In 1958 O'Neill and Walker reviewed the state of psychology in Australian universities. Their review gives a picture of a discipline which was orienting itself firmly in the direction of the laboratory, and poised to expand in the area of postgraduate research. Common features in teaching programs were not only attributable to the common origins of departments from parent philosophy departments, but to a network of academics who had worked with, or had been taught by, one another.Much of the scene which O'Neill and Walker surveyed is still familiar territory. The undergraduate curriculum may have become more vaned, but its empirical flavour remains. The family-like nature of academic psychology still prevails. There are third-and fourth-generation lecturing staff who can trace their genealogies back to Lovell. The great leap into postgraduate study anticipated in that 1958 survey occurred, and there are now some 950 postgraduates enrolled in psychology courses. Presentday researchers will echo O'Neill and Walker's complaint that "Two conditions have tended to frustrate research lack of facilities, especially financial, and lack of leisure, because of the heavy teaching loads so common in our universities."There were also changes which that review could not have anticipated. The splitting of the higher education system into two to create a group of universities and a group of colleges, both with a mandate to teach psychology, was one such change. The enormous growth in the size of psychology departments was another. And there were other things which could only be seen darkly in the glass, such as the demands that would be made on the training institutions for postgraduate professional training, and the emerging relationship between psychology and other academic disciplines.274 Piychology and the Higher kducatiun System 1 do not intend to attempt a systematic review of psychology in Australia's higher education system. Since ONeill and Walker's paper, Nixon and Taft (1977), Feather (1985), and Nixon (1984 have reviewed various aspects of teaching and research in universities and colleges. Rather, 1 want to canvass what our future policies should be for the future of psychology in higher education in the following areas: 0 the purpose and structure of the undergraduate curriculum; 0 the roles of universities and advanced education institutions in teaching and research in psychology; 0 the future of research in psychology;the responsibilities of higher education institutions and the profession for the provision of professional postgraduate training.
