ABSTRACT
This chapter shows something of the complexity of the determination of educational policy in higher education in Australia by particular reference to the recent reforms engineered by John Dawkins. It also shows that the Dawkins reforms in higher education in Australia are part of a broader response by government to economic events of international origin. In 1987 Australia embarked on a process of restructuring its higher education system, the likes of which had never been seen or even thought possible in that country. Indeed, the New Right has presented an agenda that promotes "an apparently 'commonsense' discourse and set of assumptions concerning the nature and purpose of education" and a public philosophy which says that the only value that counts is "economic value". Australia's restructuring occurred against the larger backdrop of global restructuring. An impositional analysis of what is happening in higher education policy reform in Australia is too simplistic, even though most critics in Australia have railed at Dawkins.
