The fate of public scholarship in the global university: The Australian experience

This paper explores the proposition that modern universities have been changed radically by globalization not least of which has been the erosion of 'public scholarship'. The paper argues that whatever the kind or scale of changes which have occurred in the past few decades, 'globalization' does not provide an explanation of what has happened. Rather far-reaching changes have been made driven by human capital theory and the practices of the New Public Management. Have these changes spelled the end of public scholarship? The paper proposes that in Australia at least public scholarship played little if any part in the actual work practices or culture of Australian academics in the recent past. Whatever the apparent value of the idea of the university as 'critic and conscience and critic of society', the absence of any sustained intellectual or practical resistance to changes introduced into modern Australian universities (like 'student-centred learning') since the 1990s points to a significant and long-term absence of a vibrant culture of public scholarship.