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Introduction
Universities have often been accorded a significant role in nation-building, particularly in post-colonial countries such as Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. From their establishment in these two countries and many like them, universities were designed with significant utilitarian goals in mind alongside commitments to a more traditional focus on liberal education and the pursuit of knowledge. In the period of post-Second World War reconstruction, there was a great sense of urgency surrounding the role universities could play in national economic and technological development. Debates raged in Australia and, to a lesser extent in Aotearoa/New Zealand, about the importance of scientific and technological disciplines in universities (Davison and Murphy, 2012; Forsyth, 2013). This was seen as particularly urgent at a time when the Cold War was at its height during the 1950s. The post-war baby boom and the rise in educational expectations meant that the chronically under-funded universities in Australia and especially in Aotearoa/New Zealand, which had a longer standing commitment to open entry (Butterworth and Tarling, 1994), were overcrowded and acknowledged to be in crisis (Davison and Murphy, 2012).
In response to these pressures, two significant government reviews were commissioned in line with trends in other countries (Hutchinson, 2013). The reports from these two reviews came to be known as the Murray Report (Murray, 1957) and the Hughes Parry (Hughes Parry, 1959) after the men who chaired these committees. They represent a moment of rupture in the history of higher education in both countries and ushered in a period of greater public funding for universities and broader societal interest in higher education. They also paved the way for increased government scrutiny and policy control of all aspects of university life, which had far-reaching ramifications for academic and student subjectivities and university life.
Therefore, there is value in subjecting such critically important reports to close textual analysis in order to understand more about how they position universities in relation to mid-twentieth century political and social aspirations in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. Understanding more about trans-Tasman comparisons between the nation-building goals of these two richly networked, yet diverse countries is also important in enhancing historiography about universities in both countries. This paper applies Foucauldian genealogy (Foucault, 1977/1996) and elements of Wodak's (2011) historical discourse analysis to...