Rather than lock up knowledge in costly journals, increasingly universities and governments are recognising that publicly funded research should be open to all. This past year has seen new open access…
Hartmut Michel discussing the future of energy production and storage.
63rd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings
Hartmut Michel won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1988 “for the determination of the structure of a photosynthetic reaction centre”, which helped reveal details of one of nature’s most useful processes…
The open education movement seems as though it’s here to stay – but why would anyone give away their work for free?
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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…
It’s time to move past outdated ideas about porn.
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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…
A university event where women and men were asked to sit separately raises more questions.
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The fallout from an event at the University of Melbourne where women and men were asked to sit separately has been intense. The media coverage so far has focused on the issue of segregated seating in a…
There are no short-term fixes to the long-term issues surrounding education in Australia.
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Everyone, it seems, has a “fix” for education. The government has staked improvement on extra funding while others say a higher bar for teaching graduates is needed, and some view the prestige of the profession…
Misinformation reported by a media beast hungry for any news on the Boston bombing had the potential to compromise the subsequent manhunt.
EPA/Matt Campbell
Last week’s Boston Marathon bombings and the manhunt that followed showed all too starkly the challenges government agencies faced as they responded to the attack and sought to identify the perpetrators…
Continued boycotts of Israeli academics pose a threat to the very freedoms that academics hold dear.
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On Wednesday last week, the Student Representative Council at the University of Sydney adopted a motion to boycott Israeli academics. The motion called specifically for the University to cut its current…
There are other ways to improve undergraduate writing that don’t involve teaching grammar explicitly.
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University students across the nation will be handing in their first assignments of the academic year over the next few weeks. Academic staff will sigh, as they do every semester: “my students can’t write…
What should students really expect after doing a PhD?
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When it comes to PhD graduates, it’s clear that supply now far outstrips demand. It used to be that doing a PhD almost guaranteed you an academic position but now, any guarantees are long gone. My own…
Australian universities need to trim down their bureaucracies.
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Universities drive a knowledge economy, generate new ideas and teach people how to think critically. Anything other than strong investment in them will likely harm Australia. But as Australian politicians…
Many students are confused about grammar and sentence structure – so should universities teach it explicitly?
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Imagine a student turning up at university and not knowing basic multiplication. He or she could be hard-working, bright, enthusiastic but completely unable to answer a basic question like: what’s six…
The Coalition looks set to only tinker around the edges of higher education policy.
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What should universities expect from a Coalition government if Tony Abbott wins the September election? In his address to the Universities Australia conference in Canberra, the signals were fairly reassuring…
A PhD is never easy but is there a way to make it easier?
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Doing a PhD is a difficult business. Long hours, personal stress, institutional pressure to complete on time – and all this for what? Increasingly a PhD alone does not guarantee an academic career. We…
The future of higher education doesn’t look so bright.
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Higher education, 2060: academics are out of a job. All the brand name universities have made all their courses free online, easily doing away with one side of the teaching and learning equation. Pretty…
The role of the academic has changed and more and more public intellectuals are becoming famous and engaging with the public.
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Recently, I looked at a copy of the achingly aspirational male style magazine GQ, and there was an article from its food critic on how to prepare the perfect Bronte pistachio tart. Not having a sweet tooth…
Researchers who have sometimes been waiting years for funding have been left in the lurch by government.
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The Australian Research Council’s confirmation that all funding awards and rounds are currently frozen has caused major concern, if not panic, in academic circles. The Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook…
Online learning has shown a better way to design courses.
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FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION: The rise of online and blended learning and the development of free online courses is set to transform the higher education sector. We’ve asked our authors how to remake the…
Squeezing a thesis into three minutes sounds impossible. But it’s an important skill to learn.
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Imagine condensing a thesis – which would normally take nine hours to read aloud – into a presentation just three minutes long. Today at the Australian and Trans-Tasman Three Minute Thesis competition…
Using technology to tackle plagiarism is important, but universities need to understand why students do it in the first place.
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Trying to control and prevent plagiarism is a problem for all universities, and nearly all universities these days use some kind of technology to combat it. But in a recent article on The Conversation…
Professor of Management & Organizations; Professor of Environment & Sustainability; Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the Ross School of Business and School of Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan