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). 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 extreme. But then finally effective. Then in Chapter 6 we saw…
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…
Diary of an academic infidel – Chapter 10
One quote Hare had got right was my paper's conclusion: For funding advocates, Education at a Glance has been a cherry-picker's picnic ... the more deeply we probe to tell apples from oranges, the more fruit salad we find ... Despite many claims of a serious funding problem for Australian universities based on international comparisons,…
Diary of an academic infidel – Chapter 9
By the end of my own long March at the University that year, one thing was clear. Hare didn't share my concern with her "misuse" headline. And didn't care what I said my paper actually said. Re-reading her report (Chapter 4), I saw that it misquoted from the text of my paper as well: Geoff…
Diary of an academic infidel – Chapter 8
In any normal academic debate, a reply in the Journal later that year could have noted that one of my paper's assumptions was wrong. In the OECD report it drew on, the Australian rate of spending had risen. But in the next OECD report, later that year, it fell back. While my case didn't rely…
Diary of an academic infidel – Chapter 7
As Voltaire said when a fellow philosopher's book was burned by the Paris authorities: "What a fuss about an omelette!" But this was 2016, not 1758. Then again, it wasn't 2019 either. That was the year the French Review reminded universities that academic freedom and free exchange are crucial to their work - even if…
Diary of an academic infidel – Chapter 6
So far, gentle reader, I've been telling my story with the "2020 hindsight" that a spell of unemployment can afford. Now let me pause in this (cleansingly forensic) account of The Year My Career Broke, way back in 2016 - for a 2020 COVID-19 performing arts update... Our first and second waves that year, in…
