The day after my detour through the Mad Max carpark, I sent Leo a copy of my second letter to The Australian. I didn't expect him to be happy. After all, the Centre's April memo on its Communications Strategy was clear (Chapter 8): The Melbourne CSHE and LH Martin Institute maintain good relations with a…
Diary of an academic infidel – Chapter 16
"They're bastards." I was standing in the Vice-Chancellor's office on a Tuesday afternoon in late May. On the way up to Level 9, I'd reflected that it had been a decade since I'd worked in the Raymond Priestly Building. Back in 2005, I'd been part of a small group that the VC had enlisted to…
Rhetoric or Reality: more Australian uni students in 2021?
Newly published research on the outcomes of last year's controversial Job Ready Graduates funding reforms was reported last week in the Australian Financial Review with the headline: The big steal: why the government can't deliver on uni places. As AFR puts it: The analysis by Mark Warburton, an honorary senior fellow with the Centre for…
Diary of an academic infidel – Chapter 15
I had never seen the Institute Director so visibly disturbed. That year was always going to be difficult for the Institute. Our $10 million set-up grant had been spent. Freely in the early years, then more frugally. The plan had been that in time, program revenue would stop falling short of operating costs. But it…
Diary of an academic infidel – Chapter 14
Now, where were we? Oh yes - winter was coming. The climate on campus was chilly. By early May, as foreshadowed back in Chapter 3, the face in my morning mirror had faded, from sheer weariness, into a kind of Dumbledorian grey. Some at the Centre, aware of the outline of what had happened, would…
Book review: Open Minds (and the French Review connection)
Launched in March, Open Minds is a timely book for Australian university leaders and higher education policy makers. It has had thoughtful reviews from Peter Tregear and Andrew Norton. Law professors Adrienne Stone and Carolyn Evans (the latter is vice-chancellor at Griffith University) bring context and clarity to the uses and limits of academic freedom…
Diary of an academic infidel – Chapter 13
Locked down in Victoria again!! (Just another Groundhog Day here in Melbourne - no doubt we'll all become better people by the end). Let me hit Pause in this tale of The Year My Career Broke, for yet another unofficial COVID update. Back in Chapter 1, gentle readers, our long winter months of lockdown seemed…
Diary of an academic infidel – Chapter 12
Like the trams that ambled indifferently down Swanston Street, the weeks slid by. By April's end, Melbourne had shuffled off its final flare of summer warmth. Soon May would see the city turn decidedly autumnal: colder light, shorter days, chill winds and nights full of rain. The leaves on campus outside my office window dried…
May Budget mystery: will higher education spending rise or fall?
Many university people must have found media reports and commentaries on last week's Budget confusing. None yet offer clear answers to the key question: how much funding support can the university sector expect from the Commonwealth, between now and 2024-25? With borders largely closed into 2022, the main threat to sector revenue remains our lack…
Diary of an academic infidel – Chapter 11
By late April it was clear: I needed legal advice. No response from Marginson. No headway with Hare. And no progress with the Journal. Locked down in my collegial dungeon of low regard and high dudgeon, I felt as weary, stale and flat as a rat on a tilted treadmill. Alas, poor Sharrock! My infinite…
