Reforming distance education through economic rationalism: A critical analysis of reforms to Australian higher education

© 1996 Terry Evans and Daryl Nation; individual chapters and their contributors. From the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s distance education in Australian higher education has been changing rapidly. In 1987 distance education came under increasingly severe scrutiny by the government, as part of a general attempt to reform higher education. Following unfavourable economic comparisons with the operation of competitive markets, politicians argued that higher education was not contributing fully to economic development. More precisely the Hawke Labor Government in Australia, acting in harmony with the New Right elsewhere (such as Thatcher's Conservative Government in the UK and Reagan's Republican administration in the USA), argued that there was an 'overload' of demand for taxpayers' money to support free higher education and there was considerable inefficiency within the higher education sector. Despite the transparency of the political economic rationalist agenda, the government attack led to the restructuring of not only the total higher education system, but also the distance education provision within the system. Therefore, it seems to me a worthwhile task to attempt a critical analysis of Australian government policy and its effects on distance education from the second half of the 1980s. In broad terms the critical analysis will focus on higher education policies of the Australian Commonwealth Government, drawing on some policy development parallels in overseas countries.