Antipodean academic blogging

The Age covers the academic blogging scene in Australia. The Aussies enjoy a rather more vibrant academic blogging community than the Kiwis.

I read Core Economics - the team that blogs there is excellent. But I hadn't realised that Core's Stephen King is Dean of Economics at Monash. Here's King on the merits of Monash over Melbourne. I can't imagine Kiwi PVCs doing this; differences among programmes here seem more seen as a problem to be solved than an opportunity.

Once there's enough bloggers around, universities can start doing this sort of thing:

Most Victorian universities have created blogging sites on their home webpages for their opinionated academics and students. ... RMIT University created a site last month called "blog central" as a space for academics to blog, with 15 categories ranging from arts and community to social science and sustainability. Deakin Speaking is a blog page for that university's academics to publish opinions and comments.

I don't particularly like the format of either; they're dedicated platforms rather than syndicators of independently produced content. But it shows there's a critical mass within Aussie universities that doesn't exist in New Zealand. I don't think that any New Zealand university would have enough bloggers to make a go of it.

According to The Age, "thousands of Australian academics have personal blogs, including at least one vice-chancellor...". I don't believe the number's in the thousands unless you count grad students. But it's got to be more than in New Zealand. Here, we have the folks at SciBlogs and maybe a half dozen independents, of which I can only think of two off the top: Xavier Marquez and Bryce Edwards. I really don't know what accounts for the difference between NZ and Australia. Academics on both sides of the ditch face similar incentive structures. Maybe it's a combination of the more demure Kiwi personality and agglomeration effects.

Here's John Sides in PS on political science blogging.