Since Australian society has gone through a number of wrenching changes since the early 1970s associated with “neo-liberalism”, there has been a tendency to see the university as having some kind of higher and protected status in a golden age.

Since American society has gone through a number of wrenching changes since the early 1970s associated with “neo-liberalism”, there is a tendency to see the university as having some kind of higher and protected status in a golden age.Frank Donoghue's The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities,explores the state of the American university in terms of the disappearance of tenured professors, and the cultural change evident as universities change their operational according to a business oriented model. Though Donoghue's work only addresses American professors and American universities, the story he tells of their strategic realignment towards the job-market seems a little too close for home.

Donoghue sees universities driven now by market forces, focused on results, performance and the desperate quest for prestige. What this means is that the humanities are suffering as the sky-rocketing expense of a college education, and the need for students to be job-ready upon graduation, lead them away from liberal arts courses. Also suffering as a result this lack of interest in humanities are the humanities professors - their tenured positions disappearing in favour of adjuncts and graduate students used to fill casual teaching positions. This outcome is due to the streamlined approach universities are adopting in order to react, change and evolve with the ebb and flow of market demand.