University cannot serve this generation as it did mine

National

Universities in crisis

Opinion

University cannot serve this generation as it did mine – and I’m in grief

Jenna Price Columnist September 19, 2025 — 5.57pm

There’s a moment when you realise it’s all going to hell, when the institutions you thought stood for something stand for nothing but profit. Going to university was exactly what Mum expected of me. My sister tried, failed. I wasn’t brilliant, either (at first, hah!). No idea what to do or how to do it. It took university to change my life.

In my years at the NSW Institute of Technology (now UTS), I learnt how to learn. Extraordinary teachers, historian Ann Curthoys, author Drusilla Modjeska, journalists like Chris Nash, the bloke who brought about the undoing of a federal Liberal treasurer in the ’70s . And the l