course design and delivery through, for instance, undergraduate and postgraduate certificates and short courses which appeal to non-traditional cohorts of learners.  

In essence, there exists scope to do things differently, to do things better, to do things more strategically over the years ahead whilst maintaining our core principles.