The latest twist and turn in the Dan Tehan higher-ed funding boondoggle stuff-up saga is that Uni of Tasmania vice-chancellor Rufus Black has signed up for it. Which is of course an attempt to get the vote of Jacqui Lambie.
In a submission to the Senate inquiry, Black noted that the funding scheme would help UTAS “pursue its goals” by which he meant — surrrrprise — make it an overseas student destination.
Tasmanians wanting to do an arts degree in the lowest median income state? They would have to saddle themselves with $50k of debt. Which in terms of salary expectations is more like $75k, given the absence of regional adjustments.
Who is Rufus Black? He is a trained theologian who went from Wesley in Melbourne, to Melbourne Uni arts and Ormond College, then a Rhodes scholarship and Oxford PhD, and a decade with McKinseys, then the usual roll-call of the exhaustingly ambitious academic: half a dozen institutional directorships, triple professorships and the like, while also being bound up with the army and the spooks as a consultant on defence spending and intelligence.
Doubtless Black only wants the best for the University of Tasmania, but this proposed supercharging of a regional uni as an overseas ed powerhouse can’t help but serve as an audition for the VC perch at a group of eight (poor UTAS sandstone Cinderella, the only original uni outside the charmed circle).
Lambie should reflect on this: Black is a Melbourne elite private school grad who did an arts degree when it cost $250 a year, following his intellectual passions where they would, and now wants to make it impossible for Tasmanian kids to do the same without mortgaging their future away. Does one get a sense that it’s thought the humanities is for some, but not for the likes of they?
They have to live there. VC Black, who has worked in Melbourne, Oxford, Canberra and New York, will most likely not be tarrying long by the Derwent. Is Tasmania better served by a modest, affordable state university, or an overpriced one dependent on the overseas student market and the influence of overseas governments which comes with it?
All of which has made universities like Melbourne and Sydney and others beholden to the market — and to the Confucius Institutes run by the Chinese Communist Party. If a faux-global university doesn’t best serve the state’s interests, whose interests is it serving?
The final kicker? Black, whose CV would be thick enough to float him back across the Bass Strait to his next globetrotting job, did his PhD on theologian Stanley Hauerwas, whose lifelong message was the separation of the Christian from worldliness. Black would appear to have fallen from his grace, to rule in Tasmania. Funny old worldliness!
Did you leave out the work he did with now Minister Greg Hunt on a pollution tax deliberately?
http://thetypewriter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/50162694-A-Tax-to-Make-the-Polluter-Pay.pdf
Surely fake news JM. Put there by the devil to lead the gullible astray.
That is an interesting reference of a submission (thesis?) you made JM, that would be the one that Hunt did before he argued himself blue in the face that the ‘carbon tax’ was a bad thing.
You can hear the reception at Menzies House “Boys, boys, boys, the polluter never pays!”
Nice piece. I have never been able to wrap my pea-brain around the nonsensical and ludicrous case of starting your working life $50K in debt.
We all know that it was the Hawke Labour Govt that began the process of re-introducing education fees/HECS. But HECS fees are not something you would expect from a socialist Labour Govt.
And then the impudence and audacity to name a university after him. It must be one of the biggest jokes of all time.
It’s almost like honouring him posthumously for all his dirty deeds done dirt cheap.
Well it was John “Artless Dodger” Dawkins, along with the other beneficiaries of Whitlam’s free uni. changes who thunk them up.
Small point – it’s been a longgg time since “socialist” could be usedas a modifer of “Labor” except ironically, after spitting and making a sign to ward off the Evil I, the bane of so much good intention.
Thank you Guy for your article on VC Black. Spotted the article a bit late, but never mind, it’s still worth a comment.
A couple of additions to the CV of this man of privilege and silver spoons. He has friends in fed govt. Black and Federal minister Minister for Health Greg Hunt did a joint honours these together. A grade four primary school joint project? you ask. No, a joint honours thesis – not an individual one each, like you might expect for an honours thesis. Not only did he do a long stint with McKinsey & Co, he was a PARTNER for the last couple of years there. It’s unusual enough for anyone to stay with McKinsey that long (average stint is about 5-6 years at most), let alone being a partner. The gulf between man of cloth and being a partner at McKinsey is about as far apart as you can get. Man of cloth joins den of thieves in the temple and helpeth those in Canberra to screweth the needy in Tas? Well spotted Guy.
MInd you, it hasn’t all been plain sailing for Black in Tasmania, because he signed up to continue the job in the temple and to push the dodgy campus and real estate projects of the disgraced Peter Rathjen (ex Adelaide VC) – and the multitudes and the needy don’t like it.
What is missing in any modern discussion in politics is theology, partly because Horizon and other evangelicals seem to run on corportae strategies all about market share,presence and that smile.
The rest and traditional New testament values are represented by the Salvo’s supporting people living on the streets, the only time they are allowed a seat at the table when discussing injustice.
After B.A. Santamaria when Australian Christianity was searching for common ground, the 70’s, they were often a strong voice in the rights of everyday Australians, these days that sort of dicussion gets about the same amount of coverage as the Greens in mainstream media.
Possibly because they would have a vastly different view of the world to the Prime minister’s, Howard’s, nearly all the Coalitions preferred christian allegiance.
“partly because Horizon and other evangelicals seem to run on corportae strategies all about market share,presence and that smile.”
You forgot “speaking in tongues”. Apparently a prerequisite down at the local Pentecostal hall.
Howard and Morrison have played institutionalized christians like a fiddle. Labor went to the last election as the Atheist Party compared to the Coalition. A dumb big mistake with an aging electorate with one foot in the world and one in the grave. Could it be that simple? Is the pope a catholic?