Professor Bill Louden is Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor at The University of WA and is presenting a keynote paper on Friday morning at the ATEM Student Services Centre Conference entitled ‘Social inclusion – student equity and diversity‘.  Prof. Louden was interviewed on the UWA campus by the conference liveblogger on 21th April 2009.

1.    Having been in the role of S-DVC for a number of months now, have you settled on a single description of what the job involves?

No but clearly from the University’s perspective, the single most important project I’m working on is the Course Structures Review and where we’re going to go with two-phase courses.

2.    With a number of ‘big issues’ on the education agenda, what is it that you are particularly looking forward to tackling?

In regard to changes to course structures it’s clear to me that creating global citizens can’t initially be done with early vocational specialisation which is the Australian tradition, that people make early choices at 15 about whether they’re an Arts or Science person and at 17 about whether they want to be a doctor or a lawyer or an architect or an engineer.  That serves us well in the narrow sense of ‘is there a dentist we can rely on?’ but what about kids who weren’t ready to decide to be dentists at 17?  Take engineering as an example – successful engineers are frequently managers of other engineers by the time they’re 30, so we need to make sure that engineers that we graduate take away more than their technical skills.  What our students have done with this problem is that more than half of them take combined degrees which is half-way solution because it means they can put together a portfolio of commerce and engineering (for example) but I think what the University community has decided is that we’re going to get these students to use the first three years of the degree to broaden their education and then to make conscious decisions later on.  I mean, we expect people to know if they are interested in the humanities or the sciences but it might be possible for people to have a university experience before they decide to take their interest in design into architecture or landscape architecture or engineering.  So that’s what I’m most excited about – we’ve got to contribute to a generation of people who can cope in this globalised environment where educational qualifications are an important entry price to the global economy.

3.    Your career involves an expansive and impressive record in education and has taken you to many different places but from your work and study background it might appear that you’re a true fan of Western Australia – what is it that makes living in WA and working in WA Education so appealing?

I’m one of those unusual West Australians whose family has been here for a fair while.  Many people in WA were not born here or in Australia but my family came here in the very early 1800s after a ‘misunderstanding’ involving some coins or banknotes which may possibly have been counterfeit so the rudiments of my family have been in Australia for a couple of hundred years.  Later branches of the family came here as part of the gold rush 100 years ago and we’re a WA family.  My brothers and sisters are still here and my parents are both alive and live here too.

a.    And does your family have a history of being involved in education?

My father taught me maths actually!  He was a senor education bureaucrat, my mum was head of an independent junior school, my sister is a science teacher and my brother has just finished teacher education at the age of 40-something after a having a successful career in another field.  So yes – it’s a bit of a family business.

4.    You’re presenting the keynote on Friday morning on the topic of ‘social inclusion’ – can you give us a hint as to what messages and themes delegates can expect to hear?

I want to talk a bit about the Australian government’s objectives in trying to increase participation rates in Higher Education and to increase the rate particularly in groups that have been excluded or have chosen not to participate.  The spin I bring to that is that we (UWA) are a particular type of institution so I want to talk about the broad value of those equity and access goals and how they get played out at an institution that is relatively selective on academic terms.  These goals might be a bit different for us than it is for other institutions – that is not to say that our mission is any more important than anyone else’s, but ours is slightly different because of our history and courses we have.  So I want to talk about the ways in which we have managed our obligation to broaden access.  For example, we’re not widely known for it but we’re very proud of the number of indigenous doctors and lawyer that have graduated from this institution.  The way we do that is that we pay a lot of attention to selection and preparation of students and we admit them to preparatory programs until we’re confident they will flourish in a cohort of peers that have been selected via more traditional means.  The result of that is that we’ve had tremendous success in graduating medical practitioners and lawyers who are indigenous.  But we can’t do that in volume.  So how do you make a contribution to Australia’s overall goals of access and equity in an institution like ours?

5.    What does the conference theme of ‘changing expectations’ mean to you?

The big change in expectations is the Australian government’s commitment through what they’re calling the ‘education revolution’ to dramatically increase participation in higher ed.  So that’s what I’ll be talking about – how do we deal with that? How do we get 40% of the population into Higher Ed? How will Higher Ed change when you have that level of participation?  Particularly in WA where we have one of the lowest participation rates in higher ed for various reasons.  What I hope to bring to that conversation about access and equity is lots of thinking about the school context. I’m acutely aware of the sources of education inequality and how early they need to be remedied if an institution like this is to make the commitment it needs to make.  This story doesn’t begin at our doors and I’ll be talking about the impact that already exists in the homes and lives of young children.