Since 2007, the Australian government has been evaluating a pilot aptitude test for future university students. The test is meant to help universities select students who might have the ability to undertake…
The Australian Education Bill, introduced to the parliament last week, sets out the government’s Gonski reforms to school funding. One of the reform’s key tenets is that extra money should go to schools…
As a vice chancellor, I conducted many graduation ceremonies and welcomed scores of proud graduates to the fellowship of educated men and women. One regular feature of these ceremonies was a queue of students…
The New York Times dubbed 2012 the year of the MOOC. And for many, the seemingly unstoppable rise of Massive Open Online Courses – courses which are offered for free by prestigious universities – is where…
What if, after several years of studying in an intense degree program, you graduate only to find no jobs within your field? Since 2012, public universities have been allowed to determine the number of…
So you’re just recovering from the last ERA (Excellence for Research Australia) assessment? Dust yourself off, Excellence in Innovation for Australia (EIA) is heading our way. This is the new paradigm…
A new Australian university profile system has today released its first round of data, mirroring similar tools in Europe. The new measure comes as part of a wider search for alternatives to traditional…
This week Coalition MP Alan Tudge wrote a piece in the Australian Financial Review calling for an end to the 26-week academic year. In his article, he said students were spending the remainder of their…
The launch of a new academic journal doesn’t usually grab popular media interest. But the first journal of Porn Studies seems to have bucked the trend. For the most part, media coverage has contained more…
Universities are increasingly looking to philanthropists for research funding but experts have warned that donated funds may come with strings attached. The University of Melbourne announced yesterday…
Just to the left and above this sentence is a picture of me. Like most places on the web where discussion takes place, The Conversation places a profile picture of each author next to their writing. Indeed…
A napster moment; the end of boring lectures; a tipping point. These are all common responses to the emergence of MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses. Now, simply using a laptop or iPad, hundreds of thousands…
The last Labor budget has seen the top half of the Education Revolution fizzle. The ideals that powered the 2009 Gillard policies are in fragments. Demand-driven higher education will survive until the…
With the rise of mass higher learning, tight public funding and intense competition for students, universities are often encouraged to see students as “customers”. But should they? Commentators who criticise…
Professor Sandra Harding, the Universities Australia chair and Vice-Chancellor of James Cook University addressed the National Press Club in Canberra today. Here is a copy of her speech. In his novel set…
The consensus on the recent A$2.3 billion funding cuts to the tertiary sector is they will do more harm than good. Plenty of commentators foresee diminishing quality of teaching and research, possible…
It’s nothing new to say we have a problem in education. But I’m not here to discuss the usual gripes with teachers and test scores. I believe we have a more fundamental problem with defining what we want…
“We must give universities more freedom to focus on what they are good at… If that means that some universities want to focus significantly more on teaching, then they should confidently do so… Government…
Increasingly, it’s not the quality of the research or researcher that is determining who gets funding in Australia’s universities but the reputation of the institutions they work for. This is now reflected…
Government policy should encourage some universities to focus on research and others on teaching, enabling institutions to specialise in certain areas, Australia’s shadow education minister, Christopher…