Universities’ wrong-headed investment decisions harm students

In fact, the university divestment push bears conspicuous ­resemblance to a landmark British case where the National Union of Mineworkers sought to divest its members' pension fund from ­industries competing with coal. The British High Court found that a trustee who eschewed a particular type of investment to satisfy their own moral preferences would breach their duty to invest in the best interests of their members by securing the greatest possible return.

Applied to the QUT scenario, a wholesale revision of the univer­sity's investment strategy based on the moral misgivings of a vocal segment of the student body is a clear-cut breach of this very ­standard.

Without a closer look at the relevant trust deeds and a High Court decision on the "ethical ­investing" of trust funds, the exact legal implications of divestment are an open question. But even so, the fossil-free university movement's claim to the greater good is in question.

Australian universities happily enrol thousands of students on the promise of providing degrees that lead to jobs in the mining and ­resources sector. Indeed, QUT's own website boasts a testimonial from a student lauding his civil ­engineering degree for equipping him with the "practical foun­dations" for a career in the mining and energy sector.

This is a sector that, as this newspaper has reported, employs one in six Queenslanders.

What are these fee-paying students supposed to make of QUT vice-chancellor Peter Coaldrake's comments that he wants QUT "to influence the sector" by ­taking a public stance in favour of its demise?

The movement's claim that the fossil fuel industry is an unqualified blight on humanity and the natural world is equally suspect.

With renewable energy still an unaffordable luxury for much of the world and over a billion people living under a cloak of darkness without power, the provision of cheap and reliable energy is es­sential to advancing human welfare everywhere.

Given that Australia is well poised to help deliver this energy to the world's poor with relatively clean coal, the fossil-free narrative that divestment is a fight between good and evil is really a mealy-mouthed farce.

More accurately, it's a contestable question of public policy on which intelligent minds can reasonably disagree.

Australia's universities have a proud history of political activism. It should be encouraged. At their best, universities are testing grounds for ideas and free-flowing debate. On that front, the fossil-free movement deserves at least a modest round of applause.

But the youthful idealism of these undergraduate activists is better left for the cut and thrust of the campus quad, well away from the chancellor's boardroom dictating how a university manages its finances.