Richard Hil

Australian universities are not happy places. Despite the shiny rhetoric of excellence, quality, innovation and creativity, universities face a barrage of criticism over claims of declining standards, decreased funding, compromised assessment, increased vocationalism, overburdened academics and never-ending reviews and restructures.

An Insider's Account of the Troubled University

Whackademia

For some years now I've had a gnawing concern that Australia's universities are in trouble - ethically, financially and pedagogically. Richard Hil has convinced me that it's even worse than I feared.' - Ben Eltham, New Matilda and Deakin University More students than ever before go to university, and what they experience there is vastly different from even a decade ago. The hi-tech libraries, designer lecture theatres, funky cafes and elaborate sporting facilities hide a reality very different to all the marketing hype. Class sizes have blown out, facilities are often inadequate, technology has increasingly replaced face-to-face teaching, and staff are weighed down by impossible workloads. Students work long hours in often low paid, casual jobs, feel lonely and isolated, and their education leaves them in debt for years. Richard Hil lifts the lid on today's university experience, drawing on numerous studies as well as interviews with 150 students around the country. Far from producing rounded citizens and flexible, job-ready graduates, Hil argues universities are turning out individuals often unable to obtain relevant work and lacking in some of the most basic professional requirements, and without the analytical and critical skills that once were the hallmark of a university education.

Why you won't get the university education you deserve

Selling Students Short

Paul Wilson

Michael Otterman

Documents and describes the effect of decades of U.S. policy and recent wars on the country and people of Iraq.

The Human Costs of Carnage

Erasing Iraq

Kristen Lyons

Fern Thompsett

This book calls into question the colonial and neoliberal university, presenting alternative models of higher education that can more effectively respond to today’s intersecting social, economic, environmental and political crises. The authors argue that universities should be driven by a different set of core values – one that promotes the common good over private or commercial interests, individualism and market fundamentalism. Presenting a broad range of educational initiatives from around the world that reflect life-affirming regenerative and relational practices, Indigenous intellectual sovereignty, and principles of social and ecological justice, the authors contend that pathways toward transforming higher education already exist within and without the university. This task, say the authors, is urgent and necessary if universities and other institutions are to hold relevance in a rapidly changing global environment. This book makes a unique contribution to critiques of the modern, neoliberal university by looking for alternatives within and beyond traditional institutions of higher education. In doing so, the authors dismantle the longstanding 'ivory tower' image of the university, instead resituating education within broader social and ecological communities. Transforming Universities in the Midst of Global Crisis is aimed at all those who have a direct or indirect interest and stake in universities, from the general reader to futurists, ecologists as well as students, academics, administrators, managers, policy makers and politicians.

A University for the Common Good

Transforming Universities in the Midst of Global Crisis

For nearly two decades, the US and its allies have prosecuted war and aggression in Iraq. Erasing Iraq shows in unparalleled detail the devastating human cost. Western governments and the mainstream media continue to ignore or play down the human costs of the war on Iraqi citizens This has allowed them to present their role as the benign guardians of Iraqi interests. The authors deconstruct this narrative by presenting a portrait of the total carnage in Iraq today as told by Iraqis and other witnesses who experienced it first hand. Featuring in-depth interviews with Iraqi refugees in Syria, Jordan and from Western countries, Erasing Iraq is a comprehensive and moving account of the Iraqi people's tragedy.

Richard Hil

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