“We persist with offering opaque and inflated claims of our direct impact.” Thank you, Catherine Livingstone, chancellor of University of Technology Sydney, for having the integrity to tell the truth about our universities. Your candour will not go unnoticed.

Your Tuesday speech to Universities Australia (the national vice chancellors’ club) certainly will be noticed – and ignored. Australia’s universities routinely make demonstrably false claims about “export earnings”, pretending that all student spending is brought in from overseas. They just don’t ask who’s delivering their Uber Eats.