Andrew DysonCredit: .
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Ross Gittins (Comment, 7/8) once again outlines the ″epic fail″ of our current university funding model. Universities are caught in the bind of the federal government refusing to fund them adequately, but then castigating them for an overreliance on overseas students enrolled to offset the shortfall. At the same time universities must apply the former Morrison government’s decision to set ridiculous fees for some subjects while decreasing fees for others it considered were producing more ″job ready″ graduates. Gittins reports that arts degrees are predicted to cost $50,000 in 2025. The university response to the funding dilemma – leaving university staff underpaid, overworked and highly casualised, while still increasing the pay packets of their senior executives – is common in the private sector but nonetheless disgraceful. Just as the funding ″model″ used for our primary and secondary schools needs to be addressed, we need government to ensure that we fund the whole education sector, including universities, fairly and adequately. And we need the universities to ensure their staff are treated with respect and also remunerated fairly and equitably. Jenny Macmillan, Clifton Hill
The slow erosion of academic joy
Universities are big businesses. To support a corporate culture, university bureaucracies have become gigantic. Campuses are filled with layer upon layer of administrators. As a result of these bureaucratic layers, academic activities such as teaching, research and publishing have become onerous. The joy of being an academic, and making a contribution to knowledge, has been slowly eroded.
Sarah Russell, Mt Martha
Argument of little worth
Are vice chancellors really arguing that the role of universities is to serve the economy, not higher education?
Jenny Herbert, Metung
The rot began with ‘universification’
Ross Gittins is correct about one thing and incorrect about another. The nation’s vice chancellors are overpaid and the university sector is in a mess. But it is not by reason of neoliberalism. Markets merely respond to incentives. Rather, one must go back to the ill-conceived policies of John Dawkins when minister for employment and training who drove the ″universification″ of the technical sector, diminishing the role of secondary technical schools and the various institutes of technology, creating artificial demand for university services by insisting everyone finishes high school and gets an unmeritorious degree. The legacy of that oversupply is now coming home to roost with all levels of government trying to avoid responsibility for funding the problem they created. Douglas Shirrefs, Yea
Undervaluing unis a feature of politics
Thank you Ross Gittins for your appropriately strong language in censuring the former Morrison government’s attitude to humanities degrees. However, undervaluing universities and those who have the academic talent to undertake the research which advances the stock of human knowledge, and the tertiary teaching which equips the next generation with similar potential expertise, has long been a bipartisan weakness of Australian governments. If brain power in Australia were as carefully encouraged, nurtured, protected, honed and respected as the elite sporting ability which aims for Olympic medals, the result would be unimaginable advances towards solving the nation’s and the planet’s many and varied problems, including those which have now become existential.
Ruth Farr, Blackburn South
Private benefit v public good
In the 1970s, the Whitlam government made universities fee-free. In the 1980s, the Hawke government began the process of reintroducing university fees. Through the efforts of Labor and Coalition governments we have seen university fees, not only for foreign students but also for our own, continue to climb. The notion of a public good has been overtaken by the concept of university education as a private benefit, to the detriment of the nation.
Tony Haydon, Springvale
THE FORUM
ABC in good hands
I congratulate the ABC chair Kim Williams on his foresighted, intelligent approach to the future of the organisation. Having observed his unique understanding of the media during his career I was delighted to see him take his present position as Chair of the ABC board. He understands that the audience are not all merely sponge-like consumers. Please could he bring back The Drum for those of us who thrived on the wide ranging, in-depth, intellectual and ″lived experience″ analysis of current local and overseas current affairs.
Jenny Callaghan, Hawthorn
Viewing trashed
I recently watched on ABC TV Antiques Road Show. It was made more than 20 years ago. And we have seen that episode over and over again as we have with Hard Quiz, Vera and Would I Lie To You?
Looking down a day’s program list apart from the news there is little that is not a repeat.
Recall the guarantee from Malcolm Turnbull who slashed the ABC budget and told us that it would not affect programming, only the ″back office″? That promise was later repeated by Scott Morrison when he trashed the ABC budget even further.
What happened to the ″eight cents a day″ which was the cost of the ABC when we had programs of quality? It helped aspiring actors on their way and contributed much to the cultural life of Australia.
Now we have none of it.
Makes one wonder as to where our priorities lie.
Murray Stapleton,
Darraweit Guim
Tough words? No
The Iranian ambassador’s unambiguous message that his country and its proxies are committed to wiping out Israel is nothing new. But thank goodness we have Foreign Minister Penny Wong to take the ambassador to task by calling his pledge abhorrent and inflammatory.
I mean, that should work.
Henry Herzog,
St Kilda East
Conflicting aims
Congratulations to Woodside for investing in a lower-carbon ammonia plant (″Woodside punts $3.7bn clean ammonia project″, 7/8). I hope they can understand the climate-related objections to their hugely polluting Browse gas project?
Industry needs power, but the Business Council of Australia supports a 46 per cent emissions reduction by 2030, and net zero by 2050.
Can these be achieved at the same time as the development of the Browse gas project?
John Hughes, Mentone
Dream come Trew
What a mesmerising spectacle at the Olympic Games as 14-year-old skateboarder Arisa Trew became Australia’s youngest Olympic Gold Medallist by winning the Women’s Park event in the skateboarding program.
Multicultural Australia came up trumps in the French capital: Trew, from the Gold Coast, has a father Simon who is Welsh, and a mother Aiko who is Japanese.
Eric Palm, Gympie, Qld
Create new categories
Gender controversies (“Long and short of boxing’s generation saga”, 7/8) are not confined to one activity (boxing). It has been a problem in sport for a long time. If non-standard gender capacities provide participants with an unreasonable physical advantage, alternative options can be found.
One possible solution would be to establish a separate category of competition for intending participants who do not meet traditional gender norms.
Brian Kidd, Mt Waverley
Power plays
As I write the Olympic medal table reads United States, China, Australia, France, United Kingdom.
This suggests to me that Australia, as an undoubted world power, should replace Russia (with no medals) as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
David Francis, Ivanhoe
Being there a victory
Anyone reaching a level of excellence in their chosen sport that allows them to be selected to represent their country at the Olympics is a winner in my book.
Commentators saying of Melissa Wu that she failed to replicate her podium finish of her Tokyo Olympics is plainly rude, such comments breeding public disrespect for what these amazing athletes achieve. They deserve applause, not blunt expressions of disappointment.
Peter Rickard, Kew
Flagging new ideas
There have been great suggestions in Letters recently on possible new Australian flags, but I’m not sure that wattle or kangaroos would a great flag make.
I recommend that all aspiring flag designers have a look at a brilliant TED talk by Roman Mars on vexillology (flag design/appreciation) for an explanation of what makes a distinctive and memorable flag (think Canada, Japan, South Africa), which is available online.
His key points include that the flag should be possible to be drawn on a 1″ x 1.5″ (approx 2.5cm x 4cm) piece of paper (this reflects how a full-sized flag will look from a distance); to use two to three basic colours; no lettering or seals; and be distinctive, using meaningful symbolism.
My opinion is that the Aboriginal flag meets these design principles, but having seen some of the submissions in the New Zealand flag referendums it would be interesting to see what creative ideas might be out there.
Damien Brosnan, Aranda, ACT
Profit-loss equation
What is the point of building housing on government (our) land when 90 per cent is unaffordable to a large section of our community? Surely the role of government is to ensure that everyone has access to suitable accommodation. Depending on profit-driven private developers is driving inequality with all its social and economic repercussions.
Jennie Epstein, Little River
Search engine fail
When I Googled, ″Is Google good or bad?″, it first took me to a Wikipedia entry ″Criticism of Google″, with a rather extensive list of misdemeanours. If it was bad, it would hide this page surely, so I can’t decide yet.
However, the matter has been addressed in court with a US judge deciding Google had spent a fortune designing its search engine so that it became the only search engine to use and thus the one to put your ads on.
A dominant search engine can effectively become a monopoly and thus without competition the options are reduced and Google could decide what to promote or downgrade but the responses would no longer be accurate.
Too many internet enterprises, Google, Facebook and X have become too big and as they operate internationally, too hard for any single government to manage.
The internet was meant to be the greatest boon to humankind but there is still a long way to go and maybe these enterprises will recognise the concerns and start to develop solutions to manage their use.
Dennis Fitzgerald, Box Hill
Migration numbers
The Age report (6/8) that Melbourne will have to keep growing at the fringes to house migrants assumes net overseas migration will continue at the rate of one million every two years. Even the federal government has recognised, however, that recent immigration rates are unsustainable and has pulled back, though not nearly enough to get population growth and new housing into balance.
The Victorian government, of course, does not determine immigration levels; the federal government does. Nevertheless, they are both Labor and we may assume they communicate occasionally. It would be comforting to think that Victorian MPs would tell their federal counterparts that they are not coping with recent levels of migration. It’s not just housing; it’s hospitals, schools, recreational areas, public transport and a host of other services. The federal government may enjoy the tax revenue from employed new migrants but it is the states and local government that have to pick up the tab for accommodating them and their families.
Jenny Goldie,
Cooma, NSW
Long road to equality
As during the Voice referendum, Jacinta Price is calling for institutions to “start treating Indigenous people the same” (“Price pushing for new tack on resource riches”, 6/8).
Yet globally, health institutions require practitioners to be socially accountable to their vulnerable patients. This can require extra effort to achieve the same health outcomes for Indigenous people – the idea of health equity.
The mental trauma stolen generations families experience is long-term, and affects trust in service-providers and health institutions. Treating “the same” would be a social injustice. Equal treatment is only feasible when citizens have equal status in a society, and we’re not there yet. Kingsley Whittenbury, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Torrens University, Adelaide, SA
Gambling’s losers
The recent decision of the federal government on gambling reform is disappointing to say the least. The impact of gambling on the community is well-known as was the evidence in past years that has seen cigarette advertising banned. It appears the government is fearful of the backlash from media outlets that continually promote gambling and the sporting industry that seem to believe they have a right to promote sport betting at home and online as well as the volume of funds they collect as sponsorship.
The government has taken the easy way out with its reforms and many in the community will be the losers.
Ray Cleary, Camberwell
His actions spoke loudest
Congratulations to Dustin Martin on an amazing career. Like Bruce Doull he is a man short on words but large on performing when it really mattered most.
Neale Meagher, Malvern
AND ANOTHER THING
US politics
The announcement of Tim Walz as Kamala Harris’s running mate is welcome news and proof that the much vilified ″old white male″ is not dead yet.
Greg Hardy, Upper Ferntree Gully
Can Kamala Harris walz into the presidency in November? Hope so. Robyn Westwood,
Heidelberg Heights
Donald Trump, when was America great and why? If Trump wins, will he pronounce during his next term when America is great again and why it is? He didn’t manage it in his first term, I doubt he will if he has a second term.
John Rome, Mt Lawley
Peter Hartcher (Comment, 7/8) says Trump will try to wreck Harris through the electoral system and if that doesn’t work he’ll wreck the electoral system. With all the might of the US military why can’t they control one revolutionary in the hope of retaining their democratic system?
John Walsh, Watsonia
Furthermore
Elon Musk, owner of X and Tesla, has said that civil war is inevitable in the UK. Given this man’s declared opinions, why would any person of goodwill use X or buy a Tesla?
Mike Smith, Croydon
Save your inflammatory posts Elon Musk for a call to action to deal with global warming rather than fuelling riots on UK streets.
Jenny Smithers, Ashburton
With regard to the Americanisation of our language, I have never greeted someone with ″Hey″ or ″Hi″; for me it’s always ″G’day, how’re you goin?″.
Bill Walker, St Andrews Beach
Wasn’t it Professor Higgins in Pygmalion who lamented the decline of the English language with the comment that ″In America they haven’t used it for years?″
Marie Nash, Balwyn
Less money for social housing, but plenty for a tunnel from Southland shops to Clayton shops? Go figure. David Cayzer, Clifton Hill