Campus Review Volume 28 - Issue 2 | February 2018 | Page 23

VC’s corner campusreview.com.au universities are not simply there to serve themselves, to create a positive bottom line and a strong, short-term return on investment, but that they are there to serve a deeper and more enduring purpose. They are there to provide the professionals the nation needs, but they are also there to create new knowledge, to have an eye on the positive, long-term future of our polity, economy and society, and to play a part in giving effect to that. It is on this basis that universities have been seen as appropriate targets for the investment of public and private funds. So not just serving ourselves, but some greater, public good. As unive