Thursday 18th of September 2025
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aussie universities and their troubles....

Last week in Sydney, we saw a melodrama acted out that could stand in for the state of Australian universities more generally. Inside Sydney’s swish Fullerton Hotel, a glittering cast of vice-chancellors, politicians, public servants, journalists, and consultants deliberated at a higher education summit, sponsored by the Australian Financial Review and consultancy Nous Group.

 

Universities have lost their way, but cost-cutting and consultants are not the answer

 

Michelle Arrow
Professor of History, President, Australian Historical Association, Macquarie University

Anna Clark
Professor in Public History, University of Technology Sydney

Frank Bongiorno
President, Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences and Professor of History, Australian National University

 

Teaching-only casual staff, who do the bulk of teaching in many universities, were not represented in the official line up of speakers. Instead, academics and students remained outside, protesting in the rain against staff cuts and governance issuesfacing the sector.

It started with the public good

This is not where the modern Australian university began. The expansion of the system in the decades after the second world war was animated by a profound sense of the university’s mission of pursuing the public good. New universities were established to advance nation-building but also to strengthen civil society and a common culture.

Prime Minister Robert Menzies, who played a crucial role in this expansion, expressed this vision eloquently in 1942. He saw universities not as “mere technical schools” but devoted to 

the preservation of pure learning, bringing in its train not merely riches for the imagination but a comparative sense for the mind, and leading to what we need so badly — the recognition of values which are other than pecuniary. 

We seem to have arrived at the antipodes of that vision.

There is a steady stream of stories about exorbitant executive salaries, and universities across the country are currently cutting courses, jobs and research, mostly on the grounds these endeavours are not financially “responsible”.

 

Three ways out of the crisis

If there is any way out of the present crisis, it it unlikely to come from current university leaders, who have shown little capacity to manage complex change.

Many vice-chancellors are on million dollar-plus packages and have the job of advancing the corporate interests of their own institution in competition with others.

Scholars and researchers apply a different lens. They tend to identify three ways of thinking about the current problems of the sector, and the way out of them.

  • The first we call a “policy” approach. Proponents of this idea agree that universities could do better, even much better, and the problems of the sector are amenable to good policy. Contributions of this kind have come from former Melbourne University vice-chancellor Glyn Davis and foreign policy academic Michael Wesley. They agree universities could do better and the key is to get the policy settings right. The problems of the sector are amenable to better policy, they argue, clarifying their purpose and enabling greater diversity within the sector. 

  • The second response is the “public good” approach. Cultural studies academic Graeme Turner’s recent book Broken: Universities, Politics and the Public Good is an example. As the book’s title indicates, Turner sees the system as broken, rather than merely flawed. Universities serve the public good and need to be publicly funded on that basis. 

  • A third approach is “radical-democratic”. Advocates of this approach, such as sociologist Raewyn Connell and historian Hannah Forsyth, argue universities need to be reorganised as democratic institutions. This should encompass everyone in the university community and its whole workforce, not just the academics. They need to provide spaces and opportunities for dissenting forms of knowledge and action, seeking to transform society to make it more educated, equal and just. The erosion of democratic university governance, they argue, has led to widespread exploitation and diminished quality of education. 

We argue we need elements of all of these approaches. But current university leaders rarely manage to get beyond the first – the policy approach – and even then their cupboard looks pretty bare.

Losing the ‘social licence’

There is a growing anxiety about Australian universities’ loss of “social licence” – or the idea that a community trusts and supports an organisation to operate. 

There is a view universities have become businesses devoted to the budget bottom line rather than places of learning and research devoted to the public good. 

This is a problem of governance as much as of finance. University councils are dominated by business people, not academics.

University executives routinely delegate decision-making to consultants. Decisions are frequently hidden from public scrutiny, let alone input.

The trouble is thinking about universities through the lens of the balance sheet has left those in charge unable to advocate for the institutions they oversee, the staff who work there, and the students they educate in terms of their contribution to society in all of its aspects. This includes the social, cultural and civic. 

Once you have surrendered that territory, the loss of social licence quickly follows.

Who are the experts?

Professors are no longer seen as experts, but merely as “expensive” and targets for redundancy. Tutorials – the place where much university learning occurs – are cut or reduced because they’re costly to run. 

Courses critical to maintaining our national capabilities – like languages and public health – are cut on the grounds they are “unviable”. Prestigious, long-running national projects, such as the Australian National Dictionary and the Australian Dictionary of Biography, both at the Australian National University, are dismissed as financially “unsustainable”.

What are universities really for?

Universities educate students, but they are also incubators of new knowledge and discovery. They have obligations to preserve knowledge for the nation. For example, by supporting areas of research that might not be economically “efficient” but which will be required for our future. 

So, yes, we need better policy that shifts the incentives for universities so they build critical national capabilities like linguistic and cross-cultural knowledge and skills, rather than cutting them. And we need to recognise that universities, in this way and many others, serve the public good.

Even that, however, is not enough. Planning must look beyond just financial sustainability to consider sustainability and value in a broader sense. We live in a world of rapid technological, geostrategic and political transformation. Our universities, as they are now run, are not fit for purpose in this environment.

We might be historians, but the point of all this isn’t a history lesson. We’re not advocating a return to a mythical golden age. Education is fundamentally about the future and our aspirations for it.

A good start would be a serious debate about what sort of expertise, capabilities and qualities we need to be a successful nation in this world where no one owes us a living, the democratic system of government we cherish is being abandoned by our major ally, and our social cohesion is in seeming decline. 

Universities cannot solve these problems alone, but they are undoubtedly part of the solution. They need to be at the table when the nation’s problems and future are being discussed.

https://theconversation.com/universities-have-lost-their-way-but-cost-cutting-and-consultants-are-not-the-answer-263728

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

a bridge....

GUIYANG -- The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge in Southwest China's Guizhou province, set to become the world's tallest bridge, had completed a key load test as of Monday, ahead of its scheduled opening in late September.

The five-day testing process confirmed that the bridge's structural strength, stiffness and dynamic performance met safety standards, according to the testing team.

The load test, considered the final step before the bridge welcomes traffic -- included both static and dynamic tests. The testing team drove 96 trucks, weighing about 3,300 tonnes in total, onto designated points of the deck in batches to measure displacement and stress in the main span, towers, cables and suspenders.

The bridge is 2,890 meters long with a main span of 1,420 meters. Rising 625 meters above the river, it will set the record for both the tallest bridge in the world and the world's largest span bridge built in a mountainous area, upon completion.

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202508/25/WS68ac2f90a310851ffdb5004a.html

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

china first?....

 

The White House’s Bizarre Defense of Chinese Foreign Students
Colleges would shut down without more foreigners? That’s a win-win.

 

Scott Greer

 

President Donald Trump recently announced that America will take in 600,000 Chinese foreign students, outraging much of MAGA. While the White House has clarified this is a continuation of existing policy, the move appears anathema to the spirit of America First, and prominent commentators criticized the president for suggesting it.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham, a vocal Trump supporter, grilled Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on the matter on her show this week.

“Mr. Secretary, with all due respect, how is allowing 600,000 students from the communist country of China putting America first?” she asked Lutnick.

 

The cabinet secretary offered a curious defense of the proposal: It’s necessary to save American universities. “Well, the president’s point of view is that what would happen if you didn’t have those 600,000 students is that you’d empty them from the top, all the students would go up to better schools, and the bottom 15 percent of universities and colleges would go out of business in America,” Lutnick replied. “So, his view is he’s taking a rational economic view, which is classic Donald Trump.”

This argument makes the case for Chinese students worse. The Trump administration has been eager to tell American kids to not go to college and instead work in factories or go to trade school. That may be good advice for some Americans—but it looks terrible when you advocate for foreigners to take up the prime spots at elite universities. The implication is that Americans, but not foreign guests, are only supposed to go to the non-elite schools or forego college altogether. 

Moreover, this pro-Chinese student argument undermines Trump’s war with the universities and his attempts to stifle foreign subversion. It makes no sense to try saving the current university system in its corrupt state, much less to import more foreigners to fulfill that aim.

 

The sudden change of heart about universities is odd. The administration has tried to cut funding to higher education, claiming colleges are too beholden to DEI and wokeness to deserve taxpayer dollars. The administration has reduced the number of foreign student visas, particularly those handed out to China. Trump himself has claimed these students can pose national security risks through espionage and other means. A number of foreign students have been implicated in spying for the Chinese Communist Party.

If universities are at risk of collapse and this would devastate our economy, wouldn’t it make sense for our nation’s top universities to focus more on recruiting Americans? It’s strange for Lutnick to ignore this possible solution and to treat a lack of Chinese students as an inevitable nightmare.

While the commerce secretary now feels frightened about what might happen to American colleges, he struck a different tone when defending the president’s tariffs back in the spring. Lutnick said we needed to push Americans in white-collar work into manufacturing jobs. “It’s time to train people not to do the jobs of the past, but to do the great jobs of the future,” Lutnick told CNBC last May. “This is the new model, where you work in these plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here.”

 

He’s not an outlier in this messaging. Administration officials and conservative pundits regularly make such appeals. The Department of Labor’s X account recently asserted that trade school grads make more money than college grads. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declared in May: “Electricians, plumbers—we need more of those in our country, and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University.” Elon Musk regularly touts the superiority of going into trades rather than college (while also claiming we need college-educated migrants to fill jobs in the tech industry). 

Consistency is needed here. If the administration sees universities as the enemy and a college degree as over-valued, it shouldn’t trouble itself with the number of campuses that disappear. It should instead encourage more young people to follow the trade school path promoted by the White House. It should also be happy to reduce the demand for foreign students and ensure we have fewer Chinese spies in the U.S. These moves would serve the Trump administration’s agenda.

However, the administration’s line casts its main message aside for the worst kind of inconsistency. It tells Americans one thing and foreigners another: As a young American, you're only supposed to do blue-collar work—regardless of your interests and aptitudes—while elite schools and white-collar jobs are for foreigners. That’s not the intended message, of course. But it’s easy to think it is when the administration can’t maintain a consistent line.

 

Trump’s reasoning for supporting the Chinese visas is tied with trade negotiations. China demands that America continue to allow its citizens to study in the country. The president may think it’s necessary for any tariff agreement to keep this arrangement. He’s also likely hearing from college lobbyists who want their foreign cash cows to continue paying full tuition. Advisers may tell him it could cause some serious economic pain if university admissions continue to plunge.

But it’s not compelling to tell the American public “we’re allowing in Chinese foreign students as part of trade negotiations.” Officials probably think it’s better to pitch it instead as a necessity for American universities—despite conservatives’ hostility towards these institutions.

While it may be understandable for the president to stick up for Chinese foreign students, it’s still wrong. It would be much better for America to curb the Middle Kingdom’s foreign visas and let several colleges shut down. It may cause some short-term economic pain, but the long-term gains would make up for it. Many problems with American higher education would be solved. There is too much bloat, too many degrees, and too much nonsense within the Ivory Tower. A significant downsizing of the market would improve the situation and weaken one of the left’s chief institutions.

Chinese foreign students exploit our generosity for the benefit of a hostile power. There is no reason we should train their elite, helping make China the dominant global power. If given the choice between a trade deal or a restriction on foreign student visas, the restriction is better for the national interest.

The Trump administration has made tremendous strides in curtailing illegal immigration, DEI, and other harmful liberal programs. The second term has greatly exceeded the accomplishments of the first—and there are still three more years to go. 

But no president is perfect, and Trump is bound to make mistakes. The support for Chinese foreign students is one of them. Thankfully, there is still time for the administration to do the right thing, listen to the MAGA base, and reverse this terrible policy. We can’t make America great again if we indulge higher education’s Chinese addiction.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-white-houses-bizarre-defense-of-chinese-foreign-students/

 

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THE ARTICLE ABOVE MISSES THE POINTS:

CHINESE STUDENTS PAY REAL CASH TO THE UNIVERSITY WHILE AMERICAN STUDENTS BORROW MONEY....

CHINESE STUDENTS ARE SMART — AND LESS INFLUENCED, NOR ARE THEY CHOSEN, BY DEI POLICIES...

SHOULD THESE CHINESE STUDENTS STAY IN AMERICA, THEY CAN CONTRIBUTE THEIR STYLE OF EXPERTISE TO "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN"...

SHOULD THESE CHINESE STUDENTS STAY IN AMERICA, THIS WOULD DEPRIVE CHINA OF SOME OF ITS STUDENT RESOURCES...

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.