Are we experiencing the end of universities? Will the role of academia be simply to service the status quo, not challenge it? 

Donald Trump apparently thinks so, with his attack on their funding and tax status, and his freeze on grants to scientific organisations. This move is new only in its intensity. Labor Governments, too, have undermined the status of the university for different ideological reasons.

The primary purpose of a university has been to foster knowledge through research and learning, and to educate students to become experts, critical thinkers and leaders: enlightened leaders trained to seek wisdom, rationality and work for the common good. But around the world, including Australia, governments have systematically tampered with the ethos of a university. We no longer know what a university should stand for and that seems to include the universities themselves.

Gough Whitlam championed university education and equitable access, removing fees to enable access. He used the vernacular of “the land of the fair go”. Bob Hawke embraced the “fair go” ethos, becoming the distinctly Australian larrikin. “Any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum!,” he exclaimed, after Australia won the 1983 America’s Cup. Paul Keating sought to reconstruct Australia as a creative nation, secure in our identity, diverse yet tolerant, a modern independent democratic republic. But Labor abolished the School’s Commission in 1987 to get control over education and embarked on a program for all to access higher education, but pay for the privilege. It was the birth of HECS.

Keating’s vision for Australia was resoundingly rejected in 1996 by the “Aussie battlers”, those voters John Howard identified and seduced with his narrative about the “elites”, the “chardonnay set” and those “doctors’ wives” who needed to be ridiculed and put in........

© Pearls and Irritations