Money and power ruining Monash University's reputation

A lavish farewell for one of Monash University's highest-paid vice-chancellors has drawn criticism and tarnished the institution's reputation, writes Rosemary Sorensen.

THIS IS CERTAINLY not a good look for Monash University.

The university’s staff union, which has been pursuing wage theft claims through the courts, discovered via freedom of information that the cost of the party to say goodbye to vice-chancellor Margaret Gardner in July last year was $127,134.

Held at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), this was one of those events that (literally) caters for those with money and power.

In June, Gardner had been appointed Governor of Victoria by the Monarch of Australia, King Charles, and took up that role in August. Many fine dinners will now be part of her official duties as ‘steward of our democratic framework’.

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Possibly the final fling party at the NGV was a way of acknowledging this leap upwards for a career academic, noted for overseeing job cuts at her previous university, RMIT, and being publicly outed for illegally supporting the sacking of an academic on the false grounds of redundancy.

This was all way back in 2011, when Gardner, whose academic reputation was built on expertise in industrial relations and human resource management, was VC there. Now aged 70, she’s also had executive positions with Deakin in Victoria, and Griffith and QUT in Brisbane.

With this experience, and also the brilliance of her taking RMIT – a poisoned chalice in 2005, according to reports at the time – from basket case to profitability, Gardner is clearly much-admired by the Monash University governance folk, who signed off on her $1.3 million annual salary in 2022.

The university has, of course, defended this lavish send-off of their highly-paid VC; possibly the unveiling of a huge commissioned portrait during the festivities embarrassed some of the attendees, but probably not the woman herself.

The more distinguished one becomes, it seems, the less you need to take such niceties into account. But it would be interesting to ask Margaret Gardner if she thinks this event was, as they say, appropriate. (When you’re next invited to Government House...)

According to the accolades dished out at the dinner, Gardner was good at raising Monash’s global reputation. That’s why the woman who replaced her, Sharon Pickering, weighed in, along with other Group of Eight heavyweight universities, on the one proposal in the Universities Accord report that might sort of disadvantage those heavyweights.

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Pickering huffed:

“The proposed Higher Education Future Fund [HEFF] is a costly, complicated and cumbersome tax on our world-class universities.”

Her colleague from Sydney University, VC Mark Scott, also weighed in, this time in the Australian Financial Review, calling the HEFF proposal “bizarre”:

“This proposed levy on universities’ income sources will be rightly interpreted as a tax on international students and a tax on philanthropy. What an own goal.”

Love that touch of the vernacular. Just an ordinary, sporty bloke, is Scotty.

Now, where before have we heard something that is not a “tax” described as a “tax” in order to turn public opinion against it? Lesson learnt well, by the looks of it.

Australian National University’s VC, Genevieve Bell, skipped that presumptuous no-tax bit, merely saying:

‘All recommendations in the report present an opportunity to ensure Australia has the world-class university sector all Australians deserve.’

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As with so many parts of Australian society, it does appear that the fanciful notion we used to have of ourselves as egalitarian is increasingly harder to sustain. I’m a Monash alumnus and learnt way back a little lesson about how reputations are built and protected in small ways by the prestigious universities.

Back last century, Monash was wonderfully open-minded, with a radical reputation and exciting academics. When, after a year of trying to manage the travel out to Clayton (a problem, apparently, for the non-driving Margaret Gardner, solved with a chauffeur), I thought I’d swap to Melbourne Uni. I suspect that I also was influenced by the idea that Melbourne was a better, more prestigious uni.

I was told the six units I’d done in my first year at Monash would count for one unit at Melbourne. Take that, girlie.

Deciding that sitting through all that coursework once more wasn’t worth it, I stayed at Monash and am mighty glad I did.

I do wonder how I’d feel about the place now.

Rosemary Sorensen was a newspaper, books and arts journalist based in Melbourne, then Brisbane, before moving to regional Victoria, where she founded the Bendigo Writers Festival, which she directed for 13 years.