Big Ideas Is our university system broken?
5 snips
Sep 4, 2025 Graeme Turner, an Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland and author of 30 books, joins lecturer Ben Eltham to tackle the crisis in Australian higher education. They discuss the alarming dropout rates and burnout among faculty, revealing systemic issues like funding declines and the commercialization of universities. The conversation delves into the need for universities to prioritize their role in democracy over workforce preparation, while advocating for equity and better support for underrepresented groups.
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Sovereign Knowledge Matters
- Universities are losing knowledge infrastructure and disciplines, threatening national capacity to think locally.
- Graeme Turner argues we need 'sovereign knowledge' as well as sovereign manufacturing to sustain expertise.
Workloads Outpace Staffing
- Academic workloads have ballooned while staffing hasn't kept pace, eroding job quality and morale.
- Turner links massive student growth with only minimal increases in full-time academic staff, creating systemic stress.
Change Institutional Choices First
- Universities can fix many problems through different institutional managerial decisions rather than policy alone.
- Turner urges changing choices like excessive casualisation to immediately improve working conditions.
