Walk through almost any university campus today and you can feel it. Meetings stack up. Targets multiply. Dashboards glow with numbers nobody remembers asking for. People are busy. Very busy. And yet, behind the motion, there’s a quiet question many academics are asking each other in hallways and over coffee: is any of this actually making universities better?
Governments around the world have been taking a hard look at higher education. Australia’s recent Universities Accord joined similar reviews in the UK, the US, and parts of Europe. Funding always dominates the headlines. But inside the sector, another issue keeps surfacing, less flashy and harder to fix. How universities are run, and who really has a say.
Australia’s Accord tried to shift the conversation. Instead of pushing universities to be leaner, faster, more “productive,” it talked about effectiveness. That sounds subtle, but it isn’t. An organisation can cut costs, hit targets, and still miss its purpose. Many academics would say that’s exactly what’s been happening.
Over the past few decades, universities have absorbed a corporate style of management. Layers of executives. Compliance systems. Performance metrics tied neatly to political cycles. In some ways, it worked. Institutions learned how to do more with less. But the trade-off has been a growing distance between decision-makers and the academic work that supposedly sits at the core.
Recent governance reviews have acknowledged the problem, at least in part. More staff and student voices are being welcomed into committees. Training for governance roles is being discussed. What’s missing is power. Without clear rules on representation, those voices often remain symbolic. Academics sit at the table, but the decisions still flow from the top.
On the ground, this plays out in small, familiar ways. A researcher spends weeks shaping a course only to have it altered for branding reasons. A department closes not because the teaching is weak, but because it doesn’t rank well. Younger staff keep their heads down, watching what happens to colleagues who speak too loudly.
There’s also something deeper going on. Academia has struggled to defend itself as a profession, not just a job. Older ideas of academic independence have slowly been replaced by managed roles, where success is measured by outputs that fit spreadsheets better than classrooms or communities. Some thrive in this system. Many don’t. A recent Australian report found high stress levels across university staff, with early-career academics and casual workers carrying the heaviest load.
This matters beyond staff morale. When humanities shrink because they don’t commercialise easily, when risky research is avoided because it won’t pay off fast enough, universities lose range. They become narrower, safer, quieter places. Efficient, perhaps. Effective, less so.
What reformers keep circling back to is purpose. Universities exist to serve society in complex ways, not all of them measurable. That requires trust in academic judgment, shared leadership, and governance that balances managerial needs with scholarly values. It also asks academics themselves to reconnect around a shared professional identity, rather than surviving alone inside the system.
None of this is simple. Power rarely shifts willingly. But the tension is growing harder to ignore. Universities can keep refining their metrics, or they can slow down and ask what all this activity is really for. The answer will shape not just campuses, but the kind of knowledge societies choose to build next.
