What ails Australia's universities?

This, however, began to change in the 1960s. The popular social movements that sprang up since then largely began on the university campus and retain a strong presence there.

The arts and humanities have since challenged and questioned many aspects of the dominant narratives that were previously constructed in Australia. The critical intelligentsia was one the most important counter currents that existed during the Howard era. As such the university has tended to veer outside of the control of the moneyed elites. Since the 1960s there has been an "excess of democracy" at Australia's universities.

Neoliberal reforms and democracy do not go hand in hand. No major neoliberal reform in Australia has been supported by the public; tax reform was routinely rejected, labour market deregulation has been rejected, privatisation does not command public support and so on. That there has been an "excess of democracy" since the 1960s makes matters worse.

Free market discipline is a convenient way of bringing the university under control. A core feature of the market, as the philosopher Adam Swift has pointed out, is the satisfaction of the preferences of others. In a class based society that means the preferences of the rich who overwhelmingly have the greater means to satisfy preferences.

The rich and powerful, naturally, are not interested in the production of graduates that would not help them get richer. That's why the Commerce building at the University of Melbourne is an ornate structure. Even worse, the rich are not interested in an institution producing graduates that might seek to take their privileges away from them. That's why the John Medley building is a shithouse.

The development of the profit motive within the university system not only sees the university shift towards becoming a corporation but, more to the point, it becomes more beholden to a corporate dominated society.

The other method of control, which Singer alludes to in his article, is the development of fashionable nonsense in the arts and humanities. Here I speak of such assorted junk as "poststructuralism" and "critical theory".

The purpose of all this is to distract. If the arts and humanities move out of control then tolerating mindless garbage at least serves the purpose of distracting people from undue concentration on the core of the system of power. That one can then point out what passes for scholarship, as Brendan Nelson did, to the punters paying for it all is an added bonus.

The arts and humanities must weed out this nonsense if they wish to remain viable in this country. This will be difficult because the current dominant tendencies control the appointment of academic staff.

Ultimately we should seek to create autonomous universities free of control from outside institutions and largely run by and for its stakeholders which would include the broader community. A viable autonomous university, however, is only truly possible within an autonomous society.