Nation-building universities in a global environment: The case of Australia

Abstract

The mass system of higher education in Australia is a product of the publicly financed nation-building strategies of the 1955-1990 period. The nation-building university is now undergoing a three way crisis brought on by the governmental retreat from nation-building and from the funding that sustained it, the stand-off between corporate and academic practices inside universities, and the need for new strategies in a globalising environment, in which national policies are relativised but remain important. The crisis is exacerbated by Australia's location on the American 'periphery', associated with global vulnerability and fluctuating economic and cultural dependence. In response the primary ..