Latest Articles
We are encouraged to rely more and more on government officials to do for us what we could equally well do for ourselves—and, maybe more importantly, not to do what might help us solve our own problems.
Sep 08 2024
10 mins
If we imagine a metric called the Pinocchio Scale, which measures the number of lies told by a politician as a percentage of his or her overall public statements, our current prime minister (for want of a better description), Airbus Albo, has moved well into uncharted territory.
Sep 06 2024
5 mins
Why High University Rankings Might be Bad News
The recent and widely reported success of Australian universities in the Times Higher Education rankings follows similar success in other international rankings of universities, such as QS and Shanghai Jiao. We also have our own Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) conducted by the Australian Research Council (ARC), where the proportion of Australian university research rated at or above world standard has been rising. Australia’s Good Universities Guide, which is more focused on teaching and employment, paints a mostly rosy picture of the performance of our universities. There is not yet a ranking of university management—perhaps a gap which a sharp rankings entrepreneur has already spotted and will soon exploit.
No doubt deputy vice-chancellors in charge of research across Australia are swaggering around their offices thinking about whether to spend their performance bonus on a new Porsche or a BMW, enjoying the adulation from their large teams, and wondering how best to…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins
