Ho Ho.

This article describes the method for selling used cars: No faults will be openly discussed.

Dan

"Academics feel undervalued."

Hence their continual interference in our lives? Their attempts to draw attention to themselves, with ridiculous, left-wing nonsense?

"Academics feel undervalued."

Hence their continual interference in our lives? Their attempts to draw attention to themselves, with ridiculous, left-wing nonsense?

This is nonsense. Academics discuss things all the time. The right wing press looks for things it can misrepresent then everyone acts as if we are all going to be forced to follow something some academic said in passing. The whole thing is part of the right wing fear/hate campaign designed to stifle any change that might make society better

It's funny to me the right saying that things are 'forced on them' but they are things they seek out in the media like crack addicts.

I agree universities ought to be fully funded places open to all!

That said, how do we pay for it from a budget stretched far beyond its limits and expected to service more than a trillion dollars of public debt. Yes we are getting a far better return from coal but not anything like what we could be earning if we hadn't handed our mining and power generating assets to tax avoiding price gouging, profit repatriating foreign investors.

Well, There's a few things we might do, begining with the creation of a new peoples' bank. And by using these new AUSTRALIAN owned, operated and controlled funds to build, AUSTRALIAN owned and operated income earning infrastructure projects. Very rapid rail, quite massive deionization dialysis desalination projects that is four times cheaper than traditional desal and cost effective for broad scale agriculture.
We need new dams but as myriad upland dams that force the landscape to hold and trickle out water to iron out feast or famine water flows!

All the above requiring affordable energy and cooperative capitalism to make them practical. And that's not today's coal, gas or the renewables, but MSR thorium.

And given a real skills shortage, usher in the guest labour concept that served post war Germany so well and made them the powerhouse economy of western Europe.

They return willingly from whence they came if 50% of their salary is withheld and only paid to them when they're back home! TBC.
Alan B.

We have just 3 choices here to run the universities as business operations open for business where foreigners and the well heeled are the clients. The Chinese model, which is also based on who has the most money power and influence. Allow the best from the rest to do what they need to survive. And continue to export our best and brightest and their better ideas to the benefit of foreign nations.

Or we can put AUSTRALIANS first and, and use a means test model to ensure the very best we have are no held back or rejected on social or underprivileged grounds.

If we do have to limit the numbers that get through or are selected?
Because of funding limitations? Then let it be an IQ test that decides outcomes rather than the size of parental bank balance, power and influence!

Finally, we were a far more inclusive and prosperous nation before we started to privatize and sell off our infrastructure, national heritage and our virtual economic sovereignty! And need to crack on build an economy that'll draw down debt and make us a nation that not only makes stuff again, but, as Australians, by Australians and for Australians.

When that was how it was done back then, we were the third wealthiest nation on the planet and a creditor one at that! We can do it for us or them! Choose!
Alan B.

universities ought to be fully funded places open to all!
Alan B,
Well, all who pass the entry requirements & show promise to become useful.
Education for education's sake is disastrous as we're now experiencing.
We desperately need educated people to reduce the number of Academics who constantly throw mindless spanners into the gears of society !

Agree Indy, the man with the highest IQ in Oz was reportedly running behind a garbage truck with garbage cans. Some of the over-privileged thought he might have chosen that "honorable work"? Me? I believe he came from the wrong side of the underprivileged ranks and took what honest work he was qualified for. As many of us also had to.

Even I who I'm told had the third highest IQ? And graduated from army medical school with honours even though I hadn't completed a single year of high school. To put that in context, there were a number of recently graduated med students in that room who knew the stools were odourless. And were as suprised as! When their scores were a lot lower.

I'm still treated with rare contempt and intellectual arrogance due to my age not my intellectual ability. Grey hair seems to mean you have nothing left to contribute, even if ones best and most valuable ideas are still to be realized.

It'd be a crime if they're buried with me.

If I had a PHD there'd be no problem getting others to listen and if that PHD was the result of parental deep pockets? I doubt very much if my ideas would be worth very much as a commercial proposition, as I'd probably be a second rate doctor or lawyer charging ridiculous, gold plated fees. Or a me, me, me, hasbeen?

Or get elected as a smooth talking pollie that takes home a very nice taxpayer funded salary, entitlements and a pension others can only dream of?
Alan B.

Alan B,
How could we possibly overturn the insidious Peter Principal culture in the Public service ?
If inroads could be made there, the battle would be 75% won !
There has to be a way of making people in responsible positions accountable ! I always thought a kind of national service, in fact, anything would be better than Status quo.

Agree Indy. I believe we need to isolate and identify incompetence usually accompanied by blame shifting and accepting the praise and kudos for the work of others.

I believe we need a clinical test that identifies the corporate cowboy in the ranks of the public service. And limit the number of assistants that make these look halfway competent.

Other than that, need a complete cleanout of public service positions with every change of government! Which as I see it, is the only real way of making unelected decision makers accountable for their decisions!

Also elected officials ought to be able to appoint their own public servants and then also wear it when they F up! And F-ing up should come with the sack as it would be for all others in the workforce!
Alan B.

Academics do no such thing. A change in funding won't change the nature of academia but i agree that we should go back to the 1970s and free education

Introduce natural attrition followed by probation for successors in the public Service & within a very short time improvements will become noticeable in humanity rather than the inhumanity we're dealing with now.
A successor to a bureaucrat position should not automatically receive the salary of their predecessor, they need to first prove they're capable before any pay rise.
There simply is no other way to get accountability under way !