The core of Forsyth’s book derives from her 2012 Sydney University doctoral thesis, The Ownership of Knowledge in Higher Education in Australia, 1939–1996. Some interesting sections from her thesis have not been included in the published book, so the thesis is also worth seeking out online.

Forsyth’s many vignettes remind the reader of key historical figures, such as CSIRO’s Ian Clunies Ross, who played a major part in the 1957 Murray Report, which led to the expansion of universities under Prime Minister Robert Menzies. Forsyth’s quotation of Menzies’ 1959 confidential Cabinet comment that ‘money is the weapon by which oversight of universities will be secured’ is particularly apposite today, given that it is the Liberal government’s twenty per cent projected funding cut that is partly driving the higher education deregulation debate.

Forsyth notes that the student revolutions of the late 1960s and 1970s helped the destabilisation of professorial, and thus university, authority and the process whereby universities became ‘relevant’ to the economy. The reforms initiated by the then Labor Education Minister, John Dawkins, in the late 1980s resulted in the greatest changes in higher education since the 1950s. A mass system of higher education could not be funded, as Dawkins and his academic ‘purple circle’ recognised, on the same basis as the historical ‘élite’ system.

Hannah Forsyth (photograph courtesy of NewSouth)

If the universities then made a ‘Faustian bargain with the economy’, what will the current Faustian bargain over deregulation entail? Forsyth argued in a recent article in The Australian, ‘Vice-chancellors favour deregulation because they have lost their way.’ Whatever else, deregulation will not result in the creation of antipodean Harvards, as claimed in glib political statements.

Forsyth wants her book to be read by ‘intended, current and future students ... they too need a history of the university to understand the impacts of the current political discussions around the funding of universities’. Students, unfortunately, are the ones who have the least power in determining the outcomes of the current deregulation debate. They may protest, just as Joe Hockey and Christopher Pyne did in their student days, against higher fees, but it will be the politicians and university administrators who will determine the final outcome. The higher education debates in Parliament, in the first week of October, were essentially polemical and did not inspire confidence in rational long-term policy making.

In any final deregulated system, it will, however, be the choices of courses and the fees associated with them that will impact on future university frameworks. Even if most fees will be met retrospectively, students are surely going to expect more for their money. Universities will not be able to divert increased student fees to research, while increasing class tutorial sizes and relying on an ever-growing number of short-term contract lecturers. Forsyth highlights increased equity and diversity in the expansion of higher education, which must be preserved in market-driven outcomes.

One former Australian vice-chancellor has recently commented, ‘Students will pay lots more for the same old thing.’ Forsyth hopes her book will show how universities ‘came to be all about money rather than knowledge and why students are the ones being squeezed’.

Forsyth adopts a wide interpretation of ‘knowledge’ to demonstrate ‘not only why universities look the way they do but also why the knowledge that they protected and promoted became so central to the world and the economy’. Her discussions of knowledge as a private or public good are framed within economic and societal changes. Forsyth’s exploration of knowledge takes her down some pathways which she does not have the space to explore fully. Thus, in her curiously titled chapter ‘Knowledge in the Age of Digital Reproduction’, she skates over complex issues relating to the creation, production, distribution, and access to scholarly knowledge.

Forsyth’s brief reference to the ‘publish or perish’ pressures, is shorthand for the dangers in the growing emphasis placed by politicians on the importance of university league tables, most of which rely significantly on publications and accompanying metrics. Stefan Collini, in his book What Are Universities For? (reviewed by Glyn Davis in the May 2012 issue of ABR), ironically observes, ‘Vice-Chancellors now keep as nervous an eye on league tables as do football managers.’ Yet, most research publications are ultimately little read or cited.

Forsyth highlights the career problems for young female academics with children in keeping up with the demands of research evaluation exercises and grant applications. She also cogently documents a number of problems, such as the plight of short-term contract lecturers and postdoctoral fellows and the increasing fault lines between academics and university managers.

In the chapter, ‘The DVC [deputy vice-chancellor] epidemic’, Forsyth writes, ‘Scholars rarely feel their vice-chancellors represent them’, and later highlights the ‘DVC epidemic that extends into every area of university life, poisoning and corrupting the authentic, passionate pursuit of knowledge and learning’.

Forsyth makes it clear, on several occasions, that she wants to rise above the many critical ‘jeremiah’ writers on higher education. Yet, in the book, and, more particularly, in her blog and newspaper articles, she documents a number of higher education problems. It therefore comes as something of a surprise, in her short concluding chapter, that she states, ‘In many respects, higher education has never been better. Universities are no longer the small, narrow, elitist, male and unerringly white British spaces they once were . . . administrators are no longer secretarial “girls” but respected professionals.’ Historically, Forsyth proves that case, but the current debate has moved on. While Forsyth’s last words are, ‘Dwelling in the ruins is no solution’, she never really answers her final chapter header, ‘What Sort of University Do We Want?’, beyond short generalisations.

A History of the Modern Australian University effectively documents the development and evolution of Australian universities, but not where the system will end up. In that respect, however, Forsyth is far from being alone.