The position here on the character of higher education in Australia takes as its starting point our education at the University of Sydney from 1958 to 19651. As we look back on that education and subsequent experiences as academics, we think that the most significant set of changes over the past fifty years is best described in terms of the tension between Socratic and Sophistic approaches to higher education. In its original form, the distinction between Socratic and Sophistic contrasted Socrates with the Sophists as to their disagreement over the way in which truth was to be sought. For Socrates,…