“So far we have a clever package for creating a more stratified system that suits the independent school crowd, lowers the long term public cost and reproduces the social hierarchy. Commercial market competition for the masses at the bottom and subsidised elite reproduction on top.”Professor Marginson described the announcements affecting research as “quite peculiar”.“It demonstrates the anti-modern anti-intellectual strain in the Australian conservative parties — UK Conservatives and US Republicans would not have done this and it would be simply unthinkable in Europe.“It beggars belief that Cabinet would monkey with research given Australia’s struggles to remain part of the top group of research nations — already we are hanging onto the edge. Every government in the rest of the world is committed to maintaining and most to increasing subsidies to basic and strategic basic-applied research in universities, regardless of the level of tuition fees for educational programs.”
via ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it’: Marginson | The Australian.
