Abstract:
This presentation offers a critical reading of the Australian Universities Accord. Released in early 2024, the Accord details priorities that will guide the higher education sector until 2050. A key aim of the Accord is to ensure an increased number of students attend university and graduate with skills that will be relevant for the jobs of the future. While the need to address climate change is recognised in the policy text, we argue that the Accord fails to envisage the kind of action that climate change demands. Building on research that critiques technological, managerial and economic solutions, we show how the Accord develops a problematic stance in relation to climate change. Our analysis unfolds in three parts, in which we show how the Accord i) mobilises a language of equity and inclusion to authorise an education agenda premised on a logic of growth, ii) positions universities as a solution to climate change and thus downplays how they have been instrumental in supporting and promoting systems of resource extraction, and iii) attempts to stabilise the future by understating the challenges that climate change poses. The conclusion contends that higher education policy must more adequately respond to ecological crises and promote planetary justice.