Download: CAPA’s & NATSIPA’s Response to Australia’s Science and research priorities
CAPA and NATSIPA believe the Accord should be structured to address the existing higher education system’s existing inequalities. Its focus should reflect on systemic inequalities within our current policies, attitudes and practices, which discriminate against different groups within our society. A key objective of the Accord ushers in a new system that increases choice and accessibility regardless of gender, race, ethnocultural background, age, socio-economic background, disability, mental health status and/or sexual identity. Successfully doing so would enable greater participation and allow more people to reach their full potential as active contributors to our society. Any decisions that relate to higher education should clearly include meaningful consultation and discussion with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples across universities, industry, and VET.
The current limitations of our higher education system include the neoliberal ideologies and corporatisation of our university institutions which have distracted them from their original purpose of pursuing the academic mission of teaching and research. In recent years, universities have also been increasingly dragged into political debates of foreign interference, used as the panacea for addressing skills shortages, as the fourth largest export vital to Australia’s economy and national priorities.
Our concern is that the politicisation of higher education and universities will ultimately degrade these institutions’ intellectual integrity in maintaining rational bipartisanship in civil discourse.
