AUSTRALIA: Economist had big impact on education

Obituary: Peter Karmel 9 May 1922 - 30 December 2008

Professor Peter Karmel, one of Australia's most influential educationists, died in Canberra on the second to last day of 2008 at the age of 86. His contributions to education and research, and his influence on generations of researchers, scholars and students. were profound.

Educated at the University of Melbourne and Cambridge University where he gained a PhD in economics, Karmel spent much of his life in universities. He came to national prominence in 1973 with a report to the federal government on Australian schools that put the issue of social inequalities on the political agenda and resulted in a new programme of federal spending on public and private schools.

Karmel not only conducted but was a regular contributor to subsequent inquiries into higher education. His last submission was a five-page paper to a federal review of Australian universities in June. In the submission, he proposed a voucher system of federal funding of undergraduate courses and this was among the recommendations in a report of the review presented to the government late last month.

On his return to Australia from Cambridge, Karmel worked for the Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics from 1943 to 1945 and began teaching economics at Melbourne in 1946 and then moved to the University of Adelaide in 1949.

He began planning a new university that became Flinders in 1961 during a period of rapid expansion in the Australian tertiary sector. It was also a time for innovation and Karmel, speaking at a public meeting, explained his ambitions for the new campus:

"We want to experiment and experiment bravely," he said. True to his word, he devised for Flinders an untraditional academic structure aimed at broadening student experiences and academic opportunities by establishing four schools: language and literature, social sciences, physical sciences and biological sciences.

Flinders was South Australia's second university and over the next few years, it demonstrated its distinctiveness by teaching several courses not previously seen in the state, including sociology, drama, fine arts, Spanish and Indonesian, as well as oceanography and meteorology.

Karmel was instrumental in the planning of another radical yet enduring aspect of Flinders: co-location of the school of medicine and the Flinders Medical Centre in the new hospital's buildings on the western edge of the campus.

Professor Keith Hancock, Flinders' third vice-chancellor and one of its six original professors, said Karmel had set the character of the university: "Flinders University's indebtedness to Peter Karmel is immense. He had a capacity, unique in my experience, to combine leadership with the nurturing and encouragement of the contributions of others. Peter's talents were just what were needed in the early formative years of the university. His successors, including me, inherited a going concern."

Karmel left Flinders in 1971 to head the Canberra-based Australian Universities Commission and, after serving as its chairman and heading its successor, the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission, he was appointed vice-chancellor of the Australian National University in 1982. .

His influence extended well beyond the university sector and included two outstanding contributions to policy and governance in the schools sector. His 1971 report Education in South Australia set the foundations for the modernisation of school education in that state.

Two years later, his 1973 report Schools in Australia to the Whitlam Government was similarly transformative at the national level, and was instrumental in bringing about federal funding of state government schools.

"He was, in my opinion, one of a group of Australian economists who emerged in the 20th century and went on to be major contributors to the nation's development," Hancock said.

Although Karmel retired from the ANU in 1987, he continued to be involved formally and informally in the continuing debate on higher education in Australia. A promoter of academic diversity among universities, he championed university independence from central control by government.

Giles Pickford was assistant secretary of the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee when he first met Karmel, then Flinders's vice-chancellor. "I remember him as a cheerful man with an immense sense of fun and a mind that towered over his colleagues at the AVCC meetings," Pickford recalled.

"We worked together again after he had retired. He was chair of the ANU Institute of the Arts and I was secretary of the creative arts fellowship committee. He had a deep grasp of the creative arts, which is unusual among economists. He did not put on airs and graces or pretend he was superior to others, but there is no doubt that he was."

Karmel remained active in many aspects of public life, chairing the Australia Council, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the Australian Council on AIDS. He is survived by his wife Lena, five daughters and a son, and 16 grandchildren.