Despite mounting evidence, universities continue to insist that academic freedom -- one of the most cherished of all tertiary values -- remains an immutable part of institutional life. After all, how can the modern university retain its image as a bastion of free, critical thought if academies are muzzled? Still, as the manageriat likes to remind…

The Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act 2018 (FITS Act) requires persons or entities, including universities, who engage with the Australian political landscape on behalf of a foreign principal, to register under the scheme. The High Court of Australia's recent decision in LibertyWorks Inc v Commonwealth of Australia [2021] HCA 18 may cause…

This article surveys available evidence of disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic to Australian university-based research and to the research training pipeline, considering both the long-term implications of this disruption, as well as the disproportionate impacts on higher degree research candidates, early-career researchers and women academics…

As part of a study investigating research productivity of sociology PhD students in Australia, an application to the federal government's Department of Education, Skills and Employment (DESE) aimed to establish a baseline count of completed sociology doctorates by university. It was anticipated that university totals might be different from PhD…

After 40 years as a hardworking and productive academic, here I was on a Zoom call fronting two senior colleagues telling me I no longer appeared on the new 'organisational chart'. In short, I was being made redundant. It was no surprise really, as another 40,000 professional and academic staff were to suffer the same fate. And really by then I…

In 2018 Australia's leading national university, the Austrailian National University (ANU), decided to break off consultation with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation over a bequest to fund a course on Western civilisation. It is not every day that a university decides to turn down a $3 billion bequest to fund a humanities program (Groch,…

It is easy to confuse academic freedom with freedom of speech, but it is illuminating to consider the responsibilities that frame academic freedom and thus distinguish it from the less constrained freedoms to speak that characterise our roles as citizens of democratic societies. In particular, scholars and scientists are subject to standards of…

This article reports on the findings of a study that explored the benefits and challenges for women of working at an Australian regional university in early 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines whether living and working at a regional university with dispersed campuses presented particular challenges for women and whether it had an…

In November 2018, the Australian Government commissioned Robert French, a former Chief Justice of the High Court, an active scholar and Chancellor of the University of Western Australia, to report on the state of academic freedom in Australian universities. In particular, French was also asked to assess the effectiveness of university policies and…

This paper addresses the important and linked questions of how to manage academic performance and workload effectively. It highlights the need in a modern, corporatised university to consider the nature of academic work and optimal ways to develop workload allocation and performance management processes. This paper complements two previous papers…

Martin Davies' paper seeks to vindicate the efforts of the Ramsay Centre to fund courses in 'Western Civilisation' at selected Australian universities. He begins by lamenting the rejection of vast amounts of philanthropic money for the humanities, and all too quickly dismisses the stated grounds for the Australian National University's decision to…

With the Australian international borders closed to international students due to the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Australian universities have experienced unanticipated financial losses. At the same time, many international students who would have chosen to study in Australia instead chose to enrol in universities in the US, UK and other…

Australian universities offer diverse approaches to bachelor's (honours) degrees as a means of dealing with a range of contemporary demands. These demands include responding to (i) the Bologna Declaration, (ii) tensions between the conventional role for honours as a PhD pathway and an emerging role for honours as professional development, and…

Organisational narratives are foundational to inform the actions and directions of an organisation. Modern organisations often place great weight and invest significant time crafting their narratives that are communicated through mission statements, strategic plans, policies, directives and self-promotion. Sometimes these narratives align with the…

The number of Indigenous people enrolling in and completing higher education courses in the Northern Territory slowly continues to climb. Since the first policies supporting the Australian Government's self-determination policy that encompassed training of Indigenous teachers in the Northern Territory, Charles Darwin University and Batchelor…