Dawkins' Higher Education Reforms and How Metaphors Work in Policy Making

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Abstract
The role of metaphor in the Dawkins education reforms under the Hawke labor government is the focus of this paper. I begin by offering a brief summary of the higher education reforms with a particular focus on the rhetoric that was used during the policy-making process that saw the reintrod uction of university tuition fees. I then clarify what is meant by rhetoric and metaphor, and, using official documents, continue by illustrating the various pedagogical, heuristic, and constitutive functions of key metaphors used in to implement the Dawkins reforms of higher education. I argue that recognising metaphor in official rhetoric is useful because it draws attention to the discursive devices deployed and thereby points to opportunities for contesting the power to name and describe particular groups and social and educational problems. In other words, considering the official rhetoric in higher education reform offers opportunities to change those accounts and to replace them with alternative frameworks for understanding the issues of concern.

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