“We’ll walk a different path”: Vice-Chancellor’s address
The following is a transcript of incoming Vice-Chancellor and President, Distinguished Professor George Williams AO's first address delivered on Wednesday, 24 July 2024 to the Parramatta Chamber of Commerce.
It is a real pleasure to be here tonight.
I’d like to start by acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the lands on which we are meeting tonight, the Darug Nation and pay my respects to their elders past and present. I acknowledge they have never ceded their sovereignty over these lands.
And I'd also like to say as a newly minted Vice-Chancellor how proud I am to be leading a university that is frankly leading the nation when it comes Indigenous justice.
I particularly acknowledge our Centre of Excellence and the support of the State Government, that has given the opportunity to build an entirely new model when it comes to Indigenous education and to turn around not just decades, but centuries of neglect when it comes to First Peoples.
I also acknowledge, of course, the Premier who is here tonight, and the Lord Mayor, and thank them for the opportunity to speak to you.
I've only actually been in this job for three days, so I come to you early, shall we say. It’s only been three days but when I heard about this opportunity, my response was, ‘this is where I want to be on my third day’.
I said that I wanted to be somewhere that is actually the heart of Sydney, and Sydney's most exciting and dynamic CBD. And that's, of course, where we are tonight.
Now, many of you knew my predecessor, Barney Glover, and I have very large shoes to fill. And I know that many of you knew him as Barney. And please, my name is George. I look forward to being known in the same way.
There are all sorts of fancy titles, Vice-Chancellor and the like. But just like Barney, I’m here to work with you. I'm here to serve this community. I'm here to champion this community and I'm here for the journey – like Barney was – to make sure that we are the university that Western Sydney deserves and needs to realise its unlimited potential.
Now, what I want to talk to you about tonight is a bit about the economic transformation that we will be supporting as an anchor institution for this region, but also about social cohesion.
Universities have a special, critical role when it comes to building good societies. We know that this is a troubled time for Western Sydney and the world generally and universities need to step up when it comes to helping to build good societies. Binding us together, building trust, building relationships, building understanding.
When it comes firstly to that economic transformation, my starting point is, of course, there is no region – and I’ll also add no university, even though as the Premier said there are six universities in this region – there is no university that has greater potential, or region that has greater potential in this country.
We are going to be opening the nation’s premier airport in around two years. We have the first major new city in Australia, Bradfield, opening in the coming years. Light rail, the Powerhouse, and of course the thousands of hard-working businesses that make Western Sydney what it is.
But most importantly, and the reason why I wanted to work at this university, and the reason why I was so delighted to have this opportunity, even on day three, is that I’m joining a region with the most dynamic, the most youthful, the most diverse, and the most culturally rich and entrepreneurial community in this nation.
And our job at the University is to provide the best opportunities to these people so they can go on to a good life and serve our region in ways that make this even better than it is.
Now, our university has been around for 35 years. We are a young’un in world terms. Of course, we have been recently ranked the best university in the world when it comes to impact – actually delivering for our community.
That itself is quite remarkable. There is no other university in the world that has got to the top of the global standings and in our case that standing is for impact – what have we done when it comes to actually comes to delivering for community. It’s something I'm enormously proud of. And that's because Western Sydney University is the university of the people, and for the people, and under my leadership that will not change.
I'll be doubling down on Barney’s vision and making sure that we continue to deliver for you and this community. We are deeply committed, and we particularly committed to making sure that we provide opportunities for students, who otherwise frankly would have been left by the wayside, who would not have had the chance for a university education and a better life.
When I look at a few key stats about the University: two-thirds of our students are the first in family to go to university. Two-thirds of families have students who are first to go to university. Not only that, we have a lot of students who are first in family to finish high school.
We also have the largest number of low SES students in Australia, the largest number of non-English speaking students in Australia, and that's why we are reflecting the fact that this is a community of aspiration and opportunity that delivers on ambitions. And as I've said, a university that actually delivers what Western Sydney needs.
Now, in doing that, I actually want to signal that I think we need to be different to other universities, and that's very clearly my desire and my vision for the University.
Universities, unfortunately, but with some justification, have a bad rap in Australia at the moment. I think universities talk too much about themselves; about their bottom lines. And my commitment to you is that we will be different to other universities. We will be talking about those whom we serve. The starting point is our students and the lives that we will be delivering for them.
We're going to talk about Western Sydney, and what we contribute to you, to local businesses. I’m very comfortable that you will judge us according to how we deliver on that mission. How are we helping students? How are we helping Western Sydney?
We'll be listening more; we'll be caring more; we'll be getting back to basics; and we’ll be doing so in a way that is fundamentally different from other universities in this nation.
I think we have the room to tread our own path, different to those other universities. We can be bold, relevant, remarkable. And when you think of universities, I want you to think differently of what we're about.
If you think of other universities, the first thing that tends to come to mind are ivory towers, sandstone walls. But my vision for the University is we are university without walls; a university that’s open to business, fully integrated within its community, and a business that is dedicated to serving the people in the community in which it lives.
Now, I'd say particularly at this forum, a key part of this is about being the ‘go to’ university for business in this region. That is my clear aspiration for Western Sydney University.
It’s not only a matter of being open for business, it’s listening to the business community. We need to be faster in how we respond to the opportunities that you bring to us. We need to be more agile in seeing partnership opportunities that perhaps other universities would not have recognised.
We need to give you a clear front door that gives you an easy way to engage with our academics and with the great minds more generally we have at the University.
Now, if I think about how we are going to set up a one-stop-shop for our partners, there's only one person I can put in charge of this, and that’s Andy Marks, who is with me here tonight.
It’s a little premature, but let me just say there’s a promotion in the offering for Andy very, very soon and it reflects his exemplary leadership at the University and my belief that he is the person to forge the connections we need. To forge the partnerships, and to make sure that we are the partner of choice for you at this dinner tonight.
The other topic that I wanted to mention was social cohesion and how we can contribute to that. Again, I want to acknowledge that there's been a loss of trust with universities that has betrayed, I think, the fact that many people see us as straying from our mission. That is, not as corporations, but as public institutions dedicated to the public good.
A recent poll showed that a majority of Australians do not think positively about universities. If you look at America, it's about a third of Americans that think positively about universities. So, two-thirds of Americans have hostile or negative attitudes to their centres of learning that are fundamental building blocks for a good society.
There's widespread disenchantment, understandable. There's been issues around unpaid wages. There's been issues of scandals where universities have failure to care for their staff and students. And again, my commitment is that under my leadership we will respond to those issues. We will be different. We will be true to our mission. We will be focused on community and students. We will care for our staff and students, and we will be focused on our mission of improving lives. We will act as an ethical, effective public institution should. In doing so, we're also going to focus on that social cohesion mission.
Our job is to bring people together, to build understanding, to make sure that they build bridges between communities in Parramatta and throughout Western Sydney. To make sure we can do the best thing we can do to be an antidote to someone who is disaffected, to somebody who would walk away from society. And that antidote is to give them a better life, to actually give them the opportunities they deserve, to overcome the unfairness that is so often prevalent in Western Sydney with lower salaries, fewer opportunities, and less capacity to get to where the best jobs are.
So we will combat social cohesion by focusing on building opportunities, building trust, and giving people the opportunities they deserve. And that will mean tackling some big issues.
A good example is the fact that we're about to move to $50,000 Arts degrees in Australia. Now, Arts degrees are usually the degree of choice for Indigenous students and low SES students. It's about to hit $50,000, and those students are increasingly turning away from a university education. Turning away from their dreams for a better life. And they're doing so in ways that are dramatically affecting their potential and their ability to realise their aspirations. So, we will be taking that up on behalf of our students, amongst many other debates.
We'll also be tackling the issue of caps for international students, but again, focused on the students. If we have a cap on international students that affects Western Sydney, it means that we won't be able to train the nurses that are needed for the hospitals in Western Sydney. We have a national shortage of 100,000 nurses, many of those come from overseas through Western Sydney. And if we can't train those people, we cannot supply the talent of people we need for vital stages in people's lives.
If we also get this wrong with international students, we are going to dramatically affect the economy of Western Sydney. We're often told that international students take the housing of Australians. It's simply not true for Western Sydney. We have a bed for every single international student. In fact, we have excess capacity, and we're building another 500 beds.
Not only that large numbers, up to 50 per cent of our students live with local families. They provide hundreds of dollars a week to families hit by cost-of-living pressures. And they do so in a way that enables families to keep afloat and pay for the education of our own kids.
We need international students for the growth they bring. We need them for the cultural diversity, and we should celebrate what they bring to our community.
So I’ll close by saying that I'm here because I want support for what this Chamber, and what this dinner, is seeking to achieve.
We want to be the partner of choice when it comes to achieving the unlimited potential of Western Sydney.
We want to educate the students who will be your employees, who will be your great contributors of this region over the coming years. I come to this job filled with purpose and commitment because I'm someone who can see that potential. In fact, I'm someone who when I look at our students – even at graduation, as I did recently – I see a bit of myself in those students, because of what they've achieved.
If you had asked me when I was 10 years old, would I have been a Vice-Chancellor? I would have firstly said ‘what's a Vice-Chancellor?’ I suspect. Perhaps it’s a Star Wars reference? Who knows what a Vice-Chancellor is. But, at age 10, in a single parent family, I didn't see many prospects for myself. I certainly didn't see myself as a constitutional lawyer, or a Vice-Chancellor.
But education changed my life. It put me on an entirely different path to what perhaps past generations would have trod.
So I'm here because education has changed my life and I'm here because I want us to change the lives of people in Western Sydney.
And I believe if we do that, if we stay true to our values and true to our mission, we can be the catalyst that Western Sydney needs to work with you to achieve the unlimited potential that we all know that this region has.
Thank you.
ENDS
26 July 2024
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