Australia's universities are facing a crisis that has been decades in the making. The issue is multifaceted, involving governance, financial transparency, and managerial decision-making. The pressure on university leadership, particularly well-paid vice-chancellors, is mounting. After decades of public shaming, some university executives are finally suggesting that their "social licence" might require them to earn a more average wage. This comes at a time of relentless, often unexplained staff cuts for professional and academic staff, with some cases leading to "stop work" orders due to "psychological harm". Students, too, are struggling, facing a world where affordable housing is often out of reach and intergenerational inequality has been exacerbated. They also face growing levels of student debt, which is needed to secure a job, even as the threat of AI looms. All this seems to have snuck up on vice-chancellors, but the present crisis in universities was decades in the making. The global economy underwent significant changes in the 1970s, leading to the rapid spread of globalization. By the 1980s, industries had to adjust quickly, often through austerity measures disguised as "working smarter, not harder", which ultimately led to enshittification. The federal government stepped in to consolidate higher education institutions, spread tuition costs, and expand university enrolments, preparing more people for white-collar professions. This led to a significant growth in university students, with enrolments worldwide more than doubling over the next 20 years. The rise of white-collar work further contributed to the demand for university education. With the increase in university students, the number of university managers also multiplied. Management was asked to make decisions in response to complex "levers", which turned higher education away from a "bureaucracy" towards businesses. This shift put bosses at odds with other professionals, including academics, healthcare workers, and others. Academics wanted to do their job well, while bosses sought ever more austerity, as globalisation demanded. This austerity didn't seem to apply to their own salaries, which surged even as other workers' wages stagnated. Management started to see academics as a workforce to be tamed and controlled rather than collaborators in an educational mission. The third change that led to the present crisis is the marketisation of education. In the early 1980s, when young people were temporarily reluctant to study, universities started to advertise. This marketisation skewed the way that bosses saw the mission of the university, turning it into a bunch of metrics to be gamed. To fix this crisis, commentators suggest three possible solutions: making the government fix it with more funding, reorienting policymakers away from market levers to the public good, and better connecting universities to the community with more democratic internal decision-making systems. University bosses, being part of the problem, are unlikely to bring about much change while they remain in charge. The author, Hannah Forsyth, is a historian and author of 'A History of the Modern Australian University' and 'Virtue Capitalists: the rise and fall of the professional class in the Anglophone world'.
