Negotiating the benefits of knowledge: Two British scientists in Australian post-war universities

• Published in: History of education review 2013-01, Vol.42 (1), p.24-39
• Main Author: Forsyth, Hannah
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 2. Weltkrieg; 20. Jahrhundert; Academic staff; Australien; Bildungsgeschichte; Bildungspolitik; Brite; Commonwealth; Educational history; Educational policy; Forschung; Geschichte (Histor); Großbritannien; Higher education; Hochschulbildung; Hochschulgeschichte; Hochschullehrer; International academic staff; Netzwerk; Postsecondary education; Regierung; Technische Universität; Technology; Universities; University role; Universität; USA; Wirtschaftsentwicklung
• ISSN: 0819-8691; 2054-5649
• DOI: 10.1108/08198691311317679

This article explores the origins of tensions between the benefits (such as technologies and skills) and the substance of knowledge (often described as 'pure inquiry') in Australian universities. There are advantages to considering this debate in Australia, since its universities were tightly connected to scholarly networks in the British Empire. After the Second World War, those ties were loosened, enabling influences from American research and technological universities, augmented by a growing connection between universities, government economic strategy and the procedures of industry. This article thus traces some of routes by which arguments travelled and the ways they were articulated in post-war Australia. The author takes a biographical approach to the question of contrasting attitudes to university knowledge in the post-war period, comparing the international scholarly and professional networks of two British scientists, Eric Ashby and Phillip Baxter, who travelled to Australia - contemporaries in age and education - both influencing Australian higher education policy in diametrically opposing ways. The research demonstrates that the growing connection with economic goals in Australian universities after the Second World War was in part a result of the new international and cross-sectoral networks in which some scholars now operated. Australian historiography suggests that shifts in the emphases of post-war universities were primarily the consequence of government policy. The paper demonstrates that the debates that shaped Australia's modern university system were also conducted among an international network of scholars. [Author abstract, ed]