Centre for the Study of Higher Education Education, Science and the Future of Australia A Public Seminar Series on Policy Global setting, national policy and higher education in 2007 Professor Simon Marginson Professor of Higher Education, The University of Melbourne 9 July 2007 Introduction In Australia there are two times when there is an intensified public debate and better than usual prospects of reshaping the policy agenda. The first is a time of national crisis. The second is the last six months before a federal election. Tonight we are in the second of those spaces. Tonight’s discussion matters, more than usual. And perhaps we are coming to a watershed time in the higher education sector, when the Australian system is transformed. The last such transformation, in the late 1980s, is almost a generation ago. Signs are beginning to accumulate that both sides of politics are interested in building something different. The Go8 statement on where the system should be going is the strongest, most coherent policy for a long time. We have it within us to build an expanded and modernized national system of education, training and public sector research, on the basis of a creative national consensus about the Australian nation and globalization, and deploy such an expanded and modernized system to secure a great advance in national capacity, identity, prosperity, wellness and sustainability. A lofty goal. But it has been done before. From the late 1950s to the late 1970s public policy makers and educationists built in Australia a world class national higher education and research sector. Student