Academia, the West Bank and More

Academic Freedom

Sir: In the January-February issue Salvatore Babones makes the extraordinary claim that “Contrary to some public perceptions … academic freedom is alive and well in Australia”.

Seldom has a more falsifiable, even ridiculous, statement been printed in Quadrant.

How can academic freedom exist when over the past thirty or so years all of our forty or so universities have been swamped by wave after wave of ill-prepared, poorly-motivated and simply unsuitable students whose lecturers and their casual and insecure markers are under enormous pressure to pass?

How can academics be free when the universities that employ them insist that their jobs depend on the income generated from full-fee-paying foreign students, large numbers of whose English is just not up to doing any prose-based subject at the tertiary level?

How can academic freedom prevail when middle managers systematically demand that lecturers only pursue research that “brings in” money and very…