Academics, the humanities and the enclosure of knowledge: the worm in the fruit

Australian Universities' Review 58:2 (2016) 33-41. Read the original here. Download a pdf here. My father made your yoke heavy, and I will add to your yoke: my father also chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions. – 1Kings 14 The Biblical Rehoboam’s promise to his subjects distils the same shocking…

The greatest threat to unis comes from their own leadership

Crikey, August 28 2014. Read the original here. In poll after poll, the public has demonstrated its overwhelming opposition to the deregulation of university fees, as to the other austerity measures in the budget. But university vice-chancellors don’t seem to share this opposition — and if they get what they want, it will change Australian society…

The Vice-Chancellors and the budget

New Matilda, July 3 2014. Read the original here. Any serious discussion of university funding and this year’s budget must recognise a simple fact: nothing good for higher education can come of the reforms Joe Hockey announced on May 13. The mood of public anger tapped by the recurrent student protests in the budget’s aftermath…

Australia dropped in the Times Higher Education rankings. So what?

The Guardian, Friday October 4 2013. Read the original here. There are many reasons for serious concern about the future of Australian universities. But the collective drop of local institutions in the Times Higher Education (THE) rankings this week certainly isn't one of them. Ranking tables are a major instrument of the marketised, university-as-business ideology…

Why is Sydney University on strike? Because students are not our ‘clients’

The Guardian, Friday August 30 2013. Read the original here. On Saturday, thousands of Year 12 students and their parents will visit Sydney University for Open Day, one of the many such exercises around the country. A full brace of marketing techniques will be deployed to convince would-be “clients” to choose Sydney’s “brand” over those…

Intellectual freedom under threat at Sydney

New Matilda, April 18 2013. Read the original here. The University of Sydney’s cancelation of a June talk by the Dalai Lama, revealed last night by the ABC, is the latest in a series of failures of Sydney’s management to uphold the university’s elementary intellectual and social responsibilities. China forms a key international student market…

Sandstone academics up against the wall

New Matilda, February 4, 2013. Read the original here. Of all the arenas prey to neoliberal reforms, few have witnessed such extensive transformation in recent decades as universities. Withdrawal of government funding; cuts to courses, most recently at La Trobe and Monash; swollen tutorials; less face-to-face teaching; the embrace of competition as the governing principle…