Leading up to the last federal election, Shadow Education Minister Sarah Henderson’s calls for the higher education regulator to monitor university curricula for ‘woke’ content set off alarm bells about government overreach into higher education. Look at the fuss NSW Liberals have kicked up about the University of Sydney ‘Indigenising’ its curriculum and Macquarie University including Acknowledgements of Country in an assessment task. Yet the sense that government should mould higher education to will is popular across politics. A couple of ministerially appointed university council members prove ineffectual at shaping university governance. Naturally, that requires fixing university funding settings to keep pace with inflation, recognising that many of the indignities of our universities stem from resources spread too thin.