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Bellow are “General Observations”, but read the whole document please:

General Observations

While we accept our final point takes us beyond the scope of the Bill, we nevertheless feel it important also to raise the broader point that a research culture of excellence in Australia is also at risk because Australia’s universities are themselves also increasingly not governed by people with high-level academic expertise, and are increasingly not free and open places in which to work. Reform of the ARC as outlined by this Bill will not be enough to secure a
national culture of research excellence into the future if the institutional environments themselves remain overly constrained or corrupted by forces external to, if not downright hostile to, scholarly values.

“He isn’t worried about getting caught, because he says everyone’s doing it.”

[…] “You’re dealing with entrenched institutions who, despite what you think they’re supposed to do, do not focus on the needs of the student,” Chegg’s chief executive, Dan Rosensweig, said during an interview in March.

Read the whole article here.

Edwards, Marc A., & Siddhartha Roy. ‘Academic Research in the 21st Century: Maintaining Scientific Integrity in a Climate of Perverse Incentives and Hypercompetition.’ Environmental Engineering Science 34.1 (2017): 51–61.

Read the article by Damien Cahill, also based on our research in the Conversation here.

Academics for Public Universities just published new research in the special edition of the Social Alternatives journal.

From the introduction: “Universities matter – most of us can agree on that. They remain a vital, indispensable part of our society. What happens to them as a result of government policies, changing values and altered governance arrangements matters greatly, too. Over the past few decades, universities have changed beyond recognition.” The change beyond recognition is as the research shows bad for students, academics and the future of Australian society. Read about the state of Australian universities and what needs to be done urgently if we want to save the Australian public university system and download direct a copy of the journal by clicking here.

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.

“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.

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.