Policy mobilities and the (re)making of higher education militarisation under AUKUS

Abstract Geopolitical tensions have intensified the militarisation of higher education in many countries, where university programmes are steered by governments to enhance sovereign capabilities. Drawing on a policy mobilities perspective, this paper examines Australia’s Nuclear-Powered Submarine Student Pathway (NPSSP), a government-funded initiative that enables universities to offer nuclear-related undergraduate programmes aligned with AUKUS strategies in response to China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific region. Methodologically, this study employs network ethnography to trace the policy processes through which the NPSSP has been enacted. It specifically focuses on the relations amongst diverse actors—both within Australia and transnationally—that have reconfigured the policy as it has circulated. Three key findings are presented. First, the use of government-funded domestic student places to support nuclear-powered submarine development has been depoliticised through economic discourses, which have facilitated its legitimation. Second, while the allocation of government-funded student places has traditionally been overseen by the Department of Education, new actors—both public and private, domestic and international—have emerged to co-construct how the NPSSP is (re)assembled and made mobile. Third, as the NPSSP has moved, contestation amongst actors and structural constraints have shaped how the policy has been (re)constructed across sites and scales. This paper contributes to critical policy studies by showing how a policy mobilities perspective can capture the networks that enable the militarisation of university programmes, and offering new directions for analysing the entanglement of higher education with geopolitical strategies.