If Australian Universities Are Going To Survive, They Can’t Just Produce “Job-Ready” Graduates
After decades of chalking up record profits, Australian universities are now mired in a deep crisis. But if we’re going to defend — let alone rebuild — the sector, its champions have to reject the subordination of education to the bottom line.
The University of Melbourne. (Geoff Penaluna / Flickr)
“It’s pretty hard to describe to someone outside research at the moment just what the morale is like.” Speaking on ABC’s national current affairs program, The Drum, respected cancer biologist Darren Saunders wasn’t holding back.
I have been doing research for almost twenty years now, and I have never seen morale the way it is at the moment . . . we’re in the middle of a pandemic, and one of the front-running vaccines is coming out of university research in Australia — and here we are talking about the guts being ripped out of the system.
Why would a successful scientist, dedicated to finding cures to deadly diseases, leave science? The short answer is that Saunders is over it. He can’t get a grant to support his work researching cancer.
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