Sowing Trust From Dodgy Seeds

1 Oct

Dodginess is a persistent accusation in higher education, often used to label everything from institutions to behaviors and people. Universities must move beyond their ivory towers, acknowledge their shortcomings, and strive to restore confidence by being open about their challenges and successes. Ultimately, trust in higher education is essential for its continued success and public good.

Summary

Dodginess is cheap to throw around. Whether it’s shonky providers, nefarious practices, or individual bad actors, the stench of dodginess abounds. We might not like it, but we can’t just wish it away.
The higher education sector needs to build trust. It has the means, through critical inquiry, data gathering and analysis, and telling its stories publicly. We can’t wait for dawn to bring the sunlight of disinfectant: we need to shine the light upon ourselves.
For trust to stick, we need to understand how communities view higher education and how perceptions have changed over time. Universities play different roles as participation has grown, and in changing societies. The old ways of building higher walls around our ivory towers to protect gownies from townies just won’t cut it.

Swerving the dodge

How is it that higher education is so often sprayed with the stink of words like ‘dodgy’, ‘shonky’ and ‘shoddy’, and what can be done to remedy the situation? While widely used, and always arousing, it is unclear what such terms mean or why they are used. Let’s unpack dodgy – theorise it even just a little – and promote a little salve. Importantly, let’s find a way to distinguish genuine bits of sleaze from stuff wrongly tarred.

Dodgy is purportedly everywhere, not just lurking in grimy corners. Allegations flow loudly from ministers and students to describe any and all kinds of things in higher education – institutions, teachers, policies, and even students. It’s also imputed, hidden between the lines of policy settings which cry smoke without pointing to the fire.

The loose use of lurid pejoratives serves no one well. The terms provoke defensive reactions in the sector which then potentially make a real problem worse. The attacks erode confidence in the higher education system as a whole and perpetuate the use of invectives without tying those terms directly to what’s going on in practice.

These things may not be illegal. They may not even be unethical. Usually, dodgy things are dishonest or dubious or poor quality and involve a breach of trust.

Pointing a crooked finger

As ‘dodgy’ lies in the eye of the beholder, it almost always points outward. Wherever you are in the system – student, graduate, academic, policymaker, community member – you see things differently. Aspersions can rest on perceived privilege and prestige – there’s usually somewhere more ‘elite’, or ‘elitist’, higher up a perceived pecking order, and of course there’s a ‘dodgy’ or ‘shonky’ ‘bottom-feeder’ lower down. Such adjectives are also used to construct and reinforce perceived hierarchies.

Let’s look at ‘dodgy’ through three lenses – providers, behaviours, and people.

Dodgy providers

There is lots of ‘dodgy’ being thrown in and around Australia at all kinds of higher education institutions. “Dodgy education providers targeted in shake-up of migration system” claims one TV news service. “Fraud and sex slaves: blitz on dodgy training colleges”, exclaims a newspaper headline. Showing that this alarm isn’t limited to sub-editors, a recent ministerial media release proclaimed the “Last call for dodgy providers in international education”.

A 2023 national survey from ANU found that only two thirds of people “have quite a lot or a great deal of confidence in universities”. Regardless of how things play out around international tuition regulation, media have repeatedly underlined a loss of confidence, trust and ‘social licence’.

Australia has no monopoly in this area, nor is it a new ‘professional’ field. A recent U.S. Gallup Poll concluded that “an increasing proportion of U.S. adults say they have little or no confidence in higher education”. In the 1980s there was interest from U.S. ‘degree mills’, such as the notorious Saint Regis University which sought to have itself legally recognised as an Australian university. Greenwich University on Norfolk Island was, for a brief moment, a real ridgy didge Australian university which took Senate scrutiny and direct ministerial intervention to close.

It’s easy to throw the ‘dodgy’ cloak on for-profit higher education providers, as if public institutions are immune from the pressures of the market which drive academically spurious commercial or competitive inclinations such as lowering entry and exit standards. The public bloodletting puddling around Australian higher education in 2024 has fingered many universities as having similarly ridden a visa train for pecuniary gain.

And then there is the seemingly unending stories of universities underpaying their casual staff. Wage theft seems squarely at the dogdy end of institutional practices.

Behavioural dodginess

Dodgy is always about ‘you’, never about ‘me’ or ‘us’. It pokes at things which lurk in the halflight, which you would prefer to keep out of sight, even in a boardroom or council cupboard behind the maraschino cherries. These things may not be illegal. They may not even be unethical. Usually, dodgy things are dishonest or dubious or poor quality and involve a breach of trust. Thrusting an accusing finger at something ‘dodgy’ demands only tiny and weak amounts of evidence, or even a hallucination. Dodgy usually conveys a feeling, and I can rationalise my feelings as a public right.

Perhaps, then, every part of higher education has the capacity for dodginess from time-to-time. Even ‘top-ranked’ universities! Is it that the dodgy behaviour manifests when sex pests are promoted rather than brought to justice? Or when research malpractice predominates as ‘publish or perish’ principles pervade professional practice? When is national discussion, or even sustained research, required around the topic of cohort diversity within a student body?

Politics and policies – governmental, institutional and interpersonal – can be dodgy. In many respects, there has never been a more important time to analyse, design, evaluate, critique, integrate, compare and innovate higher education policy. Fast policy invokes a swift need for imaginative reflection. Light policy demands counterbalancing shovel loads of intellectual backfilling. Comparative analysis is solvent for parochial policy.

Icky people

In a reputation-riddled world, though much is deployed to teflon coat even the most rancid personal conduct, there are surely plenty of interesting people.

Most recently, it is ‘international students’ who have shouldered the sludge. Labels have morphed to stamp these poor aspirants as ‘foreigners’. It is claimed they are stealing houses from citizens, as well as jobs and good social fabric, along with fairness, and even aspiration and opportunity.

Countries and provinces are labelled risky. Clearly characterising whole countries in such a way is offensive, even outrageous. It obviously lacks the true nuance that the world is diverse, and that the vast majority of people are trusting, honest and keen to learn. It is racist dog whistling at those who have come like everyone to a cosmopolitan country to enhance their lot.

Cases of individual misconduct crop up regularly. Complex turf, especially given the size and complexity of contemporary higher education and the nature of humans even in a sector which seeks to promote higher intellect and civilisation. But to make sweeping statements that people - because of their personal characteristics, because they are tarred with a particular behaviour, or associated with a type of institution - are lesser should be questioned every time the aspersions are cast.

Brewing ointment

Shadowy stuff surely exists in higher education. It does everywhere. We can’t simply wish dodginess away. What matters is first separating ‘genuine’ dodginess from lambast and confection and addressing genuine dodginess.

Having good quality information to hand about important matters is an important antivenom. Dodginess grows in a vacuum and flourishes by tangling with misinformation. This goes to the importance of capturing data. Denial is an enemy of such revelation, as are laziness and suppression. If large volumes of tertiary teaching are done by people employed on a casual basis, for instance, it makes sense to collect relevant data.

Having data is not enough, it is essential to support people who can authenticate and contextualise the information. It requires people who can curate seemingly disconnected data and put it into context. This always requires discretion and sometimes will require redaction and other forms of de-identification or censorship, but likely much less than has grown to be the case. What is being suggested is far from radical, it is the substrate of most academic research.

The next step is making such information available. Open data and public reporting has shrunk in Australia compared to many benchmark countries. Higher education institutions are social, regulated, and largely publicly funded. It matters that they are relevant and accessible to salient communities.

Universities should behave in ways which actively build trust, not wait for deficits to emerge or rely on reactive campaigns. Chasing commercial revenue may well have spurred the construction of commoditised credential corporations, the ‘academic supermarkets’ where we the approach to product is more Coles than Cambridge. We cannot let the imperative always to tell the positive story distract us from also telling the truth.

It is time to be more fallible and humble, and venture outside the corporate edifice into uncomfortable dialogues with community. No institution is beyond reproach, as so many scandals have revealed. It’s time for universities to talk more about how they strive and succeed and also fail, just like the every one of us.

Communities, nations, employers and learners should trust higher education. Clearly, not all do. Opening up about where things have faltered is baby steps towards making things right.

Building trust

Words like ‘dodgy’ waft a stink around higher education which is cheap, quick and sticky. That’s not fair in a sector which invests more time in ethics and integrity than almost any other, and which most people experience as a massive public good. But dodgy and virtuousness can’t be left to wallow in dodgy rhetoric. The sector cannot simply dismiss that which is thrown its way.

Communities, nations, employers and learners should trust higher education. Clearly, not all do. Opening up about where things have faltered is baby steps towards making things right. A laundry list around trust problems in higher education would go on forever, but surely building trust in a few areas will help. The public should trust teachers, qualifications, academic standards, institutions, regulators, governments and researchers.

Here’s what to do next:

Surface concerns about ethics and morality, identify underpinning dynamics, and spotlight any basic queasiness which people have about the sector. If people don’t know what research is, universities should respond to this. If families are concerned about the welfare of young adults, these should be addressed. Will spending several years at university lead to gainful employment? Let’s unpack the answer. All fair and reasonable.
Create, gather, analyse, publish and explain data. Make sense of it in ways that resonate with the audiences which matter. This goes well beyond marketing, to weaving deeper and more substantive stories. What are universities doing to make a difference?
Connect with communities and get these stories out there. No need for chest beating, slithering or censoring. A few dents and scratches is part of science and social life. Listen to how stories land in communities to understand how they landthrough a genuine desire to hear hard truths. Use that as a basis for authentic engagement and co-creation.

Much in higher education is very real and touchable, yet ultimately it relies on confidence to succeed. Confidence in financial markets is far more understood than confidence in higher education. Higher education has long rested on assumptions of greatness, rightful superiority, and arrogant splendour. Times have changed and so must universities.

There is much in higher education of which to be proud. We can celebrate the sector, and defend the position of higher education, but we also need to balance that pride with a humility which builds trust.

About

The Higher Good is a space in which interesting and impactful ideas are shared for the benefit of the Australian tertiary sector. It is all about public good. The space it fills sits between immediate news, which is well-served, and considered research on the sector which takes a longer view and which is also rarely timely. It is critical commentary with purpose.

The Higher Good explores a single topic from a range of perspectives recognising that few issues have a single answer. It draws on a diverse group of contributors – people who take pleasure in the exploration and communication of ideas which are both important and urgent.

The Higher Good aims to provoke, but not to court controversy for its own sake. It seeks to prompt reflection and reaction, debate and dissent.

Contributors

This collaborative article was written by Hamish Coates, Gwilym Croucher, Nadine Zacharias, Angel Calderon and Ant Bagshaw

Get in touch if you’d like to contribute to the dialogue and/or contribute to a future piece: info@thehighergood.net

Ant Bagshaw