In conversation

Broken | Graeme Turner

A strong higher education system is fundamental to civil society. The building of knowledge and the dissemination of information is vital to the proper functioning of our democracy. At the economic level, higher education is in the top three of our export industries and the country desperately needs well-trained, knowledgeable citizens to shore up its future. Yet, universities are in trouble. Over-investment in international enrolment, an epidemic of casualisation and the burning out of a generation of academics, culture wars over the content and orientation of university research and teaching, the lack of sectoral coordination around the national interest, and the consequences of decades of funding cuts.

In Broken, Graeme Turner provides a reality check. He unearths the foundations of this crisis and  explains how the solution is based on the idea that higher learning is a fundamental public good—and should be funded as such.

Graeme Turner AO is Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. He has published 30 books and his work has been translated into 11 languages. He is the only humanities scholar to have served two successive terms as a member of the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council. He has had extensive engagement with higher education policy, research assessment and commentary on the sector, including prominent roles with the Australian Research Council, the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy, and the Learned Academies.

Graeme will be in conversation with Libby Lester, Professor (Research) and Director of Monash University’s Climate Change Communications Hub in Melbourne, Australia. She has been a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University and the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, and was the inaugural UNESCO Chair in Communication, Environment and Heritage at the University of Tasmania.  

Join Graeme and Libby at The Afterword Café.