Yes, “direct action, such as occupations and pickets,” is just what we need – a return to the uncivilised violence of the 1970s campus. The arrogance and hypocrisy are astounding!

Perhaps it is about time to have universities close their gates.

Young adults are told: "If you want to be independent then leave home and stop relying on Dad's money", yet the author wants to be both independent and unaccountable, yet to keep grabbing our stolen money.

When money is grabbed from ordinary people in the form of taxes, they are forced to work longer and have less time left to educate themselves and enjoy those freedoms of leisure and independence as the author and his colleagues do. Their health also suffers as a result, so they die younger in order to allow the professors to live longer.

The special privileges of universities raise the demands for formal qualifications in nearly every occupation, forcing more people to waste years of their life in order to obtain a piece of paper. Meanwhile others are paying to feed, clothe and house them, but that doesn't concern the author whose relaxed job is secure for the rest of his life.

Sometimes, I'm inclined to start putting together 'An Idiot's Guide to Useful Idiots'.

It would have to have Chapters on:

* the Gramscian underpinnings of modern Nihilism;

* Tearing down the foundations of modern civil society [around ten chapters];

* how to oppose democracies as open societies;

* the primary task of occupying key positions in higher education and the media;

* befriending anybody else who may seek the destruction of modern democratic society: 'the enemy of my enemy is my bestie';

* following on that last point, how to denigrate equality, freedom of speech, and human rights, in support of one's besties;

* how to distort realities;

* how to ignore realities that can't be denied.

Etc., etc.

Still thinking about it. Suggestions welcome :)

Joe
www.firstsources.info

To add to the critical chorus and as other writers have suggested, Mark Beljac wants to be paid by the public but does not want to be accountable in any way. But to address the point about a degree in literature being of any use.. actually those graduates usually become high-powered salesman or consultants, if they don't become teachers. But they make a personal choice when they take such degrees - follow what they love and hopefully do much better at uni, or take something that might have more commercial value for the $5,000?? or so a year in HECS (which they now call something different). Degrees in literature, or law, incidentally, cost the public far less than degrees in medicine or science..

Some appreciation of this trade-off is now shaping public policy, but by labeling the shift as neo-liberal Beljac is saying far more about his own hard-left beliefs than he is saying about trends in the university sector..

Seems like a well informed and accurate assessment of the situation to me.
Henry Giroux covers the same theme, and much more too, in his various books and essays. He also connects all of the dots to the wider "culture" at large - or at least what is left of what used to be called culture.
His most recent online essay titled Beyond Dystopian Visions in the Age of Neoliberal (neo-psychotic) Authoritarianism connects all of the dots. Although it is very much about the situation in the USA it does have relevance to the situation that is developing here in the land of Oz and in the UK too.

But of course the purpose of the "universities" was always to serve the power and privileges of the ruling elites. C Wright Mills covered this theme in his book The Ruling Elites, and in his work altogether.

Location location...Australia has chosen NOT to support its communities with free tertiary education, but to turn over the university sector to a dogs breakfast for profit making.

The most useful purpose of universities, is fast becoming a predominance of enclaves of wealthy foreigners, grooming themselves to snap up local jobs, and to set up a base into which family reunions quickly fill immigration voids.

Universities are now a major preserve of the rich, to rip off a system for a personal gain not available in a home country.

On the other hand, Germany may have bitten off more than it can chew, by offering free university education "come one, come all" : And, ALL are coming from the Middle East; any wonder!

Australia has an urgent need to redesign itself on this level, or risk the same social dislocation both ends of the higher education rainbow, appear to be offering as reward!