Institutional Breakdown? An Exploratory Taxonomy of Australian University Failure 1

Abstract

Australian higher education has undergone radical change aimed at transforming universities into commercial enterprises less dependent on public funding. Despite some significant successes, including dramatic increases in the numbers of domestic and international students, decreased Commonwealth subsidies, and more private sector finance, there are ominous indications that institutional failure is endemic, especially financial accountability. Drawing on various theories of institutional failure, this paper attempts to examine the causes of the current crisis. A fourfold taxonomy of Australian university failure is developed that identifies governance failure, accountability failure, quality failure, and information failure as the primary sources of tertiary education institutional breakdown.institutional failure, New Public Management, reform, university policy,

Are Australia’s universities in deficit? A tale of generic managers, audit culture and casualisation

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Blended Learning Internationalization from the Commonwealth

“…De Vita and Case contrasted the economic stance of universities "expand [ing] their financial base by using international students as a source of revenue" with the ideological stance in which the primary work of universities is "preparing students to live and work in a multicultural society through greater understanding and respect for other cultures" (p. 385). While cultural accessibility is a laudable goal, there is a great deal of contemporary discourse presenting universities as more interested in capitalism than knowledge emancipation (Cimbala, 2002;Gunn, 2000;Huff, 2006;Murray & Dollery, 2005;Versluis, 2004).…”