Nation-building universities in a global environment: The case of Australia

The mass system of higher education in Australia is a product of the publicly financed nation-building strategies of the 1955–1990 period. The nation-building university is now undergoing a three way crisis brought on by the governmental retreat from nation-building and from the funding that sustained it, the stand-off between corporateand academic practices inside universities, andthe need for new strategies in a globalisingenvironment, in which national policies arerelativised but remain important. The crisis isexacerbated by Australia's location on theAmerican `periphery', associated with globalvulnerability and fluctuating economic andcultural dependence. In response the primarystrategy should not be to imitate Americanuniversities, a course of action which islikely to deliver modest returns, but tostrengthen the academic identity andplace-based identity of Australianinstitutions, enabling them to make adistinctive contribution to global highereducation underpinned by a renewed partnershipbetween nation and university.