This is Reimagining The Future of Higher Education from Studiosity. Your go-to podcast with remarkable education leaders, sharing personal stories from their experience in and around the sector, including reflection and evidence for progress in the sector. With your host, Professor Judyth Sachs, former DVC Learning and Teaching at the University of Sydney, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost Macquarie University and Special Advisor in Higher Education at KPMG and now Chief Academic Officer at Studiosity.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
Good to see you.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
And you
Professor Judyth Sachs:
welcome back.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
I know Iām just back on Friday. So just bright and perky from jetlag. But other than that.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
I really do appreciate that you've agreed to do this. You've done a lot of things and talked to a lot of people. I watched today a bit of the one that you did at Melbourne University, the Center for. And that was terrific. So in the light of a comment that you made: I'm wearing black.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
I will make a start.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
I'll start by acknowledgment of country and then I'll just give an introduction to you.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
Studiosity acknowledges the traditional Indigenous custodians of the land throughout Australia and all the lands where we work and recognises their continuing connection to land, borders and culture. We pay our respects to elders, past and present.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
Good afternoon, Jane. Thank you for making time to talk to us.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
Let me just give a brief overview of what I know about you. And we've known each other for a long time. When we were both deputy vice chancellors, you at Curtin and Macquarie, what people might not know about you is that you were born in Zambia and that you were educated at Wits University, and that you also did your Ph.D. at Cardiff, and you have been made a you've been given an honorary doctorate from Cardiff and also made an honorary fellow, I think, at Cardiff.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
So it's nice to have ones alma mater recognised. You've had quite a lot of experience as vice chancellors, probably more than you ever anticipated. But best known for the nine years you spent at Deakin, where you engaged in real transformative work and and reinvented the heart and soul of Deakin and really started to question what online learning and decent learning was about.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
And you know, Deakin is now back at the forefront of that. You had the unexpected invitation to be interim deputy vice, interim vice chancellor, two West Australian universities. And my understanding of what you did at West Australia was you did a quick clean up job in five months. And I was also delighted to hear when you were thinking, asked the question about who were people that you admired and that you mentioned the name Faye Gale.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
I think Faye Gale has been one of the most under acknowledged women leaders. Our country has ever had. And she, being the first woman vice chancellor of a place like you had a chance at UWA, would have been full of all sorts of challenges. And then of course you came in and were the interim vice chancellor at Murdoch as well.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
So you understand the West Australian situation. I also noticed that you are a board member of of Navitas and of course Navitas. Many of us have had relationships and partnerships with Navitas. You, you, you are a constant talker on the media, you are very visible and your wisdom and your experiences will be investigated in our podcast today.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
So as you know, I asked you to bring an object and being a contrarian, you brought two objects. So can you can you tell me what the two objects are and tell me the story behind them, in particular how they represent you as an educator and your life as as a senior educator and leader?
Professor Jane den Hollander:
Yes, so. So it all goes back to, you know, being first generation. You know, working class family. Mum and Dad both left the UK, Ireland. My father was Irish Catholic. My mother from Liverpool straight after the war in the early, early twenties. Neither of them passed the year of school where you can get out. And my mother failed her equivalent, whatever was A-levels.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
And so to her, you know, then they came to South Africa and the four of us, the four children, three girls and a boy we just ruthlessly educated. And my mother now is one of the most - was - she died two years ago. 97 [years old] was probably the most educated woman I know. Self-taught. Read widely. Taught herself Spanish. Never went to Spain, but taught herself Spanish.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
You know people say, oh, have you got a university degree? You know, education and university are not the same thing. Some people use that, you know? You, me, we went to university. You know, the lucky few and got educated and had a brilliant social life, brilliant professional life. Others just got educated. My mother never worked outside the home until after my father had died and then did a charity job doing all sorts of things for two charities.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
And you think and yet when you talk to her, you know, there was no aspect of English literature that she did not know about. And so education for me is a really vexed issue. It's not about universities. It's about curiosity, about your absolute steeliness to understand something and then to become expert. That's what education's about. And we were just lucky.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
We went to a highly social place where we could meet other men and women like ourselves and, you know - sex, drugs and rock and roll - is why we went to university. Education, fortunately, happened as well. And for some people, that's not the case. They didn't have any of the fun. They just got educated. And, you know, we've got to respect that and remember that.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
And I often think we don't we don't remember them as well as we should. Many of the clever people in this world did not have our privileges.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
And so the objects are?
Professor Jane den Hollander:
Here's my object. I'm just standing up, shared a room and put it in front of you. My mother bought this for me and it's reallyI'm really bad at this sort of thing, but here we goI have to lift it up. So it's it's the learner. And you see the learner. The book and the teacher and my mother bought this for me years ago when I just became a PDC.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
That's really, really heavy. Not expensive. But she was just so thrilled that I'd got to a level where I was going to inform education rather than just be educated as a kid. I was at Curtin then. It weighs a tonne. And then my children, when I became a vice chancellor, gave me this little disc thing that I'd put in the side of the computer, because that's how they remember me sitting in front of a computer screaming because my stupid little toggle wouldn't work.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
So it sits on here, and this has all the work I did at Deakin and all the work I did at Curtin. I just downloaded onto it. I'll never take it off. Sitting there.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
So this is - your life.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
A new life in my life has been spent either in the university, working in the university or talking about education.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
So you use the word curiosity. And one of the concerns that I've had over a number of years now is universities as they are organised and programs as they're delivered, really work against students being curious. What what are your thoughts on curiosity and how we can nurture curiosity in higher education?
Professor Jane den Hollander:
So, so if I were asked, what is the one thing that I'm disappointed about? It's the cost of higher education that for so many people, you know, I have a daughter in law staying with me at the moment who has a debt this big, and no money in the family, clever enough, got into dentistry, and she'll pay back that debt for years.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
Now she's a dentist, so she's going to pay it back in a number of years, but quicker. But you think of how many people have to work and work and work and study. Forget curiosity. 'What do I have to do to pass this unit - becomes the toss up - unless you know you're wealthy. And so that's the thing I find the most difficult about curiosity.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
Everyone, I think, has the capacity to be curious. Many of the students we meet that I meet now here in WAI mentor, three or four different people, all of whom wrestling with debt, time poor, should be educating themselves and then working. One young woman of Chinese extraction doing three jobs. Three jobs. While she puts itself through uni. And they're crappy jobs.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
These aren't jobs where you learn other than to be nice to people. You know, one's a cleaning job and I think she does fast food somewhere and you think how can you? So curiosity really matters. How can we, as the educators and voters get back to a system where you allow, enable people who wish to be educated, go to university, stay in school to be curious and to do things.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
My son's a schoolteacher. They have no time for curiosity. He has a list which he has to tick off to say, I've done these things with my year class. You know, he'd like to know at the moment he has been so much talk about what's been happening in America and the Brexit thing. He'd love to talk about Brexit with his history students and the implications of that for Europe.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
minutes, you know, because there's no time in the curriculum because he has to get these things done, because they have a year exam. So we are we have to be quite careful. Our generation who were curious, certainly, you know, I had a very blessed higher education because I basically wandered around where I wanted to be and did things I wanted.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I don't think the current generations are afforded that opportunity. I also worry that they no longer think about the opportunity of being curious and looking at things because they're in this trap and I've got to get this. Then I've got to do that. Then I've got to buy a house. Then i've got to pay a mortgage. Not that our generation was better, but we didn't have those pressures.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I certainly had no idea what a mortgage was for a very, very long time now. I lived in a reasonably not well-to-do family, so we never owned anything. So of course, you wouldn't have those pressures. But, you know, certainly this this this generation, there's much more focus on owning a house than it is on being curious and seeing the world.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
We're not going to travel for two years because we want to pay down our mortgage. Yeah, yeah.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
It's limiting, isn't it?
Professor Jane den Hollander:
So that's me being very, you know, upper middle class, Hanover-educated woman saying here's how the world should beit isn't how the world is. And I don't think it is how it should be. But I think what we've missed by reducing curiosity is also opportunity. We don't give people opportunity to choose which end or where they want to be.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
If you want to go off and go to school, get uni, go to work and live, that's fine. But there must be others who want to be over here. What do we do about them?
Professor Judyth Sachs:
So. So we've sort of brushed quickly over your undergraduate experience, but your post-graduate experience also having travelled having sort of done study in South Africa and then going to Wales. What was your personal experience like? And and what what did it what did it provide you with that you've taken with you for the rest of your life?
Professor Jane den Hollander:
So just to step back to my undergraduate experience, I lived in a small gold mining town, Carletonville, the world one of the biggest gold mines ever working class town, went to the local school. I was deputy head girl. The head girl was the sporting athlete's of the school, won all the medals in running didn't get in matric.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I was the deputy head girl so I went to Wits, the only one in my school who went to Wits. My parents had never been to university. They drove me up to and I got a scholarship. They drove me up to Sunnyside and at Wits, and Wits is a, they're really wealthy, wealthy, wealthy, exceptionally good University was also the one that introduced the first black person ever to an undergraduate degree.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
And my parents drive me there. They dropped me off at Sunnyside. They gave me rand, which in equivalent pounds would be Ā£. and said goodbye and went home to Carletonville, which was about miles away, I suppose. Something I can't remember now. And that was my and everybody in Sunnyside were pretty much privately educated, except there were about five of us who were not privately educated.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I had three good dresses and I remember thinking, Oh my God, this is not going to go well. And it didn't for a little while It didn't go so well. But then I was clever, you know, I got I got a first at the end of my first year, I got four ones or whatever you call ones enough times and the rest is history.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
People paid attention and I got another scholarship and academic staff like me. Dr. Hislop, who was the zoologist, took me under her wing, showed me a few things, taught me what not to do, and I was okay, but I was quite clever. And I worked really. I worked. I got first, you know, went through first class. You know, I worked, you know, it wasn't because I was one of these natural geniuses.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I wasn't. So my undergraduate years were my formative years. You know, I got there and I remember going home and saying to my dad, You have no idea how clever these people are and how rich they are. And and it was quite it must have been so insulting for him and my mother, because both of them were self-educated and both did.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
You know, my mother particularly spoke Spanish, for God's sake. She taught herself Spanish. And so I was quite patronising in those days. Postgraduate was a blast for me. I loved postgraduate. I got, you know when, got, did my write up my on this project as a master's in South Africa. On the basis of that, I got a scholarship at Cardiff. Jeroen, my husband,
Professor Jane den Hollander:
We were we weren't married at that point then got a post-doc at International Rice Research, which was also at Cardiff, and I was umming and ahhing about initially I was up at the University of Wales Medical School and then I transferred down into the city, into the university, into zoology to do biochemistry. And we had thenI had a fantastic postgraduate time.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
It was really good fun. My, my PhD enabled me to do a post-doc in Cardiff in parasitology, which led me to all the other things I did. So quite good fun actually. Yeah. You know, for a fortunate life I think is what I had.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
So these provided the foundations for you as, as an educator and particularly going to Wits you've got sort of in that...
Professor Jane den Hollander:
Politicised. People who often say, I'm overly political, I'm very political. I see everything politically, I see every sort of colour and know people say, Oh, I never see colour, come on, you're not looking at people really. One of the most self-identifying factors of all of us is the colour of our skin and the colour of our eyes.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
And I see it all the time. And, you know, so and we'd never come to grips with that. Now, I'm very white. My three closest friends, two of them are Indian and one is African. And I think that's the nature of where I grew up. And, you know, I, I also have a principled view on these things and we need to know some of those things haven't been, we still don't take care of them well enough, I don't think.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
So. You talked previously in other podcasts I've seen about the importance of values. And, and as as a leader, you've been very values driven, but as an educator, you certainly have been values driven. And that brief description of your entry into the world of privilege at Wits, speaks to that sort of misalignment of values. But but what's driven you as an educator and a leader in all of your leadership roles?
Professor Jane den Hollander:
Look, you know, I think your formative years matter. When I went, you know, I had these three dresses and the girl I shared a room with, very nice girl, Diane, only child. And so she had most of my wardrobe as well as who I I'm older because she just had more clothes at me and, you know, you walked around.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I had no money, so I had to work and I got a job quite early. And then I moved out of Sunnyside. I realised that Sunnyside was paralysingly expensive because the scholarship just paid for you to be there, then you have to live. So I moved out and met some very nice people, had shared a flat, etc., etc. But I've always been politicised and in South Africa that the difference between if you have and if you don't is not just colour-based, but it's mostly colour-based.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I had a lot relative to almost everybody else and that's informed my view ever since. You know. And then when I left South Africa to go to Wales to do my PhD, I remember saying to my mother: Look, apartheid will be over in five years and I'll come home and I'll work here. years later. You know, and by then, you know, I'm married with had two children.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I made both my children sit at home on the Sunday when Nelson Mandela came out of jail. And he was supposed to come out, I can't remember like : Sunday our time or whatever it was. And he didn't come and he didn't. And they were beside themselves with irritation, wanting to go for a walk into the park. And then finally he walked out of jail with Winnie and his hand up for the day.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I remember that day as if it was yesterday. You know, when you realise the world will change now for South Africans and it some of them, you know a lot of white South Africans will tell you the country's going to shit. No it hasn't. Look at how many black people are now in universities getting educated and everybody voted. They all got the vote.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
That's not shit. That's just the future. So, you know, so that's my lens. So I see things through. Are we being fair? Because I've seen unfairness and it's shocking. Are we are we helping each other? Because if you don't, you can, you know, you'll need it eventually. You need someone to help you. So that's the lens I take through.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
And particularly in education, you know, when you think I don't know about you, but now think of my privilege and the advantages I have now and the accolades I have. Yeah, the hon doc at Cardiff. That was my mother. That was my school teachers, you know, in a crappy little school in Carletonville who said, 'you can do this, you can do the math, here
Professor Jane den Hollander:
let give you an extra lesson.' Otherwise, I'd never have that, you know. So I do think we should look around, value what we've got, and then just give it back a bit and always acknowledge some of this stuff. You know, I used to be embarrassed when people ask me where I came from. I don't anymore because I see some of my strength is because I understand what can happen if you don't do anything.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
So you're throughout your career, but also in your education decisions, you've actually taken advantage of opportunities as they've emerged. So you've made it in terms of higher education. You know, your your foray into higher education particularly as a vice chancellor what opportunities did you take advantage of that? That you saw, I mean for some things, it could have been immediate benefit, but others it was much more long term.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
So so I went to Curtin, you know, it was quite interesting, big university, very commercial, a lot of international students. And of course I've been an international student going to the UK, so I had quite a lot of empathy and Jeanette Hacket, Lance Twomey, most particularly as a vice chancellor who I think was one of the fine, another forgotten vice chancellor alongside Faye. You know, I was very fortunate,
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I knew Faye and I knew Lance, and then I had Jeanette, who was a very tough Vice-Chancellor. But gosh, she taught me about frugality, about being commercial and about international. That's what she taught me, you know, that they were and I suddenly remembered, yeah, I'm one of those. I'm an international student in the UK. And so and then when you start to work and so I start to work with students and realise that, you know, the future was very different to the one that I'd expected.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I mean, I expected when I went to Curtin, just to carry on doing the kind of thing, you know, being an administrator, of course I'd be an administrator, but then I'd just go back to the lab and do my research. And I gave up my research then and became a full time. Now when I became the PVC, I just, that's what I did.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I stopped doing my research because it was interesting. And, you know, if you can get another extra ten people educated now, that's something to be proud of. But to do it fairly and with value. And all this nonsense, you know, making sure that we treated everybody the same, you know, people think I over did that a bit, but I think that is important.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
You know, welcoming our international students, making sure that they get the English lessons and being honest with them: your English isn't good enough. You need to go to classes, you know, instead of pretending they just can't speak English. What are we going to do? We can give them English. We've we've accepted them. And somebody once said to me, 'the only person who ever said to me that I had bad English.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
And then when I went and I listened..' and we sent her to one of the English classes at Curtin I think it was, yeah it definitely was at Curtin, they played it back to her and she couldn't understand it. And then she, she wrote to me, I still got the letter somewheres and said, you know, 'thank you so much.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
You were the only one who on an is honest enough to say go and get an English lesson.' And I think, you know, you just one of the things we often are so nice that we don't address the bleeding obvious. As educators, you need to get your maths up. You need to be able to learn to communicate effectively in English because you're in an English-speaking country, if you want to get on in Australia. That's not to be xenophobic.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I mean, most of these people speak four languages, but if you working in Australia, probably your English needs to go up two levels so that you can fit in and fitting in is what we all want to do eventually.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
So let's let's talk a bit about the student experience and because that that was one of the great platforms that you wanted to reinvigorate both at Curtin, but also but also at Deakin as well. So, so what's what's happened over the years in terms of the student experience and given that you you laid out very clearly this sort of wallpaper of debt, this sort of lack of curiosity,
Professor Judyth Sachs:
What's the student experience?
Professor Jane den Hollander:
Curiosity. So not lack. I think people are curious, but it's absent because they're busy over here. There's no lying around in the gardens for few there is. What shall we do today? Or wonder? Or I'll think I'll you know, I did this, I did philosophy because I got bored in zoology and some a friend was doing philosophy and I thought, I'll go along.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I sat the whole philosophy course, wrote the exam. I hadn't hadn't enrolled and I remember the registrar sort of my first crosses with the registrar said, 'But you haven't enrolled. We can't give you the mark.' Well, that's okay. I'm not going to be a philosopher. I just went, you know, and I think a lot. And to other people there were four or five of us who just went because it was a great lecturer.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
So we went and so we wrote the exam, because if you sat down in those days, you got the exam. Whereas these days you can't do of that. You know, you're not getting in if you don't have a student number, etc. So, so I think absence of curiosity and but it's more busy. And how do we encourage, you know, my son's a school teacher, encourage your kids to be curious.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
That's the most important thing I've allowed you know, I've allowed him to be very curious. He did an engineering arts degree - cost this much money. He used up every single HECS dollar he had, but that's what he wanted to do. So go and do it, you know, enable the next lot to do the same, I think. So curiosity is for if we want to be the innovative nation we are, we have to find a way to enable clever people, curious people, to do what they need to do.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
Otherwise there'll be no innovation. That's why America is exceptional, because they ignore everything that the exceptionality just comes up and you get off these people doing the most astounding things because they can. And there's this bandwidth. If you show potential, we tend not to do the same here to the same extent. We are much more streamlined, I think more.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
And what why do you think that is?
Professor Jane den Hollander:
Probably I mean, absence of money. We don't have the huge band faction, and scholarships of the big universities in America have. And just having been there and meeting a couple of people, you know, they are quite exceptional they are quite exceptional, they have lots of they have all the rubbish we have as well, the whole bureaucracy. My sister who works at New York "I have to deal with the registrar today."
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I was one of those! 'Oh, well, you know what I mean.' No, but you know, just a professor know, ranting on about your money or something. So we I think we we don't have scale. They have scale. I'm sure they're really bad universities in America. We just tend not to visit them, you know, and I think but I think we need to do more.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
Glyn Davis I remember one state, we were a very flat system. We don't have the colleges, universities, but we also don't have that, those incredible ones right at the top at the Harvard and Yale that do some quite exceptional stuff, you know.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
So if you could change something for students, what would and you were back in, I think being a vice chancellor, somebody that had resources who could make decisions, what would you change to really enhance that experience of students?
Professor Jane den Hollander:
Yeah, I think many, many more scholarships to reduce their debt so that they had time to think about doing honors to do it properly and to get the full benefit of what the, you know, the good universities of Australia they are you know, most of them are very good can give you. But these days a lot of people don't have that time.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
They spend less time on their university work than they do on getting to work, doing the job and getting back again. So that school that debt, and you know, and you can tell many, many students, look, you can you can HECS it all and leave it. But for many, they don't, they say they feel morally obliged to get rid of it.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
And some of those value based ones. Once, you know, this is money the state gave me, I'm going to give it all back as soon as I can. That was never the original intent of the HECS, of course. And so I think the the encumbrance of debt on students and the way it then forces them to work to have a living so they can feed themselves and do the like is is quite a one of our big blockers.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I think it stops some of the exceptionality you could have unless you're fortunate enough to be recognised and get a scholarship. Certainly at Deakin, you know, there was some I remember anyway. At Deakin there is a scholarship system and at leastI can't remember more than half the students writing said 'The reason I got the distinction, the reason this is the first time I've ever got a high distinction is because I didn't have to work because I had the scholarship.'
Professor Jane den Hollander:
'Thank you'. It matters. If you don't have to work as much, you can spend more time on your education. You get and you get more out of it. Now, high distinction, you know, often means that you've explored it wider that you've gone deeper, that you've thought about things. Shouldn't everybody get wider, higher, deeper? Now, not everyone's going to get a high distinction, but more will get higher distinctions or get distinctions or pass.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
If they didn't have to spend so much time shoving out fast food or whatever they do to make a dollar to pay their their housing or whatever it is they need to do. That's the great leveller for students. I could do one thing in Australia. I would reduce the cost of higher education and I would stop all those private schools, make everyone get that public education.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
The Swedes and the Norwegians, you know, the Danes, they said So sensible over there. Then at university get people to actually do what they've come to do, which is to get educated.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
So just changing direction.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I'm very left on all of this.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
No, no, I'm finding it wonderfully refreshing.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
You've you've had some sort of distance now from but being within a university. And, you know, I understand you still are engaged in universities, but what are you saying and what are you saying the future of higher education is being like? And how could you imagine it? You've already indicated scholarships.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
The pandemic was such a body blow, wasn't it? You know, you think you know, I was talking at when I got my hon doc at Cardiff, you know, and I was talking to the you know, they had the dux, we all had dinner. I was talking to a few of them and they had all been through three years of the British system, three years of university, and not one of them had been to a party and they missed their school balls when they finished school.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
No parties. One girl had done her entire three year degree sitting on their bed in a very small bedroom because she had to go home because the residence is closed. And your residence is closed everywhere. And so her mother gave her the broom cupboard and that's where she did her entire degree. And how was it like? It was really you know, the work was interesting, but it was very lonely.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
And then I think about my my my undergraduate year and I think, oh, my gosh, you know - sex, drugs and rock and roll doesn't come close to her miserable life. You know? So that's what I think we need to do. We need to give back. We need to look at what is the cost of not educating the next generation rather than how much should they pay to get educated.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
That would be my first thing too. And I think the new prime minister gets some of it. I think he gets it, single parent, mother, housing. He gets that that not everybody's equal. And then we need to give some freedom to those who come to university and make them use curiosity-driven education to some extent. Now, how do we get our university - you know, probably
Professor Jane den Hollander:
Vice Chancellors are just falling off the chair going, 'Oh my God, we've got no money.' There's always money. This is incredibly wealthy country. If you go around the world for three months, you know, we could do we could do better about being exceptional with our education, particularly at that high level, which generates innovation, new ideas and creates, well, you know, the virtuous circle, which is effectively what the Americans do.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
They do it very well in the individual things. And a lot of the county is completely deprived. But that's a separate matter because, you know, capitalism is an interesting ideology that they live, they swear by. We don't.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
So imagine you've got an audience with Jason Clare and you've got you've got an opportunity to make one intervention. What could that be?
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I got to Australia and HECS had gone to what was it, just like $ maybe I can't remember, and there's a huge row. And I come from South Africa and I was on UWA campus - Jeroen is a UWA alum, and so we'd gone to meet some people, and they all fell on and he'd been away for two years.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
They oh I haven't seen you for a couple of weeks Jeroen, and you want a beer. So I wandered around the campus and got into this, and then all these students are demonstrating about HECS and I think it was $. And in South Africa, it's private universities, a private scholarship, or you're paying huge amounts of money. And I remember thinking, oh, my goodness, what country is this where everybody who gets the right quals at school can go to university?
Professor Jane den Hollander:
And we did at the beginning that whole thing of free education and it was . And one of the student leaders who stood up, I don't know who it was, said, $ is the thin end of the wedge. In years to come, we'll be paying thousands and thousands. And so it has come. And now some people are paying over $, for a degree, which is a barrier.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
Now, I think if I'm saying to Jason ClareI'm not saying it to make it free, but you've got to make it much more accessible. And balance here is out of curiosity-driven education against the need to work just to pay rent. And we haven't got that right. And it's not because they're privileged. It's because we need people who are clever, who are innovative and who are going to do those exceptional things that you see in other countries not, just whining on that
Professor Jane den Hollander:
we're never innovate enough in Australia, but how could we possibly be? Most students are working their little socks off just to get to get graduated and then they usually go and do the innovations somewhere else. So we need, I think we could do better in how we value the curiosity-driven innovation and ideas and how we instill that into the next generation without imposing incredible blockers on them, without and without ignoring everybody else.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I'm not saying, you know, we you know, this whole thing about privilege becomes the problem, particularly white privilege. And how we deal with that is a problem. So I sit on the socialist side of the agenda. I do believe that we could do more to make sure that everyone, everyone rises together. We need to make sure that more schools are better run, our teachers are better funded.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
We have great teachers. What are we doing about making sure that they will feel proud and privileged and pleased with what they do so the next generation can come to university? But right now, you know, look, I don't know about you, but the trend at Deakin of privately-educated students to get all the great places and the scholarships is dim.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I actually set up a scholarship when I arrived and I made specific rules on that. You had to you had to come out of a publicly-funded government school. You couldn't, you know, if you'd be if you had any kind of advantage. I ignored those, not because they weren't deserving, because there's not a group over here gifted, ignored their whole lives.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
And, you know, and over the last four years, I think we've had or , maybe more now going through. And all of them have done well from very ordinary coming to because most of went to ordinary schools, worked while they were they lived in miserable conditions. You can make a difference and we need to make a bigger difference than we do the Americans do it better because of the huge benefaction they have.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
We don't have benefactions, but we have to, as leaders, very driven leaders who believe in what we do, give scholarships.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
The last question I'd like to ask you is what advice would you give to your younger self?
Professor Jane den Hollander:
Ah - probably to be less overtly political because I think people always saw me as a risk because I was because I've always said what I think. And perhaps that was an error. I remember when I went on UA, and a Vice-Chancellor said to me, Jane, if you just toned it down a bit, you could change it. And I don't want to do that, you know, I'm not that interested.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
I was busy arguing with the minister at the time. He was he was actually a very, very good minister and was very generous to Deakin, I have to say. Very generous, as it turned out, because it was a good idea. But you know, I think I would be less political and keep more of my ridiculous ideas to myself.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
But the world be a much lesser place. Deakin would have been a lesser university. So I'm glad that that advice will not be taken.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
Yes, too late she cried!
Professor Judyth Sachs:
Well, Jane, look, thank you for spending this minutes or so with with me this afternoon
Professor Jane den Hollander:
Thank you for asking me, you know, it's very, very nice of you. I come to you from Noongar Whadjur land. And, you know, over here, we don't get as much attention as as you do on the other side. If you know, one of the things that I've noticed Judyth - you know, you live on the Eastern Seaboard and you do believe you're in the centre of the universe, you live in WA and the only time people speak to you is when they forget there's a three hour time difference.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
And, you know, you pick up the phone at : in the morning. Is everything okay? Yes, just :. Oh, sorry, sorry. Put the phone down. Well, who the hell was it?
Professor Judyth Sachs:
Jane, it's been it's been wonderful catching up again. And I still remember a conversation that you, Jim Barber and I had at Clovelly all those years ago. And I think I think that and then that time but those years that we were on the Office of Learning and Teaching Advisory Board, they were great years.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
Another example - the OTL - you remember it had teeth then you remember the changes the things we did, the ideas, the imagination, the excitement.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
Well, let's, let's hope that that that returns in a different form.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
And that's what we need to aspire to, you know, that's what I'm banging on about here. You know, innovation, more ideas, teaching and learning matters.
Professor Judyth Sachs:
Well, I'll come to that party, too. Nice to talk to you, too. Thanks, Jane.
Professor Jane den Hollander:
Bye now, thank you.
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