The transformation of the interface between academic institutions and their environment can be depicted in terms of moving boundaries: the academic-commercial, managerial and university work. These movements represent fundamental transformations of universities, in structure, referent external objectives, meaning and work. It is of great importance to realise that whilst these changes may appear from close up to be unique to changes within the Australian scene, they are not. Instead, the movement of the three boundaries is set within shifts that are currently going on within global society. Representing as they do, deep penetration of commercial market parameters into the very premises of acadaemia, these changes represent the impact of postmodernism on contemporary academic work.