Debate needs to put a premium on the value of expertise because the public square has been overrun by “extremists and polemicists” in the post-truth era, the chairman of Universities Australia will say.
In a speech to the National Press Club on Wednesday, seen by Guardian Australia, Barney Glover will warn of a “creeping cynicism – even outright hostility – towards evidence and expertise”.
Glover cites the example of the British Conservative MP Michael Gove declaring after the Brexit vote that “the people of this country have had enough of experts”.
Glover will say that expertise is needed to solve problems as broad as curing cancer and preventable disease, navigating technological disruption, lifting living standards, overcoming prejudice and preventing catastrophic climate change.
Glover laments that phrases like “post-truth” politics and “alternative facts” – the latter coined by Donald Trump’s lieutenant Kellyanne Conway – have entered common usage and “agendas have displaced analysis in much of our public debate”.
Glover will say an emphasis on expertise “doesn’t discount the wisdom of the layperson”.
“And it doesn’t mean universities have all the answers,” he said. “Far from it.”
But universities are “unequivocally the best places to posit the questions” and perform an “essential function” standing up for evidence, facts and truth.
Universities also have a role fostering economic opportunity and social inclusion, Glover will say, in the face of growing alienation and disruption in the economy.
“Universities help us make the very best of disruption, ensuring we are able to ‘ride the wave’.”
This was particularly important in regions that have relied on blue-collar industries including Geelong, Mackay in central Queensland, Wollongong and Newcastle in New South Wales, the northern suburbs of Adelaide and Launceston.
“These communities have been wrenched economically, socially and at the personal level by automation, offshoring and rationalisation,” he will say. “For places like these, universities can be a lifeline.”
Glover praises the role of universities in fostering start-ups, citing a Universities Australia commissioned survey that found that four out of five start-up founders in Australia are university graduates.
“Many start-ups, too, have been nurtured into existence by a university incubator, accelerator, mentoring scheme or entrepreneurship course,” he will say. “There are more than 100 of these programs dispersed widely across the country, with many on regional campuses.”
He says the start-up sector raised $568m in 2016, up 73% on the previous year, and will have created more than 500,000 new jobs by the time today’s kindergarten students finish high school.
Glover will also discuss Universities Australia’s Indigenous strategy, which will be launched on Wednesday evening.
Glover notes Malcolm Turnbull’s comments while delivering the Closing the Gap report that there “is no gap” between tertiary-educated Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
“This statistic affirms something that most of us know instinctively,” he will say. “Education transforms lives. Australian universities now have 74% more Indigenous undergraduate students than in 2008.
“And yet while Indigenous people make up 2.7% of Australia’s working-age population, they account for only 1.6% of university students.”
The Universities Australia Indigenous strategy will set targets to maintain an Indigenous student growth rate that is at least 50% above the growth rate of non-Indigenous enrolments and ideally 100 % above.
Universities Australia will implement measures to ensure that, by 2025, Indigenous students achieve the same retention rates by field as domestic non-Indigenous students and achieve equal completion rates by 2028.
“These are ambitious targets and they may not be easy to achieve. But lack of ambition on this front is not an option.”
