Jennifer and Jacques talk about the downward spiral of our universities over the last 40 years of neo-liberalism, with the decline accelerating during the COVID pandemic, and only getting worse since.

Universities are said to be at breaking point with the corporatist, managerialist focus on cost cutting, exploitation of staff, and selling low quality courses to students.

They end the program with suggestions for professors and students from Giorgio Agamben who wrote 'Requiem for students'.

References

Giorgio Agamben (2020)  translation of short intervention on the blog Diario della crisi at the website of the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, 23 May 2020.

Graeme Turner (2025) Broken: Universities, politics and the public good, Clayton: Monash University Publishing.

Stuart McIntyre, Andre Brett & Gwilym Croucher (2017) No end of a lesson: Australia’s unified national system of higher education, Carlton: Melbourne University Press.

Lew Zipin (2019) ‘How council-management governance troubles Australian university labours and futures: Simplistic assumptions and complex consequences’, Social Alternatives, vol 38, issue 3, pp. 28-35.

Caitlyn Cassidy (2023) Appallingly unethical-Why-Australian universities are at breaking point, The Guardian, 11 April 2023.