Wow, that was quite a deluge of emails yesterday on the question of corporate chancellors taking over our universities.

Whilst the majority of top 100 company chairs are former CEOs of public companies, the same can’t be said for the university sector.

However, there are currently three former vice-chancellors who have stepped up to be non-executive chancellors at other universities and they are:

Dennis Gibson: RMIT

Bob Smith: Ballarat

Ingrid Moses: Canberra

These are the new corporate chancellors that we missed yesterday:

University of New England: John Cassidy: former CEO of Abigroup and ousted director of Hills Motorway.

Curtin University, Gordon Martin: Highly regarded as chairman of Coogee Chemicals and Coogee Resources. The latter launched an IPO last year but the float was pulled after institutions baulked at the price.

Murdoch University, Terry Budge: former CEO of BankWest, current chairman of WA Government’s LandCorp, director of Aspen Group and WestOz Investment Company.

Flinders University, Sir Eric Neal: former CEO of Boral and was chairman of Westpac when it almost went broke in 1992, although this isn’t included on the website bio.

The new non-corporate chancellors are as follows:

Swinburne, Bill Scales: did a stint at Telstra but is best known as Kennett’s chief bureaucrat and the former head of the Industry Commission.

University of Adelaide, John von Doussa: President of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. He’s had a long and distinguished career in law both here in Australia and overseas.

La Trobe University, Sylvia Walton: spent 23 years as principal of the Tintern secondary schools in Melbourne.

Griffith University, Leneen Forde: recent Queensland Governor and before that something of a pioneer female lawyer.

Wollongong, Michael Codd: head of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Bob Hawke but has corporate experience on the Qantas board.

James Cook, Lt Gen John Grey: former chief of the Australian Army.

Edith Cowan, Hendy Cowan: farmer and former Nationals leader and deputy premier of WA who failed miserably in a tilt at the AWB board a couple of years ago.

Keep the feedback coming to smayne@crikey.com.au but it does look like we are close to having a majority of corporate chancellors for the first time in our history.