Market competition positions students as consumers and qualifications as products, vice chancellors as CEOs receiving corporate salaries far in advance of senior academics and international students (according to Hill) as cash cows to be exploited.

Restricted public funding has driven universities to the private sector where corporations are now able to drive what is taught, and even the research agenda, in the name of partnerships and collaboration.

Lyons talks about the lack of joy students express in their increasingly vocationalised studies, and the increased stress levels of staff.

In support of this latter point is the 2017 State of the Uni survey which identified many hours of unpaid overtime (forced voluntary work) undertaken by staff leading to extremely high levels of stress, poor wellbeing, depression and illness.

The survey found that on average academics worked 52.6 hours a week (14.6 hours a week unpaid overtime) and professional staff worked an additional 6.2 hours a week for which they were not paid.

This is 1-2 days of extra work every week donated for free to the university which rewards such volunteer work with increasing demands for more work and rejects calls for pay rises, and even, in the Murdoch case, creates a context for potential pay cuts amounting to 40% by March 2018.

Not surprisingly, less than half of all staff around the nation thought their workload was manageable and 84% felt that this reduced the quality of education offered to students.

Neoliberalism positions staff as individually responsible for their wellbeing, so that staff who feel overwhelmed are encouraged to take responsibility for managing their “incompetence” through joining wellness programs, making time to engage with on-line modules that “teach” them stress management and workplace relationship conduct and undertake courses which “help” them become better teachers and/or better consumers of teaching technology.

This individualisation fails to recognise the systemic issues underpinning the problems endemic in the sector and thus cannot succeed in driving improvements.

Naomi Klein suggests that in saying no to the neoliberal university we need to be clear in our minds to what it is we are saying yes to.

We are saying yes to critical pedagogical work that reimages advocacy and social change.

We are saying yes to community involvement and Indigenous knowledges.

We are saying yes to prioritising community values over corporate values, including the importance of collegiality, networking and taking time to think.

We are saying yes to projects that focus on decolonising universities and challenging the dominance of white male knowledge and its associated symbolic violence.

My hope is for a truly public, better university system and my resolution – to do what I can to contribute to a collegial climate that might allow it to grow.