Globalisation and the future of Australian universities

Universities occupy centre stage in an economy that relies on knowledge and information for economic development and social wellbeing. They are engines in the production of human and knowledge capital. Their research activities generate new knowledge; through their networks with international scholars they criticise, reformulate and transmit existing knowledge; and, most crucially, through their teaching they educate the next generation of professional workers and train new researchers. Increasingly, too, they are under pressure to become more entrepreneurial - to earn a substantial proportion of their income from exporting their education services, to take a more direct role in supporting business innovation in industries and firms and licensing their intellectual property and to assist in the economic and social development of local communities and regions in a variety of ways. Further, as public organisations, universities are subject to government policies and requirements: they must act as part of a single \u27higher education system\u27