AUR vol48, no1, September 2005
Cover artwork by Mark van Driel
In this issue of AUR: (available in PDF format)
ARTICLES
Running on empty
by John Quiggin
After nine years spent in opposition, it’s still hard to
know what Federal Labor intends by way of an economic policy
platform. Kim Beazley still seems to believe that the prime
purpose of opposition is to oppose. John Quiggin disagrees.
Without a coherent and well-understood economic direction, he
argues, Labor’s sniping will continue to look like
unfocussed opportunism.
Pursuing the Ubiquity Principle
by Tom Clark
Higher education research stands at a kind of half-way house. At
present, it is highly directed by Government research priorities.
Yet the Government’s ambition is to create a much more
deregulated system, with self-created winners and losers. Tom
Clark suggests a different starting-point. All higher education
institutions generate research, and all academic staff should be
expected to do so, regardless of where they work. It is better
policy to foster the full range of the research resources we have
now, rather than allow some research to sink in the pursuit of
islands of excellence.
Reversing the slide
by Michael
Gallagher
The Government is embarking on a grand market-based vision for
the sector just at the moment when university enrolments will
begin a long and perhaps inexorable slide. And according to
Michael Gallagher, higher education is becoming a less attractive
investment for the private sector even as the Government is
pushing the sector towards ever higher proportions of
non-government funding.
Academia’s own demographic time-bomb
by Graham Hugo
It’s no news that Australian academics, like Australian
cricketers, are getting older (and perhaps tireder). But the
exact dimensions of the sector’s staffing crisis
haven’t been clear. Graham Hugo has been studying the
figures in detail, and he suggests that the problem may in fact
be worse than has been thought. Around a quarter of the academic
workforce will retire in the next decade, and there’s a
‘lost generation’ where their replacements should be.
Advertising change
by Alec McHoul
Everybody has a view about what’s happening to university
hiring policies – and it’s often a bleak one. But
it’s generally hard to tie down the facts. Alec McHoul
surveyed all the new job advertisements for the second half of
2004, and reports on his findings. As you might expect, change is
in the air.
Belittled: The state of play on bullying
by Eva Cox and James Goodman
Abused, ignored, sidelined, belittled. It’s the human face
of a systemic problem. Eva Cox and James Goodman report on a
recent studying of workplace bullying that highlights its effects
on those being bullied, and the rather piecemeal administrative
efforts to deal with it so far.
No academic borders?
by A Wendy
Russell
Transdisciplinarity has been a veritable mantra, especially in
the humanities and social sciences, for twenty years or more. Yet
academic structures and research application requirements still
struggle to come to grips with cross-boundary research and
teaching. Making universities more trans-discipline-friendly is a
tricky task, however. As Wendy Russell explains,
trans-disciplines require disciplines, and disciplinary
boundaries, too.
CORRIDOR OF UNCERTAINTY
Introducing
AUR’s new satire column, created in the belief that the
contemporary academy provides rich resources for wit, irony and
humour. Reader contributions are welcomed.
QA, RTS & quality of post-graduate theses in
Australian universities
by N O Grants and V B Slim (aka Cameron Grant)
REVIEWS
A spider’s web
Carter, Paul, Material thinking
Review by Judy Lattas
Those dismal scientists
Davies, Geoff,
Economia
Review by Alex Millmow
Networking niceties
Teather, David C B (ed),
Consortia
Review by Dr Eric Beerkens
Around the Journals
Reviews by Maryanne Dever
Maryanne Dever kicks off a new rolling column designed to alert
AUR readers to recent articles of interest from
Australian and international journals.