Brass in Pocket

I'm special, (special), so special, (special), I gotta have some of your, special consideration, give it to me

I have been thinking a lot about special consideration lately. It’s a pervasive feature of Australian higher education and plays out in many ways. Students, prospective students, staff, researchers, institutions, and networks of institutions all invoke the need to amend the usual rules of engagement to ensure their specific circumstances can be taken into account through some form of differential treatment. This pervasiveness leads me to regularly pose the question:

“What is so ‘special’ about special consideration?”

Whilst exploring this question I’ve been listening to The Pretenders classic, Brass in Pocket. Multiple references to ‘special’ in the chorus make it an apt soundtrack. The song’s title also allows for an exploration of the relationship between money and special consideration. Counterintuitively, differential treatment via special consideration processes is more likely if you have more brass in your pocket.

Read on if you are looking for reet petite, restrained emotion, Detroit leanin’, new skank, and inventive imagination. If none of that makes any sense, this piece explores the back story of the track, and by all means listen to the song whilst you read along.

Multi-level Governance and Special Consideration

This might seem like a strange place to start, but I’m anchoring special consideration in a macro policy framework. Multi-level governance is as it implies, is a framework for considering the how policy making and implementation systems are spread across multiple levels. Universities are quasi-sovereign organisations with self-accrediting authority that allows them to make their own rules. Australian universities are nested within a federated system that sees them intersect and engage with local, state and Commonwealth governments. In many cases, transnational education and international research partnerships see universities intersecting with overseas regulatory requirements.

Whilst there are multiple levels of governance, some levels are more important than others. Since the early 1970s when state constitutional responsibilities for higher education were referred, the Commonwealth now exerts primary (but not exclusive) regulatory and financing influence over the sector. Since the 1980s, when Australia pivoted to a full fee model for overseas students, the Commonwealth has also gained additional influence by regulating migration policy and education services for overseas students.

The concentration of the Commonwealth’s influence over the sector within a multi-level governance framework has benefits and weaknesses. Coherent coordination is more possible than the alternative of diffuse and varied involvement of governments.

Concentrating power with a single minister, or Canberra based Department of education are two of the downsides. The minister of the day is not always as reliably focused on system interests as one (or I) might normatively define them to be. Localised needs are not always visible to, nor accommodated by one size fits all central policy. This is part of the reason why I (unsuccessfully) argued for a deliberate power sharing structure that bolstered the role of the states in partnership with the Commonwealth in my personal submission to the Accord consultation.

The concentration of Commonwealth power does however make for a convenient focal point for system level requests for ‘special consideration’. Universities Australia is a self-proclaimed advocacy organisation seeking favourable policy treatment for member universities. Its awkward cousin, Independent Higher Education Australia, seeks favourable treatment for its members, independent higher education providers. The extended family of UA’s second cousin is the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia which includes a more eclectic range of higher education providers and Registered Training Organisations. The list could go on and on, IRU, RUN, ATN, ACOLA, TDA, etc. All are seeking differential treatment in policy, in my view, a form of special consideration. They might prefer to call it policy advocacy, or lobbying. Sabatier would define them as advocacy coalitions, but that is another story.

At a more granular level special consideration plays out at every step of the student journey that includes

• Institutional policy - a recent book chapter analysed patterns of assessment policy and provision for inclusion via special consideration across Victorian universities

• Policies shaped by networks of institutions - with tertiary admissions centres operating largely as a neutral arbiter of admissions for universities, generally setting rules that are negotiated across state groupings of universities. The rise of contextual admissions (i.e. special consideration in admissions) was well described in research that I was involved in.

• Policies relevant to school education, but attuned largely to perceived needs of the university sector. The Age recently published the rise of special arrangements in VCE exams, and shows just how hard-wired special consideration is within education systems. It is also an additional proof point that more brass is associated with social, cultural, and economic capital that enables disadvantage to be validated (e.g. diagnosis of specific health condition or disability) and to support navigation and utilisation of bureaucratic systems that enable disadvantage to be legitimised and validated. This plays out in education (as in The Age article above) but also in access to medical and mental health services.

So, special consideration is everywhere, macro policy to micro individual adjustments, so let’s see how some of this is playing out in contemporary policy, before we explore what might be a better approach.

Tough lessons

The last few years in Australian higher education have been unusual. At a system level, and for most universities, the macro financing trend has been one of perpetual growth. Even when one revenue stream has contracted, there has been an expansion in another that has offset potential losses. Demand driven funding inoculated the broader sector and most universities from a slump in international student enrolments around 2010. A cap on domestic student places from 2017 coincided with continued growth of international enrolments. Almost everyone was happy. Then COVID hit, and for the first time in my multi-decade higher education career, things went backwards, almost everywhere, all at once.

Firstly international enrolments declined with COVID border closures. The much vaunted post-pandemic-recovery coincided with soft domestic demand in a hot economy. International demand has been curtailed as the policy issue of migration was betrothed to higher education in a forced marriage that most in the sector are trying to annul. This is a rare double whammy with significant repercussions.

Some commentators are particular pleased with this outcome… ‘cry me a river’ they proclaim, glad that the cultural Marxists they believe to have taken over the sector are being taught a tough lesson. I read variations of this critique again and again.

The caps on international students will take out hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue from the sector, and some individual institutions. The bigger the international revenue line in the budget, the bigger the potential fall.

I recall chatting with staff member from a university with pockets full of brass pre-pandemic who made the point that there were risks to over reliance on overseas income. They invoked a character from The Meaning of Life. Each additional student akin to an after-dinner mint that might at some point contribute to indigestion, but was impossible to resist. Many universities with brass laden pockets have been scoffing veritable cartons of after-dinner mints over the last decade as the proportion of international revenue went from minority to majority share of teaching revenue. The rumbling of their stomachs you may be able to hear is going to cause much pain, and may have collateral damage for the broader sector and economy. If the proposed new ministerial powers are used to cap international enrolments aggressively it’ll be a very tough lesson indeed.

The caps are not even in place yet but the impacts of the COVID era redundancies are coming through in international rankings data. A lost decade beckons. The universities with the most brass in their pocket are the ones hit hardest by this, and are also the ones also invoking the need for extra special special consideration. The latest THES rankings are the ‘canary in the coal mine’ they claim. It’s not just the rich folk, with those with holes in their pockets also opposing the caps strongly.

Some of the broader sectors claims for special consideration are paying off. The Commonwealth has announced that the twice yearly assessment of visa processing evidence levels will be paused, provisional on securing power to set caps via legislation currently before parliament. I suspect that a gradual slide in university rankings will see the caps fixation ease at some point, but I’m worried about the inevitable mess in the interim.

There is of course a convenient omission in suggesting there has been a forced marriage of migration and higher education policy. The two have been, in my mum’s vernacular, living in sin through a long term de facto relationship. Growth in international enrolments and revenue is in part based on the prospect of access to Australia’s labour market. Post-study work rights and skilled migration policies have been critical enablers of demand for international education. There have been many positives from this arrangement. Universities have been able to secure higher revenue per student, with the additional margin contributing to additional expenditure on research, buildings and facilities, and additional services for all students…. that includes …. special consideration.

Everyone is Special

The Cambridge dictionary defines special as something that is not ordinary or usual. Back in the 1990s, one academic was sounding the alarm bells about the disturbing trend that the out of the ordinary special consideration was becoming routine. It would be interesting to hear of what they’d make of contemporary rates of special consideration in school and beyond.

Over four in five applicants made an application for VTACs Special Entry and Access Scheme in 2022/22. Whilst this statistic was boosted by COVID related impacts, it is now unusual for applicants not to have submitted a SEAS application. This flows through to university study with increasing rates by which students disclose and seek disability related adjustments, and make applications for extensions and special consideration. Individual flexibility is the norm rather than exception.

This rise in requests for special consideration is legitimate. I wouldn’t want any reader to think I’m castigating those who need special treatment (be they big universities or students in crisis). It’s part of the system we have, and it’s important that we have mechanisms that allow for individuals and organisations to be and to operate at their best. What I’m not a fan of is the mechanisms we have in place that facilitate special consideration.

On a macro level my vision for the Accord was a structured dialogue between local, state and commonwealth actors to achieve a more responsive and effective system. One than gave equivalent legitimacy to community need X and Commonwealth priority Y. What it looks like we’ll have instead is a small panel of ATEC experts deciding on what is best for the sector in pursuit of the Commonwealth’s agenda of the day.

On a micro level we have almost every student making a claim for special treatment at point of entry and/or through their studies, with huge overheads costs for the individual, those that validate their needs, and institutions. These costs are growing given new regulatory requirements to bend over backwards to ensure students have every opportunity for special consideration. The new support for students requirements build on existing and longstanding requirements for support in the Higher Education Standards Framework but take things up a notch and run the risk that universities are fined for every student who was not given the appropriate amount of consideration and support. These overheads are incurred in a context of tight budgets given international student caps, making it a good time for institutions and their advocacy mechanisms to submit their own special consideration applications.

A (I) Better Way?

I find it hard to reconcile the use of the term special when the majority of students are getting some form of special consideration. One could just change the name, but that wouldn’t solve the underlying problem. Society has a way of stigmatising whatever the new signifier or brand might be. Various universities have done this with disability services. Rebranding to disAbility, or Ability, or Equitable, or Inclusion doesn’t take away the stigma of having to provide a certificate from one’s doctor or psychiatrist and disclose one’s non-ablebodiedness again and again and again. ‘Special Consideration’ has however proven to be very resilient as a term and concept, even in policies that are branded in more general flexible terminology.

I think there is a better way, and as technology advances with AI, I think the better way is less pie in the sky and plausibly achieveable.

The way we might do better is to give everyone special consideration, not just the tautologic abnormal majority. Everyone. And by giving everyone special consideration I mean that every student would be able to articulate their individual learning preferences and aspirations. Personalised learning at scale.

The ‘special’ would disappear as it is just what is done for one and all. The ‘consideration’ would disappear as learning needs and preferences would be automatically and adaptively integrated in learning design and delivery and support, rather than compensated for after the fact through a prosthetic model of support. The fetish for consistant application of and assessment against common standards would not disappear, but could be ameliorated. Rather than confront integrity issues where generative artificial intelligence can generate work arounds for students to demonstrate learning for almost any assessment task, the assessment would be set through an interplay of the students learning profile and vector of their learning outcome trajectory towards more appropriately defined standards.

There are elements of this model already in play. All Victorian secondary students who fit relevant criteria must have or are encouraged to have an individual learning plan. More and more schools are generating learner profiles. In some universities there are choose your own learning path (and grade) approaches within units/ modules /subjects within a pre-set menu of learning options. Students with disability are routinely provided with a plan that enables their specific needs to be accommodated. There is work underway in the broader sector to support skills passports with advanced recognition of prior leaning for credit transfer.

All that is missing is some brass being allocated to those with vision and capacity to develop systems that might integrate these pieces together in a coherent integrated student, curriculum and learning management system. In the past this would have been a multi-million dollar project with risks of turning into an ultranet like failure.

However thanks to the wonders of large language models and iterative refinement of a conceptual model grounded in historical context and evolution of disability inclusion across over a century I have been able to develop a prototype that looks a little like this:

It’s not perfect but I trust readers will give me special consideration on this one as I’m just an accessible quality guy and not a computer programmer.