June 15, 2005
This little op. ed. by James McConvill in the Sydney Morning Herald speaks a lot of truth about academe in Australia. He says:
"As a young academic, I have been frustrated by the resistance to fresh and challenging ideas in my discipline of law. There is a clear and positioned elite who dare not to depart from their conservative views.
Many full-time academics in my discipline simply do not publish. When others, like me, attempt to live up to our desired role as genuine intellectuals, we are often criticised or sidelined."
And:
"The role of the critical intellectual must be recognised and respected, rather than being allowed to decline by academics clinging tightly to a culture of mediocrity. If the promotion of ideas does eventually come to play second fiddle to the provision of services in universities, I may as well return to practising law rather than continuing as an academic."
Is this what happens with the emergence of the corporate university?Or is that too crude?
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