The Universities
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It is a strange irony that politicians and policy-makers of Labor orientation should think it necessary for working people who do not possess a university degree to have one as some kind of validation of their worth. Would I hold my electrician in higher regard if he had a degree? Would he have a higher regard of himself? The ideas are preposterous
June 24, 2024
14 mins
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The main factor behind the groupthink that prevails amongst public university academics is not self-interest but an ignorance of the world outside their institutions. We need new thinking about the future of Australian higher education if the general public, perhaps even governments, is to be re-engaged in the needed reshaping and reform of our tertiary sector
March 13, 2024
7 mins
The latest
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Israel had not yet tallied the victim of Hamas' orgy of murder and rape, abductions and atrocities before a flying squad of Australian academics raced to raise the green flag and add the weight of their names and reputations, such as they are, to the attack on Israel. For the record and future reference, they even published a 700-strong list of who they are
March 7, 2024
6 mins
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The evidence, of which the University of Queensland's employment agreement is but the latest sad example, confirms Australia is becoming a country where opportunities, promotions and perks are determined by race. Only the implementation of true race-blind equality can foster the aspirations and contributions of all Australians
February 16, 2024
6 mins
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Now that contempt for Jews has gone mainstream among students, teachers and professors, how much liability will education departments and universities incur when the current eruption of sympathy and reverence for Hamas spawns the inevitable lawsuits? Never in our history have thousands of Australians -- many of them smart enough to know better -- thrown in their lot with a death cult. Heaven help us
December 18, 2023
15 mins
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If Australian Catholic University is abandoning the humanities ship, which certainly appears to be the case, the end is nigh for universities. Readers might scoff that these research fellows and professors can take their medicine because they are all lefties anyway. But that is a shallow sentiment. Instead, we should be mourning the passing of the true university, which was built around the humanities
September 15, 2023
5 mins
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You might well wonder how ads announcing positions for, say, female astrophysicists (and only female astrophysicists) could possibly square with equal opportunity laws – considering they give male applicants zero opportunity. Well, all the various Acts permit 'special measures' for special circumstances, and it seems that feminists academics' war on the patriarchy is just that
October 30, 2022
13 mins
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To go by media coverage of the purported sexual-assault epidemic at Australian universities, the Sabine Women had it easy. Not so for open and prominent disclosure, with the latest alarmist report artfully managing to bury the fact that relatively few students could be bothered responding to what the authors insist is a genuine crisis. Apparently it isn't
March 24, 2022
8 mins
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Australian university's co-dependent research relationships with China create strong incentives to make the preservation of Beijing's goodwill a chief and abiding concern. Beyond that, as the Dalai lama might testify in light of his visit to Sydney University, there is a distressingly eager concern to make sure the feelings of the regime never be ruffled
December 29, 2021
34 mins
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The proportion of Australian university research rated at or above world standard has been rising, but taxpayers, academics and students need to look quite a bit harder before joining the celebration of our universities’ rankings success
November 26, 2020
8 mins
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University education in the 1950s was scarce but cheap. Today it is abundant but expensive. Its scarcity in the 1950s was generated by the fact that the percentage of intellectually gifted and motivated persons in any given population is limited. The abundance of university education today is not a function of lower real prices but of lower entry scores
September 24, 2020
27 mins