Transform Volume 8 The Universities Accord: Where to now for Community Engagement?

Introduction

Engagement Australia (EA) is excited to announce the coming issue of Transform which was released in conjunction with the Engagement Australia Forum in September.

A word from Dr Matthew Pink (Deputy Chair, Engagement Australia and Editor Transform)

Earlier this year we saw the long-awaited release of the Universities Accord final report.

With much fanfare, we saw a commitment to massively expand participation in higher education in the coming years, with equity groups, including those from remote and regional areas being critical to the success of this ambition. We have already seen Jason Clare MP attack the low hanging fruit intended to drive participation forward, such as paid placements for nursing and education students and establishing regional and remote study centres. Of greater challenge, yet of critical importance, is the creation of a functional Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC) that will support some of the harder to implement and hopefully enduring changes to the sector as the fiscal, workforce, operational, and philosophical challenges are overcome to meet Australia’s future skills challenges and the social and economic well-being of the nation.

Much ink has been spilled on the Accord final report in totality, so in this editorial I wish to focus on one element specifically: the gulf between the promise for university-community engagement in the interim report, and the rhetoric of the final report. An academic paper’s worth of content on community engagement under “Serving our communities” (Department of Education, 2023, p.18) was featured in the interim report, and even quoted Engagement Australia’s position, “Beyond producing graduates and research, the purpose of the modern Australian university needs to be more explicitly connected to civic outcomes that advance Australian society and this should be intrinsically tied to the engaged teaching, research, and outreach functions of the university.”

We would like to thank the Melbourne Public Humanities Initiative, University of Melbourne for their generous sponsorship of this volume of Transform