Dialogue: Our choices made by a central committee

My daughter is doing a law degree. An Associate Minister of Education, Steve Maharey, thinks that is not a good idea. We are, he says, producing too many lawyers and accountants, not enough scientists and technicians.

As far as I can tell, she cares not a whit what Mr Maharey thinks of her decision, nor I imagine do her hundreds of classmates, nor the legions of her contemporaries studying business.

I wouldn't care either, except that this man has been given charge of tertiary education, training and employment and this week he issued a report that urges him to set up a central committee to decide our most crucial investments in people.

Nothing illustrates the perils of that suggestion better than this silly commonplace about too many lawyers and accountants. It is just conversation. You wouldn't expect a minister to take it seriously.

Bear with me while I explain the obvious. Mr Maharey may not think much of markets but they are self-correcting for people such as lawyers and accountants who generally work for themselves or in partnerships. Those who cannot find clients do not long remain lawyers or accountants.

The example illustrates something more important that I'm sure Mr Maharey knows. Many of those who study the likes of law or accounting are not particularly anxious to enter those professions. They simply want to know how the world works, the most precious knowledge of all.

All university courses are ultimately about that. People choose the course of study that, for them, offers the best key to understanding people, the world, life. That is what "university" means.

And it should never be assumed that courses chosen for that reason are of little or no practical economic value. Inquisitive people who work out how things happen are a potent source of wealth for themselves and the country at large.

It is interesting to talk about apparent gaps in the labour market but when it comes to making personal decisions, much more reliable considerations come into the equation. If Mr Maharey doubts that, he should recall his own choices.

I don't remember the country ever crying out for more sociologists. And it has long been a mystery to my industry that people with no inside knowledge of it can become university lecturers in media studies.

But no doubt he made decisions that sprang from his interests and abilities and I imagine he believes that the work he did contributed something to the sum of human knowledge.

Right now we are running away with the idea that a "knowledge economy" means that public funds for tertiary education cannot be left to follow the decisions that students make for themselves.

There is nothing new about a "knowledge economy" (or society, as the present Government prefers). Knowledge and technology have been factors of production ever since somebody discovered what happened when two sticks were rubbed together.

But knowledge and technology are just two of many elements that contribute to growing wealth and neither is the most important of these.

Attitude is the most important. Call it culture if we are talking on a national scale.

We could channel most of our higher education and science resources into systems research, genomics or the next new thing, and it would not advance the national wealth whatsoever unless the attitude of students is enterprising. That is what makes the difference.

There is a danger that in the name of a knowledge economy money will be directed by a central committee into the very institutions that propagate the most destructive attitudes to the creation of wealth.

In any case, only a tiny proportion of any population is ever going to be scientists and technicians. The rest would be better off following their best instincts. And we will all be better off if public investment follows their decisions, for these days they have to make a considerable investment themselves.

Mr Maharey was employed in an era when universities didn't really have to worry whether their courses were value for money. Students were not conscious of the cost and even if a course struggled to attract more than a handful, it would not necessarily be cut from the curriculum.

Those were the days. No need to justify your salary in crude economic terms in those days. The taxpayers would pay. They didn't have much choice.

Not even the Government had much choice. The money was allocated by an autonomous body, the University Grants Committee, and any politician who dared to ask why we were paying for a diploma in Urdu was roundly condemned from the ramparts of academic independence.

That era ended with the rise of student fees. Once people were paying (or borrowing) several thousand dollars for a year's tuition in their chosen field, it would take a presumptuous politician to doubt its value.

Enter Mr Maharey. Fortunately he is not a man who gets things done. Last year, while the principal Minister of Education, Trevor Mallard, was abolishing schools' autonomy (bulk funding) and winding back competition with zoning regulations, Mr Maharey set up a committee.

It is led by Russell Marshall, the minister of education in the 1980s who abolished University Entrance with nothing to replace it and gave us the project that grew into the Qualifications Authority. The school examination system has still to find a way out of that muddle.

Universities have managed to resist the control of the Qualifications Authority. When they see the powers that Mr Marshall's committee proposed this week for a Tertiary Education Commission, they may again scramble to the ramparts of academic independence.

For the sake of our economic prospects, I hope so.