*but universities have to compete with the rest of the world for high-profile academics*

Err hang on there. Before worrying about "high profile", what say
universities start with the basics, like training enough doctors,
dentists, engineers and all the rest, for society's requirements.

My point again, if we have to steal them from Nigeria and Bangaladesh,
our education system is clearly flawed and hardly doing its job.

There are far more applications to study medicine then are ever
accepted, so clearly not just anyone can apply.

Perhaps that is the case with philosophy, but then philosophy is
hardly important in comparison to things like medicine or dentistry
etc.

Much as that might upset you, country towns can survive quite well
without hiring philosophers, but don't do so well, without a doctor.

These days, even the tiniest hick towns have computers.
Bertrand Russell and A.N. White both classed themselves as philosophers. Without their work on logic, computer science could not have happened -at least, not in the form it has.
Maybe the majority of philosophy students are just place holders, but that could be said of the vast majority of us, in every pursuit.

Reading through Brian's article and the majority of the comment posts it is clear to me that the BIGGER part of the problem is not the universities but AUSTRALIAN EMPLOYERS.

Australian workplaces are bad at training and worse at team-building. Our industries scream about being badly serviced by education while shoving their heads deeper down in the sand, shirking both cost and responsibility.

Universities and schools have never been there to provide workers as "simply plug-in and go" modules. Their purpose, and this is increasingly under threat, has been to create an interest in the range of knowledge fields our societies and people require to thrive. Universities *should* go even further in training those whose strengths are academic and who will generate new knowledge. That role is also under threat.

To keep universities focused on knowledge we need to move all the vocational stuff (accounting, medicine, nursing, IT, etc.) to institutes. They should also be funded differently and have a different fee structure. That is the model they have in The Netherlands etc., but the prestige that word "university" has here means it won't happen. But then, as that word looses its prestige through massification, an anti-intellectual Australia couldn't give a stuff.

They dance on the ashes that portend their own doom,
while everywhere else knowledge economies dawn.