Down, under? Australian geography and the new managerialist dynamic

A new managerialism has introduced an invasive paradigm into Australia's universities. Every subject has been profoundly influenced by transformed institutional and political contexts, but too little is being done to monitor the rapidly changing situation. This paper makes a small start towards answering that need. Beginning with a provocative description of the accentuation of entrenched antipathies between the administrators and the administrated, it moves on to consider the early results of an elementary national survey of geographers’ appraisals of the new managerialism and of the current and future condition of the subject in Australia. This short exercise, which should now be regarded as a pilot study, has uncovered important divisions of opinion and large areas of ambiguity, as well as considerable anxiety about the future of geographical research and teaching and the overall quality of tertiary education.