Creating new institutions in Australia

The creation of new institutions of postsecondary education offers researchers many opportunities. Although most institutions stress that they will be anxious to "serve the community", a number of writers have suggested that academic institutions tend to be captured by interest groups. For example, the Hurtubise-Rowat Commission in Canada (1970: 121) warned of the danger that institutions could be dominated by powerful academics and administrators. Iannacone, too (1981: 25) argued that that academic institutions tend to be ruled by an in-group working to resolve disputes to its own advantage. This article examines the creation of three new institutions in Australia in the 1980s to test whether these statements apply. In short, why were the institutions established, how unique are they and whose interest do they seem to satisfy? The two hundred years' anniversary of white settlement in Australia in 1988 makes such questions more pertinent than usual.