Monash Vice-Chancellor Richard Larkins, Sees Fostering Overseas Campuses the Key to Success for Australia's Universities. (September 4, 2007)

Richard Larkins V-C Monash University

 The Age's Farrah Tomazin, reporting from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia says: "Monash vice-chancellor Richard Larkins said universities could not be taken seriously by the rest of the world unless the Federal Government removes the bureaucratic 'shackles' preventing them from competing internationally."

Professor Larkins was in Kyala Lumpur to open Monash's new $80 million Malaysian campus which at present serves about 3,300 students.

Monash University has had a presence in Malaysia for the past ten years.

The Monash vice-chancellor told his audience: "Australia has to be very innovative and forward-looking because we are geographically isolated. If universities don't (set up offshore) they think they're achieving excellence in their own environment, but they won't have a huge impact on the international research environment of the world. We won't do it by sitting back and waiting for the world to come to us."

What abject nonsense. Since when has the University of California system gained its prowess, reputation and made its outstanding contributions to the commonweal of California and the United States by having overseas branch offices.

Australian university vice-chancellors are sounding increasingly like wanting to become more like multinational sports gear manufactures than purveyors of learning and research.

Presumably Professor Larkins as incoming head of Universities Australia will be carrying his entrepreneurial philosophy with him.

Note added September 6, 2007: The Guardian has published an online debate, "Does a UK university need a campus on the other side of the world? A battle of words by two vice-chancellors" between Sir Colin Campbell, vice-chancellor of the University of Nottingham and Dr Brian Lang, principal and vice- chancellor of St Andrews University.