This event was delivered on 12 November 2025, in Sydney, Australia.
When Universities Mattered
Universities have existed in Australia for 175 years, but the Commonwealth has only been funding and setting the policy frameworks for 82 of these. Today, the Commonwealth is the dominant player in shaping the system. The history of how and why the Commonwealth became involved in higher education, may tell us something about the imperatives driving the policy framework in which universities continue to work.
In this lecture I attempt to trace the origins of the Commonwealth involvement in Australian universities, focusing on the late 1930s till the late 1950s, when the Government saw universities as integral to transforming Australia’s economy and society. It was a time of intense interest in how universities could drive the public good, requiring significant investment and oversight. It was far from a utopia as the contested role of the humanities in shaping this future highlights. As we stand on the precipice of the fourth industrial revolution there is an urgent need to rethink the fundamentals of our current broken system and recover the ethos that universities matter and the humanities matter and both are central to Australia’s ability to navigate the challenges ahead.
Read and listen:
- An edited version of this lecture is published in the March issue of the Australian Book Review.
- ABC Big Ideas broadcast When Universities Mattered on 2 March 2026.
About Professor Stephen Garton
Professor Stephen Garton is the President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (2023 –). He is the Principal Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor at the University of Sydney. Prior to this role, Professor Garton held senior management positions at the University of Sydney for two decades, including Vice-Chancellor and President and Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor (2019-2020), Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (2009- 2019) and Dean of the Faculty of Arts (2001-2009).
Professor Garton is a graduate of the University of Sydney (BA) and the University of NSW (PhD). He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, the Royal Australian Historical Society and the Royal Society of NSW.
His area of research expertise is Australian history, although he has also published in the fields of American and British history. His major books include Medicine and Madness: A Social History of Insanity in NSW 1880-1940 (1988), Out of Luck: Poor Australians and Social Welfare 1788-1988 (1990),The Cost of War: Australians Return (1996 and republished in 2020) and Histories of Sexuality: Antiquity to the Sexual Revolution (2004). He is also a co-author with Shane White, Stephen Robertson and Graham White of Playing the Numbers, a study of the culture of the numbers rackets in Harlem in the 1920s, published by Harvard University Press in 2010, and Preserving the Past: The Unified National system and the University of Sydney 1986-1995 with Julia Horne. He has published extensively in such fields as the history of psychiatry, crime, poverty, social policy, eugenics, policing, masculinity, higher education, nationalism, war and society and returned service personnel.
At the University of Sydney Professor Garton has also been Head of the Department of History (1996-98), an Associate Dean and Pro Dean in the Faculty of Arts (1991–95, 1999) and a member of the Academic Board for nearly 30 years. He was appointed Professor of History in 2000 and Challis Professor in 2004. In addition he has been a member of the Editorial Board of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, the Executive Committee of the Australian Historical Association and on the Council of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
