What are we to make of Peter Dutton’s outrageous demand that Mark Scott, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, should resign? It surely represents an assault on all universities, and on the very idea of a university education as a standard bearer for Australian culture.

Crikey even suggests that the attack on universities could be a major issue in the next federal election. The federal government and universities themselves should brace for a major external attack.

The truth, however, is that universities have long been undermined from within. Neoliberal shibboleths have invaded the whole of our society and spread through all institutions as a virus. It is now deemed acceptable that the leader of a university, the vice-chancellor, be also called a Chief Executive Officer, and paid the salaries of big-business moguls. University governing councils are often populated by a majority of businessmen and women. I once attended a seminar of senior executive staff who were greeted by the then vice-chancellor of the University of Queensland saying that ‘whether you like it or not, the university is a business’.

Now no one can dispute that the organisation manages large funds, which have to be handled with integrity and efficiency. But to claim that the whole edifice was a business was a travesty of misinterpretation as to what a university stands for. The business ‘ethos’ was then made to trickle down through the organisation when consultants from a great business, later to be identified as corrupt, came to teach us what we had to do. Each member of staff at any level had to have a supervisor, and each had to submit the notorious KPIs – key performance indicators – outlining what they hoped to improve........

© Pearls and Irritations