Universities "are decreasingly seen as a responsibility, let alone a component part, of the public".

That's true, because they are increasingly remote from, and out of touch with, the public, so few of the public having been victims of the brain-washing factories. The lady's 'selling of degrees' comment is apt.

Perhaps the government should fund universities more and decide, as with immigration, who goes to university. Austalians only, for starters.

All education, top to bottom must be privatised.
That one move will remove the scam it is, and the huge waste of public resources it is.

As we increasingly move towards a Charles Dickens exclusivist society, privatisation of this industry, will be honest and up front.

Dan

Yes we are, even as we expect future taxpayers to pay the debt we are creating.

We could solve some of the funding shortfalls by making all the unis private enterprise only and use a progressive means-tested endowment that exhausts at 200,000 a year.

And end the politically motivated garbage that continues to officially forbid nuclear energy.

With that done there'd be many more millions for research! TBC.
Alan B.

Count. And we could save more than we spend on tertiary education if we ended the rorts and ripoffs that are negative gearing, heavily subsided super for the better off and some aspects of family trusts that selectively entrench unearned and undeserved privilege.

Universities should be places filled by merit, not the size of the family's pocketbook.

An unavoidable universally applicable flat tax of 15%, would end the current tax shortfall and enable us to draw down debt while some current taxpayers are still alive!

Selectively preferred and preferences cooperative capitalism would as it did in other basket-case economies, get them up of the floor and competing with the best as they went from record strength to record strength.

Co-ops stood almost alone as the only private enterprise, free market, business model that survived the Great Depression largely intact! And given we fund and facilitate this model wherever we can? Put the nation back to work in productive enterprise.

We would outlaw all middlemen paper shuffling profit demanding middlemen/robber barons along with commission sales, to effectively have the cost of living/doing business. This and truly affordable energy and housing would free up massive discretionary spending as it massively boosts the domestic economy and tax receipts!

Someone in charge has to finally understand, volume massively outperforms margins! And that, whatever the market can bear, is Pollyanna pollywaffle or just plain dumb!
Alan B.

I understand that we have developed a vastly more comfortable spittle test and a nasal spray that kills the virus on contact.

Without our excellent research units in our universities, we'd be still groping in the dark around this virus.

We need more of the expert involvement and at the side of decision-making pollies so this science-free zone can finally accept the science on climate change, plus safe clean dispatchable energy and not only the cheapest in the world, but carbon-free to boot. Moreover, nuclear has fewer fatalities per gigawatt-hour than any other, including renewables!

And no, renewables are not as claimed by the science-free zone, the cheapest world's cleanest! MSR thorium is. And were the asinine prohibition be lifted on nuclear energy, there'd be millions in new research grants and a cancer-curing industry worth tens of annual billions!

But hey no, we don't want any of that nor a speedy recovery, least we tread on some coal-fired, troglodytes toes?
Alan B.

Correction of Grammarly's correction have the cost of living should be read as I wrote it, halve the cost of living. This correction has cost me a post. Thank you, Grammarly, so helpful!
Alan B.

Hey Dorothea,
"Universities across the world are floundering from the effects of coronavirus. Some are struggling to survive and risk bankruptcy."

Good. If we didn't have universities we wouldn't have idiots manufacturing biological weapons and we wouldn't have COVID-19.

They won't go bankrupt.
The government will bail out their financial incompetence, and the children of tomorrow will all pay for it, regardless of whether they go to university or not.

Universities shouldn't exist if the intelligence of all the people associated with them isn't enough to save them from bankruptcy.
How many financial experts come out of University?
- And they can't manage their own finances?

We should save ourselves the future liability of this political insurgency petri dish that's ruining our society and just bulldoze them all.
Send all the spoilt little window smashers and the Marxist professors that indoctrinate them into the rice paddies for the proliteriat promoting mindset they support.
Oh- they were planning on everyone else doing all the work.
Too bad so sad, be careful what you wish for.

Universities gave us Antifa and COVID-19.
Both of those things we can do without.

What about the people that empty your wheelie bin every week?
You want to take their taxes for your University when you will never have to dump your own rubbish.
Those people will never benefit from a government cash splash to universities but you're happy to take from them?

Not to mention Universities hand in immigration and support for immigration that brought COVID-19 here.

On some level this country really would be better if all the people at university were working on farms growing fruit and vegetables.

'Universities gave us Antifa and COVID-19.
Both of those things we can do without.'

true right Armchair.

Because of the lying gutless activist professors who rewrite history and preach the gw religion in order to keep their jobs (just ask Peter Ridd) our country is far worse off. You could add the destruction of simple biological truths, gender bending and the 'white privilege myth' to Armchair's list.

'We need as much intellectual capital as can be garnered.'

Universities stopped producing intellectual graduates when the leftie ideologies took them over.
Now those same lefties are complaining they cannot cope in a capitalist economy ... and we are supposed to be surprised and shell out the taxes, we paid, to prop them up.

China, intellectualism and capitalism ... really ... pipe dreams in or so-claimed 'intellectual' institutions.

What a grovelling attitude from the lefties.

Grammarly, so helpful!
Alan B.
Why do use Grammarly, did you attend University ?

Reduce the millions paid out for guessing & give more to research !
Anyhow, can anyone tell us what the most costly part of research is ?
Is it equipment/facilities or salaries for people who never discover anything?

No we are not weakening the institutions that can solve coronavirus, but we just may be kicking them back into something that will serve us, the funders of these institutions.

If people no longer trust or respect these "institutions" they have no one to blame but themselves. They have been due for a serious shake up for some time ,& this crises can only be good for them.

It is time for them to decide if they want to be funded by the taxpayer, & therefor answerable to them, or private business organisations, after the biggest buck they can find.

The first thing we must do is remove from them the de-facto right to operate as an immigration agency. A degree must not carry the right to stay in Oz. Then we must make them more efficient, getting a days work for a days pay from academic staff.

Once this is done, they may become useful citizens again, rather than blood suckers.

Bloodsuckers are indeed the bane of our existence and an albatross around the neck of the economy. And they are those paper shuffling middlemen who do no productive work for the profits they demand.

Include predatory parasites, who think a little money gives them special privileges and that the taxpayer and the tenants can pay the piper while they call the tune and demand whatever the market can bear?

Don't understand that most of the old manual jobs and quite a few of the white-collar ones, are being swallowed by automation. Coal mining, given the margins, is being robotized as we speak.

We need STEM graduates as never before and we need cooperative capitalism to replace most if not all the predatory parasite business models, currently threatened by both modernisation and cheap, clean, safe nuclear energy!

Don't or refuse to understand the depth of the economic mess we're in and that the only private enterprise, free-market business model that largely survived the Great Depression mostly intact, were employee-owned and operated, co-ops!

Or that a huge debt burden for that time went away as a result of a period of, deliberately created, unprecedented prosperity and the gang-busters economic growth it created!

And our solution only more so, this time! we can fund welfare and unearned, undeserved entitlements for the rich, or properly funded tertiary education! We can't ask future generations to effectively pay the bill and leave them holding a bag of wind for their due reward!
Alan B.