The Dawkins Revolution[1] was a series of Australian higher education reforms instituted by the then Labor Education Minister (1987–91) John Dawkins.[2] The reforms merged higher education providers, granted university status to a variety of institutions, instituted a system for income contingent loans to finance student fees, required a range of new performance monitoring techniques and methods, and revamped the relationship between universities and the Commonwealth Government. The reforms transitioned Australia's higher education system into a mass system which could produce more university educated workers, but have remained controversial due to their impacts on the incentives facing universities, bureaucracies and academics.
The reforms were proposed in Higher education: a policy discussion paper ('the green paper') which was published in December 1987[3] and announced in Higher education: a policy statement ('the white paper') published in July 1988.[4] The reforms took place over several years; implementation of the HECS system began in 1989, and Federation University, Southern Cross University and the University of the Sunshine Coast were the last round of universities to be created in this era, granted university status in 1994.