Acknowledgements, the long version

As I try to finish this thing, I think more and more of the people I should acknowledge. Not wanting to be too self-indulgent, I restricted my official acknowledgements in the thesis to one page, double spaced. Of course there are more. I will still miss people, for various reasons, but here goes for the long version.

Most of all (this is at the end of the official version, here at the start) I am grateful to my partner Thomas and my son Cooper. Their roles were the most difficult and their support the most important. To say that both were wonderful is a serious understatement. They went without the elegances of life while I left us poorer. They provided emotional, financial and domestic support on a too-regular basis. They understood this to be important. Thomas listened patiently to accounts of ideas, archives and conferences. Cooper dealt with countless school holidays, bored while I worked. They are both brilliant and much-loved.

Sincere thanks are owed to my supervisor, Stephen Garton, whose insightful, disciplined and generous guidance kept me from becoming too absorbed in details, distracted by tangents or impatient with tasks. In fact, I do not believe anyone else could have helped me do this particular project: I was fortunate indeed to have his help. More, despite other significant pressures, he was always available to me. I owe him a truly enormous debt.

As associate supervisor, Geoffrey Sherington not only shared his encyclopaedic knowledge of educational history but also kindly gallanted me to conferences and dinners, offering warm, supportive comments at every step. I am so grateful that he made himself so much more available than an associate supervisor normally should be required to do. I could not have done this project without his help.

The Sydney History Department provided a vibrant and nurturing – and yet intellectually exacting – research environment, for which I am grateful. In particular, Julia Horne regularly came to my presentations, discussed my project and offered friendly advice. Richard White did similarly, but also met me for a beer whenever a friendly chat would help me out. Alison Bashford, Penny Russell, Frances Clarke, Andrew Fitzmaurice and plenty of others offered thoughts and advice on papers, conferences, ideas, approaches and strategies. Mike McDonnell helped me in a thousand different ways, but particularly in cheering me on when things were at their worst.

My postgraduate colleagues have been a godsend: Emma Dortins, Sophie Loy-Wilson, Dave Earl, Matt Allen and so many others.

The Sydney Education Faculty has also provided important support, not only in my associate supervisor, but in other colleagues: Craig Campbell, Helen Proctor and my former colleagues at CoCo have helped in many different ways.

At conferences and in coffee shops, scholars from a variety of disciplines gave advice and commented on my ideas. I should thank Blake Stephens, Rohan Cahill, Mary-Helen Ward, Dick Selleck, Kim McShane, Iain Mason, Rebecca Sheehan, Tamson Pietsch, Yoni Ryan, Zora Simic, Phoebe Palmieri, Anna Clark, Kate Bower and so many, many more: their insights at all sorts of stages of my project helped to shape it.

Several people reviewed drafts and gave advice. In particular, thanks are owed to Lewis d’Avigdor, Peter Hobbins and Terry Irving for reviewing sections relevant to their work. David Rolph read drafts of the chapter on intellectual property twice, giving crucial advice to this very grateful non-lawyer.  John Hirst and members of the writing group he hosted were very useful: thanks to Judith Bonzol, Greg Murrie, Emma Dortins, Penny Nash and others for their critiques and suggestions.

Mary Jane Mahony deserves particular acknowledgement, for she read and provided detailed comments on the entire second draft. She also acted as proofreader for a chapter, along with Amanda Kaladelfos, Dave Earl, Nicole Davis, Ruth Laxton and Judith Bonzol.

The project would have been impossible for me to complete without the financial support provided by the ARC, the University of Sydney Postgraduate Research Support Scheme, History Department grants-in-aid, ANZHES bursaries, a CSAA bursary and an AHA/CAL bursary. I have been very fortunate in my employers throughout and thank Ann Applebee, Yoni Ryan, Alison Bashford, Andrew Fitzmaurice and Mike McDonnell.

Of the many archivists to whom I am indebted, Julia Mant at the University of Sydney archives has provided the most support. Thanks also to staff at the National Archives of Australia and the Australian National Library. I am grateful to university archivists at the ANU, CSU, RMIT, UNE and UNSW as well as the Universities of Adelaide, Melbourne, Monash, Macquarie and Wollongong. Thanks too, to the NTEU for granting permission to access the FAUSA archives and to Don Aitkin, David Penington and Robert H.T. Smith for interviews.

In addition to my immediate family, thanks also to my extended family, colleagues and friends who were understanding and helped me in so many different ways. I have leaned on them heavily and appreciate their support.

The god-professor lives

It is a long time since I felt compelled to photograph something on a university campus: probably because I've been spending all my time writing about them and visiting few but my own.

This photo is from inside the building in which I work. In this building it is possible to believe that the university and the work done within it really has not changed in a very long time. And in this image, it seems the god-professor is also firmly intact:

You could order the photographs of the members of staff of this department in all sorts of different ways: a row of three and one of two, for instance. Or you could do this.

Nearly there....

My silence in recent months is noteworthy. I have been refining, revising, checking and adding facts. Understandably, I have not re-posted every minor re-draft of each chapter. But it has certainly kept me busy, thus the silence.

The good news: nearly there. Some very generous colleagues are proof-reading for me. I intend to submit on 21st February, 2012.

Draft abstract

This thesis traces transformations in the history of higher education in twentieth century Australia from the perspective of the ownership and regulation of knowledge. Using primarily archival and oral sources from universities and governments, I argue that after the Second World War, the university’s place in society and the economy was radically altered because of challenges to its authority over knowledge.

In the 1940s and 1950s, the Australian government increased its interest in research. Among political and tertiary leaders, this led to questions about the role of research and higher education for society, resulting in uncertainties about the ongoing independence – and thus reliability – of university knowledge. A growing reliance on higher education to support government aims linked the growth of universities in Australia to nation-building and the government’s economic strategies. But in the 1960s and 1970s, a small but influential group of university staff and students resisted the connection of higher education in Australia to established goals and values, exposing the university’s vested interests in society and its role in legitimising and perpetuating social and economic injustices. As a result of these questions about its integrity, in the 1980s, the university’s authority waned. This opened the door to increased control by government, who confronted changing economic priorities. Under new pressures, university leaders sought to regain their standing in society by reconfiguring their task in commercial terms. By the 1990s, the question about the role and autonomy of higher education had developed into a significant contest over the ownership and control of knowledge as a form of intellectual property. Unlike the public institutions they had been in the 1940s and 1950s, universities were treated as an industry, competing with others for government support and commercial revenue. 

New Year's Eve

Years ago I wrote a MA thesis on New Year's Eve in Sydney. The thesis ended up as an article in the journal Continuum and another in History Australia. I also did the entry for the Dictionary of Sydney and today, an article in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Eminence

We no longer question the category of eminence, for all our attention is now directed at how best to define it - and who benefits when we do.

Final Draft

For the past couple of months I have been preparing this final draft of my thesis, which is now being reviewed with a view to planning final revisions.

The ownership of knowledge in Higher Education in Australia, 1939-1996