Australian higher education has undergone a process of policy renovation during the post-war period. Much has been written about the impact of this renovation, much of it written from a sociological point of view. There is also a body of more imaginative literature, campus fiction, which variously recounts, often in uproarious and light-hearted terms, its impact. In this paper such fiction is analyzed and it is suggested that its various authors provide a far from sanguine picture of Australian higher education, and intimate that campus communities far from embracing policy renovation have rejected it holus bolus and yearn for the halcyon days of the university circa 1970.