Australia

The present atmosphere in universities in Australia is increasingly ‘consumerist’. In spite of the rhetoric about choice and empowerment, what is happening in practice is that a decreasing pile of money follows courses that are ‘popular’. The corollary is that those not deemed to be so face the axe. In a situation like this there is a real danger that universities will cease to promote the teaching of the canon of Australian literature altogether. . . . [L]iterary criticism in Australia is a wide open field for further study and research, and for many key canonical figures not even a credible biography exists. Yet this situation is unlikely to move forward when University presses look disparagingly on books with what they have come to describe as having ‘purely academic’ interest.