Universities are pressured to deliver “employable graduates”, generate revenue, climb international rankings, and compete for fee-paying international students (Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images)

Australian universities: A waning soft power

Driven by political mood rather than long-term strategy, higher education has become fast, fragile and transactional.

Hangga Fathana

2 December 20254 min read

Australia’s universities are at a defining moment. For years, they have been treated less as public institutions of knowledge and more as export infrastructure – engines of revenue rather than engines of democracy. In Aiming Higher: Universities and Australia's future, Vice-Chancellor and legal scholar George Williams argues that this model is now faltering: student hardship is rising, public investment has stalled, and political narratives increasingly frame international students as a policy problem rather than a national asset.

Williams does not write in geopolitical language, yet the strategic consequences are difficult to ignore. A weakened university sector erodes Australia’s research capability, narrows its talent pipeline, and limits the relationships that underpin cooperation in the region. In an Indo-Pacific defined by competition for skills, technology, and ideas, treating universities as a transactional industry rather than a public investment risks diminishing not only national capacity but also Australia’s influence.

Rather than a space for transformation, curiosity, or public engagement, university life has become transactional: fast, instrumental, and fragile.

At its core, the book is a defence of universities as public institutions essential to an open, fair, and democratic society. Williams warns that decades of shifting policy settings – especially the increasing reliance on market logics – have eroded the idea that higher education serves a civic purpose. Instead, universities are pressured to deliver “employable graduates”, generate revenue, climb international rankings, and compete for fee-paying international students. This shift, Williams argues, has come at a human cost: precarious academic employment, widening social inequality, and a campus experience increasingly defined by debt, pressure, and minimal belonging.

Some of the book’s most striking sections document the lived reality of students. Williams describes students skipping meals, working multiple jobs or sleeping in cars. Rather than a space for transformation, curiosity, or public engagement, university life has become transactional: fast, instrumental, and fragile. The problem is not merely financial; it is philosophical. The question underpinning Aiming Higher is whether Australia still believes education is a public good.

One policy debate Williams highlights illustrates how distorted the system has become: the proposed cap on international student numbers. The justification for the cap rested on a widely repeated claim that international students were driving Australia’s housing pressures. Yet the evidence Williams presents tells a different story. International students are overwhelmingly renters, many live in shared accommodation, and a significant number arrive with modest means, not wealth. The cap, he argues, reflected not data but a narrative: that international students are a strain, a burden, or even a threat.

For Williams, the significance of this debate goes beyond a single policy. It reveals a worldview in which universities are governed by political mood rather than long-term strategy. The issue is not the cap itself; it is what the cap represents – a system where international education is framed defensively rather than strategically.

This matters because the stakes extend beyond domestic policy. Higher education sits at the centre of national capability – shaping Australia’s future workforce, innovation systems, and ability to participate in a rapidly changing global economy. It also underwrites relationships and trust across the region. For decades, international education has been one of Australia’s most effective instruments for engagement with Asia. Tens of thousands of alumni now occupy roles in diplomacy, media, industry, and government throughout Southeast Asia.

The choice in front of Australia is not administrative. It is conceptual.

Meanwhile, the region is changing. Countries such as Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, and Japan are investing aggressively in research, talent mobility, and international programs. Indonesia, historically representing one of Australia’s largest student cohorts, is watching closely. While it is not yet directly competing with Australia on research scale or institutional prestige, it is opening foreign university campuses, expanding mobility programs, and experimenting with internationalisation at home. As policies tighten and messaging becomes ambiguous, Southeast Asian families and students now have more alternatives than ever.

Here, Williams’ argument – though largely domestic – reveals a strategic tension: Australia cannot meaningfully claim Indo-Pacific engagement while narrowing the pathways through which the region enters its classrooms. If the country relies on education as soft power, then restricting access under the assumption of burden risks signalling retreat rather than partnership.

Aiming Higher is at its strongest when Williams moves between institutional reality and public purpose. The writing is accessible and grounded, supported by clear evidence and institutional memory. Its concern is not nostalgia, but warning: systems built around market logic cannot sustain missions built around equity, democracy, and knowledge creation.

There are sections where readers may wish Williams had gone further, particularly on alternative funding models, governance reform, and the broader geopolitics of talent competition. But these gaps do not weaken the book’s core argument. Instead, they highlight the urgency of the conversation it invites: what role should universities play in shaping national capability?

The choice in front of Australia is not administrative. It is conceptual. Universities can either be treated as public institutions that build capability, strengthen democracy, and sustain regional relationships – or as export industries responsive to market sentiment. One path prioritises long-term investment and strategic trust; the other prioritises short-term revenue and political optics.

Williams’ message is clear without being rhetorical: Australia needs to decide what universities are for. The consequences of that decision will be felt not only in classrooms and campuses, but across society and the region.

Nations that view education as a transaction may gain revenue. Those that view it as a public good will shape the future.

About the author

Hangga Fathana

Hangga Fathana is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at Universitas Islam Indonesia, with more than 15 years of experience teaching Australian politics and foreign policy.

Topics

Australia