As the beautifully-suited professors who lead Australia’s  universities rail against esoteric points of pricing, indexation (and, behind closed doors, each other), the mandarins in Canberra are weighing up how much coin they can spare to keep things quiet without actually spilling open the purse in a way that would make a significant difference to the May Budget.

In the dawn of a new year, it is time to ask why the fundamental issue that underpins our higher education sector is routinely sidestepped. Namely: What is a university for?

The government, with its intent to churn far larger groups of students through undergraduate programs, clearly sees universities as broad-based training institutions – with a bit of research for good measure. The rhetoric about the clever country has been shelved, along with any ambition to enable Australian university research to play a primary role in transforming the economy and community.

Our economy and community will benefit from more graduates; but with students given permission to choose their own educational adventure, we are unlikely to see a significant growth in unfashionable disciplines. Demoralising news for some areas of the humanities, which many in the private sector seem happy to ignore; but also for disciplines where groupthink appears to be undermining demand, such as IT and ag science, where our economy is held back by graduate shortfalls.

What do universities think they exist for? The sandstones all cling to mantras of prioritising both research and excellence, creating citizens of the world and so on. The lower the ATAR, the more friendly the dogma, but behind closed doors, many universities are extending hands of welcome to anybody with a half-decent ATAR and a pulse (or, in the case of postgraduate study, a suitcase of cash and a pulse).

Now that we are in a demand-driven world, have these institutions worked out the vector of their supply curves? How many students are too many? And is the concept of ‘too many’ predicated on the number that the fire authorities allow into the building, or the number that can be optimally taught.

How many institutions are courageous or cashed-up enough to pour marketing dollars into rural campuses and unpopular disciplines when much better returns are available supporting large cohorts in popular disciplines? Is there a plan in place? Or is it just a case of wait and see?

How many disciplines can be sacrificed before a university becomes a school? And how big is too big? Possibly there is no limit to optimal size if sufficient resources are retained within teaching areas to maintain quality – however, the reality is that universities will need to harvest returns from economies of scale by diverting student revenue into sorely depleted capital budgets and research programs in order to sustain their operations and infrastructure.

Because in the end, most universities simply don’t buy the government’s rhetoric. They see research funding as an important part of university life, and they need buildings to continue standing if they are to accommodate spiralling student numbers. As a result, part of the money the government is putting towards operating an education factory will be siphoned off for other purposes – meaning teaching outcomes will not be as good as they could be.

That’s why the pressure is on marketing teams right now to pull in numbers of domestic students, so economies of scale can be realised and funds creamed off to prop up other areas of institutions. University heads aren’t complaining, because it’s the first opportunity for a decent revenue boost for some time, and base funding cash isn’t set to rain down in sufficient quantity to make a sizeable difference.

The government isn’t complaining, because its policy of educating the hordes is still going to be completed, with metrics all about graduate numbers rather than an assessment of what they are learning and how that matches the economy of tomorrow.

Frontline academics are generally relieved that they are allowed to keep their jobs for another year. In some universities, where tutorials are each attended by more than 100, an extra dozen bodies doesn’t make a lot of difference.

So everyone is happy, pretty much. Oh yes, there’s that other group, of course students – but they are only part of the system for a few years before they drift off somewhere else and they are always complaining aren’t they? And that hidden, sleeping, perpetually unsatisfied group called employers who keep saying they want better graduates but don’t stump up real cash or clout to change the system.

So the waters will remain muddy, the playing fields of differential sizes and slopes, the debate still ossified in cliché.

Of course, we could do the mature thing and have a national debate about why universities exist and what an Australian university should look like in the 21^st century, but that would require universities to convince Australians to care.

In the meantime, it appears the fundamentals of our education system will continue to be built on sleight-of-hand. We’re not necessarily alone in that – but until we agree on a clear picture of what universities are for, Australia will continue to miss a major opportunity for change.