15. Vulnerability and generosity: The good future for Australian higher education

In this chapter, an Australian university tree-planting event to welcome international students is looked at as a scene with multiple possible histories and futures. The chapter asks how Australian universities became structurally dependent on international student fee revenue and were thrown into crisis when Australia’s borders were closed in 2020. During this crisis period, Australian universities continued to acknowledge in ritual ways their position on unceded (stolen) Aboriginal Country. Using ideas about generosity, vulnerability and thinking with care,the authors asks whether the provenance of Australian university real estate portfolios can be made good in any way, or whether one can rethink a sense of property and face the facts about the historic theft of land that makes tree-planting possible.