AUR vol49, no 1 & 2, July 2007
Cover photograph by Alex Nikada
In this issue of AUR:
ARTICLES
After Copernicus: Beyond the crisis in Australian
universities
Geoff Sharrock
There’s a received view of the troubles of academia which lays the blame on a new corporate culture of soulless managerialism. Geoff Sharrock isn’t convinced. He argues that critical scholars are often ill-placed to be able to understand their own predicament. And many of the problems of the sector lie in its incapacity to adjust to the changed world of knowledge-creation in which we live.
Future Shock: The view from the top
It’s become a truism that Australian higher education nowadays is in a state of perpetual change. The next round of changes to research and teaching funding, however, will permanently alter the face of the sector. We asked five of Australia’s most prominent Vice-Chancellors to anticipate the future face of higher education. NTEU’s Carolyn Allport responds.
Which standards?
Ian Chubb
Esteem-powered learning
Glyn Davis
Diversity for what?
Anne R Edwards
Regulation and markets
Margaret Gardner
and Julie Wells
The big changes are yet to be seen
Ian
Young
Unimagined futures
Carolyn Allport
Oh, the Humanities! Australia’s innovation system
out of kilter
Stuart Cunningham
Federal research funding is increasingly pointed towards models of innovation derived from the sciences. And yet, argues Stuart Cunningham, this is an increasingly outmoded model of research discovery. The humanities and social sciences – the poor relations of innovation policy – have been pioneering new and sophisticated paths of research and collaboration between theorists and policy-makers. But no-one in government seems to be looking.
How not to fund teaching and learning
Leesa Wheelehan
In the increasingly research and innovation-driven landscape of higher education, the Federal Government’s Teaching and Learning Fund is supposed to redress the balance. Leesa Wheelehan is unconvinced. She argues the fund simply encourages game-playing between institutions in manipulating their teaching outcomes, and rewards good teaching on grounds that make no statistical or policy sense.
Off the radar: the problem of distance-learning in
‘integrated’ degrees
Monir Mir and Abu Shiraz Rahaman
Just about everyone suspects that the rush to enrol distance-learning students in on-campus degrees tends to disadvantage them. Monir Mir and Abu Shiraz Rahaman set out to test this intuition, using accounting students as their guinea-pigs.
RETROSPECT
Beached: The Cronulla events a year on
David Burchell
David Burchell ponders the aftermath of the events that shook a city, and the academic literature it’s spawned.
REVIEWS
Remembering the nineties
The Longest Decade by George Megalogenis
Review by Andrew Nette
Moving with the times
Making and
Breaking Universities by Bruce Williams
Review by Alex Millmow