An article on the public university by in The New York Review of Books by Andrew Delbanco.In Australia as in the US the expansion of the public university is over. The reversal comes from declining public funds and increasing tuition fees in our public universities and the rise of private universities and the entry of the electronic universities into the educational marketplace.
It is a fundamental transformation. Does that mean a good education is being reconnected with privilege and wealth? The period of the public university, a liberal education and education for democracy is coming to a close? It is now increasingly about working full-time, going to uni part-time and majoring in subjects with immediate utility?
A key problem with our public universities is that they have been gutted of funds. This has lead to a lack of jobs, lack of pay for part-time work (and the highly exploitative casualisation of our university workforces) and a limp intellectual culture.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at March 3, 2005 11:07 PM | TrackBack