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The words we use and the things we do: an examination of the discourse of international Policy and strategy in Australia

Karel ReusManager International Cooperation

Monash University

The Australian International Education Conference 2005

13th October, 11:00-12:00

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or

The lady doth protest too much, methinksHamlet, Act 3 scene 2

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About this presentation• This presentation is about Australian universities’ strategic plans.

• Available plans from around half of the universities were read and analysed

• The presentation is supported by a toolkit handout

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The structure of strategic plans• Normally:

– Mission– Values– Goals

• Supported by other plans increasing in specificity– Faculty– Academic– IT– Quality– Teaching– Learning– Etc.

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Who writes them?• Normally someone “at the top”, with the aid of committees and

panels

• Followed by “wide-ranging” consultation

• Approved by senates or boards

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Who reads them?• The author(s)

• Approving bodies

• Then (less certain)– Staff?– Administrators?– Other universities?– Visitors?– Students?

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What use are they?• To legitimate other plans

• To legitimate actions (past and present)

• To prevent actions

• For PR and promotion purposes

• For branding

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What are they not used for?• Promoting research

• Enhancing teaching and learning

• Enhancing partnerships

• Earning money

• Enhancing the reputation of individual researchers and teachers

• Making life easier for “the lower orders”

• Attracting students

• Comparing universities

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Looking at the plans

Caffeine helps!

Remember that they are not actually meant to be read, and certainly not in detail or in bulk

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Dilbert Random Mission Statement generator

http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/games/career/bin/ms.cgi

• It is our business to proactively engineer timely paradigms as well as to completely initiate progressive content in order to solve business problems

• We exist to seamlessly customize excellent intellectual capital to allow us to efficiently coordinate emerging deliverables to meet our customer's needs

• Our mission is to competently network cost effective information

• We strive to completely create enterprise-wide infrastructures such that we may continue to assertively leverage other's competitiveopportunities to stay competitive in tomorrow's world

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Tomorrow the world…(1)• To be an Australian leader in research and teaching of excellence,

unequalled in the positive impact our university has on the lives of our students, staff and alumni as well as the local, national and international community.

• The XXX University … leads the country in maintaining the best of time-honoured university traditions and demonstrates its leadership by the innovation and quality of its research and teaching. It measures its achievements by international standards and aspiresto have these recognised throughout the world as the criterion by which Australian higher education is judged.

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Life, the universe and everything…

• To be a University of international standing and outlook, achieving excellence through scholarship, teaching, learning, research andservice to its regional, national and international communities,beginning with the people of [region]

• XXX University seeks to improve the human condition by advancingknowledge and fostering creativity. It does so through research and education and a commitment to social justice, human rights and asustainable environment.

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The incomprehensible…• We will strengthen our essence as a university while operating

successfully in an increasingly commercial and competitive world.

• …an anglophone university shaped by a rich western institutional heritage yet thoroughly at home, intellectually and culturally, in the east Asian hemisphere.

• XXX University will be enterprising in the achievement of its mission. We will capitalise on our intellectual property and diversify our income base through commercially oriented research and innovation in the design and delivery of educational services.

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The puzzling…• XXX University will be recognised, both nationally and

internationally, for its imaginative and dynamic approaches to practice oriented higher education. We will adopt a broad and holistic concept of learning, one that fuses the intellectual rigour of disciplinary knowledge with the ideas and concepts produced during the course of professional practice and community service. We will be valued for shaping the educational foundations of existing and emerging fields of practice and for integrating knowledge acrossdisciplines to provide real-world education applicable to the complex workplace and community of the 21st century.

• Our alumni and other practising professionals will applaud our commitment to flexible ‘whole of career’ learning and development services and will turn to XXX University at every career milestone.

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The blindingly obvious…The XXX community is united by a commitment to scholarship that embraces teaching and research as complementary and inter-linked. Through productive partnerships, the University strives for excellence in: – teaching and learning, developing graduates as lifelong learners

who make a positive contribution to society,– research and development, resulting in creative solutions to

significant problems. – By 2025 we will be one of the best universities in the world,

distinctive because our research-intensive, international focus enables us to address important theoretical and practical challenges, and develop graduates who will wish to do the same.

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Bull Index

http://www.fightthebull.com/bullfighter.asp

The Bull Composite includes the Bull Index and the Flesch Reading Ease indices. The Bull Index counts the frequency and severity of jargon, while Flesch focuses on sentence length and syllable count.

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Bull scoreUniversity AComposite bull score 3.2 out of 10

Diagnosis: You overwhelmingly embrace obfuscation and don't wantthe reader to understand anything you have to say. Your writing lavishes a preponderance of dependent clauses and compound negatives upon the reader, whose cognitive load not infrequentlyexceeds the purported benefit of the substance of the article.

Syntax incorporates numerous collections of items juxtaposed or in series that demand persistence and not a little unqualified expertise on the part of all intended recipients of the author's communications. In fact, such machinations inevitably prove detrimental to comprehension and sabotage the imparting of any and all knowledge. Your condition is irreversible.

(and more than half of the universities sampled had around this score)

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Bull scoreUniversity BComposite bull score 4.5 out of 10

Diagnosis: You like to hear yourself write. Despairing of the thought of bringing a sentence to a close with something as demeaningly ordinary as a simple period, you shower readers with gratuitous,interminable and often weighty if not impossibly labyrinthine prose. Meaning lingers, albeit awash in a thick tide of metaphor and exposition that threatens to drown the writer's message. Seek help.

( a few of the sampled universities had around this score)

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Bull scoreUniversity CComposite bull score 7.4 out of 10

Diagnosis: Teetering on the edge of unclear. The overall meaningremains discernible, but it becomes possible to lose oneself in corollary thoughts, which may be worth exploration, but which can also detract from the core point of the written article.

(only one university managed a score better than 5.5)

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Most used substantive words in mission/vision statements

2.23%9national2.23%9knowledge2.48%10practice2.73%11education2.73%11Australia/Australian2.98%12programs3.23%13teaching3.23%13staff

3.47%14social4.71%19learning6.45%26international6.70%27community/communities6.95%28students8.44%34research

10.92%44university

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Core activity references in Mission/Vision statements

0.3194Academic

0.3206Learn

0.4219Teach

0.7395International

1.2735Research

PercentageWord countReference to

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Basic rules for the generation of an Australian university strategic plan (1)• Assert that you are the best, or want to be.

• Include sections on:– Mission– Values– Goals

Don’t be too worried if you can’t tell the difference

• Use the following words as often as possible:– Research– International– Global– Quality– Excellence

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Basic rules for the generation of an Australian university strategic plan (2)• Mention, but do not over-stress:

– Academic– Teaching– Learning

• Do not mention:– Money– Other universities– Previous plans

• Do not make clear:– Who is expected to read it– Who needs to read it– Who might want to read it– How it is to be used– Where it will be kept– Who carries the responsibility for evaluation

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The Magna Carta Universitatum (1)Fundamental principles

• The university is an autonomous institution at the heart of societies differently organized because of geography and historical heritage; it produces, examines, appraises and hands down culture by research and teaching. To meet the needs of the world around it, its research and teaching must be morally and intellectually independent of all political authority and economic power.

• Teaching and research in universities must be inseparable if their tuition is not to lag behind changing needs, the demands of society, and advances in scientific knowledge.

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The Magna Carta Universitatum (2)• Freedom in research and training is the fundamental principle of

university life, and governments and universities, each as far as in them lies, must ensure respect for this fundamental requirement.

• Rejecting intolerance and always open to dialogue, a university is an ideal meeting-ground for teachers capable of imparting their knowledge and well equipped to develop it by research and innovation and students entitled, able and willing to enrich their minds with that knowledge.

• A university is the trustee of the European humanist tradition; its constant care is to attain universal! knowledge to fuifil its vocation it transcends geographical and political! frontiers, and affirms the vital need for different cultures to know and influence each other.

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Thank youand

Don’t panic