What's the point of university: Salvatore Babones

Menzies Research Centre

Australia’s universities are in trouble. A decade or more of chasing revenue from foreign students has changed the character of universities and left them vulnerable to external disruption like the Covid-19 border bans.

The rankings system with which rewards research citations more highly than the quality of teaching has distorted the allocation of resources and turned academic research into exercise in citation harvesting.

Universities have become top-heavy in administration leading to untold frustration from students and teaching staff.

And to top it all, universities are responsible for the lab leak that allowed the culturally destructive virus commonly known as woke to escape into the community.

Are our institutes of higher learning broken beyond repair? Should they be abandoned in favour of other sources of epistemological excellence less remote from the community?

That’s the question Salvatore Babones sets out to answer in his new book, Australia’s Universities: Can They Reform? He joins Menzies Research Centre Executive Director for this discussion recorded in February 2022

Salvatore Babones has a background in sociology. He has a PhD and Master of Science in applied mathematics at John Hopkins University and is currently an associate professor at the University of Sydney and an adjunct scholar at the Centre for Independent Studies.

He authored a 2019 paper for the CIS: The China Student Boom and the Risks it Poses to Australian Universities.

His latest book, Australia's Universities: Can They Reform? is published by Ocean Reeve Publishing https://www.oceanreevepublishing.com/product/australias-universities-can-they-reform/

Email Nick Cater [e-mail]

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