By Ian Dobson. The withdrawal of government funding and fee deregulation is the core issue for Australian higher education. It is even more stark because we have a largely government founded system. Colonial and state governments established universities, as well as teacher training and technical institutes and further education colleges. More...
By Ian Dobson. Given the role of multinational corporations in contributing to the looming global environmental, social and financial crises; and their increasing influence on all forms of education, including university education, there has never been a more important time to rethink the meaning of a good university in Australia. More...
By Ian Dobson. The intention of this gathering in November 2015 was to share critical reflections on various aspects of today’s university system – focusing on the incursions of corporations into the tertiary sector, especially in the areas of teaching and research – but chiefly to consider alternatives to current institutional arrangements. More...
By Ian Dobson. Universities today are defined by their commitment to private sector management, with CEOs at the helm (on salaries of $1 million or more), and military, pharmaceutical, biotech and mining industries, amongst others, driving commercial research agendas. More...
By Ian Dobson. Defenders of the managerialist status quo in Australian universities might argue that the current regime has been remarkably successful. Despite chronic funding constraints, Australian universities continue to perform very strongly on international league tables, whatever the methodological shortcomings of these may be, and continue to attract the international students who help to pay the bills. More...
By Ian Dobson. If we want to combat contemporary ‘neoliberal’ attacks on universities, we should start by refusing the way that their pseudo-rationalities already determine so many aspects of the intellectual and institutional regimes that we consider under threat. This paper sketches an analysis of those aspects of the internal practices of academia that reinforce the interests at the origin of the attack on public education, and that make it possible, and indeed expected, for universities’ leaders to oversee the betrayal of their institutions’ very raison d’être. More...
By Ian Dobson. What does it mean to be an activist or to do activist work in a university context at a time when universities themselves are openly pursuing change in their public role and function? What does activism look like in different disciplines and in diverse academic settings. More...
By Ian Dobson. A few years ago the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee (AVCC) re-badged itself as ‘Universities Australia’ (UA), and since then the assembled vice-chancellors have presented themselves as ‘The voice of Australia’s universities’. That’s what their website says, and this is undoubtedly a rich mine of corporate wisdom. More...
By Ian Dobson. Free universities form around a praxis of ‘prefiguration,’ meaning that rather than (or as well as) mobilising directly against the aspects of conventional universities they oppose, they step outside the university’s walls to re-imagine learning on their own terms. More...
By Ian Dobson. The following paper presents an argument assembled via observations regarding university workplaces, which will be quite recognisable to readers familiar with the Australian academic context. If the argument transpires to be an interesting one, perhaps the most interesting thing about it might be how easy it is to substantiate, and following on from that, the question as to why, given what is known and knowable about universities, they seem generally to trundle along in much the same direction. More...
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