If there was ever compulsory reading for Federal Education Minister Jason Clare, it would be Graeme Turner’s Broken: Universities, Politics & The Public Good. Academics have less bargaining power, and the system of research funding allocations has been replaced with the Australian Research Council (ARC), the main source of research funding in Australia. Institutions with small groups of competent teachers were told that their staff weren’t educated enough to teach at a university, and university academics were suddenly competing with an astronomically larger number of people for ARC grants. Macquarie University, the University of Technology Sydney, Australian National University, the University of Tasmania, and Western Sydney University have seen sweeping and flagrant cuts to their course offerings, staff bodies, and educational integrity. To overhaul the entrenched impoverishment of the higher education sector would take a colossal amount of courage from students, academics, unions, vice-chancellors, and governments.