Can Australian universities come back from the dead?
APU member Richard Hil writes about the seemingly dead end situation of Australian Universities and the exciting new initiative “Public Universities Australia.” Read his text here.
Remaking universities: notes from the sidelines of catastrophe
“Can we grieve not for a person but for an institution? Should we be angry over possibilities destroyed, young talents denied a chance to flourish? Is there any point in lamenting greed, short-sightedness, the brutality of power?” Raewyn Connell writes about the catastrophe in which the Australian university system is and what needs to be done to save Australian public universities. Read it here.
APU Response to the Greens’ Discussion Paper ‘The University of the Future’
Academics for Public Universities have developed a response to the Greens’ discussion Paper on ‘The University of the Future’. The response supports the discussion paper and includes further recommendations, which we think need to be included in future versions of this discussion paper and the broader discussions on the future of Australian universities. Read the APU response here.
Transforming Universities in the Midst of Global Crisis A University for the Common Good
APU member Richard Hill has together with Kristen Lyons and Fern Thompsett published a new fantastic book on urgent alternatives to the current neoliberal, colonial -in crisis dominant university model. The book is crucial reading for anyone interested in how knowledge and education can help us build a sustainable world- and there is not much time left for us to do it. Read more about the book here.
Education left behind in the corporatisation of our universities
Academics for Public Universities have published their latest research in Pearls and Irritations. Check it out here.
2 out of 3 members of university governing bodies have no professional expertise in the sector. There’s the making of a crisis
Academics for Public Universities have published the latest research in The Conversation. Check it out here.
The University of the Future
A recent discussion paper released by Federal Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi posits, ‘research and teaching should be governed by public interest and free intellectual inquiry, not the demands and pursuits of corporations’ or a corporate mindset. Check it out and join this important public discussion!
Australia’s universities converting as little as 1% of casual staff to permanent despite labour law change
Read the latest on ever increasing precarisation of Australian academic work from The Guardian here.
Reflecting upon difficult times, an impossible situation and next steps: Professor Fran Baum
Distinguished Professor Fran Baum AO writes about the closing of the Southgate Institute for Health, Society and Equity at Flinders University raising questions about the rationale behind managerial decisions and the very functioning of pubic universities. If a world renown, ground breaking public health institute with major grants and outstanding publications is beeing closed-over night, just like that- what is the actual goal behind decisions made by managers governing Australian universities? What is the actual purpose of Flinders University? Read the whole text on Croakey here.
How to corporatise a university (in three steps)
Academics for public universities have been asked by Honi Soit to provide research findings for this piece of investigative journalism. Read an excerpt bellow and find the link to the full article at the end of it.
“[…]Adam Lucas, a staff-elected councillor at the University of Wollongong, told Honi that “in my experience and that of my predecessors, we’ve seen very limited interrogation by members of most matters brought before Council.” Lucas further questioned why, if corporate board appointees were so fiscally competent, universities continued to cut jobs and courses.
Even when applying their own corporate standards, the lopsided make-up of university governing bodies contravenes a basic principle of governance. Principle no.2 of the ASX’s Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations holds that “The board should…collectively have the skills, commitment and knowledge of the entity and the industry in which it operates, to enable it to discharge its duties effectively and add value.”
For example, 73% of Rio Tinto’s board has experience in the resources and mining sector. Representation is similar across other large mining companies. Likewise, banks’ boards are drawn largely from former bankers, financial industry experts and private equity mavens. Banks and mining companies are ultimately interested in the same goal – increasing profits and shareholder value – yet their governance is tailored to their particular industries.
By contrast, appointments to the governing bodies of universities – which have radically different structures to private companies, and are interested in entirely different outcomes – are made to fit a generic corporate board profile. Bankers and consultants abound; there are more appointees from Macquarie Group alone than there are from arts backgrounds, and career directors stake their turf.
Universities are not-for-profit entities, yet their governance ‘skills matrix’ points entirely towards unabashed profit-making. Universities are interested in the production of high-quality public interest research and teaching, yet people with a basic knowledge of higher education and representatives of academic fellows have been pushed out to make way for Fellows of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
Alessandro Pelizzon, an academic-elected member of the Southern Cross University council says that there is a “schizophrenic relationship” between governing bodies and universities. He told Honi that “these corporate managers are very effective and very well-functioning corporate managers. But the problem is that universities are not corporations. They might have a corporate structure, but they’re not corporations.” […]”
Read the whole article by Deaundre Espejo and Max Shanahan in Honi Soit here.