September 2, 2025

During retirement I have received the occasional professional opportunity, sometimes voluntary, sometimes for pay, that's triggered some interest on my part. One, however, has quickly topped the list of "Things Not To Unretire For." It has been a repeating request regarding, as the subject line always says, "considering offering Bachelor degrees in Australian higher education?"

Which part of I am a former chief academic officer did the writer ignore? The retired part, which certainly would never want to take on such kinds of headaches, or the CAO part, which means there ain't a chance in hell I have the money to do this?

To be truthful, the email infers that I am still associated with a college. Here's the full text:

"With the world higher education landscape evolving, leading private education institutions are expanding globally.

If setting up a campus in Australia is part of your strategy, reach out to Darlo Higher Education.

We are an Australian company that helps progressive and forward thinking education groups get registered in Australia.

We provide on the ground, local know-how into TEQSA and CRICOS Registration."

I go back to asking if this party knows its audience. I have not been associated with a "private education institution" since 2010 (let alone an "evolving, leading" one).  More important, and at the risk of redundancy, I have not been part of any educational institution for sixteen months. The email comes to my private email, so there's no ".edu" suffix to suggest an institutional tie-in. It isn't coming through LinkedIn, which could suggest some bot used keywords from my profile to pinpoint my academic background, neglecting to highlight the retired part. 

Even if this had gone to my old swmich.edu account, the implication of offering "Bachelor degrees," given our authority to only grant certificates and degrees below that level, would be a complete miss. Even then, I would have had a better chance to suggest Australian Rules football as yet another collegiate athletic program than to suggest an associate degree in sheep-herding (my apologies to Australia for the stereotype; I just re-read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo with its reference to the Australian sheep industry.).

Ultimately, what is it with the damn acronyms? They seem to think I have a clue what TEQSA is -- Travel Equivalencies for Subject Areas? That I know what CRICOS is --Crocodiles Really Illustrate Colonial Outposts?  Maybe it's just the Australian spelling for Crisco?

Still, despite all my cynicism, and I always have an unhealthy dose of that, the Australian tie-in is the most intriguing part of all this. Since many of my blogs, especially during my song series, reference visits to, interest in, and associations with Australia, I suspect that is where the bot saw a place to entice me. I am tempted to respond citing a very general interest, just enough to induce an all-expenses paid trip to Australia to scout out potential campus sites. Hopefully they wouldn't question too much my choices for potential campuses:

• Glenelg, the wonderful palindromic name of a lovely beach village on the outskirts of Adelaide. I could revisit the apartment complex I lived in with my parents in both 1969 and 1987. Hell, I might demand the complex be purchased as part of the deal and I could set up the Provost suite in the 1987 apartment.

• Leederville, a suburb of Perth, providing me the opportunity I never had to see the western coast of Australia. I might require several days to scout locations where The Triffids formed and where David McComb fine-tuned his remarkable song-writing skills.

• Port Arthur, site of the notorious penal colony, highlighted in Marcus Clarke's For The Term Of His Natural Life. Isolated on the island of Tasmania, our college campus could ironically end up one of the safest in the world from school shooters.

• Warakurna, an Aboriginal community in Western Australia memorialized in one of the best Midnight Oil songs. After all, as the song goes, "some people laugh, some never learn." Fine, let's burn a few acres and put up a school. We'll fix that learning!

• Heron Island, off the coast of Queensland. I could relive my family's Great Barrier Reef adventures from 1969. What a way to promote our environmental science programs. Emu appearance at staff birthday parties not a guarantee.

• Ayers Rock. This destination is a no-brainer as I never got there either of my two trips to Australia. Given that it's a long haul from Australia's bigger cities, who wouldn't want to arrive to find a college with a Starbucks there for exhausted travelers? Besides what better place is there to highlight the critical thinking skills inherent in Occam's Razor than the place where "A dingo ate my baby" was discarded as hogwash and an elaborate plot of infanticide was concocted by people who should know better.

So I'm thinking I need to feign some interest for the Darlo Higher Education group. I guess I better figure out what TEQSA and CRICOS stand for. Sigh.

*Reference to Australian writer Frank Moorhouse's hilarious The Americans, Baby.