Gillard might be our first female PM. She’s also the first PM in 35 years to step up from the education portfolio. But what does it mean? Last Wednesday was just like any other June day in Canberra. No heat ...
More »Monthly Archives: June 2010
Redundancies at Ballarat – welcome to a demand-driven system
Voluntary redundancies at Ballarat may be just the tip of the iceberg as the drop in international students starts to bite. The University of Ballarat has offered staff voluntary redundancies, and a range of other flexible work arrangements such as ...
More »Applications boom in the boom states
Conventional wisdom is that job booms lead to empty lecture rooms. But the biggest spikes in university applications have come from Queensland and Western Australia. The increased appetite for higher education this year has been most pronounced in Queensland and ...
More »The $1 billion promise – or is it?
The Nationals pledge $1 billion to rural and regional education, but the reality might be a lot less. At the recent 90th anniversary federal conference of the National Party, its leader Warren Truss spoke the words that would warm the ...
More »Another one bites the dust, as government dusts off ESOS recommendations
The federal government has started implementing Bruce Baird’s recommendations – but too late for yet another international college. The federal government has introduced the first batch of Baird recommendations into Parliament and started consulting on more changes, in its latest ...
More »New RTO standards bring domestic training in line with ESOS
Stronger registration conditions for RTOs, which kick in this week, echo the evolving changes in the regulation of international training. The “stronger gateway” for international training providers is being replicated in the domestic training sector, with tougher registration conditions and ...
More »Enterprise beats education, as Tories wield the knife
The new UK government is looking to corporations rather than institutions to lead the country out of recession. The peak universities body in the UK – like its Australian counterpart – talks up its members’ recession-busting qualities. UK universities add ...
More »Time’s up for Tasmania Tomorrow
Tasmania’s three-way tussle continues over education funding, but the combatants agree that Tasmania Tomorrow is very yesterday. It’s back to the future for the island state. The Tasmania Tomorrow reforms have unravelled, with two of the three post-Year 10 educational ...
More »ISCs to undergo Senate scrutiny
A Senate inquiry is to be held into the country’s 11 industry skills councils. The role, effectiveness, accountability and governance of the 11 industry skills councils will come under the scrutiny of a major government inquiry after the Senate last ...
More »Universities in cyberspace
The unstoppable truth is that on-campus education will increasingly become obsolete as technology transforms the teaching and learning experience, writes James G Barber. In learning and teaching circles, the most common view of the relationship between education and IT is ...
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