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Not all Indigenous art students become artists. Some use the project-management skills inherent in making any creative endeavour to move onwards and upwards elsewhere

But because there are so many successful Indigenous artists, art remains both readily understood as a pathway out of poverty and a way to argue the cause

The poor see things differently

The children of the wealthy, who now dominate undergraduate arts education, know that mainstream culture belongs to them. There is no message of self-belief presented to those working-class students who may wish to take their art further because it was the one school subject that made sense to them.

n Australia the sense of freedom to choose a career seems to have been lost at about the same time as the introduction of HECS in 1989

There is a disconnect between the class of people who make and administer the rules and the lived experience of the many. Those who run the world see debt as a tool, a means to a well-considered end, a way to access working capital, a pathway to future wealth.

In the distant past, when tertiary study was less formalised, less measured than today, visually-talented working-class kids often gravitated to art schools.

my parents were not prepared to be guarantors for me to take a teaching scholarship

Accelerating divisions of class and wealth have seen a dramatic reduction in the number of bright, edgy students from the unfashionable suburbs studying the arts

very widely, and considers many writers who get scant attention nowadays

This is a hugely ambitious book, and the range of reading that has gone into its making cannot but be impressive, though the steady flow of many lengthy summaries and brief references to a huge number of writers makes for rather heavy going on the part of the reader.

(to my mind)

It is no pleasure to give a serious and substantial philosophical work such a low rating. So on the positive side I think it can safely be said that readers will undoubtedly benefit from Rockmore's range of reference.

even the briefest survey would show, I think, that 'aesthetic cognitivism', as it is increasingly referred to, is not only widely discussed, but alive and wel

For example, he uses the expressions 'art and truth' and 'art and cognition' more or less interchangeably. But the conflation of 'truth' and 'cognition' confounds many of the issues he want to discuss, because there are important dimensions to cognition other than truth

with which contemporary aesthetics is concerned.

That is the basic purpose of a new national effort spearheaded by Im

agining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, a consortium supported by 70-odd colleges and universities, including Syracuse University and CalArts. Based at the University of Michigan, the consortium is establishing a "tenure team" to develop policies and processes that appropriately value public scholarship and engaged artistic creation in the cultural disciplines.

Our working definition of public scholarship in the arts and humanities comprises research, scholarship, or creative activity that: connects directly to the work of specific public groups in specific contexts; arises from a faculty member's field of knowledge; involves a cohesive series of activities contributing to the public welfare and resulting in "public good" products; is jointly planned and carried out by coequal partners; and integrates discovery, learning, and public engagement. As we move toward a consensus on what constitutes public scholarship, we are committed to developing criteria for the excellence of this work.

We are also looking for a broader definition of "peer" in "peer review," to include recognized nonacademic leaders in public scholarship and public-art making

Perhaps most important, we are recommending that faculty members and evaluators not advise junior colleagues to postpone public scholarship if that is where their passions lie.