Effective Lobbying for the Humanities
catharine coleborne | march 2023
“Over time, we have had to ask questions about curriculum, university structures, workforce and the political economy of HASS within universities, and we have wanted to give those insights more of a voice within the sector.”
- Professor Catharine Coleborne, speaking at the conference of the Australasia Council of Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (DASSH), September 2022.
Image by Aditya Joshi on Unsplash
In this blog, I use my past experience with DASSH to offer academic leaders some ideas about effective lobbying.
1. Show leadership
Speaking up on issues that affect the academic fields we each represent is important. Over the past few years, it was impossible to stay silent on issues affecting the arts, social sciences and humanities. It is why our organisational groups and associations exist, and what we must do. Between 2020 and 2022, the focus was on reminding our membership of our value and purpose. Our leadership on big issues, like the Tehan ‘reforms’ or ‘Job-ready graduates’ (JRG) package, was no small task. It was scary, risky, and sometimes pushed us outside our comfort zones, mostly because engaging with the previous government as we also held our roles inside institutions was potentially going to mark us out as ‘political agitators’. I recall trying to manage the politics – on the one hand, pointing to the seriously unfair fee increase of 113% for most ‘HASS’ subjects, and on the other hand, also noting that the overall impact of the fee structure would impact all university degrees and CGS funding. In my view, the debt burden passed to students is the most frightening educational policy we face as a nation. People talk about HECS offsetting these fee increases to students, but how can we allow such personal debt to grow, especially when we know how it looks in other settings like Britain and the United States? What does this mean for an accessible and inclusive university education?
2. Find your voice and tone
At the time of the JRG announcement, we did not want DASSH to look like the lone, predictable agitator. We did not want to alienate our own universities or VCs; and we did not want to look unsophisticated or lacking in nuance in our understandings of the changes. And I don’t think we did. However, I found myself asking when we became so timid. Is being ‘careful’ the way we need to behave in the present and future? What next – and what will happen later if we accept changes like this again? The way to do it was to find the right tone to engage on the data, what it might tell us, and how to speak about the impact of the fee changes. With the introduction of the JRG, I recall poring over the various interpretations of the fees, rates of funding per field of study, and the implications for current and future students. Helpful tables breaking down the new regime were circulating, including one shared by the Australian Technology Network of Universities (ATN). One option for humanities leaders in responding to this change was to be creative about degree structures: if we could exert influence in the institutions we represent. For example, new types of degrees could ensure students take a broad-based set of subjects, creating different models of university study.
Yet we also wanted to claim intrinsic value for our degrees. The hundreds of thousands of students across Australia - and more in Aotearoa/New Zealand - who study the arts, social sciences and humanities at university go on to have meaningful careers, hold a range of leadership roles, contribute to global industries and communities, and have a vital role to play in the development of a rich and diverse society. Such is the parlous narrative about the arts and social science degrees in some quarters that when a journalist queried my figures – hundreds of thousands of students across Australia – I saw her evident shock at the fact of it, the sheer reality of the interest in our areas and fields of study.
3. Collaborate with peers and find allies
Finding allies in the higher education sector sounds simple, doesn’t it. But it is surprisingly complicated. For organisations representing academic leaders like Deans, the Learned Academies are important allies but represent different ambitions, constituents, and concerns. Membership of the Academies is acknowledged as ‘elite’ and research focused, while many Deans are grappling with university budget realities that frustrate top researchers. Despite this, some of the most satisfying and productive relationships we were able to build was with the Academies of Humanities, Social Science, and Science, mostly because we agreed, however tacitly, that we wanted to achieve the same thing: greater visibility for research and education during a time of massive change and pressure on university researchers and educators. Meanwhile, working with other councils of Deans – of Science, of Environment, of Creative Arts – enabled a new collegiality to emerge and opened the door to some promising relationships and ideas. Senior leaders both inside and outside universities can also become allies. As the Australian Research Council started to respond to sector-wide challenges, the CEO also made contact to learn from us and garner views from the sector.
What I’d like to see is less competition between these various groups: it should be about cooperation and collaboration to find common ground, shared hopes for education and research for all of us and finding a way to work together on projects and ideas to challenge the status quo. It was not only HASS degrees, as we know, affected by these changes. On the face of it, at the time of the announcement, the worst fee hikes were visible to the humanities; other costs, such as reduced funding to flow with students in teacher education, for example, seemed more obscure, but no less impactful internally to university finances. Anecdotally, I had many STEM colleagues– in engineering, medicine, and the sciences - supporting our cause, shocked at the impact on HASS degrees.
4. Represent but also shape the views of stakeholders
Some of your stakeholders might ask you to take a stance that you think could be counter productive and result in reputational risk or damage the message you are trying to convey. Listening and finding a way to bring all ideas into the mix is important, but you need to think about the audience you’re trying to reach and the objective. One example of this is an idea that surfaced following institutional restructures: there was evidence that leaders in HASS fields were being passed over during appointment processes, with those from education, law or business gaining roles, reflective of the disciplinary mix in the bigger Colleges and Faculties emerging in many universities. My view was that making an argument about this is divisive and potentially made HASS look petulant, rather than focusing on the impact of policy shifts and changes that affected all of us and building bridges to colleagues in other fields. It is worth creating an agreed position on issues that supports or amplifies others in the sector, in part to avoid unintentional clashes or division. Creating a groundswell of similar views and ideas can be the most effective way to gain traction, effect change or be heard.
5. Find the best people, put them on the team, and be visible
When Dean or discipline organisations such as DASSH go through change – whether because of a change in leadership on the ground in different institutions, or because of internal governance changes in the organisation itself – we need to find the most positive and energetic people to lead and grow the next phase of the work and encourage them to nominate for election. I have always been aware of having the right ‘mix’ of institutional members at the executive table (from regional and small to large and metropolitan, for instance, as well as a good gender balance). During my presidency we were not able to realise the need for much better representation from Indigenous leaders, and greater diversity and inclusion is also vital to showing up on major sector-wide changes that affect our members. Our visibility, through better strategic engagement online, in person and through special events, was a focus for me during my time as President. It was crucial to find the skill and expertise of an excellent Executive Director with communication experience when the role became vacant. Digital presence and impact are imperative. Providing your community with resources, research data, evidence, opportunities to share ideas and examples of positive outcomes including contributions to consultations is critically important.
So how do you do all of this when you’re a Dean or Head of School? Stay informed, get involved, and find your community.
Professor Catharine Coleborne is an internationally recognised historian, prolific author and academic administrator. At the University of Newcastle, she led the implementation of the new School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences.
