Mind of the Nation: Universities in Australian Life

In this thought-provoking and timely examination, academic and writer Michael Wesley asks what Australians really think and how they feel about our universities, and where to next?

In 1964, Donald Horne wrote in his classic The Lucky Country that, in a sense, 'Australia does not have a mind. Intellectual life exists but . . . has no established relation to practical life.' For Horne, Australia's universities were marginalised; they were places where 'clever men nurse the wounds of public in...