Faculty of Education - Theses

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Type: Masters Coursework thesis × Subject: Bendigo × Subject: Education and state × Subject: Victoria ×

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    The politics of education at a provincial teachers' college : Bendigo 1968-1972
    Silverback, Ronald B ( 1981)
    The study is concerned with the attempts of Bendigo Teachers' College to gain autonomy and resist pressures for amalgamation with the Bendigo Institute of Technology. It examines the efforts of a small academic community in a provincial city to influence the future of their institution by resisting the policy of rationalisation of resources. It thus was necessary to look at developments in tertiary education in Victoria in the wider context and briefly examine the role of the Commonwealth Government as it attempted to rationalise and direct the tertiary sector through the allocation of resources. The attitude of the Federal Government influenced educational policy at the state level and it became apparent that the State Government in turn brought pressure to bear on education authorities. State teachers' colleges had always been under the direct control of the Education Department and they were discouraged from taking any initiatives that could be construed as being at variance with Departmental policy. Bendigo Teachers' College attempted and succeeded in initiating political action on its own behalf rather than rely on the Department to support it against pressures to become part of the Institute. It was a new role for the staff of the Teachers' College for they were all employees of the Education Department and were a nominally conservative group in a conservative tradition directed institution not accustomed to taking direct political action. They were influenced by the Principal of the College who either led or supported their efforts to convince the community of the merits of their case for remaining independent. It has thus been necessary to examine the role that the Principal and individual staff members played through the media in interaction with representatives of, the Education Department, the Bendigo Institute of Technology, the Victoria Institute of Colleges and the Minister of Education. The College saw that its best chance of resisting amalgamation lay in its ability to expand physically while broadening the scope of the courses it offered. To do so it needed to become an autonomous institution and thus it equated autonomy with survival as it adopted a defensive position against those institutional and community interests who would force amalgamation upon it. A complicating factor was the uncertainty of the location of the Fourth University, which, to the Bendigo community, was of paramount importance. Bendigo desired the University, the Institute wanted amalgamation and the College sought autonomy. The reconciliation of conflict between divergent and potentially conflicting interests was eventually partially resolved in the short term.