Reconceptualising Higher Education: Critical Challenges in Australia

Global higher education has been experiencing unprecedented levels of mobility, which has renegotiated and reshaped the identity of students, academics and universities alike. This paper explores the transformation of Australian higher education in terms of the global mobility. It analyzes the challenges of remapping a transformed higher education landscape, contesting the ‘neoliberal cascade’, and the marginalization of public good. The paper argues that in the age of
heightened mobility that should evoke respect for the otherness of others, Australian universities have regulated uniformity in governing practices in which difference is sublimated and categorized along a developmental continuum. It calls for a reconceptualization of higher education which is plural in nature and transcultural in approach within the global knowledge production system.