Universities have lost their way
“The fundamental cause of this is a massive expansion of student numbers, which is in many ways a good thing, but creates costs too great to support from the public purse. Making money has become the objective rather than being a constraint. There has been reliance on making monopoly profits from selling degrees to overseas students, which creates financial volatility and is unsustainable long-term. As graduate numbers have gone up, average quality and average wages have gone down. The idea of a community of scholars has been cast aside. Sadly, it looks like we will keep getting more of the same.”
Graham Partington, retired finance academic

City-centric thinking
“It’s obvious that the research quoted in the article about safety systems being switched off in cars depends too much on a city-centric view of the world. The reason I turn off lane keeping assistance is quite simple. I live in rural Victoria in an area where the roads are atrocious and the systems do not detect dangerous potholes that can blow tyres, destroy rims and even damage transmissions. More importantly, it could possibly put the occupants into a life-threatening situation. Can we please use more nuance in this debate?”
Max King

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