President Barack Obama addressing a large crowd at University of Wisconsin – could he or his competitor Mitt Romney change higher education in Australia?
EPA/Tannen Maury
US presidential elections generally have little direct impact on Australia. And broadly speaking, this campaign is shaping up to be no different. Despite their ideological differences, Barack Obama and…
Some people could be left behind in the digital revolution in higher education.
Divide image from www.shutterstock.com
FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION: We continue our series on the rise of online and blended learning and how free online courses are set to transform the higher education sector. Today, Tim Pitman writes on who…
Ranking universities is useful for only understanding the bigger picture.
University image from www.shutterstock.com
The release of The Times Higher Education World University Rankings will be welcomed by many people in the Australian university sector. See the full list of The Times Higher Education World University…
Universities need to play closer attention to how they teach students, not just rankings.
University image from www.shutterstock.com
The Times Higher Education rankings will be released tomorrow and universities around the world will be clamouring to find out how they place. As all academics know, rankings are closely tied to research…
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says universities must adapt to the challenges and opportunities presented by ubiquitous high-speed internet.
AAP
Australian universities need to adapt their education models or face becoming irrelevant says Communications Minister Stephen Conroy. Speaking at a forum being held at the University of Melbourne on high-speed…
NSW has become the third state to make major cuts to TAFE.
AAP
State governments are shifting responsibility for education to the Commonwealth, resulting in mixed messages about the importance of education to Australia’s future, say education experts. Yesterday NSW…
The rise of open online courses will affect almost every part of higher education, including the international student market in Australia.
AAP Image/Julian Smith
Mass Open Online Courseware (MOOCs) is less than a year old but it is already clear this will be the game changer in higher education worldwide. Right now it is reverberating through Australian universities…
Should the government subsidise university places when graduates gain so much from a tertiary education?
Flickr/pamhule
After releasing my report, Graduate Winners: Assessing the public and private benefits of higher education, the question I have most been asked is: if university fees go up, will students still come? It’s…
Future students need more than rankings to make the best choice.
AAP Image/Julian Smith
Australian universities compete with providers all over the globe. The stakes are high and it is hard to ignore world rankings. In The Conversation recently, however, University of Southern Queensland’s…
The global movement towards open access publishing has taken another step with the release of the Finch report.
Flickr/liikennevalo
A committee convened to examine how UK-funded research could be made more accessible released its report this week. The committee, chaired by Dame Janet Finch, was set up last year by Minister for Universities…
All cut out to fit the same mould? We can’t assume that all universities are trying to be the same.
Flickr/walterh
James Cook University drew a lot of attention in the higher education sector recently by publicly “opting out” of the Times Higher Education (THE) World University rankings. Their reason was simple enough…
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has called on miners to accept that the resources they mine belong to the people.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivered one of her strongest messages to the mining sector last night, telling mining bosses at a Minerals Industry dinner in Canberra that they don’t own Australia’s minerals…
The Victorian government’s TAFE cuts have shown other states exactly what not to do.
Flickr/Takver
For years, those concerned with vocational education and training have worried about how to lift the public profile of TAFEs. But what has taken many years for some – without much success – the Baillieu…
Serious, interconnected risks are closing in on the globalised community, from climate change to anarchy. Are we heeding the warnings?
AAP/EPA/Daniel Deme
In that world of peripheral vision, essential for business, social and political leaders, it is surprising that the World Economic Forum’s report, Global Risks 2012 has not received greater publicity or…
How crowded will it get? Universities can enrol as many local students as they like from this year. Flickr/jennandjon
Contrary to fears of falling enrolments in the sciences, the proportion of students taking science at Australian universities has been remarkably stable over the past half century: in 1962 16.4 per cent…