Book chapter draft: Carol-Anne Croker

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Writing to Affect Change

By Carol-Anne Croker

Unpublished chapter, (withdrawn by author 2009)

Creativity Market: Creative Writing in the 21st Century

New Writing Viewpoints Series,

Multilingual Matters, Bristol. UK. 2012

(Edited by) Dominique Hecq

Attribution-NonCommercial-No DerivativesCC BY-NC

September 13, 2009

Book chapter draft: Carol-Anne Croker

Writing to affect social change.

I have always believed that the Arts have a unique role in addressing vexed and controversial issues. Through play scripts, novels, cinematic representation, visual arts installations and public commentary, issues of social concern can be debated without fear or favour. One needs only to look at one of the highest grossing films screening around the world in 2009, My Sisters Keeper i by Jodi Picoult, to note that audiences are made to reflect on the moral and ethical decision to bear a child as a donor for an ill sibling. Audiences watching the movie (or reading the original novel) will come away discussing this storyline thus examining their personal values on this issue.

Would I be wrong in thinking that more of the ‘general public’ will emotionally and intellectually engage with this issue simply by having seen the movie or read the book, instead of listening to politicians, ethicists, religious leaders and the medical professionals debating it in the broadsheet papers?

A similar argument for social engagement could be mounted for Lionel Shriver’s Orange Prize for Fiction winning novel, We Need to Talk About Kevinii, illuminating the issue of secondary school violence and dysfunctional families; Michael Moore’s award winning documentary, Bowling for Columbine iii on American gun culture , or even the current Tony award winning play by Yasmina Reza, The God of Carnageiv looking at contemporary parenting. Australian award winning novel The Slap v by Christos Tsiolkas tackles the same issues as God of Carnage. These creative works speak to their audiences and readerships about issues to which they can relate, and allow us to feel competent to form an opinion and speak about these issues and concerns.

There is nothing new about this, and to write it here seems to be stating the obvious. After all Aristophanes Lysistratavi (as early as 411 BC) had audiences questioning warfare as means of social and cultural control.

I am revisiting this line of thought because as a creative writing student within the Academy, I often question what value my work can have or indeed if it has any scholarly or social value at all. At the ripe old age of 53 what am I doing studying in University? What am I hoping to achieve? The flippant answer is to become qualified to earn a reasonable living and support my family and myself into my old age. But of course this answer is only partially truthful. After all I could work anywhere.

I could teach in secondary schools. I am qualified and I have done so recently. I could work in the Public Service. I can pass the entrance exam and have done so in the past. I could possibly work in administration in the private sector. Again, I can and I have. I can even pull a reasonable head on a draught beer by tap and know the satisfaction of returning from work physically tired after a day on my feet earning an ‘honest wage’. But none of these jobs or careers offer me what I need intellectually. I need a challenge and issues to wrap my brain around. I need to read, think, reflect and then to write. I need to write as much as I need to eat and sleep. It is my way of making sense of the world I live in.

Everywhere I look I see problems and possible solutions, yet there is often an antipathy or sense of futility articulated by people in power and those directly affected. I was never one to disagree with the Einstein’s mantra “Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.”

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Book chapter draft: Carol-Anne Croker

As early as I can remember I have looked at the things that are said to be immutable and unchanging and I always saw alternatives. When my mother would walk me to primary school I was aware that the other mothers were younger than mine and that my mother could not be as active as they were. Despite being picked on for having a mother (and father) who was (were) ‘different’ to the norm, I merely saw it as natural and something that I knew instinctively would be my own life choice. I did not want to be one of the young mothers I saw around me daily, not ever.

I did not know it then, nor could I articulate the reasons I thought this way. My mother was at home, she was there to walk me to school. She baked and cooked daily. She worked for numerous voluntary organisations and seemed to me to always be busy doing interesting things outside the home. Yet she was always there before and after school whereas the younger ‘working’ mothers were not. I knew I wanted a life full of challenges and interests like my mother. By the time I was in my twenties I knew that early motherhood was not for me, and increasingly more of my peers felt the same way. The birth age for mothers escalated as more women entered the paid workforce and put motherhood on hold (Kippen 2006). vii By the time I was in my thirties and had my own son, most of the mothers at his primary school were of a similar age cohort to me. There had been a major demographic shift in Australian marriage and parenting, and it was just as I had always viewed as ‘normal’.

To this day I see things from what could be considered a ‘skewed angle’. I see potential everywhere. If only the stakeholders and power brokers had the will or bravery to adopt change. And like the Death card in the Tarot pack, change is not frightening to me. The status quo is to be feared. This is why I need to write. In need to describe my alternate visions, hopes and dreams. I need to articulate the reasons for change. I need to convince people that discriminatory practices and beliefs do not have to remain discriminatory. Inequality is not necessarily a prerequisite for society to function effectively.

This is why I am at University. I want to affect change in my world, and my son’s world. I want my voice heard and respected. I have tried to affect change from within the system many times and simply had the system turn on me and crush me.

In my most recent incarnation as a secondary school teacher it was obvious to me that the students did not value education for any intrinsic reasons. School was a place you attended because it was State-mandated until you were 15 years of age. The choice to leave was also circumscribed by the economy and lack of unskilled jobs in the labour market for young workers and inadequate social welfare provisions for independence and training. School was viewed as a social occasion with the teaching getting in the way of the socialising. It was clear to me that the entire rationale for these young people to be sitting in class was to get through to the next break when they could freely discuss relationships between themselves and their peers. This was their way of examining who they were and what their beliefs were, and discovering that they were separate from their parents and families in attitude and even moral beliefs. What would shock their parents most (under-age alcohol consumption, illicit drug use, risk taking behaviours and adolescent sexual experimentation) were the very issues these students needed to examine and discuss amongst their peers. Education for them was life education not text book based learning.

Many of the boys were not able to sit quietly in their desks and concentrate on traditional school curricula. How do we expect a young person to learn about the history, politics, geography and

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Book chapter draft: Carol-Anne Croker

agricultural production of a neighbouring country when in all likelihood their experience of travel does not extend beyond the much anticipated holiday to Bali.

These are the boys a few decades ago were not expected to sit quietly and listen. It was assumed they would be in the workforce in jobs requiring physical activity and manual dexterity and any excess energy was channelled towards sport on the weekend.

These are the students (both male and female) who in all probability will finish school in their home suburb, get a job in the same suburb, marry and reside in the same (or neighbouring) suburb, then produce children who will attend the same suburban school.

Every time I sought to arrange out of class activity-based experiences the simplest bureaucratic procedures would act as deterrents. Education department compliance, co-operation from other teachers who’s subjects may be interfered with, costs, staff student supervision ratios, first aid qualified personnel, working with children police clearances for all ‘outsiders’ involved or hosting the activity, and the parental consent slips often left languishing in the bottom of school backpacks or lockers. Then of course there needed to be demonstrated educational outcomes, often in the form of projects, workbooks or artefacts constructed (then photographed as records). All of this, just to get the students actively participating in education, and having fun through participatory learning.

Well needless to say I was perceived as the populist teacher, disrespectful of the core education curriculum, dismissive of the rigid discipline boundaries. Indeed this is true, I was. But I paid a hefty price for this student-centred approach to education. I became one of ‘them’; the critic who appeared hostile to the school system. To this day I am against trying to socialise young people into the ‘correct and valued’ slots without taking into account the students’ personality, interests and skills.

Many of my students, (those supposedly with ADHD, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, social immaturity, amongst other labels with negative baggage), were pigeon-holed as disruptive and trouble. I would argue that many of them were simply bored, under-challenged or inappropriately educated in terms of curriculum content. As a teacher I was unable to change this within the school system. In the Australian State education system change occurs at a glacial pace and from the top down, not instigated from the bottom up. I soon .... myself of the myth of the charismatic teacher as depicted in such movies as To Sir With Love viii and The Blackboard Jungle ix. These were fictional works of creative art not documentaries and whilst charismatic and dedicated staff do work in our State schools they are often too busy just coping and doing the best job of educating their students, leaving very little time for collective political action.

Perceived deviance or non-compliance within organisations and institutions is construed as a threat to be neutralised. It is easy to use the rules and regulations against one solitary individual, and for that individual to be ‘scape-goated’. I’ve lost count of the times I have succumbed to stress and anxiety because I am perceived as a threat, as deviant in some intrinsic way. I just do not ‘fit in’. The consensus amongst my counsellors has been that in my case, for me to instigate change and for it to occur it would be easier (and healthier) to lobby and agitate from the outside.

Outside, but where outside? In what professional realm? Could the University possibly be seen as ‘outside’ the system?

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Book chapter draft: Carol-Anne Croker

I do remember a time in recent memory; the seventies, when in Australia University education was free, so as to encourage students with academic potential from all walks of life and social stratas into the tertiary sector. As a working class child, only one member of my extended family had attended University and he studied architecture, which seemed only an incremental step from the other males who worked as builders, electricians and tradesmen.

Needless to say no females in my family had attended any form of tertiary study. So for me to contemplate that future was simply not even an option. But I knew I didn’t want to have a job that I would have to stop when I “settled down”, a temporary pastime until I attained my desired female role. As a compromise my parents permitted me to enrol in teacher training as women no longer had to retire upon marriage and could stay in the workforce. My father, particularly, thought it was a good career choice as it would enable me to be at home with my (future) children during the school holidays and after work. There was never a question that this might not be my preferred pathway, nor did I understand the systemic discrimination that hid from me, a working class female, the opportunities a University education could offer.

Only after an entertaining and ultimately partially satisfying career in Performing Arts did I begin to see that not only did I need a creative outlet but I also needed intellectual stimulus as well. With the safety of enrolling in an Arts undergraduate degree I finally felt that tertiary education could be for me.

The world of the University was magical. It was a world of esteemed scholars mentoring keen young students. The tutorials, of no more than ten students, generated long and vibrant discussions on societal issues and yielded ferocious opinions on aesthetics. These hours would often spill over into the Bistro at Flinders Uni and continue on across the counter lunch period. If it wasn’t for other lectures to attend the whole day could have been spent in discussion, as students came and went to their timetabled classes. We were our own small “Bloomsbury group”! I definitely fantasised that I was Virginia Woolf.x It seemed obvious that the actors, writers and filmmakers around me were the next big thing in the Australian arts scene; many indeed became household names and global celebrities.

Our lecturers were the ones being consulted by the local papers. They wrote opinion columns, and reviewed arts events around town. They were feted by the policy makers and politicians, attending summits and social events. It was a time when everything seemed possible.

The Academy was changing. The Anglo-canon was losing its grip on English curriculum, cinema and media studies were taking their rightful place alongside the visual arts courses. Women’s studies and post-colonial studies were finding a niche in the Humanities programs. Social change and progressive debate flourished with the student radicals at the helm of the student newspapers. All of a sudden I learned that one of our nearest neighbours was East Timor had been placed under martial rule by Indonesia. xi I learned that my idolised Labor Federal Government had recognised the despotic Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime. (Henderson 2002) The Australian music Industry was flexing its muscle, the second-wave of Australian cinema was making inroads into the commercial film Industry, and Australian plays were being written for Australian audiences. It was a heady time full of promise.

Perhaps I am naive but that is how I conceptualise the University; as a place for activism, critique, social responsibility and hothouse for innovative thinking. On returning to the University after a

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Book chapter draft: Carol-Anne Croker

break of over twenty years, I had lost none of that naivety, or as I would call it, idealism. With the election of the Federal Labor Government under Kevin Rudd, it seemed that the electorate and the Country itself had had a ‘wake up call’. We would finally be able to disentangle ourselves from US colonisation, in the same way we had parted ways with the motherland in the seventies.

I wanted to be part of this again. I wanted to work and study where I knew the conversations were stimulating and addressing pressing issues. I wanted to see equality of opportunity and access to education back on the agenda for society. This was why I enrolled in a Master of Arts (Writing) program and prepared myself to take on a FEEHELPxii debt at this middle stage of my life, after years of domestic responsibility and no workforce income. I wanted to rekindle my sense of power to affect change. And whilst not completely self-sacrificing, I did need to earn a living, however above all I wanted to be part of the generational change that would bring the Academy back from the brink of neo-conservative corporate managerialism into the realm of social responsibility and community leadership.

The Rudd Government was signalling a change in discourse for the Creative Arts and the term Creative Industries was being bandied about in terms of economic value and contribution to social capital. Policy white and green papers gave rise to the new roadmap for Australian society. Terry Culter delivered the Review of the National Innovation System(Cutler 2008), quickly followed by Powering Ideas: an Innovation Agenda for The 21st Century (Senator Kim Carr 2009). These two reports articulated the links and pathways between education and training, industry policy and imperatives and the Nation’s economic prosperity in a globalised marketplace. Thus the logical accompanying policy document was developed after the investigation by Denise Bradley into the Higher Education sector.(Bradley 2008)

These documents inspired me to believe that my choice to return to the Academy and pursue a Higher Degree in Creative Writing was a correct decision. One of the issues that drew my attention was the Government being willing to reconfigure and re-conceptualise what constitutes valuable research in a contemporary society.

Prime Minister Rudd and his colleagues were determined to break down the barriers between what is viewed as knowledge, both in the Academy and in society more generally. Knowledge was no longer to be viewed as purely scientific or quantifiable. The role of the social sciences, the humanities and the arts were to be valued for their contribution to the Australian society and economy. The Creative Industries were said to be the drivers of innovation and excellence, and global competitiveness for our Industries. By harnessing the cultural capital generated by investment in and research into the creative industries, Australia could only prosper internationally. To me this seemed to signal a renaissance for the Creative Arts, in the community and in the education sector.

I could find nothing to indicate that this was hollow feel-good rhetoric. The same conceptual reframing and discourse was happening throughout the EU. Canada, the United States, Great Britain and many mainland European nations were developing similar policy agendas. (Hecq 2008).

The Bradley report (Bradley 2008) returned to issues close to my heart, opening access to higher education to students from disadvantaged and lower socio-economic students, along with the recognition that rigid discipline boundaries were no longer appropriate in educating students for the ‘Information Age’xiii and the ‘Knowledge Nation’. (Croker & Carthew forthcoming). We now have the

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Book chapter draft: Carol-Anne Croker

political will for the implementation of the ‘Creative Nation’, the title of the Commonwealth’s Cultural Policy and political catch phrase first bandied about in the electorate in 1994.

The Prime Minister stated at the closing of the 2020 summit, that Australia needs to “put...to bed the false dichotomy between the arts and sciences” (Jaaniste 2008) and the Prime Minister goes further in the policy document In Venturousaustralia: the Review of the National innovation System. This dichotomy is problematised even further, “Australia’s innovation policy needs to acknowledge and incorporate the role of the creative and liberal arts.”(Cutler 2008:p.48) It should be a great time to be a practising creative artist, and an even better time to be working and studying creative arts in the University sector.

Knowledge transfer is the current priority. Transfer between disciplines, Universities, Industries and practitioners, researchers and artists. This imperative for building knowledge and disseminating research, particularly creative arts research within the Universities and communities of practice finally has recognition at policy level. In the Rudd Governments much publicised ‘education revolution’ higher education has an intrinsic role to play in this scheme.

For those of us working and studying in the creative disciplines, or the HCA( Humanities and Creative Arts) cluster alongside our colleagues in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Media) can now share access to competitive grant funding for our research. Not only are HCA researchers encouraged to apply for the highly prized and sought after Australian Research Centre grants, we are encouraged to apply under schemes previously limited to STEM sector researchers.

To ensure that our work is valued and deemed instrumental in the knowledge transfer process, our Higher Education Institutions have been advised that under the new Excellence in Research Australia system of quality bibliographic collection, our creative works will be deemed research in terms of points accrued and funding allocated. For creative artists it is recognition that practice and practice-led research is recognised as part of the innovation cycle and valued accordingly.

Thus I began this final year of my PhD candidature in creative writing with a new energy and sense of purpose. I could read, think, reflect and indeed write my way to understanding complex issues and theoretical debates. I do categorise myself as a writer and educator when asked at social functions. My keyboard is and will for the foreseeable future be my tools of trade. Now that i have acknowledged that I do belong in an academic community I am faced with some fundamental philosophical dilemmas.

My creative writing study has given me the opportunity to reflect on the old adage, ‘those than can, do and those that can’t teach’. As a writer to ‘do’ means constantly being on the marketing treadmill as in Australia books do not have a long pre-sale shelf life or is the traditional printed codex an outdated and limited vision of a writers output. The Australia Council would suggest so.

In a publication entitled, The New Writing Universe, (Dena & Gleeson 2008) the role of writers in a global economy is diagrammatically represented. The career pathways appear endless and promising. Maybe what is needed is that we need to reconceptualise what it is to be a writer in the 21st Century. (http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/42648/New_WRITING_Universe.pdf)

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Book chapter draft: Carol-Anne Croker

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Book chapter draft: Carol-Anne Croker

And within the schema, where is the writer in the Academy? Can we exist solely as practitioners or would that be to remain guests or visitors, artists in residence if you will? At one Conference sponsored by Creative Writing academics, the issue was somewhat contentious. A published writer in the academy was seen as an avoidance of the Industry, a back door to public subsidised income, or access to defacto literary grants. The inference was that if the writer was ‘good enough’ to ‘make it’ in the marketplace they ‘should’ be able to gain highly prestigious and competitive literary grants to support their creative arts practice, and not be putting their hand out for public dollars through the higher education sector. Underpinning this logic is a divide and conquer mentality common to disenfranchised groups; attack competitors to protect access to scare sources of funding, rather than actively call for unity and demand that the pool of funding be adequately increased. Hidden beneath this rhetoric is also an insecurity, that one group (those that ‘can’) may allow administrations to consider creative writing academics as ‘those that can’t.’ I am concerned that it places a hierarchy of status and value on Government funding with higher education dollars needing to be quarantined and protected, and Arts Ministry dollars constructed as a form of Community beneficence or public philanthropy.

I would propose that there is another way to frame the discussion. As writers working in the Academy, we must be educators, qualified by our knowledge of the Creative Industry in which we practice, and recognised for our ability to pass on the craft and skills to the next generation of writers. Thus the teacher becomes one who also ‘can’ and ‘does’.

I contend that the next incremental step is to have creative arts teaching valued within the Academy, and this is another divisive issue. With the corporate managerial model operating in our Universities, the drive towards metrics to measure perceived quality measures has intensified as it has in the private sector. The discourse of business is now the lingua franca of the Academy; the rationale being that we are producing a product (education) to be marketed (sold) to consumers (students) in a global industry. In 2009 $13billion dollars is said to be channelled into the Australian economy from International full-fee paying students. This money is then used to cross-subsidise on-campus domestic student places and resourcing. This has developed over several years of reduced funding per capita student by the previous conservative Federal Government. The free market was believed to control and regulate the Australian economy, and higher education was a product no different from other consumables.

Our Vice Chancellors quickly became very adept at restructuring courses, marketing their products in the global education market, whilst creaming off profits for investment in lucrative portfolios. These portfolios have since lost their capital value due to the 2009 global financial crisis. There is now more than ever the need to capitalise on the overseas student dollar.

With this increased reliance on student-consumers, has been a need to measure customer satisfaction. Thus the metrics once common to private enterprise has found the way into the Academy. This situation is not isolated to Australia; Universities globally have adopted various forms of Quality Assurance measurement scales. These measures are applied across all disciplinary divisions and the creative arts are called upon to furnish such statistics for their sector.

It would be pleasing to have every dollar spent by Creative Writing students returned to the Creative Writing Faculty but this is presupposing an equitable and well resourced higher education sector.

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Book chapter draft: Carol-Anne Croker

Without getting into the debate about the ‘Melbourne model’xiv, or the issue of staff ‘voluntary redundancy’ and ‘rationalisation of humanities subjects’, I will however quote University of Melbourne Vice Chancellor Glyn Davis who noted in The Australian newspaper xv that Melbourne University expects to lose $30 million of income derived from undergraduate fee paying students in the coming academic year, and that he was loathe to increase the number of International students beyond 11,000 simply to recover lost income. Melbourne claims to have the most International fee paying students of all the G8 Universities in Australia and points to the Federal Government cutting grants and subsidies in real terms for University education per capita of student enrolment over many years, forcing them to rely on cross-subsiding core university responsibilities; education and research. According to figures published by the National Tertiary Education Union xvi notes that despite the $1.3 billion increase in the 2009 Federal Budget, for recurrent core learning and teaching funding, the effect will not be felt until 2011-12 with the actual funding per student in 2009, down 0.3 percent.

Needless to say with Australia weathering an economic slowdown, the HCA disciplines attract far fewer International fee-paying students, most of whom are looking for (fast and comparatively cheap) workforce credentials rather than a less instrumental and less industry targeted liberal education.

The consequence of this move to quality assurance and measurement has impacted on the Arts faculties. As the disciplines are not generating income via full-fee paying international students (and in Australia the Federal Government has stringent caps on the number of domestic full-fee paying places), teaching is the area where esteem and quality can be measured. Esteem factors become the stuff of marketing campaigns and advertising slogans adorning the corporate banners flapping on flagpoles on University entrances, and touted in bold lettering in broadsheet advertisements.

In terms of income generation, then, creative arts teaching is on one side of an unequal educational relationship. One sure way to generate income is through Government funding and the way to obtain that is via Competitive Research Grants. Thus Research is valued more highly within the Academy than teaching. Research higher degree students more sought after than undergraduate students.

For the HCA sector, we appear to have won the research equivalency argument for academic publication, and theoretically at least, the recognition of creative works as research equivalence under our ERA, but we have yet to formulate and construct the metrics for Esteem measurement. Currently, the Council for Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, the Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, the learned Academies of Humanities and Social Sciences are in consultation with members and staff to develop such metrics.

Only then will writers in the academy feel comfortable being considered educators. After all, esteem is easily measured in writing practice by award nominations and prizes, invitations to literary festivals and symposia, and of course through sales income. But esteem measurements for teachers remains subjective and difficult to quantify. With the 2008 challenge to the traditional science-based bibliometrics, HCA groups have managed to compile a journal ranking system, alongside existing citation indices. And whilst the inclusions and classifications remain problematic for interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary journals, it is a basis from which to progress. (Genoni & Haddow 2009)

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Book chapter draft: Carol-Anne Croker

As for me, I feel that I am a professional educator, researcher and writer. My future may be in continuing to work to ensure that cross-disciplinary curricula and academic journals are recognised under the ERA scheme, and also working to ensure that writer’s creative outputs are recognised by all Australian Universities, which will necessitate the construction of bibliometrics for publication outlets in Australia, as is happening around the globe. But I may simply pass the baton on to the next generation of scholar-activist-writers within the Academy, and decide that it is easier to influence cultural change from the outside of the University sector possibly by gathering much valued and sought after research opportunities in Countries where the system is already ahead of ours. After all why waste time re-inventing the proverbial wheel. That’s not innovation or creativity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Bradley, D 2008, Review of Higher Education Report, Canberra. http://www.deewr.gov.au/highereducation/review/pages/reviewofaustralianhighereducationreport.aspx.

Croker, C-A & Carthew, M (forthcoming) 'The Boat that Rocked'.

Cutler, T 2008, Venturous Australia:Report on the Review into the National Innovation System., Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra. Viewed September 13, 2009, < http://www.innovation.gov.au/innovationreview/Pages/home.aspx> . .

Dena, C & Gleeson, C 2008, in The Writer's Guide to Making a Digital Living: Choose your own adventure(ed Fingleton, T) The Australia Council for the Arts.

Genoni, P & Haddow, G 2009, 'ERA and the Ranking of Australian Humanities Journals ', Australian Humanities Review, vol. 46, May

Hecq, D 2008, in Australian Association of Writing Programs Annual Conference:Creativity and Uncertainty(ed Sydney, UoT) Forthcoming - University of Technology Sydney Sydney.

Henderson, G 2002, 'Gough's Fans Must Face Facts', The Age, December 3.

Jaaniste, L 2008, in QUT Digital RepositoryQueensland University of Technology, Brisbane.

Kippen, R 2006, the Rise in the OIder Mother, viewed September 13, 2009, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb4932/is_3_14/ai_n29309472/.

Senator Kim Carr 2009, Powering Ideas: An Innovation Agenda for the Twenty-first Century. , Commonwealth Government, Canberra. Viewed September 13, 2009, http://www.innovation.gov.au/innovationreview/Pages/home.aspx.

ENDNOTES:

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i http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=mysisterskeeper.htmii http://orangeprizeproject.blogspot.com/2009/01/we-need-to-talk-about-kevin-mandys.htmliii http://www.bowlingforcolumbine.com/reviews/festivals.phpiv http://www.tonyawards.com/en_US/nominees/shows/200904191240190093843.htmlv http://www.allenandunwin.com/default.aspx?page=94&book=9781741753592vi http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/7700vii http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb4932/is_3_14/ai_n29309472/?tag=content;col1viiihttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062376/ix http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047885/x http://bloomsbury.denise-randle.co.uk/intro.htmxi http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/indonesia/index.htmlxii FEE-HELP commenced in 2005 description taken from the following website accessed September 13, 2009http://www.backingaustraliasfuture.gov.au/fact_sheets/6.htmStudents paying full fees for an undergraduate course do not currently have access to an income contingent loan scheme. This is unfair and clearly works against students with reduced financial means. The new FEE-HELP scheme offers all eligible students an income contingent loan facility to pay their undergraduate or postgraduate fees in courses in public or eligible private higher education institutions. Students will be able to access a loan up to the amount of the full tuition fee charged for the course they are undertaking, to a limit of $50,000. Students studying at private higher education institutions only have access to FEE-HELP if the institution is recognised as a higher education provider by the Australian Government. FEE-HELP will encourage lifelong learning and the upgrading and acquisition of new skills. It will also help to remove barriers to national and personal investment in education, training and skills development. Enrolments in undergraduate fee paying courses in both public and private higher education institutions are likely to increase. This will help to reduce the level of unmet demand for higher education places and enable students to access their preferred course or provider, instead of taking up a Commonwealth supported place in a course they do not want. Debts accrued under FEE-HELP will be indexed to the consumer price index (CPI) but are otherwise interest free. A loan fee of 20 per cent will apply to FEE-HELP loans for undergraduate courses of study only. No loan fee applies to a FEE-HELP loan for fee paying postgraduate courses of study, or for units of study that do not form part of a course of study and are undertaken with OLA, or for bridging courses for overseas trained professionals. xiii Term first used to describe the latter decades of the 20th Century with the information revolution and rapid expansion of electronic communication and technological advancement. This first decade of the new Century could still be described as belonging to the ‘innovation age’.xiv “The Melbourne Model is based on six broad undergraduate programs followed by a professional graduate degree, research higher degree or entry directly into employment. The emphasis on academic breadth as well as disciplinary depth in the new degrees ensures that as a graduate you will have the capacity to negotiate your way successfully in a world where knowledge boundaries are shifting and reforming to create new frontiers and challenges almost daily.” http://www.futurestudents.unimelb.edu.au/about/melbournemodel.htmlxv Slattery, L & A Trounsen. University of Melbourne axes 220 jobs to cut losses. The Australian Higher Education Supplement http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25850820-12332,00.html Accessed August 1, 2009.xvi Kniest, Paul. NTEU Advocate. Volume 16 (2) July 2009. P. 15. http://www.nteu.org.au/publications/advocate/vol16no2 Accessed August 1, 2009.