Prize giving a write pleasure
Written by Steven Schwartz on October 24th, 2008
It was my pleasure last night to meet the winners of the Macquarie University Vice-Chancellor’s Writing Competition for 2008 and to share in their pleasure as they received their awards.
Eleven prizes worth around $15,000 in total were presented by our various sponsors.
Competition judge Dr Willa McDonald told the audience how challenging the judging had been, […]
Bad Marx for capitalism?
Written by Steven Schwartz on October 23rd, 2008
Karl Marx is back in fashion. Sales of Das Kapital are booming as the “world realizes” it was in this book that Marx predicted capitalism would destroy itself.
According to German publisher Jörn Schütrumpf these new readers are “those of a young academic generation, who have come to recognise that the neoliberal promises of happiness have […]
Let’s hope Queen History can rule in peace
Written by Steven Schwartz on October 17th, 2008
In his book The Poverty of Theory the English historian E P Thompson describes history as the “Queen of the Humanities” .
Thompson was right; all other areas of study come together in history – English, politics, economics, sociology, even mathematics and science. Because history is the story of humanity (although I’m told one Macquarie history […]
Higher education’s collision of values
Written by Steven Schwartz on October 15th, 2008
“The outsiders want the students trained for their first job out of university, and the academics inside the system want the students educated for 50 years of self-fulfilment. The trouble is that the students want both. The ancient collision between each student’s short-term and long-term goals, between training and education, between vocational and general, between […]
Australia at war: now that was tough
Written by Steven Schwartz on October 14th, 2008
The stock market’s tanking, the world is slipping into recession and banks are falling over like dominoes. Jobs and credit are getting scarce and pensioners are finding their retirement much less comfortable than they had planned.
The media have turned the volume up to screaming point - talking about “meltdown” and the “unravelling” of our […]
Higher education: less Gekko, more Gandhi
Written by Steven Schwartz on October 8th, 2008
In a speech to a group of business leaders recently, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd linked the turmoil in global financial markets with the 1987 film Wall Street. In the movie, fictional stockbroker Gordon Gekko makes the following speech:
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all […]
University access: why the good Lord is wrong
Written by Steven Schwartz on October 2nd, 2008
Lord Patten of Barnes, former Conservative MP and Britain’s last governor of Hong Kong, was in the news this week for a comment he made about his old alma mater, Oxford University.
Speaking at a meeting of the UK’s Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ (school principals as we’d call them in Australian) conference, Lord Patten, who […]