Nicoll said she won the top job by applying for it. She was “delighted” to be able to keep working in the sector. “As a senior education bureaucrat, I’ve dealt with a number of areas and I’ve given my all towards them, but I do have a particular passion that goes back a long time about higher education,” she told  Campus Review . “I hope I have something to offer.” 

 She expected the job to be very hands on. TEQSA’s activities would require a fine balance between enforcing and encouraging quality education, Nicoll said. “We have statutory responsibilities, which are very clear, and they are about regulation. But there’s also a brief for us to be involved in quality improvement. I’ll be looking to work with, in part, the new branch that DEEWR’s setting up to succeed the ALTC,” she said. 

As a high-ranking regulator, Nicoll said she and her fellow commissioners would have to curb public outspokenness on higher education issues. Nonetheless, engagement with the sector she had worked with for 20 years would remain a trademark. 

“I’d like the sector to know that my approach will be open and I will consult with the sector where appropriate. It’s my intention to continue the momentum begun by [acting chief commissioner] Denise Bradley and [interim CEO] Ian Hawke,” she said. Bradley, the former acting chief commissioner for TEQSA, said Nicoll washighly respected as a person of integrity and intelligence.

 “As well, she is a superb administrator, with a deep understanding of the processes of government. She has credibility, judgement and tenacity. I have no doubt she will set the agency up as a major player internationally,” Bradley said. The Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA), which after 11 years will have its activities essentially rolled into the TEQSA framework, also approve of the new appointments. “Collectively, the commissioners have a good balance of expertise in quality assurance in higher education and in regulatory oversight,”

AUQA executive director Dr Jeanette Baird told CR. “Dr Carol Nicoll has a strong understanding of current and emerging good practice in learning and teaching [and] she is attuned to the way in which the Australian higher education sector operates. I am confident that TEQSA will be engaging actively with the sector over coming months.”

 While the Group of Eight declined to comment, Universities Australia echoed the general sentiment, noting Nicoll had a wealth of experience and had demonstrated great commitment to quality education.

 “Dr Nicoll is well-placed to ensure that TEQSA is able to undertake regulation and quality assurance in ways which both protect the interests of students and support the strength and autonomy of universities,” said UA chief executive Dr Glenn Withers.  And academics who campaigned hard to reverse the federal government’s decision in January to close the ALTC couldn’t be happier, either.

 “I think she has a huge fund of knowledge to draw on, and that this will make a great difference to the success of TEQSA, and especially to its understanding of the sector,” said University of Sydney education professor Peter Goodyear.

 “The sector is strongly supportive of and greatly reassured by her move into this critical new role,” added Queensland University of Technology law professor Sally Kift. “We look forward with great optimism to working with her and congratulate the government and her on her appointment.”

 Also joining TEQSA’s senior leadership: executive director of financing and planning at the University of Melbourne, Michael Beaton-Wells; higher education quality assurance expert Dorte Kristofferson; Ian Hawke, former assistant director-general for the Queensland Department of Education and Training; and Eric Mayne, former chair of the ASX Corporate Governance Council.
 

This question is very relevant to Dubbo as it is one of the small number of locations in Australia in the last ten years where Aboriginal people have taken to the streets to express their frustration with their social conditions and their lack of options. In recognition of the complex issues involved, public disturbances several years ago led to the razing to the ground of a large suburban section of West Dubbo and the re-location of hundreds of Aboriginal families. 

I have a fair grasp of the issues around Dubbo and the region having visited there regularly for the last five years. I also prepared a report three years ago for the government on neighbouring Wellington where I was confronted by complexities around long-term unemployment, poor health levels and drug and alcohol abuse. There are no simple solutions to these complex issues. 

Dubbo could be a litmus test as to whether governments and communities are doing enough to help Aboriginal people to build a future for themselves and their families. I spent several hours learning from a local Aboriginal woman Edith Eastwood  what helped turn her life around in the last twelve months. Edith prefers to be called Mibby. 

Mibby was raised in Western NSW, around Brewarrina.  She left school at 16 to have her first child and is now forty years old, a single mother of four children, two of whom are still in high school. She suffered domestic violence for more than a decade and for many years fought a battle with substance abuse and nagging government officials wanting her back in the workforce. She readily admits she was dependent on government welfare but felt she had no hope of a better existence. 

Just over twelve months ago she received a letter from Centrelink informing her that because her youngest child was thirteen, if she wanted to retain welfare payments, she needed to enrol in job-related training program. 

“I got a letter in the mail saying that I had to do some sort of training because my baby is now 13-years-old. They were pushing us to do some sort of formal training to get us back into the workforce.” 

Mibby attended the compulsory training at the bowling club and found it of no interest. However she very much enjoyed the company of the other students in the program and they bravely decided to front up at Western College, the local community college, and enrol in an accredited program. 

“We had a great class and we didn't want to leave each other so we just decided to enrol in another course. We all came up to Western College and enrolled in Certificate III in Business. That's how it started.” 

The next step in Mibby’s story is equally unusual. She came to the notice of the Western College staff for a range of reasons one of which was that she organised a lunch club. 

“Because we were all single mothers and struggling with lunch, I had an idea that if all of us chucked in $5 we could have some sort of lunch routine. Well it grew. I ended up having the office ladies chucking in money, and all the students. The $5 each ended up feeding us all week. 

“I was the organiser and I had meal helpers, cutting, chopping. We'd set up salads every day here in the kitchen. We'd spread it out and they'd just come in with plates and help themselves.”

Mibby’s collaborative leadership skills became apparent to the Western College staff and after completing her business qualification she was offered a two-year traineeship position as a youth worker at the college. Her initial work involved two days per week helping with the Links for Learning program offered by the college. 

With financial support from the college, she has nearly completed her Certificate IV in Training and Education and she now works another two days a week in the new PEP program; a program for mostly Aboriginal youths who have struggled fitting in at school. The program involves the active collaboration of the state secondary school, Western TAFE and Western College, and is based at the Police and Community Youth Centre (PCYC) in Dubbo. 

Mibby took me to see where she works with Aboriginal youth in the PEP program at the PCYC, a centre with facilities that make young people feel valued and connected, including Internet-enabled computers, games machines, a lounge with a wide screen television, a gymnasium, a basketball court and a weightlifting room. 

She feels totally at ease working with previously disengaged Aboriginal youth. 

“I've got the personality to suit young people. I relate really well to them. I totally understand where they're coming from, because I've been through a hell of a lot myself. I've lived a very colourful life, I've done things I shouldn't have done but I've also learnt my lesson. I’ve seen the light.” 

Apart from her high praise for her fellow Aboriginal women students who undertook the retail training program with her, Mibby pays the ultimate accolade to the staff at the college whom she says saw potential in her and “just accept you for who you are”. 

“And not only that, they sit back and they watch too. They can see who's doing what. It's just like I can see potential in my Links to Learning boys. 

“I try not to pressure the boys: they don’t need that, they need someone to just trust. They've got hard lives themselves, not through any fault of their own, through circumstances beyond their control. They just need someone to trust and they have found it with me.” 

From Dubbo to the world, some simple but profound solutions to complex social and economic issues: remain non-judgmental about people who are currently disengaged, see their potential, offer community-based support, encourage them to train and work, and be patient, caring, respectful and trustworthy. 

Declaration: Western College is a client of Dr John Mitchell, a Sydney-based researcher and consultant who specialises in VET workforce development and strategic leadership. See www.jma.com.au 

Gone was the Keating Growth Funds for TAFE initiative that skills were a shared priority in Australia, leading with the Commonwealth stepping up with deep pockets. In recent years this federal funding segment has stretched to 25 per cent of VET, while the states’ have withdrawn funding to border on 50 per cent. The rapid cost shift has been to individual learners – read FEE-HELP loans, growing to almost 25 per cent of VET course costs.

Skills Australia revealed this radical change of shared VET funding, but recommended an essential place for the “public provider”, and suggested why special strategies might be required to retain TAFE. The VET Roadmap suggested TAFE might best be protected by imposing a quality floor of funding before Registered Training Organisation (RTO) providers qualified for VET funds, to guarantee quality and “outcomes”. 

TAFE hardly rated a further footnote in the vision for Australian skills.

It required deeper analysis of the Skills Australia Roadmap to see the ‘roadmap’ that Australia’s industry-led system wanted. Business chiefs insisted that quality was essential to credible skill qualifications (hallelujah!), and current completions bordering 50 per cent were too low. 

The demand-led, industry-led training system had its birth in Victoria in the 1980s. Terry Moran, a youthful general manager of the Victorian State Training Board, was one of the key architects speaking out for demand-led training, and why TAFE needed to respond to industry needs.

Soon after, the Kennett government in Victoria dismantled the central employment system for TAFE teachers. It began a devolved governance model – a concept which rested in Victoria until recent years, with several reform reports supporting statutory authorities for TAFE. 

This single reform enabled Victorian TAFEs to launch into individual branding to attract market share, specialist student profiling, and international collaboration. The concept of universities and TAFE divisions under a single umbrella were a part of the experiment, creating four ‘dual sector’ institutions. A recent addition has been the Charles Darwin University.

This trend is expanding. Professor Denise Bradley, the architect of the Review of Higher Education was commissioned by the ACT Government to provide advice as to the future of Tertiary Education in the Territory. She has recommended that the University of Canberra and the Canberra Institute of Technology merge to form a new Institution. 

A merger of Central Queensland University with Central Queensland Institute of TAFE was endorsed last week by state premier Anna Bligh. This apparent rush post-Bradley toward consolidation – and institutional dual sector structures – has deeper roots than a single report. 

Whirlwind reform was originally the whim of Whitlam with his take-over of university funding. Years later during the Hawke/Keating years, it was John Dawkins’ Education vision which saw Colleges of Advanced Education wrapped into universities in the so-called Unified System. This reform architecture created a real divide between higher and vocational education, and remained until Bradley proposed a unified tertiary sector.

While the Bradley reforms created headlines and budget bounty for universities with full indexation and uncapped places to compensate for closing down full-fee domestic students. The seeds of disparity were left to TAFE and VET. The Bradley vision for diversity in higher education was not followed-through by successive ministers for education – at least to date.

Commonwealth supported places were restricted to just two Victorian TAFE Institutes, both already established higher education providers with planned degree courses in skill shortage areas of nursing and early childhood. Uncapped places for universities continues, with enormous over-enrolment recorded for 2012 fulfilling some of Bradley’s degree targets, but not satisfying equity access goals.

National regulation on quality did prevail but disparity remains, and runs deep and is now costly. A staggering number of private RTOs were registered by state and territory regulators, to create 5,001 RTOs by the end of 2010 – all requiring regulation.

The combination of the global economic downturn and the Rudd government move to de-link the de facto nexus between training and immigration concessions – irrespective of the quality of providers, and the finances of universities and TAFEs – caused an implosion. The result was calamitous; private colleges collapsed, thousands of Indian and Chinese students were cast out of courses, and families were losing enrolment monies.

The damage is extensive: Australian Education International 2010-11 data shows overseas student visas for VET are down by more than 45 per cent. Of this, student numbers from China are down 64 per cent, from India down 91 per cent and from South Korea 20 per cent. For TAFE the overall decline is about 30 per cent.

The taxpayer has bailed out the ESOS (insurance) Fund, reimbursing student fee or allowing a line of credit to the tune of almost $15 million, with insurers hit with another $7 million.

Looking beyond these setbacks, authorities in China and India have pronounced that based on quality, TAFE sets a preferred education provider status now followed by many agents.

The China story for TAFE is remarkable. Today almost 45,000 students receive dual qualifications with a TAFE Institute, or study an Australian course curriculum led by a TAFE Institute working offshore with a China polytechnic or college.

Not surprisingly, China now includes TAFE Directors Australia (TDA), along with equivalent peak bodies in the US, Canada, UK and South Korea, to undertake leadership training for its emerging education leaders.   

TDA was also selected for membership of the Australia India Education Council, which held its inaugural meeting in New Delhi. Underpinning the new arrangements are quality assurances with the national regulator Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) for VET and TEQSA covering higher education.

Doubtless ASQA will face early challenges, Victoria and Western Australian have not come on board. TAFE has successfully championed vocational education and training through quite exceptional and transformational years – its market share is intact at approximately 87 per cent.

Speaking at the Big Skills Conference in 2009, John Buchanan, head of the University of Sydney’s workplace research centre, posed a series of solutions to challenges of sustainability and social inclusion. In doing so, he reflected on the two words etched on the main entrance doors of Sydney Institute back in 1891 – ‘industry and literature’. 

He said an important solution to the big challenge was the fusion of industry and literature – what he described as the need for practical intellectuals. In fact the original motto of Sydney Technical College also neatly encapsulates this approach – ‘manu et mente’ – by hand and mind, or by doing and thinking.

While the Sydney Institute has now modernised its tag line, for us, practice-based learning is fundamental to TAFE and VET. 

As industry requested of Skills Australia, TAFE trusts that quality will prevail and new funding arrangements will not prevent students being given top qualifications at an affordable price.

Skills Victoria data released last week signalled wide equity loss in Victoria’s latest entitlement and contestable funding model. TDA has questioned whether individual qualification entitlements have been traded without disclosure, with private colleges. 

Australian VET reform will now likely include a national partnership with entitlement as a centrepiece, from July 1, 2012. TAFE Directors will seek assurances that the apparent haste for consolidation in tertiary and VET structures will not signal a rush to funding which could result in lowest price without quality guarantees. A balance between quality, price and teacher standards will be testament to the fairness of VET in Australia.

The mission of TAFE in the 21st century is a leadership role, to deliver quality and demonstrate teacher standards. U-turns may yet prevail on funding. TAFE Institutes may be renamed to align more closely with communities and international clients. However the special function of TAFE to deliver their future roadmap is dependent on credible qualifications, access and quality – milestones worthy of retaining.

Martin Riordan is CEO of TAFE Directors Australia. 

The past twenty years is testament to the fact that universities are both resilient and adaptable. 

Through the structural changes which followed the Dawkins reforms, the leanness of public funding that characterised the Howard years, and now as we enter a new era in which funding will follow the student, universities have adapted. 

And so when it comes to the future of Australian education, I am an optimist. I am confident that the higher education sector will be able to take advantage of the opportunities that lie in the period ahead. 

Since the release of the Bradley Review, Labor has been steadily putting in place the building blocks for a stronger and more accessible system of higher education in Australia. 

In 1991, there were just half a million students enrolled in our universities. Today, there are more than 1.1 million. 

And yet, while our higher education system has steadily expanded over the last twenty years to accommodate more students, it is a matter of great regret that the proportion of students from a low-SES background has remained unchanged at around 15 per cent. 

In a nation that prides itself on giving people a fair go, the disappointing reality is that successive governments have not been able to lift the proportion of people from under-represented groups and disadvantaged backgrounds who walk through the gates of our university campuses. 

Fortunately, I know that there are many people within our universities who are strongly committed to changing this. 

Likewise, it’s something that this Government is passionate about. 

The human face of this goal should not be underestimated—it’s about opening a door to an experience that would not have otherwise existed. 

For many it will mean being the first in their family to go to university, and the promise of a high skilled, well paid job when they graduate. 

There are already some encouraging signs. New figures released in June this year indicate that while applications are up across the board, the rate of growth among low-SES students has been the most impressive. 

Many people will be looking closely at how the higher education sector responds in the new funding environment which allows universities to grow in response to student demand. 

While the new Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency will oversee the foundations of a high quality higher education system, real responsibility for ensuring that quality remains high will continue to rest with each institution. 

In short, reputation matters. While many universities are looking to expand, it’s incumbent upon all participants to do so in a way that continues to protect both the quality of teaching and the experience that students receive. 

Going forward, the new demand-driven system will enable universities to respond better to meet the needs of the labour market. In that context, I believe that students will increasingly value learning experiences as part of their degrees which equip them to be more job-ready. 

I’ve been impressed by partnerships that are developing between universities and industry to allow students to undertake real-world job placements as part of their studies. This helps them better understand workforce requirements and provide employers with graduates who are ready to make a contribution on day one. 

As our economy changes, the demand for highly skilled, innovative and creative workers will continue to grow. 

The Australian economy of the future will require more Australians to be degree qualified. That’s why it is essential that, as a nation, we continue to invest strongly in higher education. 

The next few years will see transformations in our nation’s universities and open the doors of higher education to a new generation of Australians.

Senator Chris Evans is Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations. 

In 1991, tertiary education was also two years out from major reform announcements – the binary system had been abolished and former colleges had become universities; enrolments were planned to grow; and HECS had been introduced. The Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission that had been in place as an advisory body in varying forms since 1942 had been abolished. Its operational tasks had been transferred to the Department of Employment, Education and Training and a new National Board of Employment, Education and Training had been established as an advisory body, albeit with a skeleton staff and no capacity to undertake its own policy analysis other than through the Department.  

The fundamental problem that emerged from this new arrangement was that the system had lost an expert and independent policy and planning coordinating agency that could provide government with evidenced-based policy and advice on the health of the system and how it could meet the government’s objectives. All systemic innovation had been transferred to the government of the day or to inquiries that it might establish. Where the commission could maintain a watching brief and investigate matters on its own initiative, a department would always be constrained by the preferences of the current government, so that options would inevitably be narrower with some solutions not able to be canvassed if they were seen to be against the prevailing government ideology. Over the years this led to a lack of policy coherence as different reviews and inquiries examined different aspects of a complex system but with no strong coordinating entity to develop a coherent implementation plan. 

Evidence was already emerging that this was the policy-making trend, so my piece in that first issue of Campus Review argued for the development of an independent centre for higher education policy planning that would assist the advisory bodies and the wider public policy environment to develop evidence-based policy, but with the proviso that it should also canvass options for its implementation. It would be expected to present solutions and implications so that the result was not just a barrage of unsustainable or impractical ideas or cattle prods for governments. It would do its work through the creation of a locus where policy thinkers from the sector, government departments and international experts could explore policy ideas and solutions, produce discussion papers and promote policy debate.

While another idea in my 1991 article that the system needed a training solution for its leaders and managers, eventually led to the creation of the Martin Institute, the policy centre remains elusive, despite the fact that its need has become more urgent.  

The Bradley Report provided a sobering description of the size of the problem and proposed a set of solutions which it acknowledged would do no more than stop further decline. The several policy initiatives and reviews that arose from the report, from participation and attainment rates, to base funding, quality and standards, and research assessment, to name some, cannot be managed effectively by hoping that proposals will emerge as a coherent and implementable whole – they will need expert judgement and effective integration, and, where funding has not followed the policy intent, advice on how implementation might be adjusted.

The post-secondary education system is a complex organism and each alteration or tweaking of one part will have impacts on others. Without an entity that understands the whole organism so that the consequences of each change can be planned for and any risks mitigated, the resulting structure will not work.

The falling trend line in funding that was already causing concern to the Higher Education Council in 1991 because it might endanger quality, has continued, with Australia falling well behind its OECD counterparts in public spending on higher education. Despite the changing rhetoric this downward trend has been constant since the early 1980s, irrespective of the government in power. Any increase in funding has been driven by enrolment growth rather than for the maintenance of per capita funding. As a result, in addition to the Bradley estimate that the system was some 10 per cent  underfunded, staff-student ratios have been worsening, from 1:12 in 1991 to 1:21 in 2007. The base funding review’s discussion paper suggested that the science on the impact of staff-student ratios was not yet settled, despite Australia lagging behind the UK and considerably behind the US on this measure. In this environment a close examination of quality and standards may demonstrate that the system is unsustainable.

TEQSA’s emerging measures for determining the quality and standards of institutions, including definitions of teaching and learning standards, will inevitably raise questions about the adequacy of funding to support quality, yet the AQF definitions are in the hands of a different organisation, and funding is determined by government. The proposed provider standards require universities to demonstrate an appropriate level of research performance, yet the measures of research performance are the responsibility of the ARC. If one were to use a score of 3 in the recent ERA assessments as a threshold several universities would be at risk of losing their university status. The risk is that with each review proposing solutions to the problem it has been set, sight will be lost of the shape and sustainability of the system.

These risks cannot be mitigated at present because there is no avenue for preventing the system from being subjected to divergent demands with no account of its capacity to meet them. There is a need for a senior and expert group that can make the judgements required to create a workable and sustainable policy framework. 

It is time to revert to the more common global approach to tertiary education governance by establishing an independent advisory Commission with responsibility for coordinating the system and providing long term and sustainable planning advice. It should:

l Be responsible for policy advice on tertiary education as a whole, including teaching and research, to provide comprehensive and evidence-based advice.

l Be a free-ranging advisory body that can test new ideas and set new boundaries. There is currently a lack of capacity for the system to respond to innovative solutions. The commission would canvass ideas and options without committing the government, while providing advice that the government can adopt or reject as it chooses.

l Have councils for higher education and VET.

l Have an advisory role, with funding decisions remaining with the Minister and government, advised by the Department.

l Be the main regulatory and quality assurance body, incorporating TEQSA and ASQA.

l Have a role in negotiating compacts with institutions within a broad policy framework set by government.

l Have data collection, analysis and dissemination functions, and maintain a watching brief on the health of the system, recommending action to maintain and improve it so that it continues to meet the government’s objectives.

A Commission focused on the long-term health and promotion of a quality tertiary education system would ensure that the system does not inadvertently fall into a further period of neglect and policy confusion.

Vin Massaro is a higher education consultant and Professorial Fellow in the Martin Institute and the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne.  He is also editor of the OECD Journal of Higher Education Management and Policy. 

The level of uncertainty is hardly unprecedented. My vice-chancellorship began in 1987, just after the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission recommended increasing Australia’s intake of international students, for educational and social-cultural reasons. CTEC proposed a full fee approach (with scholarships from Foreign Affairs), rather than continuing to enrol overseas students in the inadequate places for Australians. CTEC had also just released its Efficiency and Effectiveness report.

The next years saw the Dawkins Reforms: abolition of the binary system; widespread mergers; calls for more access delivered with more efficiency; the new HECS scheme. 

My experience pre-disposed me to new student entry and delivery models; internationalisation; engagement with industry and commerce (as mandated by Macquarie University’s statute); and a more diverse sector, with more private involvement. 

I favoured leveraging strengths and assets through partnerships and Other People’s Money/Other People’s Resources, or ‘OPM/OPR’, to support high-quality teaching and learning, cutting-edge research and improved facilities – not a new idea, since residential colleges on campuses were provided along these lines.

By 2005 Macquarie was that rare creature: an academically thriving research university which had not increased HECS. Despite its low government funding, its range and variety of revenue streams, along with private and public partnerships, made possible new staff, programs, research centres and grants, research scholarships, a $2 million budget for student travel grants, and community outreach.

Many universities would not have survived the turbulent 80s and the 90s’ cuts without changed business models. The sector decreased dependence on government income to a national average of 40 per cent by 2004 (with HECS playing a big role).

Macquarie went further, reducing dependence from 81 per cent in 1986 to 28 per cent. It was highlighted in the Stanley Report (1994) for the highest proportion of total income earned from fee-paying domestic postgraduates; Marginson & Considine’s The Enterprise University (2000) for greatly exceeding the 1996 national average for income from market sources; and Howard’s The Emerging Business of Knowledge Transfer (2005) for earning 41 per cent of its income from sales of knowledge products and services.

Enrolment of international fee-paying students, with Macquarie becoming number one in NSW by 2005, subsidised infrastructures for further domestic students.

Macquarie gained another revenue source by licensing teaching IP and ‘badging’ to selected partners, providing new pathways through Sydney Institute of Business and Technology, a college of the (later ASX-listed) Navitas. Service sector degrees with industry training were introduced through International College of Management, Sydney, without incurring heavy set-up costs. 

Frequent approaches included double degrees with overseas universities, with advanced standing; co-tutelle PhDs; single unit enrolments of fee-paying non-award students (many progressing to degrees); fee-based summer programs; and expanded executive programs.

Reflecting its establishment based on Stanford’s role in Silicon Valley, Macquarie also leveraged its campus, becoming key to Australia’s biggest high technology precinct. It housed CSIRO research partners and, in its R&D Park (developed in private partnership with Baulderstone Hornibrook) leading corporations with teaching and research links. Our incubator serviced spin-offs commercialising research-based IP, with equity and licensing income as benefits. One of my last tasks as VC was to announce the NSW Government’s designation of the campus as a Site of State Significance.

OPM/OPR business models introduced (along with revenue) the golf-driving range; Travelodge Hotel; student village, through a ‘Build, Own, Operate, Transfer’ (BOOT) scheme with Campus Living Villages; and an agreement for relocation of a private surgical hospital on campus, partnering with our researchers and clinics in postgraduate studies and research. 

While not matching some Group of Eight’s asset-bases, substantial investment reserves were built. (No university challenged Queensland’s leadership in attracting US-style philanthropy.)

Universities spread the risks and improved return on investment in international education. Source countries were increased with support from IDP Education Australia, and later also Australia Education International. Scholarships attracted top applicants from emerging markets.

RMIT and Monash led the way in off-shore teaching, addressing disincentives to travel such as visa regulations, currency changes, and SARS. Several regional universities attracted overseas students to new capital city sites. 

Universities spread risk by diversifying disciplines and levels of degrees on offer. Overseas partnerships often provided ‘bricks and mortar’ and support services, helping Macquarie’s postgraduate applied finance programs to become the biggest in the world by a factor of five.

There was massive growth, led by Charles Sturt and other universities, in flexible, online and multi-mode delivery, with benefits to domestic and international students alike. 

A consortium of five universities, playing to their strengths, introduced an online Master of Science Education badged by Macquarie and Western Sydney, meeting a need with modest outlays.

From the early 1990s, Open Universities Australia (OUA) provided sophisticated and flexible delivery of full, partial and ‘mix and match degrees’ on behalf of partner universities to large numbers of domestic students unable to complete studies on campus. CEO Stuart Hamilton reflects that, offshore, Australian expatriates often initiate or continue studies through OUA, while continuing to receive Fee-Help.

 He points out: ‘OUA can assist partners not just with cost-efficient online delivery of down-loadable content but also through managing online discussion forums, and “virtual reality” modes through which students engage with each other and tutors, including in real time. OUA and its partner universities will find ways of leveraging the consortium approach to deliver online tutoring and assessment in a more cost-effective way which maintains quality standards.’ He also expects OUA to help partners in 2012 to recruit domestic students to Commonwealth Supported Places, as well as those enjoying Fee-Help.

Universities’ costs per student have been reduced by web-based marketing, service centres, agent networks, and cost-sharing with partners. 

Satisfied students are great ambassadors. AIM Overseas works with government, universities and VET to grow outbound mobility. Director Rob Malicki describes Australia as ‘a genuine world leader in this field’. While traditional student exchanges continue to grow, he points to universities’ increasing mobility options, including short courses, internships, leadership and service programs.  

Looking forward, I see potential for universities to benefit educationally, internationally and financially by selectively incorporating ‘world best practice’ educational packages produced elsewhere, just as they access the world’s best books. They have much to gain as producers and users of such packages.

Private providers will also develop, with high educational and production values, content-based packages in study areas taught via flexible delivery and with local support across the world, or with potential high volume and relatively low cost in particular countries.

Innovative approaches will emerge, addressing declining public subventions and further blurring the public/private divide.

Di Yerbury, a previous AVCC and IDP President, chairs AIM Overseas and Victory College of Arts and Media, and is on the Advisory Board of International College of Management, Sydney.  

Wollongong was one of the new breed, if a little older than those created by Dawkins’ amalgamations of colleges of advanced education. We had been an autonomous university since 1975, with roots going back to 1951. Fifteen years after autonomy student numbers were climbing towards 10,000, we were attracting good staff and our reputation was building, both in Australia and overseas.

Most importantly, we had an inspirational Vice-Chancellor in Ken McKinnon. Many people, including me, considered him to be the best Vice-Chancellor of his generation and I had come to Wollongong to learn all I could from him about how to run a university. I certainly didn’t expect to be running his university just five years later.

McKinnon wanted to boost UOW’s research credentials, and appointed me as deputy vice-chancellor with a responsibility to build our research capability and status. He believed that no university – even a Harvard or MIT – could be excellent at everything they did, especially in research. He considered that to be successful in research Australian universities had to focus on areas of strength – and make sure they became world-class at what they did.

McKinnon saw that earlier than most, and as a result Wollongong was able to get ahead of the game. It was certainly a strategic direction I followed vigorously when I was appointed Vice-Chancellor to succeed McKinnon in 1995, by developing “flagship” research institutes. It is a policy that has taken UOW to the top two percent of universities in the world as measured by the Shanghai Jiao Tong rankings, which are heavily weighted towards research.

Early in my time as vice-chancellor we decided we would only fund the research areas where we could be the best in Australia, as well as being internationally competitive. People working outside those areas would have to find their own funds from the funding bodies and industry partners. This had the combined effect of really focusing our researchers on developing worthwhile research projects, while also fostering a culture of interdisciplinary cooperation that has become a real strength at UOW.

The decade of the 1990s was a challenging period for Australian universities, as federal governments of both political persuasions imposed funding restrictions that made life difficult across the sector. First the Keating Labor Government introduced enterprise bargaining for universities but did not index operating grants at levels that matched inflation.

The Howard Coalition team won government in 1996 but didn’t change the indexation rate so we had a situation where our funding was indexed to rise by 2 per cent each year at a time when inflation was 3 per cent and salaries were increasing by 4 per cent. Needless to say something had to give, and governments of both persuasions therefore hold joint responsibility for blowing out the staff-student ratios at Australian universities during that period. 

But every cloud has a silver lining and government policies in the 1990s forced universities to look elsewhere for financial viability. Australian universities became leaders in recruiting international students and in my opinion that has led to considerable benefits apart from the obvious financial ones. Foreign students were introduced to Australia in increasing numbers, and domestic students were exposed to other cultures in a way that was unheard of for earlier generations.

At Wollongong it has been clear that this exposure to people from 60 or 70 other countries and cultures means our domestic students have become much better prepared for opportunities that arise on the world stage, and as a result are winning very senior positions overseas that would not previously have been within reach.

UOW has also has taken international engagement further than most Australian universities, with our University of Wollongong in Dubai celebrating its 18th anniversary this year with close to 4000 students. Fortunately for the sector, in the latter years of the Coalition government education minister Dr Brendan Nelson and his departmental head Peter Sheargold addressed the indexation issue indirectly with a three-year funding  increase. Nelson also provided a great service to all universities when he pushed through a vital reform of our governing councils, which means that councils now have fewer elected and more appointed members. That has allowed universities to appoint council members on the basis of the skills base required to run a complex organisation, and we are all stronger for that.

Other actions by both Coalition and Labor governments over the past decade have also benefitted the sector. Coalition Treasurer Peter Costello’s Future Fund was a visionary move that has provided significant capital works funding for many universities, including Wollongong. Current Prime Minister Julia Gillard was an outstanding Education Minister during Kevin Rudd’s Prime Ministership and she both built on the Future Fund (now the EIF) and delivered many of the key recommendations of the 2008 Bradley Review into Higher Education, including indexation.

We have also reformed ourselves. I am particularly proud that as Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee chair in 2006-2007 I was involved in very necessary reform that led to the creation of Universities Australia in 2007 as the peak body representing our sector. We needed to move from a club of vice-chancellors to an organisation that truly represents the sector, and we have achieved that with UA. 

Here at the University of Wollongong we have grown even closer to the city of Wollongong, the region and our community over the past two decades, and the leverage that both the university and city get from each other is now stronger than ever. This close relationship has helped UOW grow dramatically, and we in turn have contributed substantially to diversifying the regional economy with the development of our Innovation Campus and other initiatives. Our motivation for establishing a Graduate School of Medicine was primarily to improve the health outcomes for the people of our community, and we are already seeing the benefits of that.

Looking back at the past two decades of higher education, it is clear there have been many fundamental changes in our universities – from internationalisation to the Australian Academic and Research Network (AARnet) bringing dramatic changes in communication, and other significant changes in technology.

But one of the most dramatic changes has been in academic workloads. I am convinced that very few people in Australia now work harder than the majority of academics – and that is not something I would have said 20 years ago! Academics are now much more accountable, but we need to be careful that they don’t become overloaded and thus less effective.

Finally, I would like to congratulate Campus Review for the role it has played in reporting on higher education matters so effectively and thoroughly for the past 20 years. Our sector is fortunate to have such a thoughtful and professional journal as a communication organ.

Professor Sutton will retire from UOW 31st December. 

The Group of Eight, the Innovative Research Universities, and the Australian Technology Network overcome other differences in order to cooperate on the issues that bind them. Seven of the unaligned universities may be about to do the same thing in order to form a new group. These institutions, of which the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC) is one, are all headquartered in regional locations. This is a clear and significant characteristic with the potential to galvanise the group, and some useful work has been done in assembling key datasets, demonstrating many similarities. What is striking for USC when these data are analysed, however, is how different it is even from these institutions. It is growing faster, yet has fewer international students than most. It has a very high proportion of on campus students, yet has only one campus. It is the youngest, yet is one of the fastest in growing its research performance. The great majority of its students are drawn from regional areas, yet it is close to a capital city. It is located in a regional area that is relatively under-resourced by government and private economic investment, yet has sustained rapid population growth. Its region is clearly defined and highly recognisable, yet it has little tradition of unified local government. And it is currently the smallest institution, yet already has a larger number of higher education students than some of the dual sector universities. There is no manual for steering this university through such interesting times.

USC’s profile strongly influences how it competes.  Take place for example, which overall is a competitive advantage for USC. Perhaps the biggest current imperative for USC is to attain critical mass as soon as possible so it can achieve better economies of scale. With 8,000 students at present, it is on target to reach 12,000 by 2015, and at least 15,000 by 2020. This expansion is occurring on the back of regional population growth, strategic development of new programs, and deliberately opening up access to university for under-represented groups. Since USC opened, higher education participation rates on the Sunshine Coast have lifted to levels similar to those of Brisbane. However, in the wider region incorporating Moreton Bay to the south, Somerset to the west and Gympie and Fraser Coast to the north, higher education participation rates remain well below national and state averages. These areas also contain significant social and economic disadvantage. By working with government, TAFE, schools and communities, USC is providing new pathways into higher education in these areas. It is also investing heavily in inclusive approaches to learning and teaching, and comprehensive provision of learning support for students so they can more quickly become independent and successful learners.

A key strategic decision for USC in responding to the interplay of higher education policy and its local context has been its ongoing concentration on building up its campus at Sippy Downs. In an era when community support and outreach can have a material impact on a university’s performance, especially in a regional area, this has not always been a comfortable position. The hype around the knowledge economy and the economic role of universities seems to combine with territorial rivalries and land development ambition to create a sense of entitlement to a university in every small town. But this is unsustainable, and it is also clear that students from across USC’s catchment strongly prefer a full service campus. The younger generation in particular are drawn to universities with their own community cultures, broad subject offerings and excellent facilities that support student life as well as academic life. At a time when serious analysts are arguing that the key to solving Australia’s twin problems of productivity decline and skills shortages is new university provision in the high growth outer-metropolitan areas, USC is an exemplar. And it has a fifteen year start. In this context, part of USC’s competitive advantage is that it offers a face-to-face experience on a bustling campus in the heart of what the ABS strangely categorises as a “major city”.

The process of developing the Sippy Downs campus also provides an insight into the workings of the competitive higher education sector. In this sector there are no significant funding programs to enable simple institutional growth. Commonwealth investment in university infrastructure is an integral part of the competition for market share in teaching and research, and the key currency is quality. This is just a fact of life and it changes everything. In an industry that confers enormous competitive advantages on established players, there is no choice for less established institutions but to compete on quality. For USC, this means growing up in a hurry. There is no time for a normal childhood or adolescence. There’s no under-age competition in which to develop the skills of the game. It’s straight into the development of the world class teaching and research that requires excellent infrastructure. So part of being USC in this competitive sector is finding the ways to develop high quality teaching and research programs very fast. 

On the teaching front USC has already developed a genuine, national profile for the quality of its teaching but things are tougher when it comes to achieving similar recognition in research. There is a lot of self-serving argument about the teaching-research nexus, which can only be read as exchanges in an ideological war – whether between the Go8 and the regionals, or TAFE and the universities, or universities and the bureaucracy. The bottom line is that the political economy of university funding in Australia determines that the two are inseparable unless a university has sufficient alternative sources of income to supplement its research effort. USC is not in this category so a strategic position to which it holds is that the great majority of its academic staff are expected to both teach and undertake research. Beyond this lies an even more significant strategy in the struggle for quality. Most of USC’s academic appointments have to possess a real research pulse – either a research track record or the makings of one. This has serious implications for everyone given the priority to grow research performance quickly. 

There’s nothing romantic about being a university competing to get ahead in the modern higher education sector. And there’s nowhere to hide. The lot of university leaders is to make intelligent and honest assessments of their institution’s strategic position, get the proportions right between inspiration and perspiration, and face down the distractions and illusions. Thank goodness all of the rest of being part of a university is still as interesting, satisfying and worthwhile as it has always been.

Professor Greg Hill is vice-chancellor at the University of the Sunshine Coast. 

As deputy prime minister and minister for education, she honed her ideas about structural adjustment particularly in the context of the Bradley Review. She established the Structural Adjustment Fund and sought to encourage universities to begin making the appropriate structural adjustments that would enable them to transition to the new student-focused funding system and to improve their long-term sustainability.

She reminded the sector that the challenges in the post-Bradley era were likely to be acute for universities serving regional and outer metropolitan areas. In her view, these universities in particular needed to establish longer term financial stability and to ensure that all students have access to a high quality teaching and learning experiences. 

While most Australian universities are going through some form of voluntary structural adjustment, there are others which have had no alternative given that it was central to their long-term survival and sustainability. The University of Ballarat (UB) has been one such institution.  

UB is the nation’s second youngest public university, and many commentators see us as something we are not: a small, higher education-only institution, with a relatively narrow course profile, which has aspirations to be research intensive and which has large numbers of international students.  

Challenging the mythology of what others think you are is probably an artefact of being such a young university where you are often compared with other universities, many years and in some cases decades older.

UB became a dual-sector institution in 1998. It is headquartered in regional Victoria with campuses in Ballarat and the western region of the State. It has 22,000 students spread equally between higher education and TAFE programs ranging from the health sciences, to business, education and the arts, to food, land and service industries, to human services, manufacturing, science, IT and engineering.

International students comprise 17 per cent of the student body, most of whom are at partner provider campuses in Sydney and Melbourne. UB has an applied research profile which has focussed largely on regional issues. It has its own Technology Park which employs 1,400 staff, and has a strong and sustained engagement with its region.

What type of structural adjustment has taken place at UB since the Bradley Review? First, within a dual-sector regional university, confronting the realities of a student-focussed funding environment, both in higher education and TAFE, required changes to ensure that maximum capacity was able to be derived from its organisational structures, most of which had been in existence since it became a dual-sector university in 1998.

UB’s 12 higher education and TAFE Schools were disestablished, and in their place seven new, much larger schools were formed, with most integrating TAFE and higher education programs where work-integrated learning is a key element for students.

Second, the  business processes of the University were reviewed and reformed. This required major organisational change especially to the ways in which students were supported and provided with services. Student Connect is now a major organisational unit which drives the student experience at UB.

Third, the reality is that UB’s future will be a future built on partnerships. This has led to the establishment of the Centre for University Partnerships which provides a unified and consistent approach to managing key alliances and partnerships which facilitate students enrolling in University programs.

Fourth, a further reality for the university was that, to boost its research efforts, formal relationships needed to be developed especially with more established research intensive universities. The university embraced the hubs-and-spokes concept and, in turn, applied for funding from the Collaborative Research Networks initiative.

As a result, significant partnership arrangements are now being put in place with Deakin University, the University of Melbourne and with Monash University. This will enable the UB to continue to focus its activities on regionally relevant research, but in concert with teams of researchers from other universities. This will also enable a more robust approach to research higher degree supervision and with the development of early career researchers at UB.

Fifth, mindful that regular organisational and structural change now characterises the modern day university, UB has established a Centre for Learning Innovation and Professional Practice which has a commitment to continually developing our staff and the organisation.

These and other changes have not come without some pain and anxiety, but they have not involved any industrial disputation, which, for the University of Ballarat, is a remarkable achievement given its recent history. There have been voluntary redundancies and a number of staff redeployments across the University.

But change is never easy within universities, although the realities of the Bradley Review, the implementation of the TEQSA and ASQA regulatory and compliance environment, the ERA and State reforms of the TAFE system in Victoria, provide a constant reminder that we are witnessing unprecedented public policy changes in tertiary education in Australia.

For UB, the need to adjust to these changes, and to be much more agile and flexible, has remained an imperative and, indeed, is essential to its ongoing sustainability.

The future for the nation’s second youngest public university now looks more encouraging, having embraced significant major structural adjustment. UB’s strength is in being a regional dual-sector university, very engaged with its region, and committed to partnerships and alliances, especially in research, with its Technology Park developments, and in building affiliations with regional TAFE Institutes and private higher education providers.  

With nearly a quarter of its domestic students being from low SES backgrounds, and three in four from regional and rural communities, the University of Ballarat has an added role to play in helping the nation meet government targets for participation in tertiary education.

David Battersby is vice-chancellor at the University of Ballarat 

In acts reminiscent of campus disturbances during the 1960s, groups of academics in hooded fleecy sweat-tops hurled computers out of windows, smashed projectors and set light to piles of paper – mostly administrative forms. 

One academic could be heard shouting “burn, mother******burn” as he set light to several forms clutched in his hand. Violent scenes have been reported across several university campuses, with the epicentre at the University of North Drabton where a professor of economics was seen throwing his computer out of a fourth floor office. 

The vice-chancellor of Makealot University described the scenes on the inner city campus as “acts of wanton and mindless violence which will attract the full force of the law, and not a few sackings”. The troubles came as a shock to most observers who regarded academics as a peaceful, even benign professional group incapable of such acts of violent expression. 

One hooded senior academic who preferred to remain anonymous said: “enough is enough; we’ve been disregarded by all and sundry for years. Government ministers and VCs have babbled on about excellence while we’ve had to do more with fewer resources. It’s scandalous”. But the pro vice-chancellor of teaching and learning at Harry University of Technology said, “this has nothing to do with being over-worked or excessively regulated.  No, it’s a failure of moral responsibility. Some academics think that the world owes them a living. It doesn’t”. 

The troubles started on Thursday evening at the campus of North Drabton when several academics who had stormed out of a board of studies meeting began daubing slogans on campus walls that read “no to zombified education” and “freedom now, not quality assurance”. It is alleged by the academics that security officials threatened to “beat the living daylights” out of them if they did not desist from smashing their offices and chanting slogans. The next campus to erupt was at Kidunot University where academics – mostly social scientists – occupied the vice-chancellors offices and began shredding draft copies of a “Kidunot and Quality Assurance in the 21st Century”. 

Asked by a journalist what they were protesting about, one senior academic known as ‘Bob’ said: “We’re against administrative oppression, excessive scrutiny and the loss of academic freedom. We want our university back. We want the closure of the factory system”. As Thursday evening wore on, hooded academics could be seen smashing their way into administration buildings and emerging with boxes of forms, the contents of which were then tossed onto fires. Witnesses say that policy manuals, employment contracts, student evaluation forms and time sheets were also thrown onto the pyre. 

John Upself, professor of Sociology at Pratborn University and author of Narratological Nuances of  Cultural Violence and Existential Decay, said of Thursday’s events: “Academics have become ontological shadow figures in an increasingly corporatized system grounded in the hegemonic tyranny of managerialism and neo-liberal governance that has created regulatory subjects in an overarching system of hyper surveillance and control”. The Anglican Archbishop of Hitchens, the right reverend George Snodgrass said, “vice chancellors have for years ignored academics at their peril. They have turned a blind eye to growing disaffection. I’m not surprised this has happened although I deplore the violence and damage to property”. 

In response to such comments, the deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Central Kingsland, professor Joan Suitsme remarked: “What rubbish! Just when we were turning the corner and overseas students were beginning to eye Australian universities again, just when we reached agreement on casualisation, and just when we had all the quality assurance systems in place, groups of shameless, irresponsible academic wreckers come along and ruin everything. The culprits will be brought to justice!” 

However, another senior university manager from the University of Crockton remarked: “you can only repress people for so long. Sure, some academics will go along with the system, even embody some of its most repressive aspects but ultimately they’ll come to a point where they can’t take it anymore”. 

Amid unprecedented scenes of campus destruction, senior university mangers complained of a lack of police presence. “They just stood by and watched events unfold” said one pro vice chancellor. The Prime Minister, Julia Drone, said to a packed press conference outside Parliament House: “this sort of mindless violence is unacceptable in a civilized society. It is brazenly un-Australian. The police will be granted extensive powers to deal with the culprits and the perpetrators will be brought to justice. This is criminality pure and simple.” 

The leader of the opposition, Tony Chesthair, countered: “we need to put this into context. The government has ignored the plight of academics and the fact that we now see gangs of them wrecking university property is an indictment of this government’s failure to take their issues seriously”. 

The prime minister has convened the national taskforce of Australian defence, TOAD, to plan the government’s response to the troubles. Asked if academics would be invited to attend, the PM said no.

Richard Hill is Associate Director of the Centre for Cultural Diversity and Social Justice at Southern Cross University. 

The late 1980s had seen thoughtful reviews of post-compulsory education and training, driven by the then government’s policy hopefully entitled Learning for Life. This was the same Labour government that had reformed the administration of the school sector largely by handing great autonomy to the schools. Think of the USA in which each school would be a School District and you grasp what happened largely following the ideas of a couple of Tasmanian devils. But this set the tone and when it was the turn of the tertiary sector, autonomy ruled.

The Learning for Life reforms funded all institutions in bulk and similarly, gave them each a governing council – polytechnics, wananga, private training establishments each started to flex their muscles with an autonomy that previously only the universities had enjoyed. At the same time constraints on the teaching of degrees were freed up and polytechnics and colleges of education (aka Teachers Colleges) set about creating degree programs. 

Reforms were bringing about the development of a national qualifications framework that was more robust in theory than in practice in those early days. The universities had stood outside of it believing that its focus on achievement-based learning was reducing knowledge and their important work into, to quote a prominent academic, “intellectual finger food”.

So the 1990s had been characterised by change in status and the leavening of the tertiary sector with increased status for polytechnics and private training establishments. With autonomy came freedom and coupled with the funding by volume (commonly referred to as “butts on benches” or worse), competition was unleashed and funding budgets blew out all over the place.  

The polytechnics in the early 2000s realised that with, on the one hand, volume driven funding and, on the other, no caps on that funding, low level courses were a great generator of revenue. Much of this was excellent in that it was opening up pathways into tertiary for those who failed to breach the defences of the academy.

But not all of it was excellent and courses such as “twilight golf” and rather flimsy computer course that consisted of a self-instructional CD attracted the wrong kind of interest. One institution in one year accounted for most of the growth in tertiary education through one single program that acted as a portal for Maori students (60,000 enrolments). This tested not only the budgets but also the rhetoric of learning for life etc and rather than have the wit to capitalise on this situation, successive governments spent too much time on trying to dampen it down.

So it was in that mood that the 2000s started – growth, no limits to either our thinking or our hubris, we had momentum – that the government announced another set of reforms and set up the Tertiary Education Advisory Commission (TEAC). Competition was to be replaced by collaboration, institutional grandstanding by partnership and a great up-swelling of awareness about the needs of the nation, aspirations of the community and the strategic direction of tertiary education.

Shaping was to be the theme and the four TEAC reports were successively titled Shaping ...... first, a Shared Vision then ... the System, and following ... the Strategy finally ... the Funding Framework. The TEAC devised the drivers for change that it wished to use and these were indicative of how this was to be achieved: there would be a “network of provision”, in which each type of tertiary institution would make a “distinctive contribution”, you get the picture? A clear result was to be a shift of considerable control from institutions back to the centre, to the Tertiary Education Commission.

Now it would appear that the system has become over those 20 years more clearly centrally managed apart from the huge millstone of student debt which is likely to soon be around someone’s neck, but whose? It is true that growth in tertiary education is now more controlled and funding continues to be an incentive to work hard (to make ends meet that is rather than to be rewarded).

The two decades have been characterised by change but to what purpose? The performance of the tertiary sector plods along much as it always has so in that regard there has been little impact on real access other that the illusory kind produced by expanding the tertiary sector downwards to include low level programs that once would never had made the cut. Tertiary has become postsecondary.

That might have been a good thing if there has also been an accompanying increase in the success of students in attaining higher qualifications but that appears still to await us somewhere in the future. I calculated that of one hundred babies born in New Zealand last year that based on current levels of performance of different ethnic groups in tertiary education only 29 would achieve a postsecondary qualification. It is not just what happens in tertiary places of education but also in the K-12 schooling system.

I am not encouraged to believe that any of the English speaking education systems (and that includes Australia) are going to do better than this. And as for the goal of 40 per cent reaching degree level qualifications, that seems to be a real pork pie in the sky.

The goals such as the US goal of college for everyone and the 40 per cent of the UK and Australian communities with degrees have no connection with current performance and outcomes in tertiary education. We forget that we are but one dot on the educational landscape. If we can join the three dots that matter then we will be more likely to make a contribution.

Dot 1: two years of early childhood education. Dot 2: graduating from high school with the agreed level of high school leaving qualification. Dot 3: attaining a postsecondary qualification. This last one could be a certificate, a diploma or even a degree. Where these three dots are joined without a gap the young person is likely to go on to a further qualification at a higher level. Postsecondary qualifications at any level bring value to the community. Those at diploma or above bring increased financial rewards to the individual. 

So the key improvements needed in tertiary education continue to be elusive in New Zealand and, it seems to me, in Australia. But it is not for the lack of trying, or lack of commitment to change or of appetite to do so in the past 20 years reforming and changing the system.

It might be interesting to speculate on where we will be when Campus Review turns 40!

Stuart Middleton is director of external relations at Manukau Institute of Technology in Auckland, New Zealand and writes on education at EDTalkNZ. 

The ALTC has lost its funding and will be closed at the start of 2012. Some of its functions and staff will be moved to the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, and Nicoll has become chief commissioner of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency.

“I’m devastated,” said Tasker of the closure of the ALTC. “[It] has been a wonderful organization, they’ve done things so well, so thoroughly, and it’s peer reviewed and it’s got the respect of the academic community for university level teaching and learning.”

He said the ALTC had been far more than just a platform for handing out awards, and that it had facilitated unprecedented cooperation between universities on teaching and learning practices.

“When it becomes [part of a] government department, are they going to have to build that up all over again? I’m really hoping that the new manifestation in DEEWR will maintain the standards and the incredibly good programs.”

Nicoll thanked the hundreds of assessors, fellows, discipline scholars and other supporters of the ALTC in her speech, which received great applause. She said that despite the organizations imminent closure they had had more nominations than ever before for this year’s awards.

“Tonight is an opportunity for us to celebrate the achievements of the Australian Teaching and Learning Council and its predecessor, the Carrick Institute, over the seven years of our existence,” said Nicoll.

“I was part of the team which originally conceived of a national institute for teaching and learning in Australian higher education and it has deeply saddened me to be the CEO at its closure.”

Tasker said that he would miss the centre and that he hoped that Prime Minister Julia Gillard would think carefully about the future.

“Our Prime Minister, I share three things in common with her: I have a Welsh mother, I am an enlightened atheist, and we both share a passion for teaching and learning,” he said. “My appeal to the PM, having got her award, is that she will uphold the standards and ensure that the new manifestation does what the ALTC did.”

See related story  

Tasker, a chemistry professor at the University of Western Sydney, was given the Prime Minister’s Award for Australian University Teacher of the Year at the Australian Teaching and Learning Council Awards at the Sydney Opera House last week, the last to ever be held by the council, which has lost its federal funding. 

“Nothing like this ever happens to me,” he told Campus Review in delight after the ceremony. Tasker is being recognized for his work in making chemistry more accessible and understandable to his students.

“When you’re a new academic, particularly in the sciences, you’re told by everyone, if you want to get ahead you’ve got to do research in the lab, which you love doing because you’ve just done a PhD,” he said. “But I love teaching as well, and being at the University of Western Sydney, where we have such a broad range of students, I think we have to teach better.”

In the 1980s, he began thinking about ways he could make chemistry more accessible to students who were overwhelmed by formulae and diagrams. 

“You’d be doing things in the lab that were interesting and exciting and then they’d spoil it all by putting up formulae and equations and you’d think, well what does that all mean?” said Tasker. “I hit on the idea that the gulf between these two was in people trying to understand the symbolism – we have to be able to zoom down in our mind’s eye to the molecular level and imagine the atoms and things and what’s going on in this world, and then all of a sudden it makes sense.”

The dynamic nature of the molecular world meant diagrams weren’t good enough, he said, but the advent of 3D computer animations opened up new opportunities and allowed him to show accurate models of the structures the students were studying. This led to VisChem, a sequence of learning activities that use interactive multimedia visualizations and discussions to lead students through the molecular world.

“I was getting students coming up and saying to me, I never understood what all that stuff meant, and now I can imagine it,” he said of his early use of 3D animations. “That started me off on the fact that you can show people depictions of something but… they don’t really take it on because it’s cartoony, not something to be learnt.”

The VisChem process uses different types of animations to build up student ideas about the chemical processes they are studying.

“It shows them something at the observable level which they can understand, and then gets them to try and imagine what going on at the molecular level – and then if they can’t understand that, I show them an animation or a depiction and get them to relate that to chemical forms and then apply that to the new situation. It’s been really successful,” said Tasker.

While Tasker’s VisChem approach has been picked up nationally and internationally, he is still frustrated with the way chemistry is taught at a basic level in Australia.

“That’s been my passion all this time, just trying to imagine the molecular world and unfortunately it’s depicted very, very poorly,” he told Campus Review.

“I bet your idea of an atom is of a nucleus with orbiting electrons. It’s a terrible model, and it’s a model that I hate that’s being taught in schools because it’s wrong and it doesn’t help.  How you should be imagining it is a… cloudy spherical onion with layers in it, and instead of having planets in orbits, imagine the electrons as layers, that’s a better model. It’s not that hard to imagine – why don’t they teach it in schools?” 

New technology like interactive whiteboards and online discussion forums also make engaging students easier, said Tasker. Getting a lecture theatre of 500 people to engage can be difficult, but equipment like student response units – “clickers” which allow them to register answers to questions posed by their teacher – helps a great deal.

“And then up on the screen you see the top ten responses, and students love that, because they’ve participated, and participation is engagement and it’s such a simple thing if used well,” said Tasker. “You pick questions where you know there’s a misconception, where you’re going to get a spread of results and you see the responses and you say right, I want you to talk about it, convince the others you’re right and they’re wrong and then we will re-poll. It’s such a simple technique.”

Tasker, who in 2011 won the ALTC Award for Teaching Excellence in the Physical Sciences and Related Studies, said projects like his online problems solving sessions would not be where they were without his colleagues.

“None of this you can do on your own,” he said. “I should really acknowledge the fact that all of my projects have been with mentors and really good people.”

Also presented at the Opera House were the ALTC’s awards for teaching excellence and programs that enhance learning and the 2011 citations for outstanding contributions to student learning. See here for the full list of winners.

See related story  

Last week the Good Universities Guide, the annual directory of Australian institutions, was handed out to prospective undergraduates around the country. 

Earlier this year the European University Association declared international university rankings to be unconstructive and to present an “oversimplified” picture of the work of a university.

Professor Simon Marginson of the University of Melbourne, who is a member of the Times Higher Editorial Board, and a member of the Advisory Committee of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (the Shanghai Jiao Tong ranking), told Campus Review he agreed with that assessment.

“No ranking can tell us about the whole activity of a higher education institution,” he wrote in an email. “Not all such activity can be represented comparatively, or counted. And no comparative ranking has yet been devised that provides objective measures of learning achievement or teaching quality, though the OECD is currently working on measures of learning achievement.”

But yet universities still pay attention, particularly to those seen as more credible, such as the Shanghai rankings and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

“All research universities that see themselves as global players are very interested in the outcomes of ranking exercises,” said Marginson.  “Ranking effects both local/national prestige and global position. The more credible the ranking (Shanghai Jiao Tong is no. 1) and more widely known the ranking (Shanghai and the Times Higher are the best known), the more it matters to universities.”

At the University of Western Australia, which came in the top 150 in the in Shanghai list (the university’s own estimate puts it at about 110) rankings are regarded as important. Vice-Chancellor Alan Robson said UWA planned to be in the top 50 in 50 years, and the top 100 by its centenary next year. Robson said he believed not all rankings were equal, however.

“We believe the Shanghai is the better of these,” he said. “My view is that mixing data with reputational surveys is a very risky business – what would people really know about other universities when they’re ranking them? I’m not even keen on the QS [World University Rankings], even though we do better than we do on the Shanghai. You don’t want to believe these rankings, but you can’t ignore them.”

Robson said he believed the results of reputational surveys were not as valuable to universities, particularly when they used a relatively low sample size to get their results, and that he found data more valuable. Marginson said he agreed completely.

“A ranking based just on a survey is OK providing the survey is sound – subjective indicators are one sign of market position,” he said. “On the whole though, objective data are about the fundamentals of quality and therefore more interesting.”

Marginson said he believed the best ranking systems, such as the Leiden University Ranking of research performance, were those that just had one indicator, rather than a composite. “Of the composite indicators, Shanghai is best because it is all about research only and all the indicators are objective numbers on the public record that cannot be ‘gamed’ by institutions. The worst rankings are those that mix subjective and objective indicators, especially when the surveys fall below social science minimum standards.”

Robson said he was interested in rankings because he wanted UWA to “stretch” itself.

“I want to measure it against the world,” he said. “I want to measure it against the world and this is one of the ways you can measure [that] performance and give yourself a real view. It’s not the final judgment, it’s just a view.”

How much weight others place on rankings varies, however. Robson did not think prospective domestic students paid much attention, although postgraduates probably did. Internationally, however, they were important, for both students and governments.

“There are some countries that only give scholarships to universities that rank in the top 50 in the Time Higher Ed,” he said, a sentiment echoed by Marginson, who also pointed out that families considering sending their children overseas would also probably look at rankings.

Domestic students were also probably not hugely influenced by publications like the Good Universities Guide, said Robson.

“I think students take information in from a wide range of sources – peers, parents, there’s a large number of people they’re getting information from,” he said. “But [the guides] influence parents and other decision makers. They’re important so you can’t ignore them.”

UWA has been looking at the nature of the universities that make up the top 50 in the Shanghai index with an eye to improving its own ranking.

“I think it just gives you that lift as an institution, it gives you that confidence, and I think that’s important,” he said.  

Opposition education spokesman Senator Brett Mason last week moved that the Senate Education References Committee investigate the “adequacy and effectiveness of current funding arrangements and alternative policy options for the higher education and public research sectors”. 

It was defeated by Labor and Greens senators, a result that Mason described as a “missed opportunity” in a statement in which he also accused the two parties of not being concerned about adequate funding for higher education.

He said that while there had been a number of reviews over the years, including the West and Bradley Reviews and the current Lomax-Smith Review of base funding, there had been no “unbiased and holistic review” of the sector in nearly twenty years, despite major changes to the landscape.

“Whenever I speak with stakeholders they express concerns about their revenue and how effectively the government’s reforms are being implemented,” he said. “There is widespread concern across the sector that under the Bradley reforms universities are increasingly asked to do more for less, and that quality may be at risk. There is also a potential concern about the government’s future plans and intentions once the costs of adequately financing the Bradley reforms become apparent.”

But Rhiannon, in a statement given to Campus Review, said there was little sense in considering an inquiry before the base funding review was submitted in October. She also said that Mason’s motion ignored her party’s own policies.

“The terms of reference from Senator Mason overlooked the Greens’ core concerns to improve access and build equity into any funding arrangements,” she said.

“Another barrier to supporting it was that part of Senator Mason’s motion echoed the Howard government’s market driven agenda for higher education.” 

Professor Sandra Harding, vice-chancellor of James Cook University predicted life in universities, for those at the coal-face and for those in leadership and management roles, would be challenging, profoundly rewarding – “and not for the faint-hearted”.

“A new higher education ecosystem is in dynamic formation and we can expect an explosion of diversity, simultaneously creating and populating a highly contested marketplace.” 

She said universities, other tertiary institutions and new entrants will choose where they are positioned along intersecting continua. She said they would still need to cleave to the traditional purpose of universities - a scholarly community that pursues the ideal of a civil society.

“It will demand great clarity of purpose, commitment, confidence, connectedness and courage in the face of fresh complexity.” 

At Bond University on the Gold Coast vice-chancellor Robert Stable said a truly demand driven system was needed now and in the future. “A quality higher education system provides real choice to the students and responds to their needs – such a system must have transparent allocation of student funding that follows student choice and demand.”

While keeping an eye out for the potential tsunami of caps-off most of the VCs had research as well as international competition and opportunity in focus. Professor Margaret Gardner, vice-chancellor of RMIT, summed it up: “This is a time when global boundaries to education and research are dissolving and when the movement of people into cities and across countries is unprecedented. The need for new solutions to global problems, and for people able to understand and work with complex knowledge and technologies, grows inexorably.” 

She saw the global nature of competition as the major problem. “If the overarching goal is international quality and impact of student educational outcomes, as well as the quality and impact of international research in chosen fields, then a university must be able to draw students nationally and internationally, to participate effectively in international research, and to invest in the university for the future.

A similar theme was taken up by Professor Paul Greenfield, vice-chancellor at the University of Queensland, who said universities had become “an irrevocably global industry, so that in 2011 no nation’s sector is an island.” 

For him international mobility as well as each country’s ambitions to grow their own higher education product challenged “Australian institutions to offer qualifications that have global cachet. He also pointed out that the actions on our own turf such as decisions on base funding, “were inseparable from the national capacity to compete and succeed in the global arena”.

Professor Richard Higgott, vice-chancellor of Murdoch University in Western Australia, believes the future of Australian higher education lies in increasing internationalisation. “Teaching and learning, research credibility and the successful internationalisation of any university’s product are all inextricably linked. A high international student demand is directly correlated with international scholarly standing.” He said that for Murdoch, like other Australian universities, the strongest demand was in East Asia in general and China in particular. “But it is not enough to simply have a presence there – universities must make a conscious effort to adapt to the demands of these international markets. New modes of delivery must be developed, and universities must be price and quality sensitive, especially as countries that were traditionally exporters of students grow their own domestic provision.” 

New modes of delivery were uppermost in the mind of University of Southern Queensland vice-chancellor Professor Bill Lovegrove. He said the future of higher education in Australia had to embrace the digital age yet at the same time reach out to those less able to take up the opportunity to gain a university degree. It should be the part of the university strategy to develop open and flexible learning and take education to the next level in online education. “For all students regardless of delivery mode an integrated digital environment should underpin research and teaching excellence.”

The changing geopolitics of the Asia Pacific were also identified by Professor Ed Byrne, vice-chancellor at Monash University, as providing opportunities for Australian universities. “Australia is moving from the periphery of a North American European dominated world to a central position between the old world and the rising powers of Asia. He said this would give unprecedented opportunities in tertiary education and in research as Australia strengthened links and collaborations with China and India and the longstanding links with the ASEAN nations. 

For Griffith University vice-chancellor, Professor Ian O’Connor, higher education in Australia has rarely been so challenging. “A student demand-driven model, research under a microscope and the international student market contracting as we speak mean every section of the market is in flux.” He identified public engagement and philanthropy as ways forward: “Universities that clarify their mission, effectively align activities with that purpose and tell their story well will thrive.” 

Dr Michael Spence, vice-chancellor at the University of Sydney, said bold thinking was a must to meet the challenge of providing quality in a universal but diverse higher education system. For universities to survive long-term and meet the government’s targets, while delivering high quality teaching and research it was critical the Base Funding Review enabled the sector to make a transition “based on a robust understanding of the actual costs of sustaining high quality education in a range of different disciplines and settings.”

Like Campus Review, Edith Cowan University is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2011. Vice-chancellor Professor Kerry Cox said in the past two decades the major strategic priority for ECU had been to develop research of major international standing in selected areas. He sees universities using their research strengths to work with their various communities as being the best way forward.

University of NSW vice-chancellor Professor Fred Hilmer said Campus Review has been reporting on a sector performing above its weight, “despite chronic underfunding, then one would hope that in the next 20 years it will be reporting on a revitalized sector, with our top universities really coming into their own internationally”. 

For University of Newcastle’s vice-chancellor, Professor Nicholas Saunders, quality should be the hallmark of Australian higher education in coming decades.  

He said this would not be an easy task given the challenges: “current funding levels per student place are not adequate, our infrastructure needs significant upgrading, attracting and retaining quality staff is a pressing issue, and the domestic and international marketplaces are increasingly competitive”.

Curtin’s vice-chancellor, Professor Jeanette Hacket, said universities had “to reclaim the mantle of being thought leaders within the Australian community, of providing the intellectual and research rigour to inform public debate, community opinion and public policy. It too, is one of the key contributions higher education makes to the nation.”

University of Ballarat vice-chancellor Professor David Battersby said the arrival of the market driven environment in tertiary education in Australia signalled the advent of just-for-you provision where the student will increasingly want to be front and centre of an individualised learning, teaching and research experience.

Professor Paul Johnson, vice-chancellor at La Trobe University in Melbourne identified three key issues in Australian higher education at the moment: quantity, quality and price.

He said the big issue was how many students were actually looking for places? He said there was a challenge for the sector in terms of whether they could meet the low-SES targets set by government. 

On quality he wondered if the sector could keep it while expanding. “This begs the question can ‘quality’ even be defined, measured and assessed and that is in itself a big challenge. But assuming we can measure it, can we do it across a sector that is becoming more diverse, a sector where degrees are being offered by more institutions, and that expansion poses challenges to the quality audit ratio, – auditing 100 institutions is obviously more difficult than 40, ” he said.

Johnson also wondered if students could afford to pay more, or if the government could afford to pay more “given that existing universities argue they are under-funded with respect to their international peers?” 

Professor Ian Goulter at Charles Sturt University said the effective shaping of both size and course profile will require a deep understanding of points of differentiation and competitive advantage. “Universities’ ongoing sustainability will depend on developing sufficient institutional scale to ensure quality and alignment to their missions.” 

So what’s changed? Certainly not government attitudes to funding with universities bracing for the onslaught of uncapped Commonwealth-supported places and Australia still struggling in just about every international benchmarking exercise for universities. 

Concerns about the number of world-class universities in Australia has allegedly been top of mind with every federal education minister since Dr David Kemp, who held the portfolio from 1998 to 2001, but that hasn’t translated into more realistic funding. On Kemp’s watch the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) came into being, carrying out its first audits in March 2002. Forecasting the launch of AUQA Kemp noted the following: “Our major competitors have external quality assurance mechanisms and countries in our largest markets look to government verification of quality standards.  We need a system that signals to the community and the rest of the world that the quality of the higher education system is assured through a rigorous external audit of university quality assurance processes.”

Kemp, an advocate of vocational education and training (VET) but not necessarily the public provider, TAFE, possibly came closest to throwing the spotlight on university funding when he proposed systematically deregulating higher education policy. But the leaking of his confidential Cabinet submission scuppered any possibility of doing things differently, especially when then Prime Minister John Howard dismissed any prospect of change, a position largely supported by the Opposition at the time.

Ten years ago vice-chancellors railed against public funding stringency, having to stretch resources ever further as demand outstripped places across the country while internationally we slowly sank lower in comparison with other OECD countries in terms of government investment in higher education.

At the time vice-chancellors regularly spoke out about the injustice of under-funding and with few exceptions called for greater government investment. These comments from Professor Steven Schwartz, then vice-chancellor of Murdoch University convey some of the angst felt at the time. 

“It is the worst of both worlds – the negatives of state control and the negatives of market competition. We have futile competition and massive duplication. We have an industrial relations system left over from the dark ages. We have pathetic salaries, and most of the really good staff are looking to go overseas.”

Things were seemingly so bad that the then president of the Australian Council of Deans of Science, Professor Rob Norris, said he couldn’t guess at the number of science deans who wanted to put their heads in the oven.

Former University of Melbourne vice-chancellor the late Professor Alan Gilbert was a rare exception, calling for innovative thinking in policy formulation and taking his institution down a path that led to the first private university in Australia created by a public institution. Melbourne University Private did not enjoy the success that Gilbert predicted and was shut down by Melbourne’s current vice-chancellor, Professor Glyn Davis.

Higher Education at the Crossroads, the review initiated by Dr Brendan Nelson, minister for education, science and training from 2001 to 2006, did little to quell concerns, with the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee complaining loudly about the extra red tape its recommendations would produce while failing to address the fundamental flaws in the system. A staunch promoter of VET, Nelson attempted to “sell” the benefits of apprenticeships and the fact that university wasn’t for everyone whenever higher education funding was raised, or so it seemed. Like his predecessor, he lamented that Australia did not have a single world-class university observing that under current arrangements the nation didn’t have a hope of achieving that outcome.

Despite this recognition, flatline budgets came to be expected by the sector, frequently with no mention of higher education. Australia was seen to be increasing its investment in universities, but all extra revenue was generated by students, not the government, with successive Liberal Party education ministers placing increasing emphasis on “user pays” schemes.

The shape of the sector has shifted significantly over the last 10 years with more than 200 private higher education providers now operating, many with large enrolments of international students who rightly expect rigorous academic standards. Postgraduate education took off with the introduction of income-contingent loans providing savvy institutions with a steady income stream.

Steven Schwartz’ warning about workforce planning remains a critical issue for the sector but not just because academics are being lured overseas. A decade ago the issue was recruitment and retention, but now it’s dealing with those who remained and are on the cusp of retirement with few ready to step into their place – if anything, universities appear less attractive workplaces than they once were.

Ten years ago, most universities demonstrated little interest in TAFE, decrying competency-based training and paying little heed to calls by dual-sector institutions, and others, for an agreed system of credit recognition between TAFE and universities. As editor of Campus in the early 2000s I often fielded calls from senior university staff furious that Campus Review was placing VET sector stories alongside those from universities, even when there was clearly a blurring of the sectors and wide interest in the topic. Such was the indignation that some universities threatened to withdraw advertising and cancel subscriptions unless TAFE stories were quarantined to the VET pages, which of course, appeared after the university news. As the traditional demographic for universities declines, many universities have now “discovered” and embraced TAFE in the name of equity when in reality it’s about ensuring their survival.

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How it started

The launch of Campus Review Weekly in 1991 marked the birth of the first stand alone newspaper in Australia totally dedicated to tertiary education. Foundation editor Jane Richardson brought experience, energy and enthusiasm to this bold new title which, under her skilled direction, quickly became required reading in universities. Jane assembled a small team of journalists across the country to report and analyse the news and from early on attracted  comment pieces from opinion leaders and shapers in the higher education sector. Her early work resulted in a loyal readership and set a firm foundation for the future.

Campus was viewed as an alternative and independent voice to that available through News Ltd’s higher education supplement in The Australian which coincidentally, Jane had established some time earlier. The strength of Campus was its exclusive focus on tertiary education and readers who were almost entirely working within universities, essentially making it a niche publication. It did not have to present news to a general readership, nor battle other sections for space.

Towards the mid to late-1990s, a blurring of the higher education and vocational education and training sectors widened the scope of reporting in Campus considerably, led by editor Dr Warren Osmond who countered strong resistance from some universities about this slight shift in orientation. Osmond’s early vision set the tone for those who followed and for more than a decade now Campus has dedicated itself to coverage across both sectors. It continues to give voice to individuals and groups who experience the impact of policy shifts and who help shape the debates around third level education in Australia.  

The ‘demand driven funding model’, set to take effect from 1 January 2012, has the potential to rapidly expand participation in higher education, but carries with it great risks.  There is the potential for a drop in the quality of courses and of the student experience under the system as universities reposition themselves to take advantage of increased student load. During the consultation and submission process for the Higher Education Base Funding Review, NUS advocated strongly that base funding per student had to be increased to a level that would support quality teaching and learning, as this is not currently the case. Many universities are increasingly reliant on revenue from international students and ‘profitable courses’ to cross-subsidise other areas and maintain a high level of quality. For students in designated ‘profitable’ courses, this means less contact hours, less investment in teaching infrastructure and increased class sizes. Any wriggle room that can be found between the bare minimum that can be offered to students and the current levels of commonwealth funding per place is hived off to keep the organisation as a whole afloat. 

Since the announcement of the demand driven model in March 2009, this trend has accelerated. At some prestigious universities, the number of tutorial teaching weeks is being reduced as a cost-saving measure, much to the chagrin of students forced to learn complex content in a dwindling number of hours. At other institutions, tutorials and lectures are merged into 60-student seminars to rationalise time and reduce the cost to the university of teaching each student. These changes have an impact on the quality of the course, and they are being made to prepare for a sudden expansion in the number of students at each institution without the appropriate investment in infrastructure, teachers, facilities, student services and non-academic staff. There is an incredibly short timeframe before the demand driven model commences, and students are looking to the Government’s new quality assurance mechanisms to keep universities’ cost cutting and restructuring in check.

The new Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) will play a role in regulation and registration of institutions, as well as quality assurance and enhancement. However, there is concern about the extent to which TEQSA will be able to discharge its quality enhancement role, given both its ‘risk-based’ approach to investigating providers and the fact that the standards it is using have been formulated to suit all higher education providers, not just universities. Universities are likely to be considered low-risk, and are also likely to easily fulfil the standards that are prescribed due to their lack of specificity. Additionally, Universities will almost certainly avoid being exposed to any of the punitive powers of TEQSA. It should be the business of TEQSA to clearly identify and articulate the comparative quality of teaching and learning at each institution against a range of indicators, and to enable the university community to advocate for reallocation of resources where necessary to arrest any decline in quality.

The range of other quality assurance mechanisms developed by the government is predominantly market-based, providing comparative data to inform student choice. The My University website will display a range of information about each institution, including results from the University Experience Survey, a pilot of which will be run this year. Such measures have the potential to put some pressure on institutions to conform to an accepted level of investment in key areas, but are of limited use when it is market leaders who are making some of the deepest cuts into the quality of their undergraduate teaching programs. The problem of funding remains, with universities already crying foul over the maintenance of caps on HECS, which they claim stifles their ability to offer a more diverse range of courses and curricula. The quality of a degree should not rest on the student providing a greater private contribution. There is a community expectation that universities will offer a quality course to their students, with qualified teachers, appropriate class sizes, contact hours, practical work, work placements and support services.  Base funding per student should be at a level that enables quality in these areas, and universities must be responsible and transparent in the way they allocate resources.

The government has laudable goals for inclusion of students from demographic groups previously under-represented at universities, but the struggle to find financial stability and affordable accommodation is still dissuading many students. Students from low-income and middle-income families, particularly those outside the major cities, are finding accessing income support such as Youth Allowance increasingly difficult. Finding affordable housing in the rental market and even on-campus accommodation is proving to be an impossible task for many. 

The Government’s Review of Student Income Support Reforms is considering recommendations from NUS to grant independent status to students who have to move away from home to attend university. This would represent an important step in opening up opportunities for students from any background to attend any university and study the course they find most appealing. Even if this recommendation is wholly adopted by the review – which appears unlikely given the funding constraints on the income support system and the federal budget as a whole – payment rates of Youth Allowance and Rent Assistance must be increased to provide an adequate level of support. The real value of student income support payments has continued to decline over recent years, with the maximum rate for a student living in a share house declining from 57.1 per cent of the Henderson Poverty Line in 2008 to 54.2 per cent in 2011. Compounding this problem has been the skyrocketing cost of accommodation, forcing students to seek paid work and, in some cases, jeopardise their academic progress. A study released earlier this year showed that students who work for more than 24 hours (three days) per week are 25 per cent more likely to drop out of university. Increased income support or investment in low-cost student housing stock would help to ease this burden and allow more students to engage in university without experiencing serious financial stress.

The government is making some sweeping reforms to higher education that have the capacity to provide benefit to students, universities and the community, but carry with them some risks. So long as the government remains committed to addressing the important issues of quality enhancement and financial support for students, the chances of success will be far greater, and the risk of long-term damage to the quality of Australia’s higher education system will be greatly minimised.

Jesse Marshall is national president of the National Union of Students.  

Not least amongst the complaints — the format of the rankings list, up to 21,500 lines long, delivered by the Australian Research Council (ARC) as a wieldy spreadsheet. 

Universities have been expected to sift through this list during various test iterations and eventually, the first Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) exercise itself. They can only be grateful, then, for the initiative of a Deakin University researcher and senior lecturer in information systems, self-proclaimed geek John Lamp. 

In 2008, Lamp used his technical know-how to convert the journal rankings into a vastly simplified, clickable and searchable web site. He’s added every piece of data the ARC has released about the rankings since.

Sure, it plainly states on the homepage that, “This site is not an official ERA site”. And it’s not. But try telling that to the thousands of academics who hit the site 611,000 times in the 2010 calendar year. 

“I can easily look up journals in any field. I’m not able to do that with a spreadsheet — it’s a cumbersome, horrible thing,” said Julie Fisher, associate professor in the IT faculty at Monash University.

In June 2010, during the height of the first ERA initiative, hits to Lamp’s site soared to an average of 2000 per day. Site traffic has never really dropped again since, at times topping 5000 hits a day. Web analytics to June 2011 show a total 708,000 visitors have looked at 1.4 million pages since inception.

“I’ve found the site useful in a whole range of ways,” said Leigh Dale, head of the school of English literatures and philosophy at the University of Wollongong. “As John himself says on the site, he is simply re-presenting data from the ARC, but his knowledge of IT and his capacity to anticipate the kinds of uses that academics were making of the information meant that his [site] was incredibly helpful because of the way it was structured.”

Lamp’s journal information gathering began with an online index of journals in his field — information systems. Expanding the undertaking when ERA came along was a logical progression, he says.

“There are people accessing my web site who previously wouldn’t have been interested, because it was focused on information systems,” said Lamp. “But now I’ve got people from any discipline you can name coming in and looking at it.”

Dale said the web site was the kind of resource often overlooked by official channels. “It’s ironic that the John Lamp web page, which was probably used by thousands of people in preparing submissions for the ERA, wouldn’t fit easily in any measure of excellence that the ERA uses,” she said. “That raises the broader question about how even to see, let alone how to ascribe value, to things that are not captured by quantitative measures of excellence.”

Lamp’s efforts did win him an individual award for excellence from the Australasian Research Management Society in 2010. Of course, journal rankings have now been abandoned in favour of new journal “profiles”. 

However, the ARC will release a 2012 list of approved journals and has confirmed it will do so in its usual format. In other words, universities can look forward to another lengthy spreadsheet, which the ARC says it’s happy for Lamp to convert and republish. If you haven’t already checked out John Lamp’s unofficial ERA Current Rankings Access web site, you can do so here. 

Paul Sherlock, is the president of Caudit (Council of Australian University Directors of IT) and director of information strategy and technology services at the University of South Australia, and claims: “The improvement in technology, whether you are talking network speeds, processor capacities, disk storage capacities, is exponential. That means that in thinking about how ICT is going to affect tertiary education and research you need to think exponentially rather than linearly.”

IT will, he said, fundamentally change the way in which teaching, learning and research are conducted – making information technology an increasingly strategic issue for tertiary institutions, and potentially a competitive weapon in terms of recruiting students and staff. As a result Sherlock believes that spending on IT as a percentage of university revenues will have to rise.

The importance of technology is not lost on academics. Professor Bob Hill, executive dean of science at the University of Adelaide sees technology as a fundamental building block of education reform, demonstrating that earlier this year when he launched a program which provided an iPad to 720 science first years. 

But he acknowledges that long term reforms need to be less about introducing gadgets and gizmos to engage students, and more about a wholesale reform of the delivery of education and support for research.

“The one thing that is really clear is that the very large lecture theatre with a talking head down the front is disappearing fast and that’s a good thing.” He predicts that as the number of people entering tertiary education rises there will be greater demand for self-paced learning programs, combined with smaller, tailored face-to-face teaching sessions.

And Australian universities need to consider if and how they could deliver those learning programs over the internet to students outside Australia according to Jan-Martin Lowendahl, a research director covering the education sector for technology analyst Gartner.

Lowendahl, himself a former university CIO at the Chalmers institute of technology in Gothenburg Sweden, says the key impact of IT for universities is the death of distance. “Boundaries are blurring for the uptake and recruitment of students. Australia has been there for a while in terms of online learning on campus – now with the Australian dollar and migration issues, online international learning should be growing.”

But Lowendahl confirms that the most pressing task for university CIOs was to implement a flexible technology stack, which would then allow a range of different applications to be embraced as they became available or feasible – or affordable.

As Bob Hill notes: “There are wonderful things we could be doing but can’t because of the access to technology and the cost of it.” This applied equally to harnessing technology for teaching and learning and to support research.

Caudit is well aware of the fundamental potential of new technology – when its members can afford it.

Paul Sherlock notes that network speeds were racing ahead in the sector with 1 Gbps common, 10 Gbps increasingly prevalent and 100Gbps around the corner. Coupled with the roll out of the national broadband network , remote access to university systems could become a much richer experience in the future.

Releasing the five year strategic plan for Australia’s Academic and Research Network (AARNet) in early August, managing director Chris Hancock said there were now plans to get an 8 terabit per second communications trial up in order to wrestle with the data demands of university researchers which are doubling each year. 

The current generation AARNet 3 network is scheduled to be replaced by AARNet 4 offering backbone speeds of up to 100 Gbps by 2013-14. 

Hancock said AARNet’s traffic was growing 50 per cent year on year, and that the demand for off-peak services between 5pm and 9am (essentially free for the subscribing universities) had soared 250 per cent in a year which was influencing the way universities and researchers operated.

AARNet was also supporting university demands for mobility. Hancock said that 36 of Australia’s 39 universities had now signed up for the DigiRoam wireless authentication service which allows travelling researchers to connect to their home university computer networks when visiting other institutions. To further support inter-university collaboration AARNet is also enabling a Cisco telepresence solution for the sector. The system which is being trialled in USQ, ANU, Deakin, Monash and Curtin is intended to allow universities to use any videoconferencing equipment they have to interoperate and make video calls (in the past most videoconferencing has taken place within a walled garden on single vendor equipment).

Bob Hill, however, argues that while technology may allow inter university, even international collaboration (ANU for example is now sending climate change data to the US based Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at rates of up to 5 Gigabits per second) the grants and publishing infrastructure under which academics laboured are still playing catch up, particularly in terms of supporting multidisciplinary research.

He also points to the bottlenecks that were emerging in terms of management of the huge volumes of data now being generated by university research programs. Paul Sherlock acknowledges that; “Data is being created at an unprecedented rate – some call it the data deluge. Disk capacity is going up and the per byte cost of technology is going down, however the overall management cost including backup and archive management is not decreasing. Managing large volumes of data, particularly for research, in an environmentally and economically sustainable way is an ongoing challenge.”

The move to cloud computing may offer some respite. Sherlock said that 80 per cent of local universities now used cloud based student email services, and some were also: “Setting up private clouds particularly for dealing with “bursty” research requirements.”

Gartner’s Lowendahl also acknowledges the potential of cloud computing to support research. While some research required onsite computing; “There are opportunities in high performance cloud computing so that what was once the prerogative of large well-funded institutions,” was now becoming available to more institutions which he described as “the democratising of certain types of research.”

Lowendahl says this is turning university CIOs into resources brokers, and placing additional demands on them in terms of providing technical support to researchers who were unsure of how to optimise their research software for use in a cloud environment.

Sherlock says that Caudit is currently developing a cloud computing framework to help university CIOs make decisions about their use of cloud technologies. 

He believes that technology will fundamentally change universities over the next 10 years. “The combination of more capable technology mobile technology, improved access capability (both wireless on campus and via the NBN) and demands from the community for more flexible delivery and more flexible access to education will drive major changes in how students experience tertiary education. 

“It follows that ICT will become increasingly strategic in universities and those that can harness the power of ICT effectively will be the box seat in a sector which is undergoing rapid change.” 

But I think the Australian people understand that it’s a task we must take on – because they know just how important TAFE is."

Julia Gillard, National TAFE Day, 2009 

As education minister Julia Gillard articulated a vision for TAFE that Australians could identify with and be proud of. 

She spoke of skills and training, but she spoke also of hope and aspirations. In contemporary parlance, she got it. However, what the Gillard government hasn’t got is a clear or coherent strategy for the future TAFE as it continues to atrophy under the weight of relentless raiding by low cost, high volume training provided by a largely transient private sector. This has left TAFE increasingly at the mercy of a market it was never designed to compete in.

Again 2011 has not been a good year for TAFE, however that’s not because a great deal has changed since 2009. Instead it is because the TAFE system in Australia has continued its seemingly never ending struggle for survival within the contradictory policy imperatives that governments have thrown up around it for the last two decades.

Under the marketised model of VET, government funding for TAFE has declined very year since 1997. In 2010, the Centre for the Economics of Education and Training (CEET) established that government recurrent expenditure per hour of training declined by 11.9 per cent between 2003 and 2008 – part of a longer term trend that has seen funding per hour reduced by about 22.3 per cent from 1997. If both expenditure per hour and TAFE’s share of that expenditure had been maintained at even 2003 levels, TAFE’s funding would have been $623.6m (or 17.0 per cent) greater in 2008 than it actually was.

Since the early 1990s, governments of all political persuasions have pursued the narrow goal of creating a competitive market in vocational education. This simplistic policy objective has involved the encouragement of the growth of private RTOs (now in excess of 4500) across the country through the gradual opening up of government funds. 

Since 2008, three state governments have announced and enacted policy which will eventually see all government funds for vocational education available to private providers.

Victoria has been progressively implementing a fully competitive market for government VET funding since 2008. In the last two years, private provider numbers have more than doubled (from 225 in 2008 to 528 in early 2011) and private provider market share of government funding has grown from 14 per cent to 35 per cent.

In South Australia, the government has based its shift to full competition on the dubious bedrock of a decline in funding per student contact hour of 12 per cent since 2005, and an aspiration that its funding by this measure should be further reduced to the national average throughout the reform process. This would see a further decline in funding per student contact hour in South Australia of 6 per cent.

Queensland has just announced its plan to move to full competition through a demand driven system, lamenting the inroads made by private providers into the Queensland VET market, but painting their proposal as an inevitable response to the challenges TAFE faces in competing for ever diminishing funds.

In Queensland and the ACT, each government has made announcements around the establishment of Australia’s sixth and seventh dual sector universities – not because its necessarily the best thing for students and communities in the ACT and Queensland, but really because the market made it inevitable. In each case, stripped of the rhetoric of hasty government reviews, the arguments for these dual sector universities are economic, not social or educational. And in each case, despite the best endeavours of those who work in these institutions, communities will be poorer for the loss of their TAFE institutions.

All the attention has centred on this radical market experiment, not sustaining one of the greatest legacies of the Whitlam Labor government: the establishment of high-quality public institutions for VET that had a parity with public schools and universities. Such a vision cannot be contemplated in the market model, which is preoccupied with the cost rather than the value of VET. As the social infrastructure of TAFE begins to crumble under the weight of neglect, real questions must now be asked about the Gillard’s government ambivalence to this great Labor legacy. Does the Commonwealth accept responsibility for the maintenance of a high quality public TAFE system, or does it by neglect see it as yet another sacrifice on the alter of the neo-liberalism? 

Despite the events in Victoria, South Australia and Queensland – and in the ACT – TAFE enjoys high levels of student and employer satisfaction. Within the Australian community, TAFE is well recognised and highly regarded. It underpins regional communities, and is the cornerstone of many industries. It is the only network of vocational education providers that can guarantee support for industries encountering skills shortages or anticipating massive structural change in the shift to green skills.

It is the only provider which can guarantee a high quality response to the challenge of increasing the nations literacy and numeracy, and broader educational goals for the socially isolated and the disadvantaged. In essence, TAFE by all measures drives quality and inclusion in a system struggling for credibility under the growing weight of low quality private providers merely in ‘the market’ for profit rather than educational excellence, skills creation or building economic futures for communities.

TAFE institutes continue their work around the country, highly regarded internationally, poorly supported and funded domestically with their continual reduction to a ‘market participant’. Those who work in TAFE view the 21st century narratives around seamless pathways in a tertiary education sector sceptically. The vision is laudable, the reality of achieving that vision threatened at every turn by the poorly conceived policy settings of reduced and reducing government funding.

TAFE can and must take its place in a properly conceived tertiary education sector in Australia. It must continue to provide vocational education to individuals and industry and to work with industry and governments in anticipating and addressing skills shortages. It must be allowed to continue its work with students and communities addressing social inequality and disadvantage through the hard work of a highly skilled teaching workforce. VET cannot have a future built on single training rooms in desolate office blocks, mass online courses or on fly-in, fly-out providers. Communities are more important than that and TAFE is a community builder of the 21st century.

Obviously, by all measures governments are not funding TAFE adequately. They are not developing public policy based on independent research, and critical dialogue. They will not articulate an expansive, indeed any vision of TAFE beyond a demand that they compete for funding, and become ever more “efficient” in a market driven by the imperative of cost shifting from governments to students. More recently TAFE is being further diminished to become “feeders” for a demand driven higher education sector, jeopardising the futures of many thousands of young people centred on VET and work, consigning Australian society and industry to the vagaries of the newest market for higher education places.

What has happened to the 21st century leviathan of Julia Gillard’s 2009 speech? How much more could TAFE achieve if governments told TAFE what they wanted from it, and then made a commitment to its future as substantial as those courageous Labor figures of times past?

Pat Forward is national TAFE secretary with the Australian Education Union.  

Waiting for the Australian Government to think strategically about international education does feel a little like waiting for Godot. Godot promises much, is rather elusive and is bound to disappoint, especially if he actually turns up.

We are assured the Australian government is thinking deeply about international education. There are signals that a government formulated vision for international education is afoot, apparently to be announced around the time of the release of the government’s response to the Knight Review. Presumably the vision will be wonderful, comprehensive, cohesive, meaningful and powerful, with the extra element of surprise, since the education sector itself is not really being consulted. There’s lots of action offstage, in the backrooms of Canberra.

Meanwhile, back on stage, the sector is not hanging around waiting for Godot to enrobe.

Given the crisis the sector faces there is agreement that the best way forward is for the sector itself to lead the way out. Progress has been made to formulate a vision and to advance an industry strategy. Without prejudice to final outcomes a number of things are clear.

The global context we face is unprecedented. There is increasingly massive unmet global demand for education and for skilled labour. The situation is increasingly complex and competitive – globally, regionally and inter-regionally. China is more than likely to “rule the world” in this century. The former economic, strategic and cultural presence of the West is certain to change. The predominance of English as the global language of international relations, business, science, the media and culture will decline. Australia is slipping behind, propped up in its complacency by a mining boom giving little real return to the Australian people and continuing failure to invest in our future lead industries.  

One of those industries, education, is allowed to languish. International education particularly suffers from a double jeopardy. For one thing its “international” therefore a boogy man to all those fabricating or prepared to acquiesce in fabricated fear and prejudice against foreigners. For another, its “education”, therefore a low political priority for governments and oppositions.

The international education sector is coming together to formulate a vision and strategy to defeat this malaise. While it is doing so it is useful to reflect on what a vision and strategy might look like.

The vision should probably focus not so much on the industry itself as on the future of education globally and the role international education might play as one of the pillars of Australia’s future security, prosperity and social advancement. 

Clearly the vision and strategy should be driven by underlying principles. Broad multi-party support for international education is a crucial one. We have it now, in the worst sense – Labor is not attending properly and the opposition won’t go into bat being focused on pandering to the rabid anti-immigration fringe. The challenge is to garner positive multi-party support, without it the strategy is unlikely to succeed.

Other principles are important too – broad industry cooperation to achieve the common goals; a fair balance of sectoral interests; a strengthened commitment to quality and ethics; a solid evidence base through good priority research and data for sound decision making; and coherent, whole-of-government support.

Particularly important is a genuine and effective consultative mechanism with government, something unlikely without some muscle stretching by the industry.

The vision itself should encompass a uniquely Australian value proposition for the export of our education services, stress the quality and creativity of our education system and be broad enough to encompass international students; our own student studying abroad; our increasingly large and influential global alumni; international linkages for teaching, research, innovation and engagement with global industry; an internationally relevant and competitive education system with internationalised curricula and strong foreign language offerings; transnational program delivery and other offshore presences; and international development assistance for countries not getting a fair go. The vision needs to address Australia’s educational, economic, diplomatic, cultural and social needs. 

It would be well to model the detailed strategy on that developed for the tourism industry and articulated by the Jackson Report, Informing the National Long-Term Tourism Strategy. As with tourism, the international education industry crucially needs strategic research, professional development of industry members, industry infrastructure development, an effective, well resourced promotions and marketing strategy and a public relations campaign to explain the benefits of international education to Australians living in our cities and regions so as to counter the manufactured campaigns of ignorance and fear perpetrated by some in the media and in politics.  And there must be concrete, properly funded industry-focused action programs to implement the strategy. 

The education sector itself already invests heavily in these matters but will need to do even more as governments are moribund both in terms of foresight and funding and can’t be looked to for either ideas or significant support. The most useful role for government is to enable what an education sector owned and operated industry strategy sees as necessary. If unable to do that, government should just get out of the way.

Finally there really does need to be a structure to carry all this off. Probably only an independent, industry owned international education development authority would work.

Bruce Baird, a friend to the sector, told us frankly last year that politically we were too nice and so, unsurprisingly, not very effective. Perhaps if Godot ever does show up we should give him a punch on the nose.

Dennis Murray is executive director of the International Education Association of Australia.  

There are points of connection with 1991, as with a parallel universe. But much has altered in higher education, in policy, and in life. Modernity takes no prisoners. 

We are becoming very different to what we were, though we do not know where we are going. Higher education is at the front line of this transformation.  

The four transformations of the last two decades are the internationalisation of the student body, the privatisation of funding, the spread of the internet, and the changing political culture. Maybe the first two trends have been halted by the Rudd/Gillard governments – though in a neoliberal policy climate the rationale for what remains of public funding is shaky and it could erode further. The transformations in public communications, and politics and policy, will continue.

Higher education is first of all about people and what they learn. There were 534,538 higher education students in 1991, nearly all onshore domestic students. Since then numbers have doubled. However, half the growth is accounted for by international students, some offshore. Domestic student numbers rose more slowly by 60 per cent – slower than in the 1960s, early 1970s and late 1980s. 

Australian higher education was already a mass system by the time of the late 1980s Dawkins reforms, the upgrading of colleges of advanced education and forced mergers – and the 12-15 per cuts to per student funding that paid for the new system and undercut the capacity of the newly designated universities to build basic research (and thus preserved the pecking order of institutions). 

What Australian citizens learn in higher education has not changed much since 1991. It is their social and personal formation outside courses, via digital manipulation and social networking, that is very different. Higher education is yet to change itself to accommodate this, driving spontaneous student disengagement. 

The much greater change is internationalisation. Australia is the fifth largest education export nation with 21 per cent international students on shore. Like the universalisation of the internet, in 1991 no one expected this. 

We have more than 80,000 students from China, over 30,000 from each of Malaysia and Singapore, over 20,000 from India and Hong Kong SAR, and over 10,000 from Indonesia and Vietnam. Student populations are much more cosmopolitan. Campuses look and feel different. With many domestic students working and others largely disengaged, libraries and refectories are often largely international. 

At the same time Australian society is slowly Asianising. In the year to June 30, 2011 Australia took in 29,547 migrants from China and just 23, 931 from the UK, the first time Chinese immigration has outweighed British. Many successful applicants for immigration in the skilled labour category were former international students. 

Higher education-led Asianisation is now being slowed and might go into reverse. Early signs show international student numbers for 2012 will be well down. 

Federal restrictions on student visas, new hurdles in the transition from graduate status to immigration, 2012’s uncapped funding of domestic student numbers and the dramatic over-enrolment as many universities move to secure an advance market share, taken together these policy-induced changes are forcing a massive shift from international to domestic student growth. We don’t do things by halves. 

But Asian immigration will keep on coming whether attached to education or not. And higher education has been crucial in normalizing it. Pauline Hanson’s late 1990s efforts have totally failed. She never understood the education-migration link that her de facto political allies in the Howard Coalition government put in place. 

The shift from public to private funding started by Dawkins and accelerated by Howard is a change almost as momentous as the internationalisation associated with it. The Rudd/Gillard regime twice missed the chance to hike public funding sharply upwards, at the beginning of Rudd’s time and again in the fiscal stimulus package, instead spending its money on school halls and gymnasiums. The shift in values has been almost as great as the shift in the political economy.

Dawkins set the HECS at 20 per cent of average course costs. Though his rhetoric emphasised the private gains to degrees, the benefits of higher education were still seen as largely public and common. Most policy initiatives were joined to packages of new federal money. Then government discovered it could achieve objectives just as easily by attaching conditions to diminishing funds. The rhetoric about individual earnings became dominant and government came to expect market competition and institutional self-interest to drive improvements, not public investment. The rise of professionalised management and executive leadership made the change possible.

This has forced continuous efficiencies, imposed a marketing relationship between institutions and public, and led to a displacement from the public policy objectives to institutional objectives, with institutions modeled as business firms. 

In this context the 2008 Bradley review could not articulate a compelling case for taxpayer support, leaving that to the Lomax-Smith review of base funding, which reports by 31 October this year. But it is doubtful the political conditions for a stable ‘balance’ between public and private funding are in place. Institutional resourcing, and the public compact, are highly unstable. Here Australian higher education does it tougher than most other systems in the developed world.

Institutions are locked to the logic of self-interest and a diminishing funding base by performance pressures, especially the global rankings first initiated by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2003. This forces the concentration of more resources in research, the driver of global status and attractor of foreign student families. 

The Larkins study of research resourcing shows that teaching has been bled to pay for the growth of research. It is a nasty tradeoff. The one silver lining is that research creates downstream public and global benefits.

Labor has also missed the chance to rework the one-size-fits-all Dawkins system in which every institution is expected to mirror the leading research players. The experience of the US, Europe and China shows the key step in creating a horizontally differentiated system is not fee deregulation but a robust classification system bedding down a consensual division of labour between comprehensive research/ teaching universities, specialists, teaching only institutions and two year colleges. 

But Australians are jealous of status while determined to preserve their own – both are legacies of the colonial settler state – and recent governments have been uninterested in Dawkins style confrontations amid policy settlements with losers as well as winners. In the present political culture only win-win Pareto policies are politically attractive in Canberra. The hung parliament exacerbates this.

In this context we may well get a UK-style partial funding deregulation with higher fees under a future Coalition government, but as a solution to the resourcing conundrum rather than part of a plan to create diversity to meet national needs. As long as institutional self-interest is uppermost, and policy makers remain nervous or indifferent, diversity will be vertical not horizontal (continuing our love/hate relationship with status) and market mimetics will drive sameness not difference.

Simon Marginson is a Professor of Higher Education in the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne.  

The relationship between parliament and the research sector is not deeply understood, in either quarter. The divide must nevertheless be navigated if governments are to meet their obligations to their people. 

That is a mission I took up on my entry to the Senate, some 18 years ago, in the earliest years of Campus Review. This journal was an invaluable resource back then, and it remains so to this day. Of course, I do not agree with every view. That is as it should be. In a sector not known for consensus, this journal offers the full range of opinion. It features rigorous journalism and informed analysis. It does not shrink from criticism, but it does not stoop to abuse. This is a balance rarely struck in contemporary politics.

At core, I believe, the relationship between the party I serve and the sector I represent is founded on a shared belief in progress. We want to understand the world and we want to transform it for the better. Science and research put that power in human hands. That belief frames everything we do. From Labor’s perspective, governments are elected to deliver and spread the benefits of progress. Our ambitions would overshoot our abilities if we failed to invest in science and research. 

I call this our compact with the research community. We will support their quest for excellence because we believe they can excel. We expect that excellence to be translated into outcomes. Times change, priorities shift and technology marches on. Knowledge remains the key to our strength and researchers must help us to use it wisely. This is how we ensure that universities remain answerable to the communities that sustain them.

These are views that have appeared many times in this publication under my by-line. They have not changed in 18 years. I have learned, in that time, how easily the message can be swept aside by ignorance, cynicism and fear.

Few politicians look back with satisfaction on their years in the wilderness. We all regret the opportunities lost, the progressive policies left to wither, the reviews that gathered dust on a ministerial shelf. The Howard years were not kind to the research community and their legacy is felt to this day. Many will remember the savage cuts to university funding in 1996. From my perspective, however, it was not just the assault on finances, it was the assault on the legitimacy and authority of the academy itself. The sorest test of that lost decade was the profound divide which emerged between the party of government and the leaders of the academy. With notable exceptions the Howard ministry spurred on the Cultural Wars with little care for the consequences. 

The humanities were marginalised and the sciences attacked for challenging accepted wisdom or presenting evidence of uncomfortable realities. The basic presumption that academics make a valid and valuable contribution to public life was put in jeopardy. These were the manifestations of a government which did not trust the university system. It caused all sorts of problems for the research sector internally, but it also did harm to its precious relationship with the wider community.

Unfortunately in some quarters that same suspicion and hostility is still manifest today. The value of expert inquiry into the human condition is still casually derided, and the contribution of our scientists is at times greeted with scorn and threats of violence. In some circles, ignorance and vested interest still trump the objective pursuit of the truth. I note with particular concern the recent determination of the Liberals in Western Australia to call a ‘Royal Commission’ into the legitimacy of climate science, as though scientists are criminals and their procedures corrupt. It is a sign that the hostility of the past lingers today.

After a decade in opposition, I came to office in 2007 with great expectations for Australian research. This was not just about raising the university sector’s budget – although I make no apologies for my part in that. Since Labor came to office, we have lifted the federal investment in science, research and innovation by 43 per cent over the best the Coalition could muster when they had the chance. We also restored the independence of the Australian Research Council, established the Australian Research Integrity Committee, secured the scientific autonomy of our publicly funded research agencies, and entrenched the principles of academic freedom in legislation.

We have introduced a range of new measures to support researchers at crucial stages in their careers, from the ambitious early career researcher to the senior mentor of international standing. We have acted to improve the retention of talented women researchers, and to recruit gifted indigenous researchers to the sector. We have opened up opportunities for collaboration with international partners, industry and communities.

We have done all this because our ambitions were bolder that our predecessors’. We wanted to change the place of universities in Australian culture. We wanted to move them from the margins of debate to the centre of public life. We wanted industry and communities to draw on the rich pool of talent and ideas that we saw in the academy. This was how we would transform the economy, firm by firm and region by region, for the twenty-first century.

That is the case we put to the Australian people in the 2007 election and it remains the justification for the substantial resources we continue to dedicate to the cause. I know from the sector’s perspective that there is never enough money on the table. I understand the frustrations attached. I am also aware of the brutal realities of the Budget cycle. For every dollar we spend, there are a dozen rival claimants – all legitimate, and all worthy. And for every research advocate, there are countless detractors. 

That is why I have placed such emphasis on the fundamental principle that the autonomy, the independence and the integrity of research institutions are matters that must never be politicised. Ministers who question the value of particular research grants recommended to them by the expert agencies must be accountable for those decisions. Equally, the quality of the publicly funded research must be empirically tested and open for all to see, which is why we have implemented the Excellence in Research for Australia initiative.

I have also used every tool in the hands of government to break down the divides between researchers and industry. It remains the notable weakness in our innovation system. We have not built the deep web of human relationships which should bind ambitious people in all spheres together. The introduction of the new R&D Tax Credit in the coming months will strengthen the incentive to overcome the divide. 

I also welcome the emphasis on collaboration in the new Clean Energy Future package. There is more than $20 billion on the table for the transformation of industry, including a tailored $1.2 billion suite of clean technology innovation measures in my portfolio. The demand for breakthrough ideas will be immense. I am confident the expertise and infrastructure in Australian universities are equal to that demand. It is our joint responsibility to put the case to industry.

We cannot be certain of what lies ahead. But I am confident that together the government and the university sector can weather whatever comes over the horizon – especially with the aid of a reliable and rigorous forum like Campus Review.

Senator Kim Carr is the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research.  

I would answer no to both those questions, although, to address the second issue, I do agree you will hear from some colleagues about a halcyon time when the sun shone, there was lifelong tenure and we were allowed to do as we pleased. These conditions do appear to have existed briefly for a small number of men in a systemically discriminatory environment in universities in particular in the mid twentieth century before the expansion of higher education began but I have not seen them since I entered the sector (still highly discriminatory by the way) in the 1970s.

I started my career as an unqualified temporary secondary teacher. As a 20-year-old married woman I was not eligible for promotion, superannuation or maternity leave. I taught for a while, spent about 10 years at home with four children, went back to teaching briefly and then entered higher education as a temporary lecturer in a college of advanced education. I got my first permanent position in higher education when I was 35 and it was then I entered a superannuation scheme. I have lived through four institutional mergers and in one glorious period I applied for, was interviewed for and gained what was essentially the same job three times in eighteen months.

I tell you this because there is not and never has been a single path to success in higher education. Many of my generation, particularly the women, have had interrupted careers and have achieved success through diverse pathways. They have managed these careers in a sector and in institutions which have been restructuring almost without pause since the late 1970s, if you came from the College of Advanced Education sector, and since the late 1980s if you came from the university sector.

Within that very turbulent scene many people have had productive and satisfying professional lives as mainstream academics or as administrators. They have contributed to the advancement of knowledge, to the education of generations of people and have felt they were part of a great endeavour. Certainly I feel and others feel we have been able to make a significant contribution to our society as we worked in higher education. I have never been bored or jaded, exhausted yes, enraged yes, uncertain about what to do yes, pushed to the limits of my capacities yes, but never ever bored. And I have had a lot of fun. 

For others, though, it has not been so good. They feel the change and turbulence they have experienced has had a malign influence on their career. My observation is that among these are people who believed that we were in a unique period of change and soon it would cease and everything would return to “normal’. Many of them at one stage thought that all would have been well for them if things had not kept on changing. Often they appear to think that there has been something particular to higher education over the last decades, which has not been experienced elsewhere in the economy.  

But higher education is not unique. Employment everywhere has changed with greater competition within a global economy, the retreat by democratic governments everywhere from direct funding of services and the subsequent marketisation of public services, the loss of old jobs, the creation of new ones, the greater participation of women in the workforce and the growth of an international market for goods and services. So the context for higher education employment is, and has been, little different from other areas of the economy. Indeed, we have been lucky as the demand for well qualified professionals has burgeoned in the new economy while it has been the low skilled and unskilled who have borne the brunt of structural changes. It has been uncomfortable for our sector at times but never as painful as it has been for those who work in manufacturing.

But it is how you manage change that matters as you pursue your career. As someone who has sat on hundreds of selection committees at every level, let me assure you that all who are successful have characteristics in common. They have taken risks in their career – moved into new areas, carried out research which addressed wicked problems, accepted jobs or roles which were not well defined – they have been innovators and contributors. Career success is built upon hard work and quite a lot of luck but you only get lucky when you take a punt. 

The saddest academics I know are those (and you will have met them already) who are still telling you how well they did at school, in their undergraduate career or in their doctorate when they are 50 or 60. The best of this group are bemused about why this early performance did not translate into later success while the worst are angry and bitter about why mother’s best boy, top of his class is not as successful as others whom they see as less intelligent or less worthy. They are often the proponents of conspiracy theories, usually toxic in the academic team and often very discouraging to those who are early in their career. They are the ones who tell you that good people are treated badly here and that nothing is as good as it once was!

But when you examine their career you often see a track record of identifying problems rather than working to find solutions, of resisting change and of being the champion of the status quo. Sometimes, too, if you know them well, you can identify their failure to deal with a particular rebuff or rejection as pivotal in their stalled career trajectory. All of us fail. The more risks we take, the more failures we have. What is important is not that we failed but how we dealt with it, what we learnt and where we went from there. 

Early in my career I had an office beside a relatively competent chap who fought for and gained appointment as a head of school. He lost that position, after a less than stellar performance – not terrible but not great, during a time of structural change. It was a reasonable institutional decision but obviously not one in his interests. He was treated well with salary maintenance and leave for academic refreshment and certainly his was not an isolated case. But he allowed it to pollute every aspect of his life – personal and professional. Twenty years later he was still in the institution and still in a fury, berating senior members of the university who had not even been there when this event occurred and without any significant career outputs since the loss of the position. Over the same period others had also lost jobs as a result of structural or other changes but behaved rationally and either moved out of the institution or moved on to other satisfying pursuits within it. With the changes we have all seen in the last decades, it does seem that there is always something to do if you are ready to think laterally, define your skills broadly and decide to contribute rather than oppose.

There is now and there will be much change in higher education over the next decade but this is not unusual. This is a sector which has been in a state of constant structural and policy change for fifty years. But what is terrific at present is that there are likely to be so many opportunities for people who are adaptable and people with a whole range of different interests and skills. There is no lock step academic career or ideal academic. To continue with the earlier racing analogy we will need horses for courses and there are likely to be an increasing number of courses.

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Some of the things happening at present which might affect careers and choices 

• Widespread acceptance by states, territories and regions that the educational performance and qualification profile of citizens will be critical to their capacity to maintain or increase local economic performance. Therefore the maintenance or growth of current national effort to expand tertiary education is most likely but levels and sources of funding will continue to be an issue

• Adoption of a range of mechanisms in all sectors to make the performances of educational institutions more transparent, for example MYSchool/ MYSkills/ MYUniversity 

• A government pressing ahead with opening up the higher-education system to student-driven demand but not, apparently, resiling from active monitoring through compacts with universities

• Certainty that ERA results will have an impact on research funding policy or for allocation of research degree places but uncertainty about what that impact will be.

• Continuing pressure on all publicly funded research entities, including universities, to concentrate and specialise their research focus

• Unprecedented change in higher education funding in England – a country with which Australia has always been in step. Many see it as the end of a national consensus there about higher education as something which conveys a public as well as a private benefit. If this is correct and Australia follows down this path it could herald greater competition, even more diversity in institutional wealth and considerably more instability in employment

• Great perturbation in VET as three states move to an entitlement system, all states consider offering or already offer degrees in TAFE and the Commonwealth signals a new attempt to drive radical reform in VET with a negotiated funding agreement

• TAFE Directors Australia and others agitating for new categories of higher education institutions to be recognised in the National Provider Standards for Higher Education

• The Base Funding Review being lobbied on all sides but no evidence there is any government commitment to provide additional funds in response to any recommendations it produces

• The proponents of teaching-only universities possibly emboldened by the decision in England to make it easier to gain university designation 

• Exploration in several jurisdictions of possible growth of dual sector provision and, in all, of a new range of formal relationships between VET and HE institutions

• Movement of universities into VET provision through establishment of subsidiary colleges which are Registered Training Organisations 

• A long term national trend of decline in numbers enrolled in VET diplomas and growth in degrees together with a clearer picture of differences in the age and experience of groups enrolling in VET diplomas and HE degrees

• ASQA and TEQSA legislation passed and regulators established but the implications of a standards regime in higher education still not appreciated

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Interpretation of what these might mean for those working in higher education

• Greater competition between providers and the possibility of much faster change in their relative circumstances

• Greater diversity of institutions- growth of teaching only providers and encouragement through policy and funding of different ways of being a university 

• Possible growth of research only entities

• Greater clarity within institutions about their mission and where they sit strategically and competitively as competition intensifies

• Stronger focus on performance of individuals, areas and institutions and greater transparency about the information

• Community and industry concern about comparability of graduates and clarity about what they can do will continue to put pressure on governments and on institutional leaders

• Governing bodies are likely to become much more focussed on institutional performance and more likely to use conventional risk metrics to interrogate the teaching mission

• No guarantees about care and maintenance of existing arrangements and settings by governments. Interest in what is being delivered, not what is hallowed by tradition. So this could mean that much more rapid policy change is likely and what worked once has little relevance.

• Real issues for all who work in tertiary education about the judgements which will have to be made about the ‘right’ way to do things. On the one hand the – ‘we’ve always done it like this’ argument is not going to prevail and neither should it but on the other, not all change is good. There will be a real need for intelligent debate at every level of the system – government, peak bodies, institutions, those who work in HE and VET about what we do and why we do it.

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What it means for individuals trying to establish and build a career 

• Different kinds of universities, possible growth of independent research entities and an expanded range of higher education and tertiary providers will offer a broader range of institutions in which to find a niche

• Possibility of even more rapid change in circumstances of institutions and areas within them as both teaching and research are driven by uncertain funding year-to-year

• Possibility of significant internal differences between institutions in the working arrangements for staff who teach and research within HE – teaching only, teaching and research, research only, VET only, preparatory and support positions? There is the possibility also of movement by individuals between these designations over a career

• The need to understand the whole – the context, is more important than ever. It will not be enough to understand the politics of your area of scholarship if you want to get on. You will need to understand what is going on in the sector.

• Many more opportunities for the hard working and the astute to find a place in this much more dynamic environment!

So my message is, finally, this is a sector where you can find a job, a mission, a calling. It won’t be stable or safe and you won’t get a job where you can ignore the broader sector and national context but I am sure if you have done your due diligence you know that no area of professional employment is safe in that way any longer. Most importantly, the very changes that are rendering employment less stable are opening up opportunities for those who are prepared to think laterally, see the big picture and seek a challenge.

*This is an edited version of an address which Professor Denise Bradley delivered at the University of Western Sydney conference A Scholarly Life.  

With an NHMRC C.J. Martin Fellowship under her belt, the molecular biologist headed to France to work for three years at the prestigious Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology at Strasbourg.

“It was more or less expected that you would go overseas for a postdoctoral posting,” she recalls. “We were affected [in science] to an extent by a cultural cringe.”

Move forward 20 years and Byrne, conjoint associate professor at the University of Sydney, believes that attitude has gone, in part due to the rising reputation of Australian research.

Having just returned from the national capital, where she was one of the 400-odd assessors for NHMRC grants, Byrne says there appears to be increasing demand for Australian-based postdoctoral positions.

“Research is becoming less geographically bound,” she says. “The opportunities in Australia have grown compared with 20 years ago and you can find someone to collaborate with closer to home.”

Despite the growth in research opportunities, Byrne, group leader of Molecular Oncology and acting head at the Children’s Cancer Research Unit, believes it is harder for researchers to make a start.

“It’s always been a struggle to get money but overall the standard of research and grant applications has improved [so] in order to receive funding you have to get better and better.”

It is a view shared by Professor Michael Good, chair of the NHMRC and an Australian Fellow, who recalls he returned from four years postdoctoral experience in the US in 1988 and was almost immediately chief investigator on two project grants.

“It is very different now,” he says. “If you are looking at the age at which people receive fellowships that age has gone up significantly – partly because more people are coming into science, but also because the budget hasn’t grown with the need.”

Coinciding with this is a growing strike-out rate with only about 20 per cent of grant applications successful. The difficulty in obtaining grant funding is something that has recently exercised the mind of evolutionary biologist Professor Rob Brooks.

“If you are getting one grant out of every five or six you apply for you have to ask is it worth my while putting in this effort,” he says. As a former grant assessor for the ARC, the UNSW researcher worries too many academics offer research they think will succeed, rather than research they believe in.

In a recent article he urged academics to “find the essence of the grant proposal that excited [them] and reminded [them] why being a scientist is the best job in the world”.

Although many academics complain about the hours lost to funding applications, Brooks sees grant writing as a “chance to think about what I want to do and organise my thoughts in a way I probably wouldn’t be disciplined enough to do”.

Having had his share of knockbacks, Brooks points to the recent publication of his book Sex, Genes and Rock ‘n’ Roll: How Evolution Has Shaped the Modern World as proof rejection can be beneficial.

“I applied for a Federation Fellowship but was woefully undercooked for that,” he admits. However he used that grant application as the launching pad for renewing his research and ended up with a proposal for his book. 

At James Cook University, in North Queensland, Professor Helene Marsh is at the coalface negotiating the challenges facing research students.

The Dean of Graduate Research Studies believes the increased use of metrics to measure research performance is a “major challenge”. “There is really no where to hide now,” she says. “Young researchers are under a lot of pressure to publish and publish in journals with a high impact.”

Yet “publish or perish” has always been a catchcry, says Good, adding that the difference today is the emphasis on research translation.

“The focus on translation is healthy as long as people don’t lose sight of blue-sky research.” Marsh supports his observation but believes this is not compatible with demanding high-impact publication; “On one hand there is more emphasis on research that is going to have a tangible outcome and yet more pressure to do research that is academically meritorious.”

After 10 years as director of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Good last year made the journey back to being a full-time researcher to continue his 25-year crusade to develop a malaria vaccine.

His experience in making the return to research – thanks to the now defunct Australia Fellowships – gives him pause for thought.

“Since I left the institute my research has gone really well because I’ve been able to give it 110 per cent, whereas when I was director it [research] was lucky to get 30 per cent [of my time].”

He questions the logic of a system that has some of the nation’s top researchers lost to the laboratory running institutes and research centres.

Good believes structures need to be in place – such as fixed-term contracts – to ensure this elite can return to “doing the thing they are good at”.

Brooks, at the University of NSW, believes the tendency of universities to “pick winners” leaves many on the sidelines.

“Managing mid-career academics is an enormous challenge,” says Brooks. “They are seen as second or third-tier researchers so many universities are happy to load them with teaching. “There are some folk [researchers] who feel genuinely forgotten.”

At the mid-career stage themselves, Byrne and Brooks have walked away from the laboratory bench, but are at ease with the decision.

With her responsibilities leading a research unit, Byrne finds little time to be hands-on with experiments: “The reality is I have too many other things to do [so] I have to do the jobs no one else can do… someone else can always do the experiment.”

Brooks, director of the Evolution & Ecology Research Centre, is also comfortable in stepping back from the bench and instead finding money to fund his postdoctoral staff.

“I am more interested now in the writing, analysis and strategic thinking,” he says.

That view segued with an increase in family commitments. “I realised when I had my first child nine years ago I couldn’t do the big experiments any more, so I stepped away from the bench and working 8am to 7pm to working 9am to 5pm and not at all when my child starts throwing up.”

During her career, Byrne has seen an increase in women in research and more male researchers taking on family duties. “I have no doubt [having a family] has had an impact on my career,” she says. “But what is the alternative – not to have children? I was never going to do that; you just have to live with the consequences. “I focus on what I can do and do the best I can with the time I have.”

Marsh is heartened to see initiatives by bodies such as the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and NHMRC to take into account career disruptions, but says there remains much to do to ensure women researchers are not lost to the system after childbirth.

Despite the flaws these researchers see in the system, they are united in their love of the job. “It has got its downfalls, but overall we put up with them because it is the most exciting thing you can do.” Byrne says and  likens the process to climbing stairs.

“You climb a few stairs and suddenly you have a completely new view and think ‘now I can see where we are going and where we will go next’ and that is really rewarding.”

For Good, his desire to make discoveries is unchanged from his childhood. “The thing that motivates me is twofold – there is the joy of discovery and the beauty of nature and the wish to do something good for the betterment of public health.”

Yet, like revisiting the town in which you grew up, that sense of familiarity was knocked about by the realisation that landmark edifices were being torn down and the half built new ones might, when complete, make the place unrecognisable.

You may find as you read the opinions of policy and sector leaders, students and unions together with stories on the history and politics of higher education that the old town is no longer as comfortable as it once was but it looks like becoming an exciting place in which to spend time or, depending on your mindset, to do time.

We thought we would start our journey by asking vice-chancellors across the country where higher education in Australia was at now and where it is going.

“Just now, Australia is in the middle of a fundamental revolution in the way its universities deliver education. Quite literally, things will never be the same again,” Professor Greg Craven, vice-chancellor of Australian Catholic University in Sydney, said. For him, as with almost all who responded, the student demand driven model loomed large. Craven had no problem with the underlying reasoning that could ensure higher levels of participation by lower socio-economic groups and lead to higher individual attainment and greater national productivity.

But for universities it was all “heady stuff”. They can grow but once they are dependent upon their ability to attract students, they are afloat on the seas of competition, he said. “They will sink or sail on the basis of their appeal to students.”

Professor Stephen Parker, vice-chancellor University of Canberra, also had the new model on his mind. “Australian higher education is at an extraordinarily interesting moment. We are about to hand over the shape of the sector to the distributed preferences of 17-year-olds, and we wait to see if their aggregate hidden hand delivers the graduate workforce profile that the country needs. We may also be about to run out of academics to teach them.”

He said innovation amongst tertiary leaders would be crucial and predicted the return of polytechnic higher education. “The future must be bright for education providers generally, however. Education is the ultimate form of renewable energy, in my book. And without it, we are lost.”

Read What the VCs had to say

Also Rhetoric and reality

Blurring the public-private debate

Great vision, poor policy

Why wait for Godot?  

Death of distance

The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) report examines incidents of assault and robbery perpetrated against about 13,000 international students between 2005 and 2009. Among its broad conclusions: no evidence that the students were victimised at higher levels than the general population, nor evidence of race as a primary motivation for crimes against them.

That may be due to insufficient data, the AIC authors concede, but their conclusions and methodology have stirred criticism from the Australian Human Rights Commission, among others.

The 172-page study is a response to the waves of protests in 2009 and 2010 from Indian students in Australia who claimed they were the victims of racial violence. It was commissioned by the departments of foreign affairs and immigration and citizenship, and “sought ways to quantify the nature and extent to which Indian students were the victims of crime compared with other international student groups and the Australian population”.

But human rights race discrimination commissioner Graeme Innes told Campus Review that that approach was flawed, and one he had opposed since the start.

“The international student population can’t be reasonably compared to the broader Australian population because international students face a specific set of risks and vulnerabilities,” Innes said. “The second problem is there’s chronic underreporting of crime and violence against international students. Both of these factors will have an impact on the reliability of the data.”

Further, Innes said race was undoubtedly a motivation in at least some of the crimes. However, he and others indicated the report’s tone would give the federal government more ammunition for rejecting, rather than accepting, that notion.

“When you get 4000 students protesting on the streets of Melbourne, saying that they are being attacked on the basis of their race and that they’re afraid, then there’s a clear need for us to take some positive action about it,” he said. “But you can’t start solving a problem while you’re continuing to deny it.

The University of Melbourne’s Professor Simon Marginson said interviews he and colleagues conducted for their 2010 book,  International Student Safety, showed 99 of 200 students had experienced discrimination or abuse – and 198 of those students had been non-Caucasian.

“To say racism is not the ‘primary’ driver of crimes against Indians is avoiding the point,” Marginson said about the AIC report. “Criminal behaviour has a mix of motives, and for racism as a single cause to be ‘primary’ in relation to all other causes, such as economic causes, is impossible.”

He questioned the AIC’s interpretation of its data. “Spinning the meaning of the research does nothing to address the real issues of student welfare and rights and does nothing to improve actual international education on the ground,” said Marginson.

When comparing Indian students to other students, the AIC found that Indian students were subject to higher assault rates in some jurisdictions, and also to higher robbery rates than the general Australian population in some jurisdictions. But again, there was not evidence to conclude race was a factor.

That prompted the harshest disapproval, this time from the Federation of Indian Students of Australia, which labelled the report “immaterial” and “a joke”.

“I don’t care what the politicians say in India or Australia,” said the group’s spokesperson, Gautam Gupta. “I’m telling you what the market is saying, I’m telling you what the consumers are saying, and they’re saying this report is crap, that this shows the arrogance of the Australian government.”

He said Indian students had left Australia in droves and the report would do nothing to entice them back. 

Like other commentators, the National Union of Students called for more research behind the criminal motivation.

“It is clear from the heightened levels of violence against Indian students that there is a relationship between the colour of a student’s skin and the likelihood of them being victimised,” said president Jess Marshall in a statement. “Governments and universities must start acting in a more coherent and decisive manner to repair Australia’s reputation as a safe place to live and study for students of any background.”

International Education Association of Australia executive director Dennis Murray said the AIC report contained important information but it was a decade late. “We have argued for this research until we are blue in the face, but governments have put their heads in the sand,” Murray said. “There is a strong tendency for governments to resist bad news stories, but ignorance is no excuse when individuals are mistreated, discriminated against, or hurt.”

He called on the government to fund deeper, routine research on the plight of international students, which was still the nation’s third largest export industry. Research to date had been on a laughable scaled, he said, funded with “beer money”.

AIC director and one of the report’s authors, Dr Adam Tomison, defended the study and its methodology.

“Leaving aside there may be issues of whether a crime’s reported or not – and we don’t know precisely how much isn’t reported for Australians or any other group in the population, including international students – what you’ve got is the only real, hard evidence, and it might not be perfect, but it’s the only hard evidence of victims’ reports of crime. I think that’s a reasonable base to make a comparison,” he said.

If the AIC could attract up to $1 million in funding, the next step would be to survey international students and migrants to better understand the nature of the crimes against them, Tomison said. But Innes said such a survey was what he had advocated for initially, because it would provide much more meaningful information.

The AIC report raised the ire of groups for more related reasons – perceived inaction from government on issues such as safe, affordable transport and accommodation for international students, especially in Victoria, and a general lack of communication with them about the issues.

That is at least partly fuelled by disparate responsibility for the sector across multiple portfolios, according to Murray.

“DEEWR, DIAC, DFAT, Austrade, DIISR and even Prime Minister and Cabinet… The impression we get is that the relevant ministers and their departments barely talk to each other, distrust one another, and cannot get their act together,” he said. “The proof is in the pudding – the spiraling down of the sector and the failure to be vigilant and to protect international students.”

The Council of International Students Australia president Arfa Noor said, “Now is the time to stop talking and actually put some action into place. We’ve been talking about the need for safe accommodation, for example, for years”.

A DEEWR spokesperson said a roundtable was being held in Canberra on August 21 to 23 as part of the implementation of the Council of Australian Government’s international student strategy, released last year to a lukewarm response from the sector. The spokesperson said the roundtable would bring together 30 international students.

The Isolated Children's Parents' Association is asking the government to make the payments available to all regional students, no matter where they live.

The government has tightened the youth allowance eligibility criteria so that students who come from city and inner-regional areas must work an average of 30 hours a week for 18 months before they can qualify for the benefit's more generous independent rate.

But the association says the new requirements put significant obstacles in the way of students and their families. It passed several motions at its federal conference last week urging the government to make the system fairer.

"Moving 600km-plus away from home is a fair indication that these students are independent, so it would be only too obvious that these children should become eligible for independent youth allowance," a motion proposed by parents from Bourke, NSW, said.

Two other motions called on the government to make relocation scholarships available to all regional students who had to move to attend university.

Currently they are only available to students who receive the 'dependent' allowance.

"Relocation costs do not differ for students who must leave home to access tertiary studies just because they receive a different rate of Youth Allowance," the association's Burren Junction (NSW) branch said.

Nationals senator Fiona Nash said the parents had sent a strong signal to the government to fix the system.

She called on Tertiary Education Minister Chris Evans to release as soon as possible academic Kwong Lee Dow's review of student income support reforms.

UQ, now at number 86, was previously in the top 150 universities. Vice-chancellor Professor Paul Greenfield said it was the university’s focus on research, and the work of its staff, that had seen it move up the rankings.

“Research excellence is increasingly a hallmark of global leadership, and this ranking will be regarded by many as a stamp of UQ’s distinction in a very competitive world industry,” said Greenfield in a statement on Monday morning.

Also in the top 100 are the University of Melbourne, at 60, Australian National University at 70 and the University of Sydney at 96. “Having four Australian universities in the ARWU top 100 reflects the quality of our research community and the determination of universities to succeed in a challenging global environment,” said Greenfield.

“It is to be hoped that leaders in government and industry will see the value of strong investment in a sector that receives such high appraisal from an independent global ranker.”
Griffith vice-chancellor Professor Ian O’Connor said he was “as proud as it is possible to be” of his university’s success. "We are now ranked in the top 500 of the 1000 universities ranked by the SJT - a recognised measure of global achievement,’’ he said in a statement

"This is a tribute to a broad-based, overall effort on the part of our body of world-class researchers. "Our strategy of encouraging publication in highly-regarded journals across the board is proving to be a winner.”   

Also making the cut were the University of Western Australia, in the top 150; Monash University and the University of New South Wales in the top 200; Macquarie University and the University of Adelaide in the top 300; Flinders University, James Cook University, the University of Newcastle and the University of Tasmania in the top 400; and Curtin University, La Trobe University, Swinburne University of Technology, the University of Technology Sydney and the University of Wollongong in the top 500.

Professor Glyn Davis vice-chancellor at the University of Melbourne said that: “While university ranking is not a precise science, naturally colleagues at Melbourne welcome a result that recognises the hard work and dedication of the University of Melbourne team." 

He added that the university strove to undertake research of global significance, and "this assessment recognises our international ambition."

To see the full list, visit: http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2011.html

Released on Thursday, the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) report also uncovers no racial motivation in the deaths of eight Indian students killed here since 1990. However, in its examination of previous data from police and survey records, the AIC includes some strong caveats in its 172 pages, especially about the role of race.

“Small sample numbers and a failure to capture the range of factors that might influence reporting and the risk factors for victimisation meant that the role of racial motivation and many other factors that might affect the prevalence of crimes against overseas born students were unable to be investigated further,” writes the AIC.

And this: “While the study has also provided some evidence of some of the factors that may increase the risk for student victimisation, the nature of the available data does not enable specific analysis of racial motivation. This is because policing databases do not consistently collect motivation data for all offences reported or investigated.”

The authors write that a large survey of international students and other Australian migrants would best determine motivation for offences. 
The AIC report is a response to concerns raised in 2009 and 2010 about the safety of international students in Australia following a series of attacks against Indian students.

The institute examined nearly 15,000 incidents of assault and robbery against some 13,000 international students from five source countries — India, China, Malaysia, South Korea and the United States.

It found that, “Overall, international students from the five source countries generally experienced incidents of physical assault at significantly lower rates than in the general population in each state/territory jurisdiction in 2009”.

However, in comparing the experience of the international students from the five countries, “for some years, in some jurisdictions, Indian students had experienced higher rates of assault than [other] students”.

When it came to robbery, the AIC found that male Indian students againexperienced higher levels of victimisation, this time more than state averages. The report says international students are vulnerable to crime due to a lack of economic security and limited work, housing and transport options.

AIC director Adam Tomison said the report, Crimes against international students in Australia: 2005-09, was the first major study of its kind in Australia. “The nature of the data did not allow the AIC to engage in specific analysis of racial motivation. That said, there was nothing in the overall findings that lends support to the view that Indian students have been singled out primarily for racial reasons,” Tomison said in a statement. 

As reported previously by Campus Review, however, others take a different view. In a paper released earlier this year, the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia warned that racism and human rights breaches threatened to undermine the nation’s export education industry.

These findings are contained in a paper from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research titled Which paths work for which young people?, which also found that even for school leavers who are not highly academic university is a worthwhile post-school pathway.

This, it notes, bodes well for recent government policy endeavouring to increase the proportion of the population with a degree, as per the Bradley Review recommendations.

“Although the more academic tend to do better, those who are less academic can benefit from a university path,” the paper says.

In a survey of women aged 25, researchers Tom Karmel and Shu-Hui Liu  found university led to the best outcomes in terms of full-time work or study, and higher remuneration for women working full-time.

For men, however, the picture was not as clear. The paper found that for males, university was still the best path for leading to a “high-status” occupation. 

But an apprenticeship after year 12 offered males the best pay at age 25, while pathways involving apprenticeships led to greater levels of satisfaction than did university. 

The study, which analysed data from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth highlighted that young people need to have year 12 plus further study to get them on a “path to success”, which the researchers measured in terms of being in full-time employment or study, earning higher wages, having better job prospects and being satisfied with life.

“We seem to be moving into a world in which year 12 is losing its importance,” the paper said. “While the results on the whole point to the benefit of a university path, the same cannot be said for the completion of year 12. For males, it is year 12 followed by university study or an apprenticeship that offers a good path rather than year 12 completion as such. Similarly for females, year 12 is clearly worthwhile if followed up by university, but not otherwise.”

But it would not be advisable to force everyone to complete year 12, the researchers said. Some pathways involving year 12 did not lead to better outcomes relative to leaving school earlier. For example, a young man who leaves school early to take up an apprenticeship will be, on average, in a higher status job at age 25 than a peer who finished year 12 and then took up a traineeship, the paper noted. 

The researchers said it was worth nothing that their study followed young people who completed year 12 in 1998, “which was a buoyant economic period, so it is possible that the success of various pathways would differ in a downturn”.

They also pointed out that they have considered a set of successful outcomes, with age 25 as the end point of transition for youth. “Outcomes at later ages will differ. Specifically, the high occupational status for the university pathway will translate into higher pay at later ages,” they noted. 

Reading between the lines, it’s clear Professor Hilmer thinks a university council should be little more than a rubber stamp for the whims of its executive. Elections are a messy business, after all, and to quote Campus Review, “Hilmer believes elected representatives on a council end up representing their constituents …”

Heaven forbid. Following Professor Hilmer’s logic, the suffragettes had it wrong. In fact, while we’re at it, why not pare back the vote to property owning males? That whole democracy thing is a little overrated, and terribly inconvenient.

If the notion of intellectual freedom means anything in a university setting, Fred Hilmer is the one who has it wrong. What is even more worrying is that he seems to be softening up opinion ahead of an assault on the already limited collegial processes open to staff and student university council representatives.

Let’s establish some basic parameters around this debate. Decision-making works best when it is inclusive and accountable. Achieving those twin aims requires a diversity of opinion, where conflict can set creative processes into action. Getting that diversity is difficult without enshrined democratic practice.

We’ve seen this played out in the corporate world. A management executive like Professor Hilmer should be aware of the example set by the likes of Enron, HIH and, in more recent times, News Corp.

In the case of Enron, the board’s audit committee was told on numerous occasions between 1999 and 2001 that the company’s accounting procedures were high risk.

Yet none of the directors objected. Even when the company paid $750 million in cash bonuses to executives, despite a reported net income of $975 million, the board was compliant.

We all know how the Enron story played out.

Nobody is suggesting a similar fate will befall UNSW, but "pushing the envelope"-type behaviour is far more likely if a culture of head-nodding and backslapping pervades the university council.

At times, this may mean it will take longer to scrutinise and debate management plans. Indeed, in some cases, management’s plans will be thwarted. However, these checks and balance may mean the system is actually working.

Fred Hilmer cites the example of the university’s disastrous foray into Singapore and we’re led to believe he rode in as a knight in shining armour to protect the university from the board’s decision.

Without independent, feisty university councils, however, we would likely see more, not fewer, executive adventures like the Singapore experience.
Given the present dominance of business figures on the university council, UNSW is in danger of becoming hostage to a narrow commercial agenda that will limit its ability to fulfill a broader social mission.

Having councillors who represent constituencies beyond this narrow cabal will be vital for ensuring the university meets the needs of all its stakeholders, not just the few.

Genevieve Kelly is the NSW secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union.

In Canberra, a decision has been made to merge, amalgamate, bring together – whatever word you choose – the University of Canberra and the Canberra Institute of Technology, a TAFE institution. This was recommended by the Bradley of the Bradley Report fame and such a recommendation is entirely within the framework of that report.

But immediately it was announced the discussion attracted the rather inevitable headline – "Planned merger of uni, TAFE unwelcome" (The Australian, August 5, 2011). The ration packs were broken out to ready the troops on both sides for the scrap that inevitably lies ahead.

Such announcements mean some will be winners and some will be losers. And whatever word you do choose to describe this process (which was something of an Australian sport in the late 1980s), there will be a major partner (which wins) and a minor partner (which loses more than it wins).

So what decides the winner/loser designation? It is not size or even quality and especially not the needs of the community – no, it all still boils down to good old-fashioned status. Education has never managed to develop any sort of willingness to understand or practise parity of esteem. And we all know what that means!

This  state of affairs is fuelled by a strange belief that there is a difference between “academic” and “vocational”. Thinking about this distinction for a second or two exposes it for the hogwash that it is. What is more vocational than becoming a medical doctor, a lawyer or an engineer? What is more academic than becoming an electrician, or a builder, or a jewellery maker? All the old distinctions attributed to those two words and the pretentious behaviour they spawned no longer apply.

Yet still the immediate reaction to the suggested amalgamation sees the university vice-chancellor assuring people the university would seek to establish a polytechnic as a teaching-only institution for higher vocational qualifications. This was to be a “tri-sector” institution whatever that might be.

On the other hand, Leesa Wheelahan, a vocational education specialist, was adopting a defensive stance – it makes sense, she claims, but she is suspicious about a university takeover – it might not be a “marriage of equals”, she fears. Is an institutional merger ever a “marriage of equals”? 

It all boils down to the love affair of Western education systems with the baccalaureate – status really is a matter of degree or, in this case, degrees. Australia is one of those countries (others are the US and the UK) that believe goals that a establish percentage target for students getting degrees will be the educational action that leads them to the promised land.

Apart from the fact that the countries haven’t much hope in meeting the targets they set (most young people who are qualified to go to university actually get there and the universities have seemed unable over a very long time to lift their successful completion rates), it is not increased numbers of degrees that we need but greatly increased numbers of young people with technical skills and older people with new technical skills.

This is exactly what a vocational institution does, it is why TAFE systems exist. Bringing together the two kinds of institutions – the university that would brand itself as academic and the TAFE institution that would be comfortable with its vocational reputation – is an opportunity for rethinking the relationship between the two. It is a chance to think more carefully about the academic dimensions of vocational programs and the vocational nature of academic programs.

Instead, I predict both sides of the amalgamation will set out to “protect” the “very special and different” approach they take to their work. We know amalgamations do not save money despite financial gains being listed high among the reasons for them more often than not. We know amalgamations can be managed so as to allow the same old ways of working to continue: most of them have proved just that.

What would be exciting would be for Canberra folk to get together to craft a new approach based on multiple pathways that make opaque the hard distinctions between academic and vocational and offer flexible and linked pathways for students who would have options a little more subtle than pass or fail.

I have always enjoyed the description by Knight and O’Neill in a contribution about amalgamations in Wollongong to a study of mergers in that orgy of getting together in the late 1980s in Australia. They give a hint in the title, Mating and Amalgamation. I think they get it right:

Consider the position of some of the then threatened parties, particularly those universities and colleges which were to merge. The cliff edge is no place to indulge in philosophic discourse nor for romantic exploration. There were certain doctrinal problems, for university-college conjunctions amount to what used to be called mixed marriages. Such cross-sectoral mergers contradicted the rhetoric of those government agencies who for years had maintained that one party was refined and academical and the other (no less equal, of course) was practical and responsive to needs. Universities might  have seen themselves in the former garb but colleges actually came to believe their place was at the kitchen and laundry end of the tertiary abode. In short, it was generally supposed that college/university partnerships were a mismatch and to be opposed by both sides. The universities feared a pollution, the college a subjugation. In uppity circles the University of Wollongong was spoken of as if it were the Whore of Babylon for accepting the local college. As we know from Revelations (17:3), that lady sat upon a scarlet beast having seven heads and ten horns - not a bad description of the academic structure in many a combined institution.

Stuart Middleton is director of external relations at Manukau Institute of Technology in New Zealand and writes on education at EDTalkNZ. 

That is the view of Professor Ian Goulter, vice-chancellor at Charles Sturt University, in a warning to other regional universities not to expect the federal government’s regional loading scheme to rescue them if they struggle under policy reforms.

“Regional loading is not a panacea for the new world of higher education in 2012 – the uncapped student environment,” Goulter said at a recent regional tertiary education conference. “Regional loading is a very thin veneer across that.”

Goulter was on the reference group that advised the Department of Education's recent review of regional loading. The department issued its final report on the scheme earlier this year. It has added $110 million over four years to regional loading, but the way the money will be allocated has changed.

“I’m not here to sell it on behalf of the government … [but] I think it makes sense when you look at where the dollars went,” Goulter said.

He said the new scheme still recognised the need for some government intervention to keep higher education in the regions viable, but would mostly take its cue from 2008 Bradley Review, which wanted more students in the system and for universities to change.

To survive in the new uncapped market, Goulter said, regional universities that found ways to enroll more students would be rewarded, adding that the best response was to “get your course profile right … If you put the right course on, people will come”.

This meant regional universities would have to scale up institutionally and by discipline — a huge challenge involving multi-campus operations and increased distance education offerings. 

They also had to improve their sustainability by meeting regional workforce needs, said Goulter, who again underscored the importance of offerings. 
“Sustainability, in my view, is about having the course profile that students want to come to now and will continue to do so in the future, whether it’s on campus, online, or mixed modes."

In explaining the new regional loading scheme to delegates, Goulter said it required a stronger student load — to be weighted at 50 per cent — and a more refined definition of remoteness. 

He expected CSU, James Cook, La Trobe, Southern Cross and the University of Southern Queensland to be the rightful “winners” under the new formula. “Is that a surprise to anybody? It shouldn’t be. Those are the ones you think about as having true regional identity.” 

And two of the big “losers” would be the universities at Wollongong and on the Sunshine Coast, but “they look like they’re in cities”.

“I can see farms from a lot of places I go to; you don’t see them from the Sunshine Coast or from Wollongong. It’s very provocative, that statement, but it makes sense. I’m arguing for something that’s more refined nuanced, and still driven by the capacity of the institution to attract students.”

Sunshine Coast vice-chancellor Professor Greg Hill challenged Goulter on this. He said the regional loading review had simply draped a Bureau of Statistics map over the country to definite remoteness, with unfortunate consequences.

“Our issue is that if we’d been located a couple of miles to the west, on the other side of the M1, we’d be fine,” Hill said. “From my office, I see bush, I don’t see a major city. I’ve got a national park on one boundary and the place is surrounded by bloody trees. 

“So the remoteness, comparing the Sunshine Coast with Toowoomba, which is roughly the same distance from metropolitan Brisbane, it’s us. It’s a pretty bizarre outcome from my perspective.”

Another delegate asked why CQU, with six regional campuses, would also lose under the new formula, saying its regional loading would drop from 7.5 per cent to 5 per cent.

The discontent was not resolved at the conference. 

The comment came from Dr Debra Rickwood, professor of psychology at the University of Canberra and head of clinical leadership and research at headspace, a nationwide mental health service for 12- to 25-year-olds. 

Headspace ACT has helped 2000 young people since it opened in 2008, and Rickwood, its first chair, said that even though it is based at UC, it is a community service intended not solely for students. 

Being on a campus full of young people makes it a less embarrassing prospect for non-students, she says. It also provides opportunities for research and student placement.

Rickwood said the non-students who attend find that because the facility is on campus "it’s a really non-stigmatising place. The campus is full of all sorts of people wandering around doing all sorts of things." 

This, she said, made it "more real and less frightening for these 15-year-olds, 16-year-olds, who are thinking about what they’re going to do. We’ve had lots of comments from parents and young people, that they find the campus a really positive experience.”

Rickwood is careful to point out the service is not just for the seriously ill and that one of its reasons for being is to help people before they are in crisis.

“It’s not a traditional mental illness service. It’s a mental health service,” she said. “If you’re not travelling well, come in the door, anyone can come in and talk to one of the youth workers, they’ll listen to what your issues are.

"It’s about what the young person presents with, not about being diagnosed and put in a box and given a particular type of treatment. 

"[It’s about] working the with the young person, finding out what’s concerning them, looking at their life in all its facets and working with them to make life more positive.”

ACT headspace also runs health promotion campaigns locally and among students, including during orientation week and on- and off-campus festivals, where staff give advice on staying safe and well.

UC psychology students also use the headspace centre for research and work placement, Rickwood said. “We’ve had honours, masters, PhD students, involved in headspace. It gives them a really great learning opportunity, and we also use it as an external placement for our masters of clinical psychology students, so we have a couple of them every semester working there.

“It’s [located] there with the faculty of clinical health and the psychology intern clinics, so that kind of helps train all the students in working in a multi-disciplinary clinic type of approach.”

Rickwood said having a headspace on campus was particularly beneficial to UC because it was in a smaller city.

“What I think it’s really great about having headspace on campus is it fits in with all the integrating learning ideas - it’s like being involved in a teaching hospital,” she said. “You’ve got a real-life service on campus built in with the education and training and research, so all of those things can then inform each other and that’s when you start to learn more.” 

Barry Munns, chief internal auditor at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and chair of the Corruption Prevention Network, says inefficient procurement "directly impacts the ability of each university to achieve its primary objectives”.

He issued this caution at the recent Higher Ed Services National University Finance and Procurement conference, which focused on how universities can balance growth with sustainability. 

Presentations under the theme "Balancing the Scales: The Challenges" covered topics ranging from snatching surplus from the jaws of deficit, to service transformation, greener HR and university investment. 

More than 30 speakers provided strategies to effectively implant the issues of economic, social and environmental sustainability into the activities of campus operations and management. 

Munns’ presentation concentrated on fraud, misconduct and the financial consequences and he pointed out there are numerous examples of procurement “gone bad” that have led to immense waste, fraudulent and corrupt conduct.

He has “great concerns” about probity and transparency in procurement, noting that spending large amounts of money lead to obvious fraud and corruption risks. “The less under control the procurement system, the more opportunity for fraud and corruption.” 

He suggests universities conduct a fraud risk assessment on their procurement system and demand the highest standard of probity and ethics. But he is also aware of extremely well-managed procurement within very large infrastructure projects that have achieved excellent outcomes in terms of time, cost and quality.

“Similarly at the other end of the spectrum, the implementation of automated supply chain workflows for minor consumable item procurement – specifically office requisites – can lead to significant improvements in cash flow, inventory holdings and most importantly, customer satisfaction,” he said.

He fully endorses the procurement framework developed specifically for universities by HES’s Australian University Procurement Network and believes it will greatly assist the move to recognise procurement as a professional discipline. 

“I would argue that an efficient, effective and economical procurement system should be standardised and routinised as much as possible so that system processes can be brought under control and qualitative improvement achieved. Cost savings and enhanced utility are achieved through these measures.”

Munns admits the eternal conundrum is where to place procurement in the continuum from a devolved versus a centralised arrangement but argues that ultimate responsibility for “what is” bought and “how many” should be in the bailiwick of the consumer who also has budgetary responsibility and accountability for that expenditure.

Creating efficiencies in procurement should ideally lead to direct reduction in gross consumption and the depletion of finite resources and considerably “smarter” consumption.

“For example, the purchase of energy-efficient equipment and infrastructure: that leads to recurrent reductions in resource depletion. Efficient and effective procurement can lead straight to significant and recurrent reductions.”

Given the status and role of universities in society, Munns believes institutions should freely choose to take a leading role in promoting procurement as a “fantastic opportunity to improve organisational efficiency and effectiveness while also pursuing environmental benefits.”

Market-based arguments for sustainability often raise the issue of creating price signals to motivate behaviours to reduce consumption, Munns points out.

“In procurement these signals are already there but are often not recognised. Put simply, the ultimate objective of sustainability is for humanity to at least reduce or better avoid its negative impact on the eco-system – primarily through reductions in the consumption of finite resources and procurement is all about consumption.”

For further information about the AUPN National Framework for Enhancing Procurement Capabilities in Universities and to read presentations from the HES National University and Procurement conference go to the HES website. 

Jacqui Elson-Green is a communications consultant with Higher Ed Services, a not-for-profit company owned by Universities Australia that provides professional services in HR, finance, procurement, student systems, research administration and contract management and analytical services for Oracle Technology. 

Dr Brian Croke, director of the NSW Catholic Education Commission, stated his belief after being awarded the Sir Harold Wyndham Medal, which is presented to an educator who has made an outstanding and significant contribution to NSW education.

Returning to issues he raised on the night, Croke cited three reasons for his belief that the study is in freefall: there is no longer a chair in the history of education at any Australian university, except for a personal one; fewer theses were written on the area between 2001 and 2010 compared to the previous decade; and the Australian Association for Research in Education lacks an interest group on the history of education despite having others dealing with areas such as psychology, sociology and psychometrics.

Croke told Campus Review the absence of such research had an impact on policy development and analysis. If corrected, we would have not just "better educated educators, but ... better educated politicians".

He said research in educational history was far stronger in the US, Canada and Britain and that its decline here was likely the result of financial pressures Australian universities were under. “Universities are a real national disgrace the way they’ve been resourced and the way the resourcing has declined in the last twenty years,” Croke said. 

As investment declined, he said, the tendency was to cut less pragmatic things and in education that meant areas such as history and philosophy.

Lecturer in education and historian of education at the University of Sydney Dr Helen Proctor told CR that although there was some great research going on in the history of education, Croke was right in saying there had been a real decline in the recognition of its importance.

Proctor said she endorsed Croke’s view that the fall was impacting educators and education policy. “We tend to, I think at our peril, neglect the history of education,” she said. She said there was now no-one in Australia appointed to the job of lecturer in history of education.

Croke said teacher training was also suffering and that before 1987, when most teacher education took place in teachers' colleges or colleges of advanced education, students generally had a course in history of education as part of their training. 

“Pressures on teacher training got significantly stronger and things like that got ditched early on so teachers come out knowing nothing about the history of education, whatever they teach.” 

Proctor agreed it was the less pragmatic areas that were cut, saying the emphasis was on narrow technical skills. “I think that if we want a really strong and really engaged, really well-informed teaching profession we need a really deep and thorough understanding of the underpinning principles of education.” 

Proctor, a former school teacher, said learning history was of practical value to her. “In my teacher preparation I did find that as a teacher it really did inform my teaching to understand the context of my teaching.”

Throughout his address Croke contrasted the situation with that during the life of the medal’s namesake. Wyndham was director-general of education in NSW between 1952 and 1968, during which he had three ministers. Since John Aquilina retired in 2001, Croke said, there had been six - and five directors-general.

“Such security and continuity of leadership clearly expedited long-term fundamental reform in a way that is no longer possible in Australia,” he said
Croke said the present Ministerial Council was an ill-designed and ill-suited body for formulating and driving a national vision and a national agenda for education. 

And he described the council’s membership of ministers and senior officials as “a revolving door that could turn over completely every three years or so”. He told CR the council lacked a strong sense of corporate memory and Australian educational history more broadly. 

In an organisational sense, corporate memory was not seen as important, he said. “We don’t think of it as a corporate asset, but it is and in education it’s particularly valuable when we’re developing policies and understanding how schools work and how you can get schools to work and do things differently and think about things differently.”

Croke said it was impossible to build up corporate memory with the current kind of instability. “For curriculum you need stability, continuity. You need long-term planning. Kids spend 13 years in school. You can’t be zig-zagging along as you go.” 

Croke said the governing body needed to be less tied to government and more like the schools commission was in the 1970s and '80s. He said an association “that’s credible, authoritative, stable in its membership and had the independence to make frank and fearless decisions based on the data and the best advice and is simply less political and more stable”.

Proctor said understanding the history of education and corporate memory was “really important” for policy makers. Its importance, she said, was covered in the research book ***Reform and resistance in NSW public education*** by John Hughes and Paul Brock, published by the NSW Department of Education and Training.

Dr Paul Brock is director, learning and development research at NSW Department of Education and Communities and adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney.

Brock was the Wyndham Medal recipient in 2002 and he was there to see Dr Croke receive the award this time round. Brock said he applauded Croke’s call for a much greater focus on research in the history of education in this country.  

“There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is the imperative for those in positions of institutional, political and policy development leadership to have a thoroughly informed understanding of our educational history,” he told Campus Review.  

"This is particularly important to emphasise in an era when, within a range of public and private organisational contexts, there has too often been a significant loss of corporate memory.”

While the study’s authors suggested this was at least in part because postgraduate students are more likely to work full time while studying, a careers advisor at one university suggested it was also emblematic of the appeal of postgraduate qualifications to employers.

Graduate Careers Australia produces a  postgraduate outcomes report every year, and has found that despite uncertainty internationally, employment figures for postgraduates dropped only one percentage point on last year.

Graeme Bryant, a senior research associate at Graduate Careers, said the results were not entirely a surprise but given that the employment rate for postgraduates had dropped from 90 per cent in 2008 to 87 per cent in 2009 the 2010 numbers were good to see.

The postgraduate employment rate for 2010 is 10 percentage points higher than the bachelor degree graduate rate (76 per cent), and while bachelor degree employment figures have dropped by nine percentage points over the past two years, the postgraduate number has dropped by only four percentage points.

There are probably a few reasons for the stability, said Bryant. “A lot of postgrads tend to study part time, so their employment tends to be more stable,” he said. “They’ve shown a marginal decline, but it’s still quite a positive outcome for postgrads ... Given that there’s still that lingering uncertainty as to whether the global financial crisis is over, the fact that they’ve remained relatively unchanged is a positive thing.”

Some fields and levels of qualification did better than others, with all areas of engineering showing the strongest employment fields, particularly among students with postgraduate certificates and diplomas. The highest employment rates among coursework masters graduates were in nursing, pharmacy and physical science, while veterinary science and dentistry PhDs had also came out on top. 

Overall, the employment rate for holders of postgraduate diplomas and certificates was 88.3 per cent, for coursework masters was 84.7 percent and for research masters and PhDs was 84.9 per cent. 

The study is conducted among graduates who are either in full-time employment or who want to be – those still studying, or who are working part time or who are unemployed but not looking for a job are not included.

Bryant said he wanted to be optimist about the data for next year, which is being collected now. “So it’s employment rates from April this year, and I think at that point things had started to stabilise, so I like to think that next year employment rates will be up again,” he said. 

“There’s a lot of issues now though that are long term and we won’t know their impact for a while – the stock market in the US, the UK riots, but implications are still that graduate employment rates will be better next year.” 

Australian National University careers centre manager Kate Gemmell said she believed the stable employment rates for postgraduates show more employers were looking for more than just a bachelor’s degree. “The example that comes to mind is the public service and the graduate programs in the public service,” she said. 

“Some of the more popular government departments – without naming names – are reporting that up to 25 per cent of the participants in their graduate programs have PhDs and the like …. I’d say that’s particularly true of policy areas like defense and security, they were traditionally undergrad and are becoming a mix of undergrad and postgrad for entry level positions.”

The desirability of postgraduate qualifications also reflected the increasing complexity of workplaces. “[Employers are looking for the] analytical skills, teamwork skill, that come about as a result of the process of doing a degree as opposed to just the content,” she said. 

“I think the postgraduate qualification is becoming more and more accepted as method of skills acquisition as well as content and research.”

The handbook is a capstone project, drawing together lessons from all the Australian Learning and Teaching Council leadership projects, which should be available by Easter. The council disbands in January and its functions will be rolled into the Department of Education.

The University of the Sunshine Coast’s executive projects unit director received the grant for the handbook collaboration between the university and consulting company Phillips KPA – in the final round of ALTC funding. Phillips KPA principals Dr Craig McInnis, Professor Paul Ramsden and David Phillips will work on the project with USC. McInnis will manage the project. 

“We now have new knowledge, the generational change over the next decade will be huge and there is nothing out there that provides details on the characteristics of academic leadership,” Don Maconachie, director of the executive projects unit, told Campus Review.

In the handbook there will be a strong focus on managing change and leadership development for senior staff such as pro vice-chancellors, executive deans and deans, heads of schools, and associate deans for learning and teaching.

The case studies will be sourced from talking to stakeholders across the country, representative bodies as well as university senior managers, university development and human resources units. Maconachie said they decided to go with the handbook because it would be more usable.

He saw it having a shelf life of about a decade. The principles would be distilled from the documented case studies and the content would be theorised.

Ramsden and McInnis had already done extensive research in the area, he said.
The book is being produced during a time of great change in  sector but Maconachie pointed out that the trajectory of that change was constant and growth was the biggest element of this.

“There is a lot of churn ... and there is probably too much of the new-broom approach to leadership,” he said. It is better to handle change incrementally.

If a leader, like a dean, can create a positive environment then the benefits permeate throughout and beyond the faculty and the institution benefits, he said.

The Australian Research Council’s 2011 fellowships went to 17 leading researchers last week. The program is worth $44.5 million over the next five years. Women account for just three of the fellowships this year, despite efforts by the ARC to move the gender needle. This year, it introduced two gender-specific fellowships — the Georgina Sweet and Kathleen Fitzpatrick fellowships, with each awarding additional funds for the recipients to mentor other women.

“There’s a phenomenon that women don’t apply for these very prestigious schemes because they have to wait until they’re absolutely very confident,” said ARC chief executive Margaret Sheil. “So by putting in the two new fellowships, one in the humanities and one in the sciences, we wanted to signal we wanted more applications from women. We’re very committed to this issue.”

As a result, female applications did rise this year. Of the 139 laureate candidates, 30 were women, representing 21.6 per cent of total applicants, compared to 17.5 per cent last year. The ARC said it was pleased that 27 of the women applied in one of the two special categories.

ANU experimental physicist Professor Mahananda Dasgupta, a world leader in accelerator-based nuclear fusion and fission, was awarded the Georgina Sweet fellowship; the Kathleen Fitzpatrick fellowship went to Visiting Professor Pippa Norris, from the University of Sydney’s Department of Government and International Relations, for research about the impact of democracy on the peace and prosperity of nations.

Deakin's Professor Maria Forsyth is the only other female laureate, for a project that will develop materials for sustainable energy technologies. Dasgupta, who in 2003 became the first permanent female member of staff in the decades-long history of ANU’s Research School of Physics and Engineering, said women’s high expectations of themselves stopped them from putting themselves forward as readily as men. 

“Women tend not to make applications because we have, as a society, pushed women to give credit to others and not take it themselves,” she said. “That reduces our ability to put our hat in the ring for the sake of it.”

Dasgupta’s fellowship is worth $2.7 million over the next five years. Her research on quantum effects in nuclear fusion affects areas ranging from the formation of elements in the early universe to advances in nanotechnology and the production of new isotopes for medical applications.

“These two new fellowships — named after prominent women researchers — were announced by the prime minister last year,” Research Minister Senator Kim Carr said at last week’s event. “I am confident the work professors Norris and Dasgupta will undertake with their fellowships will show Australian women that they can achieve great things and follow long and strong research career paths.”

Continuing a long tradition of Australian research in astronomy, Professor Stuart Wyithe, of the University of Melbourne, was awarded $2.6 million to deepen the study of the formation of the first galaxies, with advances that have revolutionised telescopes.

“If we make observations of galaxies, that gives us some knowledge, but if we want to understand physically how they work and how they evolve, then we need to interpret those observations,” Wyithe said. 

The full list of 2011 fellows is available on the ARC website .

Lee told a recent regional tertiary education conference regional institutions were being disadvantaged by the federal government’s approach to research funding. This was especially true for infrastructure, he said, because regional universities were not permitted to apply under the same programs as their city counterparts. 

Even the $500 million allocated in the 2011-12 federal budget for a regional priorities round within the Education Investment Fund was problematic, he said. 

“We have to demonstrate how our research is related to our teaching; no such criteria ever applied to a metro university,” Lee said. “So are we being pigeonholed as a teaching-only institution forever and a day? Is that government’s intent in the way it’s driving the Education Investment Fund?” 

Submissions to the Department of Education’s draft guidelines for the regional priorities round closed on August 3.

Lee told delegates that although the regions were home to 40 per cent of Australians, they accounted for just 20 per cent of research expenditure. He presented a snapshot that showed strong correlations between the age and size of Australian universities and the research investment they attracted.

“Age matters; it takes time to build a world-class university,” said Lee, adding that in world university rankings such as the Shanghai Jiao Tong, only 39 universities in the top 300 were less than 50 years old.

The sheer scale of the two biggest Australian earners of research income — the universities of Melbourne and NSW — was impossible for regional universities to compete with, even looking at fictional amalgamations.

For example, combining the research outputs of SCU, New England, Southern Queensland and Charles Sturt would barely compare, except in the field of animal sciences, where it would become the biggest researcher. 

Lee said regional universities faced a challenging problem, having to expand to entice the best teams of researchers, who were essential for increasing institutions' visibility. “Your ability to attract those really bright minds that generate the knowledge is often governed by, who will they work with? If you don’t have someone they can work with and spark off, you find it very difficult to recruit them."

Block grants were not suitable for building research capacity, either, and Excellence in Research for Australia was “about the past, not about future potential”. Further, the ERA exercise had made it tougher for regional universities to keep their researchers focused.

“Because of the way the discipline codes work and the way you are judged in those discipline codes, it means that we will now focus our energies into narrowly defined research areas because that’s where we can get rated."

To meet its research challenges, SCU had embarked on a strategy in plant sciences since its founding in 1994. It obtained its initial funding outside the Australian Research Council and slowly recruited the highest-citation researchers in the field. Eventually, it merged two research centres into one — Southern Cross Plant Sciences.

“We don’t believe in a thousand flowers blooming. We’ve actually made very deliberate choices about the areas we’re investing our limited research budget in and we’re going after those as strongly as we can,” Lee said.

Nonetheless, immediately after last year's ERA exercise, SCU lost the centre’s top researcher, Professor Robert Henry, to the University of Queensland.
“That’s the plight of regional universities … It hurts when you’ve invested 16 years into this particular area as a regional university and there goes one of your major researchers out the door." Southern Cross recently managed to replace Henry with two researchers from the UK.

Lee told delegates universities were about much more than teaching. “A university is about scholarship … I don’t believe in teaching-only universities,” he said. 

 But students with mental illnesses rarely think to tick that box, a conference in Melbourne heard last week, and even if they do, most universities are ill-equipped to help them. 

Conversations with staff about mental health literacy at Victoria University led Professor Tony Jorm from Orygen Youth Health Research Centre at the University of Melbourne to start thinking about the need for a set of guidelines to enable tertiary education institutions to engage better with mentally ill students.

Speaking at the National Summit on the Mental Health of Tertiary Students in Melbourne on August 5, his colleague Dr Nicola Reavley, the chief investigator in the guideline’s development, told about the process she and Jorm developed. 

Reavley said that during conversations with people in disability and counselling services,  "One person came to me saying, we don’t really know what to do with these students, and I said, have you asked them clearly what they need? 

"You need to be talking to service providers but you also need to be talking to the people who are going to be receiving the services and asking them what they want."

In an online questionnaire run by Reavley, thousands of mentally ill students or recent graduates - recruited via word of mouth, beyondblue’s Blue Voices forum or counselling services - were asked to rate different strategies 
Researchers also spoke to campus staff  including mental health experts and counsellers. 

The result is the publication Guidelines for Tertiary Education Institutions to Facilitate Improved Education Outcomes for Students with a Mental Illness.
Reavley said respondents rated what they thought was important.  "There were some differences between what students thought, and what people in services thought,” she said.

One of the biggest issues, she said, is making students with mental health problems aware help is available on campus. This was partly because the young were less likely to seek help than older people, she said.

Just the simple fact of alerting students with mental health problems to the disability box during enrolment would make a great difference, she said
“I think that’s education that could start to happen earlier – if people are seeing school counsellors, and if they’re going to uni the next year, I think it would be fantastic for them to have that awareness."

Destigmatising mental illness is also necessary if institutions are to work with such students, Reavley said. For some, simply identifying themselves to tutors and lecturers as someone with a mental health issue is frightening.

"The stigma is definitely an issue, that’s true of adults as well. They don’t want to identify themselves as having an illness: they think they should be able to manage it, or they worry about what people will think.”

Some staff and departments are already ahead of others in dealing with students with mental illnesses. “You get those who think it’s really important and often what stimulates their interest is having a personal experience of it,” Reavley said. 

In one law faculty, there had been a suicide, so this was much higher on the agenda. That was "often the way with these things - it can be a bit reactive", she said. The initial response to the guidelines has been largely positive, Reavley said.

There were a few criticisms, however.

“One person emailed me for a Word document so they could rate their own institution’s practices against the guidelines, and most people broadly seem to endorse them,” she said. “A few people said they don’t go far enough, and I agree with that – the next phase is implementation. 

Some recommendations:
• The institution should have a policy covering mental health promotion and illness prevention, as well as services for affected students.
• Policies must address the needs of students with mental illness as well as those with physical disabilities.
• On-campus mental health policies should be developed in tandem with outside agencies.
• Students with mental illness should play an active role in developing and reviewing policies, procedures, services and facilities.
• Institutions should have a strategy in place to communicate mental health policy to staff and students.
• Staff and students should be made aware support is available for students with both mental and physical disabilities.
• All students should know help is at hand for those with difficulties including stress, anxiety, personal problems and depression and performance anxiety.
• Strategies dealing with prevention, early identification, stigma reduction, availability and access to services should be developed.
• Information about how to access mental health services should be highly visible. 
• A guide should be developed for students with a mental illness on how to get the most out of their studies and time on campus.
• Staff should be given information about making reasonable adjustments for assessments.
• Staff should encourage students to approach them as soon as possible about any reasonable adjustments they may need.

In its report AUQA commended UOW for its sustained high levels of domestic undergraduate student retention and success, particularly for students from equity groups as well as for its sustained high levels of graduate satisfaction, “including graduate satisfaction with generic skills, and quality of teaching and overall satisfaction”.

It said, however, that uncertainty over the nature of the academic alliance with UOWD reflected rather marked absence of academic exchange and visits for the past few years. “The absence of close academic relationships between UOW and UOWD inevitably creates risks for academic quality assurance. Although UOW staff have been heavily involved in the accreditation of several courses in the UAE, AUQA observes there is at least one instance when UOWD has acted on accreditation issues without sufficient initial involvement of UOW”.

A spokesman for UOW told Campus Review that a unique feature of UOWD degrees were that they are accredited within the United Arab Emirates through the Commission for Academic Accreditation (CAA) but at the same time were interchangeable with University of Wollongong degrees. “This means that we must quality assure their degrees so that students at UOWD achieve equivalent learning outcomes to those of their counterparts at Wollongong.

He confirmed the close governance ties between the two operations but said UOW had self-identified that “both institutions need to further strengthen their academic ties.” There had been an increase in academic visits between the two institutions over recent months. And there were plans to strengthen the ties in the future via such avenues as staff and student exchanges, he said in an email response to queries. 

“In addition, in regard to the UOWD risk assessment process, UOW will be actively working with ITC Ltd (the body that operates UOWD) to ensure a stronger academic focus to its risk assessment,” he said. The UOW is also conducting an IT systems review across a number of operational areas that will involve how systems integrate. He rejected the AQUA statement that some students at UOWD thought staff were employed for their qualifications not teaching skills. He said student satisfaction surveys showed otherwise.

“There’s some interesting work over the next three or four months in the philanthropic sector and opportunities for tax relief in regards to provision to education,” he said. “Some of the generous US donors are starting to question, if Australians don’t give to Australian universities and the Australian education sector, why should anyone else?” Oakeshott said new funding sources were essential to the growth of the Australian higher education sector. He told Campus Review he was inspired by Oxford University’s plans to move towards a philanthropic model similar to that of Princeton and Yale in the United States.

Oxford vice chancellor Professor Andrew Hamilton just wrapped up a week of private meetings in Australia, possibly on the same topic. Oakeshott used his conference slot to focus mostly on access and participation in tertiary education by people from low socio-economic backgrounds. He said responding to their plight, rather than climate change, was Australia’s current moral and economic imperative.

He also said Australia needed to overcome a peculiar cultural bias if it was to meet the targets identified in the influential 2008 Bradley Review of higher education. “The smart people go to uni – it’s almost oxymoronic. Higher education should be about making smart people; it’s the other way around. Culturally that’s the flip that’s before us and how we make that flip happen is where the whole community’s got to be involved,” Oakeshott said.

University of Sydney Business School Associate professor and project co-leader Mark Freeman said: “This is the first time... I am aware of that a particular discipline has taken a national approach to try to agree first a standard then benchmark against those standards.” Freeman said many institutions could already be doing a similar thing locally but they had not been able to have a national forum for sharing with other institutions, employers and accreditation bodies.

Jointly funded by the Australian Business Deans Council, CPA Australia, Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia and the ALTC Discipline Support Strategy the project has four stages spanning five semesters. The pilot stage involves 22 academics from ten participating universities as external peer reviewers of five pieces of randomly-sourced student work with all identifying details about the students and institutions removed.

There is no intention to alter results only to assist in quality assurance and facilitate quality enhancement at individual universities. “It’s more about continuous improvement and quality enhancement than purely lets check if so and so has passed or not. That’s why we’re going to such extraordinary lengths to keep it confidential so that people feel safe,” Freeman told Campus Review. 

Freeman said in addition to focusing on learning and teaching the project was very much about the application and relevance to business.“That’s why we’re getting employers, recent graduates [and] professional bodies to look [and] give us feedback about the sorts of assessment tasks that are being used as evidence that a student can achieve that particular learning outcome.”

Head of Academic Relations at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia, Professor James Guthrie, said getting feedback from the professional bodies about the validity of the assessment tasks and the standards expected of new graduates was an important characteristic of the project. 

“For the accounting profession it is critical as the project offers an objective unbiased way to get feedback on the education standards being achieved across the learning outcomes instead of relying more on self reporting by providers indicating they are covering the various generic skills in various units,” Guthrie told CR. “The benefits are graduates from accredited accounting programs will have the minimum level of skills both technical and non-technical to make them employable in the industry.”

CPA Australia’s executive general manager, (member knowledge), Tony Gleeson agreed the partnerships were strengths of the model. He said the project was critically important to industry because it would provide stakeholders with an increased level of consistency and confidence. “It’s actually showing evidence that people have completed certain tasks and then get some sort of balance around that evidence,” Gleeson told CR. 

Gleeson said the aim was not to make everyone do the same piece of work and standardise that but about moving to more evidence-based assessment, review and understanding. “If you look at the current university system it’s just, have you done x, y, or z? Now what people want to be able to say is show us evidence you’ve done x, y, or z and how does that compare with other universities or other organizations,” Gleeson said. 

Mirroring other recent opinions from industry and government, Gleeson said getting all the active components together, as this project does, was the way it had to be.  “It’s important I think if the government wants 40 per cent of people having university degrees eventually, that there has to be a real tie in between academia and the business community.” 

He said CPA Australia saw they had an active role in helping to achieve a successful alliance of the communities. “It’s to give all those groups certainty, you know business, students, parents about what’s going on, to be honest at the moment there’s probably a lot of uncertainty,” Gleeson said. “It gives people that level of certainty about the quality of the program.”

Freeman said the model could also be used in meeting other government goals, specifically those set by the new tertiary education quality and standards agency, TEQSA. “We know the government is keen to have evidence about learning standards, learning outcomes [and] this is one important way that people could use in providing evidence to any agency such as TEQSA in the event there was any query or any particular review taking place.”

Guthrie agreed that TEQSA would shape the future with its strong focus on outcomes and said they saw the project as a great vehicle for aligning accreditation processes, which he said was in the best interests of everyone. “We hope all Australian professional accounting bodies will collaborate and align accreditation systems to ensure high quality accounting bachelor and masters graduates,” Guthrie said.

“Alignment will avoid doubling up on costs. It will also protect Australia’s reputation for accounting education in the international space. We want the best accounting graduates so CAs can value add where ever they work.”

The participants have collected data from the first semesters’ students and completed the first component of calibrating peer reviewers as part of the pilot stage, which is scheduled over two semesters. Freeman said they found there was some variation which was useful to establish before they started marking. As a result they have decided to have another calibration exercise before the next step. “Because the conversations were so robust and useful we thought, well let’s have another go at it before, rather than starting the peer-review process without us all being exactly on the same page,” Freeman said.

A further aim of the project is to get participants to mirror the process at their own institution and Freeman said some of the institutions had already started doing so. Monash University’s head of the Accounting & Finance Professor Keryn Chalmers said it was something they were planning to do. “Certainly what we’ll be doing over the course of the next period of time is engaging with a similar process in-house because I think collectively getting people together and engaged in this type of a process is a really constructive and insightful thing to do,” Chalmers told CR.

Chalmers first became involved at the beginning of the project when she was president of the Australian Accounting and Finance Association of Australia. And like the others sees the collaboration of stakeholders as beneficial to industry but also to the educational process. “I see this as being another avenue and vehicle in thinking reflectively and constructively about what we do and how we do it and looking for that continual improvement,” he said.

Guthrie said the project would likely result in providers systematically reflecting and learning from feedback. Which he said could be used in their accreditation processes by asking providers to show what they did with their results from the external reviewers. “This is something that the UK external examiner process has been doing for decades, but this process will be anonymous so there is less chance of bias or influence arising.” 

The first stage includes only Bachelor students but future stages plan to expand to Masters programs and more providers depending on funding. The other participants are Adelaide, Curtin, Deakin, Griffith, Monash, RMIT, Southern Cross, Southern Queensland, UWA and UWS.

The bad news could be enough to make any training provider specialising in retail training want to walk away. However in one case, while accepting times are tough in retailing, Sue Freeman, Brisbane-based director of national retail training provider First Impressions Resources, says there are “some pockets in this industry that are continuing to report increasing sales”.

“There is a downturn, but in the past a downturn has been pretty well across the board, but this time round we are seeing really different performance levels. Coles has come out with a report of increased sales and the same with Woolworths”.

Freeman has co-owned First Impression Resources for over two decades and in that period she has seen downturns as well as booms, but overall she accepts her industry is currently in strife. But she is staying committed. Why? “I get a bit prickly when asked that. That’s what we do, our focus is skilling the retail workforce and you can’t interchange retail with another industry just because there’s a downturn. We’ve been doing it for 23 years, there have been downturns in that time, and there have been really buoyant periods. It’s what we do.”

Being inside the industry, she views challenges in ways not normally reported in the mass media. “Managing the negativity is one major challenge. You talk about the negativity and the impact on customers, think about being an employer and managing that negativity among your people as well. “Then there is the challenge of bridging the gap between online retailing and bricks and mortar retailing; that’s a huge one. It’s been there for a long time, but it’s been one that many retailers have chosen to ignore. And of course now it’s headline material. 

“Retaining good staff, (when you’re in cost cutting mode), is a challenge. So I think there are a whole lot of challenges on the horizon at the one time. And what falls out of that for us is that there are a range of different skills that are required in the marketplace.” So while some training providers might be looking to move away from retail training, Freeman believes that in tough times retailers need more and better skills. 

“In a downturn you’re doing more with less. You have skinnier staffing on the floor, and people have to play broader rather than narrower job roles. If you think of a department store, people are covering whole floors at the moment, not just the electronic/white goods departments they’ve worked in for the last four years. These people have the need for better product knowledge. So suddenly you want your people to be full bottle across a range of areas in the store.”

In this new environment, Freeman sees many opportunities to offer training for retail staff in how to be multi-skilled, but it requires organisations like hers to be very flexible. “Industry is time poor at the moment. So we need to develop different training products and methodologies that don’t compromise quality. We need to maintain our quality and yet deliver the skills that retailers need.”

General manager at Resources, Mike Wallace, says in tough times retailers are not going to send their staff to off-site classes. And retailers are even reducing the time they can spare their staff to participate in on-site training. “The time that we used to get on the floor, for workplace based delivery, has been cut down. So we’ve got to look at our materials and other ways in which we can work to ensure that we can get that training across.”

Faced with these fundamental challenges, the training company is responding with a raft of innovations, including moving into the field of timber merchandising, leveraging off its existing strength in hardware retailing. Freeman acknowledges that the downturn has “driven us as an organisation to look outside of what we’ve normally done”. So to offer training in timber merchandising, “which is half retail units and half forestry units”, they are partnering another provider “who’s got that skill in the forestry products”.

Another innovation is a project for which the company won state government funding and involves working with retailers in the Lockyer Valley recovering from the devastating floods last January. And rather than work separately with each retailer, they are working with the whole community of retailers. Yet another innovation is their recent entry into a partnership in India “in a campus in Hyderabad that’s been purpose built, which will be a retail specialist. Our role is technical advice and capacity building support. So we’re looking overseas as well.”

In Australia, Freeman believes that any growth in the retail sector in Australia over the last 12 months has largely been due to global retailers and she is pleased her company is the preferred training provider nationally for Aldi supermarkets. “If you look at the new Westfield centre, the anchor tenants are overseas retailers like Gap and Zara. They have never operated in Australia before, however they are successful internationally and they bring their own skill standards. 

“It’s great to have an Australian retail training package that you can be proud of, but the reality is we’ve got to be heading towards global standards of performance for retail”. Freeman and Wallace want to see the retail training package catch up with the massive changes occurring in the industry. Wallace appreciates that “retailers have had to respond to significant changes in their environment in the last twelve months, changing their strategies and redesigning jobs and reviewing their staff capability”. 

If retailers can ignore the eulogies in the mass media and change themselves to meet their challenges, Wallace believes the VET sector can at least overhaul the retail training package, “redesigned from the roots up, to help update the skills really needed in the business”. Training package developers, not just training providers and retail businesses, need to share the pain, shift with their industries and be much more innovative.

Dr John Mitchell is a Sydney-based researcher and consultant who specialises in VET workforce development and strategic leadership. See www.jma.com.au

When a native speaker of a language other than English learns English they do not become an Englishman or woman – they remain a Samoan, a Sikh, a Somali, an Italian or a Greek and so on. But they now have two languages in which they can be a Samoan, Sikh, Italian or Greek citizen. It could be that in fact these new skills allow for a confidence that intensifies the feeling of identity.

Where these languages are new to the English-speaking community, they add richness and it is the community that now has new skills and capabilities. But do we respond positively to this?  
Not always. It is a tired old joke that has more than a grain of truth in it that if you speak two languages you are bilingual, if you speak many languages you are multilingual and if you speak one language you are English.

Language learning has never been strong in English communities, so we struggle with linguistic diversity. We struggle to find comfort with indigenous languages in English speaking countries and we continue to believe that if you are going to be a valuable citizen you had better measure up in gems of English language.

Take for instance those professions that stamp arbitrary English language requirements on students and new citizens from language communities other than English. Nursing is one such example. If you arrive in New Zealand or Australia as a person trained and experienced in certain areas, you cannot offer your skills in the service of your new community until you have demonstrated a level of skill in English. Well it is more a case that you have to demonstrate the skill of passing an examination in English rather than actual communication.

And you have to do this in an examination that a sizeable number of domestic English-speaking people would fail – not that will stops them from practicing. We simply assume that if by accident of birth you are English-speaking you will be OK. Of course, the programs and tests and examinations that you have to pass are evidence of a certain level but it cannot be assumed that it is up to the level that we require of people from other language communities.

One on the explanations of levels of educational success for indigenous communities is the extent to which we have removed their first language and expected them to proceed on the basis of a second language. I suspect that this helps explain Maori student educational patterns over a hundred years and that of Pasifika students more recently in New Zealand. In Australia the picture of education success for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders is the same and that leads to other serious issues.

Where a student retains a robust first language that they continue to develop and grow is able to learn a new language easily. Metalinguistic processes enable them to learn that new language by reference to their first language – in what ways is this new language the same as or different from the language I already know?

In Sweden, when a student from a particular language community enrols in an institution, that institution is required to find and employ a native speaker from that language community to support the student. This is very enlightened. We could do this easily as we have a rich vein of community members available who would be pleased to be employed in this way. Yes there is a cost but the cost of making education difficult for those who do not bring the correct language into the classroom is much greater.

It is one of the great ironies of the modern world that in California, part of the country of E pluribus unum, half of the population now cannot speak to the other half; the rift of monocultural obsessions is now complete. Are we headed the same way?

Stuart Middleton is director of external relations at Manukau Institute of Technology in New Zealand and writes on education at EDTalkNZ. 

That grip is now starting to loosen as universities, like most major enterprises, work out how they can allow their employees to use their own devices to access core computing systems – providing greater choice to end users and also, in theory at least, reducing the costs associated with maintaining large fleets of personal computers.

Peter James, the chief information officer (CIO)at the University of Technology in Sydney, currently manages 6000 desktop PCs in operation – 2000 of which are in laboratories. While James said that it’s early days he believed the BYO device movement will have an impact on all universities and over time should reduce some IT support costs. “It’s a bit like company cars, there used to be fleets, now people get their cars on novated leases.”

Law firm Freehills and financial services player Suncorp both this year announced their intention to move to a BYO device option for staff. James considered the arrival of tablet computers, such as the iPad, as one of the major drivers for BYO device initiatives, but he acknowledged that universities had to come up with policies to cover the legal and security issues associated with BYO PC.

Security is one of the major inhibitors. According to a survey of 700 international chief information officers, released by virtualisation specialist Citrix in July, 92 per cent of CIOs said employees were already using their own devices for work-related tasks. At present laptops are the most often cited BYO device, although CIOs said that within two years the smartphone would take over. However, 52 per cent of the 100 Australian CIOs surveyed for the report nominated security issues as the major inhibitor of BYO device.

Lloyd Borrett, security evangelist at software firm AVG, said that universities have a slightly different computing landscape than many organisations in that they have two often distinct user groups and computer networks – the student body which can access information and learning systems, and a separate network for the core university administration systems which is secured for staff. 

Borrett acknowledged that students have been allowed to bring their own devices onto campus and connect them for some time, but warned that there are bigger security issues for universities to consider when they allow administration personnel to use their own computers on the university network to access applications such as payroll or finance.

He said that only organisations which had “locked down” access through robust desktop virtualisation strategies and technology could avoid the “inherent vulnerability” associated with allowing consumer devices onto the university network in a free-for-all.

Desktop virtualisation is often seen as one of the first steps toward the introduction of wholesale BYO device initiatives. While server virtualisation is well advanced with universities embracing the technique in order to extract efficiencies from their central computer systems, the progress of desktop virtualisation has been much slower. According to technology analyst Ovum, only 15 per cent of the global desktop PC market has been virtualised, largely because organisations are unsure which flavour of desktop virtualisation will eventually triumph and no one wants to be left holding the IT equivalent of Betamax.

But there are pockets of activity. Last year Curtin University, for example, ran a virtual desktop trial, as a first step toward allowing BYO device. Meanwhile, Macquarie University has embarked on a program of rolling out desktop virtualisation in many of its student computer labs.

Getting the right infrastructure and policy settings in place is imperative if security is to be preserved in a BYO device environment, said Borrett. “We’ve been dealing with it for networks, notebooks and laptops for some time. The big impact now is the tablets and smartphones running IOS and Android. People treat them completely differently. Eighty per cent of people have passwords on their computers – only 20 per cent of smartphones have passwords.”

The challenge for universities is what if a smartphone, which is not password protected, is used to access a university administration system perhaps download some data, and is then lost or stolen? “They are nothing but a smaller computer,” said Borrett, and it was therefore necessary to develop policies to control how to deal with the enormous amount of data that could be stored on such devices and what happened if they were lost or stolen. “Our software provides virus protection, and back up and we can lock them down or wipe them remotely if needed.”

Stuart Driver, director of IT for Citrix in the Asia Pacific Region, said the “old way of thinking was to stick up a big perimeter and come in via virtual private networks and SSL (secure sockets layer). We put the perimeter around the data centre – that’s where the important data is.” A Citrix survey showed 75 per cent of organisations would support some form of BYO device program within 12 months. 

Paul McIntyre, CIO and vice-president of operations for the company, said it was important that organisations got their technical settings right. Just having policies about what was and wasn’t allowed on a network was not enough, since “consumer devices are coming in in a hostile manner”, he said. At present, laptops are the most often used BYO device but according to the survey they will be overtaken by smartphones within 12 months and tablet computers are also on the rise.

Associate professor Colin Carati, the executive director for ICT strategy at Flinders University, said that the local university sector was at the very beginning of its journey toward BYO device. But he acknowledged that the consumerisation of technology (most individuals in higher education owned 2.5 different devices, he said) particularly among students was forcing universities’ hand. “We are in transition. We need the right infrastructure and architecture – it’s part of a response to anywhere, anyhow computer but it’s also more efficient.”

But he acknowledged that there was a lot of work to be done to prepare university IT environments for the arrival of BYO devices. That often included boosting network infrastructure as demand was “rising dramatically”. Said Carati: “BYO device means they could have two devices on the network at any time.” 

The first step, however, remained the introduction of some form of desktop virtualisation “to create environments in the university ICT infrastructure where staff or students can have access to all their material through any device including a thin client. I have a laptop and my whole life is on it. If you have a virtualised environment you are critically reliant on access to the internet – but it does allow more efficient controls of the ICT environment including the security of data in that it’s stored securely.” This seems key to successful and secure BYO programs.

He said the move would result in a $4000 HECS saving per student per year – a strong incentive that could help regional universities capture their share of students when uncapped places are introduced in 2012. “What the government’s done has been to deregulate supply, but it’s done nothing about demand or price. That’s hardly a free market,” Barber told Campus Review at the inaugural Regional Tertiary Education Conference in Coffs Harbour.

By his calculations, the HECS change would require little more than adjusting the cash contribution government pays out to regional universities anyway to cover deferred HECS payments. Barber said he would support the call by the Group of Eight and others to lift the price cap on places at all universities. 

“We should deregulate price, but we should deregulate it not just for the student, also for the government, because there are two parties contributing to the cost,” he said. “My overall proposal would be lift the cap off price and forgive the HECS debt of students attending regional campuses. So the student pays a higher price if they wish to attend certain universities, the government pays a higher price if the student wants to attend a [regional] university.”

In his address to conference delegates, Barber said market competition was dominating higher education policy to the possible detriment of regional universities, which anticipate struggling under the new system. “Apart from some one-off assistance to help regional universities compete, existing policy settings display a distinct lack of interest in the fortunes of regional universities,” he said. “The government is clearly not averse to promoting regional development, but in the case of higher education policy, appears dazzled by the lustre of the free market.”

He issued a challenge to policymakers to develop a higher education policy that was distinct to regional Australia, saying it was something that had never been done. Such a policy would recognise and value the multiple economic, social and cultural contributions regional universities made. “What would happen if a regional university shut down? That’s entirely possible under the Bradley Review,” Barber said. 

In the case of UNE, he argued that closure would significantly impact up to 300 students per year who could not afford to relocate to attend university. Further, 78 per cent of UNE’s on-campus graduates secured their first job in a regional area; 72 per cent of all graduates attending UNE from surrounding areas returned to regional areas for their first job – 43 per cent to their home regions.

And losing UNE would drastically change the demography of Armidale, turning it into a “retirement village”, said Barber. “In contrast, a regional education policy would actively encourage students to choose regional universities and would reward universities for contributing to regional development priorities,” he said.

ERA is a national evaluation of Australian university research that the federal government has signalled will increasingly influence its research funding. As such, its design and implementation has been marked by trepidation and controversy, with its system of journal rankings copping the most heated debate. In June, research minister Senator Kim Carr made a surprise announcement that the rankings would be abolished.

The result has been a big drop-off in complaints to the ARC, said its chief executive, Margaret Sheil. But for how long? The ERA 2012 draft guidelines include eight substantive changes to the first 2010 exercise, including new weightings of research outputs for peer review. The one thing still missing that the sector may clamour for, said Sheil, was a measurement of research impact.

Measuring impact within the framework of ERA would be difficult, she said. However, she added, “We’re completely keeping up to date with developments in this internationally, and if there’s an alternative that fits within ERA, we’re happy to do that and accommodate that in the future”.

The Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) has been perhaps the most vocal Australian champion of the importance of measuring research impact, first stating its support in 2006. “CHASS notes the concerns raised more generally about the ERA scheme and where it tends to be geared towards basic research,” said the organisation’s executive director, Angela Magarry.

“[We] would welcome further work to explore how research impacts could be measured and how issues of timing, in terms of the time-span between the original research and its take-up in achieving an impact, could be measured.”

As a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Australia ratified in 1991, the federal government had a responsibility to make primary school education free and available to all. “There are some circumstances, where international students in some visa categories are being asked to pay school fees for their children. However, the Convention on the Rights of the Child obliges Australia to provide education for primary school-aged children for free,” she said.

“From our perspective, there is an issue of the states being allowed to undertake a practice, which is, on a superficial reading, inconsistent with our obligations under the convention,” she told Education Review. While the scale of the fee paying cohort was unclear, Toohey said the fee policy appeared to have a disproportionate impact on the number of people affected.

The commission is currently undertaking a scoping study to examine the impact of the legislation on families in the community; including the impact on their financial situation, family life and access to education. There have been reports of families choosing to home-school their children or deciding not to study or work in Australia.

Research and community consultation is being now underway to gather evidence that current legislation unfairly discriminates against students on the basis of nationality. It will be presented to the minister for education and the Victorian attorney general.

Toohey said Victorian laws which permitted schools to charge fees to temporary residents appeared to be inconsistent with equal opportunity legislation. “It is our view that charging people because they are not citizens is an issue that should be allowed to be brought as a complaint under the Equal Opportunity Act.” It is the role of the commission to draw attention to areas of discrimination even then they are provided for under law, she said.

Our sister publication Education Review has the full story this week.

Bradley recommended the amalgamation of CIT and UC into a dual sector institution by January 1, 2012.She said the amalgamation should proceed underpinned by respect and value accorded to the unique characteristics of culture and traditions of each partner, and respect for the strengths each will bring to the new institution. These provisos were welcomed by both CIT and UC.

Stephen Parker vice – chancellor at UC told Campus Review that parity of esteem in a merger was originally recommended in the earlier review into the university by Alan Hawke, a former chancellor. CIT chief executive Adrian Marron said he too welcomed the parity provisos as acknowledging that the subsumption of TAFEs into universities can happen in dual sector amalgamations. 

“There is always a danger in these things that this can happen but [the report says] if you do these things, then this will militate against that happening,” he said. He described the potential merger as “the best opportunity for a new style of institution, an innovative style of institution which is different from that which exists in Canberra or elsewhere”.

Parker was of the same mind but said inevitably there would be complications which had to be looked at. He identified among these the respective financial status of both institutions. CIT is reporting a deficit and has been for a few years, so that was something that has to be sorted, he said. UC is in surplus. Marron told Campus Review that despite recent reports CUIT was in a good position with student numbers up.

The inherent cultural differences between universities and vocational institutions are also something both will be considering. Marron said the fundamental role of VET education and training was not pathways it was to provide people with skills knowledge to take up employment. “It is too neat in our dialogue to have a split between theory and knowledge and doing things,” he said, and added that he saw a new institution challenging accepted directions and cultures with a new culture emerging over a period of time.

He pointed out though that the fundamental role of VET education and training was not pathways it was to provide people with skills and knowledge to take up employment. “Employability skills is at the heart of it and pathways are the possibility,” he said.

Earlier in the year UC was looking at establishing a polytechnic, a teaching-only sub-degree institution as part of long-term plans for an ‘omniversity’. This would comprise UC College – which has enrolled international and second-chance students since the 1990s – a senior secondary college, a high school, the university and the polytechnic. Parker said even with the merger proposal this was not “off the table”. 

UC history might lend itself to change. It started life as Australia’s first college of advanced education, and during the Dawkins years it was the only CAE which managed to become a university without amalgamating. In her report Bradley said the national pace of change, driven by shifts in the economy was extraordinary and no one could predict what the shape of the tertiary education sector was likely to be even in the medium term. 

“Contestability of funding, encouragement of private provision, changes to the bases of funding and the introduction of new regulatory arrangements will all have an impact. Probably the only point on which nearly everyone agrees is that institutions must have sufficient scale to invest in new developments but be agile and swift. For this to happen, public institutions must cast off the comforts and constraints of their traditional relationship with government,” she said. 

UC and CIT already have inter-institutional pathways and collaborate in areas such as early childhood education and forensic science. Marron said there were 200 pathways programs in place but the student flow-through was not happening. It was time to do things differently.

Professor Larissa Behrendt, chair of the Review of Higher Education Access and Outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, presented a public outline of the review last week. She said among other things, it would consider the current funding framework for meeting participation targets set out in the Bradley Review of higher education.

“When I was approached to do the review, it was prefaced on the idea that the government was reflecting on the way it is putting a lot of money into the sector, [but] doesn’t seem to be getting huge results,” Behrendt told delegates at a Regional Tertiary Education Conference in Coffs Harbour. “So this underlying question of whether the funding formula is right is certainly something that’s open to thinking about.”

However, she said, in devising a path to parity for indigenous students, researchers and academic and non-academic staff, other considerations were just as important. “We’re very mindful of a strong view from indigenous communities that we shouldn’t just be looking at this as a simple close-the-gap exercise…” Behrendt said.

“It’s also about the creation of space for indigenous culture and vibrant indigenous community.” She said the review also would make recommendations on the place of indigenous knowledge within the higher education sector. Without these wider goals, it could be perceived as simply “running an assimilation line”.

Behrendt, a professor of law and indigenous studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, shared statistics with delegates that showed indigenous Australians were far from achieving national targets. “The gap’s actually been widening in the higher education sector,” she said. “The numbers have been increasing in actual figures, but as a percentage, they’re less.”

The role of regional universities as enabling pathways to higher education also would form part of her review, which is due to report to tertiary education minister Chris Evans and research minister Kim Carr at the beginning of 2012. The Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council, a government advisory panel of senior indigenous academics, is a key stakeholder that has had much input into the review’s framework.

The council’s chair, Professor Steve Larkin, also sits on the review panel. Behrendt said universities, but not the TAFE and VET sectors, would be included in the review, which is expected to set its own participation targets for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

“We are looking at the fact that improving higher education outcomes will have improvements for indigenous people and their families and their communities, as well as benefits for higher education institutions themselves, as well as implications for the economy. There’s also, of course, the social and cultural argument about the flow on effects of improving the statistics within the higher education sector,” she said.

The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) announced the review in April, with a call for submissions originally slated for June. At the Coffs conference, Behrendt said she expected the call for submissions to be announced imminently. However, DEEWR could not confirm a date.

The report blamed blowouts in visa processing times, financial pressures on students, variations in visa requirements, changes to the skilled occuptation list and the collapsed of private colleges that specilaisted in training intertnational students for the recent 30 percent drop in the number of international students coming to Australia.

It said that while the government was keen to blame the global economic down turn for the drop, visa problems played a far greater role, as did the wider debate in Australia about immigration. “How did a debate about trade suddenly become a debate about immigration? More to the point, how have foreign visitors to Australia suddenly been caught up in a complex web of incorrect perceptions about this country’s refugee policy, illegal boat people, and immigration and job losses?” the HTA’s report asked. 

“For Australia to maximise its potential export return from education, government must separate the social imperative of providing first class education for our own children from the economic rationalism of offering that same world class education product to people in other countries who are willing to pay for it.

“Australia needs to decide whether it is in the business of international education and in so doing provide a... tangible way to increase the wealth and prosperity of our country.” All stakeholders in the industry need to work together to build a “strong education and training product for export”, the report said, something that will require recognition that “the customer – the international student” is at the centre of this goal. 

But the report also said that generating collaboration between public and private higher education, vocational education and training, providers, along with ELICOS and the government could be the hardest part of the plan – and requiring a joint industry-government body.

Mending Australia’s reputation for international education will require a new strategy with a strong customer focus, a “united culture and powerful brand…implemented through a proactive marketing strategy” and a support policy framework with links to education and immigration regulators to back it up. Claire Field, CEO of ACPET, said her organisation strongly supported the HTA report.

“Australia’s international education sector remains under immense pressure, and our policy settings are simply out of step with our competitors overseas,” she told Campus Review through a spokesperson. “We particularly endorse the HTA’s calls for the Australian Government to work collaboratively with industry to get the sector back on its feet.

Through the Knight Review, the Australian Government has throroughly reviewed our student visa system but has struggled to continue this consultative process through the draft report stage. It’s vital that the government continue this constulation with the release of the Knight report and continued dialogue with the sector.”

Taking up the theme of collaboration Australia’s tertiary education minister Chris Evans chose his visit to India to launch a bilateral Australia India Education Links website – an information portal to support further education and training collaboration between Australian and Indian education and training institutions, business and industry.

The website highlights more than 300 collaborations between Australian and Indian universities, business and industry and was launched by the minister during a meeting with the Confederation of India Industry. Vice-chancellors from 29 Australian and Indian universities met in New Delhi last week to explore collaboration between institutions. It was the first meeting to be held under the new Australia-India Education Council, established earlier this year.

Evans was in India for four days, along with the entourage of 15 Australian vice-chancellors, South Australian Premier Mike Rann, and other education industry representatives. The visit coincided with the start of the passage through Indian parliament of its new Foreign Education Providers Bill, which will place greater scrutiny on the process through which Indian students travel overseas for education and training. 

At a joint press conference with Kapil Sabil, the Indian Minister for Human Resources Development, Evans and Rann spoke about the need for greater cooperation between the two countries in education and training. Evans said the two countries had much in common and a strategic partnership would help both sides, including greater exchange on education and learning. (The Australia-India Education Council was initially conceived in 2008, Sabil discussed it again with then education minister Julia Gillard in April last year.)

“One of the things we agree on is to encourage more participation from Australian students in Indian universities, to do parts of their degrees here, to make sure we get things like credit transfers and mobility of students able to be enhanced so that there are people-to-people links,” said Evans.

Sabil said that establishing common parameters between Australia and India to allow more collaboration in higher and vocational education was important. “If we want student mobility, then mobility cannot take place unless there is quality assurance, mobility cannot take place unless the qualifications are recognized and mobility cannot take place unless there are credit transfers… and unless that mobility takes place, there cannot be any collaboration.” he said. 

He said he believed that the meeting between the vice-chancellors had been productive and shown that “on both sides the vice-chancellors are on the same page. This is not about generalities; this is about putting in place for the years to come a particular framework through which this will happen,” he said. 
Sabil said it was in the interests of both countries to improve vocational education frameworks.

“We know for a fact that India has enormous potential in the context of the large human resource that we have and there is a deficit of human resources in many parts of the world,” he said. “In an ageing population, countries will need young people acquired skills and with quality to actually emmigrate to those countries.”

Evans said he was pleased that the vice-chancellors had discussed practical ways of identifying problems as well as areas where universities could work together developing research and skills training, along with greater collaboration with industry at the vocational level. He said the Knight Review, on international student visas, would be released soon and would also make sure financial pressures on students were fair.

Sabil told the conference that he was confident in the steps the Australian Government was taking to assure the security of Indian students, as well as protecting them from exploitation by private colleges.

Evans said Australia wanted to make sure that students have the capacity to support themselves whilst in Australia. “They have the ability to work up to 20 hours a week to support themselves. But we do not want people coming who need to work 60 hours, because they cannot study successfully. We are offering people opportunities to study, not to work. They can work to support their study.”

OKeeffe graduated Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) with a journalism degree in 2004 and worked for national and regional newspapers and local radio in Ireland, prior to coming to Australia and joining Education Review. He has been a frequent contributor to Campus Review as the concerns of the education sectors become more interlinked.

In 2004 OKeeffe won the John Healy Journalism Award (print category), a prestigious Irish journalism award, and in 2006 was awarded Young Journalist of the Year by the Guild of Agricultural Journalists for a feature on the suicides of three young men in a rural Irish village. 

At Education Review, OKeeffe has written extensively on the government’s reform agenda, including the new national curriculum, professional standards for teachers and principals, national testing and reporting and pre-service teacher training.

In announcing the award, Osman said that OKeeffe has provided outstanding service to teachers and the education community through his work as a journalist and editor, by breaking news stories on political and educational developments affecting schools, analysing issues on a wide range of topics and encouraging the education sector to participate in the wider debate on national issues that affect students and schools as well as related learning and teaching practices. 

The Australian College of Educators (ACE) is a national professional association which represents educators in all sectors and systems. The College provides a forum for Australian educators to share expertise, provide analysis of educational policy, and maintain professional standards among educators.

The Journalism Award was presented to OKeeffe at a ceremony in Sydney on Friday. Previous winners of the award have included Adele Horin, Sydney Morning Herald, Justine Ferrari, The Australian and Richard Aedy, ABC Radio National.

“Obviously this struck a chord, lots of people posted comments about their memories. It’s interesting that a topic that had nothing to do with my main topics struck this chord. The topic on which anyone can have an opinion tend to get the most feedback, whereas the topics that rely on some expert or technical knowledge get much less.”

Norton is currently a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, but as of August 15 will be the director of the Grattan Institute’s higher education program. Higher education is certainly one of the most common topics on his blog, but it’s by no means the only one: activism, bureaucracy, business, citizenship, conservatism, crime and punishment, democracy and elections, economics, employment, federalism, free speech, language, media, immigration, politics, religion, health, tax… all these and more are up for debate.

“It’s mostly about my social science interests that I can’t work on in detail but nevertheless am interested in,” said Norton. “I try to focus on things that aren’t being covered somewhere, information that isn’t getting a run.” Norton has been blogging since 2003, when he was part of the libertarian/centre right group blog Catalaxy. His personal blog has been running since 2006.

“It was a very informal start, it wasn’t part of any strategy to promote my views – this was in the very early days of blogging,” he said. “But I found it fun because you get a lot of immediate feedback on what you’re saying, it’s a useful way of trying out ideas before you commit to something more substantial – there are people who can point out the flaws.”

There are other benefits to running a blog too, he said. “You get some useful back channel feedback. There are people who don’t feel comfortable offering their views in public, even anonymously on a blog, but they will email you or call you,” said Norton. “Even though I didn’t set it up to be part of my work, it’s had a good synergy with it.

“I think for academics it can be a useful way of creating discussion of ideas, particularly when you’ve got quite a specific field of interests,” said Norton. But he said that in some ways, the time of the blog had “peaked”. “I think they’ve taken a battering from the upswing in mainstream media websites like the Drum and the Conversation, they provide an outlet for opinion when in the old days it was the op-ed pages or blogs, with not many other forums.”

Norton’s blog suggestion
• Tyler Cowan’s Marginal Revolution

Dr Dear’s most high profile contribution to date is his estimates of the likely changes in mortality and morbidity across Australia due to heat and cold to the end of this century for the 2008 Garnaut Climate Change Review. He is also a contributing author of the upcoming fifth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It turns out our climate “comfort zone” is actually very narrow; as soon as you deviate away by only a few degrees mortality shifts upwards.

By combining weather pattern projections with both demographic and health data, Dear  has concluded Australia could be facing over 800,000 more cases of gastroenteritis, a sharp and rapidly accelerating increase in heat related deaths into the tens of thousands from mid century, and a significant movement south of the serious mosquito-borne disease, dengue fever.  Now with access to Australia’s fastest supercomputer facility – which opened, fortuitously, at ANU in 2009 – these initial models of three specific health risks look “quite simple”, he says.

Dear and his team are continuing to build increasingly sophisticated models, taking into account multiple future weather scenarios – down to daily conditions – plus “de-personalised” cause of death data, hospital admissions, geographic location and local characteristics affecting health such as proximity to medical care and air pollution; which already adds up to millions of rows of data. And, that’s really just a beginning.  “Climate change doesn’t kill people in a novel way. A very large number of risks increase a little bit....we have to start thinking in mathematically subtle ways about probabilities.

“The truth is not simple,” he says of the disappointing tone and level of Australia’s current public debate.
By way of illustration, consider the potential impacts of heat and drought in rural Australia. Direct heat-related deaths are one thing, but we also know rural suicide rates and depression, for example, increase during severe drought. There is also a well documented link between depression and cardiovascular disease, for example. So far, the health risks for Australia of extreme heat, gastroenteritis and dengue fever have only been modelled separately.

“But, if we are really going to understand the impact of climate change on health we have to put a myriad of risks together,” he says. That way everything from emerging infectious diseases to underlying, subtle changes to existing health threats can be cross referenced with “adaptations”, like air conditioning in our homes and workplaces, heat wave alarms, even mass planting of trees to combat urban heat generated by vast areas of concrete, as well as issues such as access to medical care.

One way to do this is to set up a “virtual Australia” with every citizen represented (but not identified) as a distinct unit, and a large range of data summaries from this month’s census mapped on. On top of this “population simulator” any number of variables can be overlaid, he says. His own team, part of Australia’s Climate Change Adaptation Research Network for Human Health includes a mathematician, a climate scientist, and epidemiologist, an emergency physician and a GP to ensure the widest range of inputs.

For a biostatistician accustomed to working with solid, real world data – initially in clinical trials and then in epidemiology – Dear says the single biggest challenge is modelling into a range of possible future climate scenarios. Dear came to the ANU via Cambridge, Reading, Harvard and Newcastle Universities and the five years he has been working on the health risks posed by climate change is a natural extension of his early work in epidemiology, he says. Nevertheless, this is relatively new field.

Globally, climate change and health risks were definitively linked by the World Health Organisation in 2000, which then attributed 2.4  per cent of worldwide diarrhoea and 6 per cent of malaria to climate change. The first large scale, quantifiable impacts on human health are likely to be changes to the geographic range and seasonality of some infectious diseases – including malaria and dengue fever and food-borne infections such as salmonellosis which peak in warmer months. Climate sensitive diseases are already among the largest global killers; diarrhoea, malaria and protein-energy malnutrition.

However, the future public health consequences loom even larger. Although much attention has been focused on rising sea levels and the areas facing inundation and the immediate death and injuries caused by severe weather events; wider, large scale disruption to food-production with changing rainfall patterns, including longer droughts and more intense floods, will put intense pressure on the world’s health. Developing countries have been identified as especially vulnerable by international agencies; “rain-fed” agriculture, for example, employs 70 per cent of Africa’s entire working population.

While Australia has considerably more resources to “adapt” – and a national climate change adaptation research network is already in place – we are also facing considerable health challenges. Despite Australia’s vocal climate change sceptics, Dear has no doubt about the urgency of his task. A new global collaboration, led by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was established last year, through which researchers from all over the world, including Dear, will share their “models” and methods; a positive development which should inform national models everywhere.

Personally, Dear says he does “whatever my teenage daughter tell me to” when it comes to his own “green” credentials; riding a bike to work, harvesting water in the family’s Canberra home and planning to buy the first electric cars to come onto the market. But, personal behaviour isn’t really what he is worried about. Firstly, he’s dismayed by the divisive public debate over whether or not climate change caused, for example, the recent Queensland floods or the deadly Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria.  

“The essential point is we keep asking the wrong question. Floods and fires are caused by extreme weather events and no single weather event is caused, or will ever be caused, by climate change,” he says. What the Australian public is apparently so reluctant to grasp is that climate change increases the frequency of extreme events – so that what we need to be considering is changing probabilities and risks, not looking for simplistic ways to lay blame. And he believes Australia’s failure to act to date is both an “embarrassment and a disgrace”.

“For Australia action on climate change is a moral issue, it isn’t even about whether or not the small amount of CO2 we put out makes a difference. We can’t expect to stand up on the world stage and criticise China and India when we have no moral authority ourselves,” he says. From a scientific point of view much, much more can be done to pre-warn us about the health risks ahead. 

Just as climate scientists started with simple models just looking at the atmosphere, then added interactions with oceans, the same kinds of sophisticated model can be developed for health – with enough funding, he says. For Australia, the most urgent issues are likely to be dengue fever and the impact of shifting agricultural to new regions, and the likely dismantling entire rural communities, as weather patterns change. However, only with sophisticated projections can we build policies and strategies to adapt.

But, watching the politics of climate change in Australia and worldwide, he says, is a different matter. “When you stare the facts in the face they are scary. The magnitude of the disaster has not been recognised, even if we act now things will get worse because CO2 levels cause slow change with a long “lag” effect – personally, I am very frightened about the future.”

The program was closely monitored by the NSWNA, an organisation which has an intimate knowledge of the education and skills required for aged care work. There were stringent guidelines for the RTO delivering the qualification and standards set for those who could teach the program. There was an expectation that the rules governing Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) and assessment of skills articulated in the Certificate IV Trainer and Assessor (TAA) qualification would be followed. 

Over subsequent years, I have delivered the qualification for a number of private RTOs and observed the deterioration of a once substantive qualification into a meaningless piece of paper. The deterioration of the qualification is related to the demand for aged care workers and the focus on the fiscal rather than on the person – the person being both the person receiving the education and the person who is the potential recipient of care. 

The inconsistency in the outcomes of the qualification can be related to the qualifications and experience of those doing the training, the standard and quantity of the resources and equipment provided by the RTO to acquire and practice skills, the amount and quality of face to face learning, the length of exposure to the reality of the aged care setting and skills and competency assessment. In each of these components, there is the ability to rationalise costs by the RTO and increase profits. 

Of particular concern is that of skills and competency assessment. One strategy to get competency assessment done expediently is that the RTO will withhold payment to the trainer for work they have done until all paper work related to the module they have taught has been submitted to the RTO. This means that the trainer must present the students’ signed competency forms prior to receiving any money. How reliable then, in this instance, is the competency assessment process? Another problem occurs when the student is placed in an aged care facility for experience.

Here, the student is buddied with an aged-care worker who is expected to sign skills assessment and competency documents without having any training in competency assessment and without being given any extra time or reimbursement to fulfil this role. Then a person with the required Certificate IV TAA is required to counter sign the competency and the complex, expensive process of competency assessment has been completed at very little cost to the RTO but with very little surety that competency has been achieved.

A significant portion of the training program can involve the completion of workbook by the students. These books are given to the students to be filled in and returned for marking. There is no guarantee that the student who was given the book was the person completing it and there is little follow up to ensure that what has been written has been translated into learning and skills. The book eliminates the need for expensive face to face education. This is significant if an aged care facility is contracting an RTO to deliver training.

The fewer hours in the class room, the more hours the student can be rostered for clinical work and fewer costs related to time away at training. When RTOs are vying for contracts with aged care facilities, it is the lower cost and the shorter training time that is most important. In a recent article in Aged Care INsite magazine, Sue Lyons from United Voice asked why complaints about training providers have not been raised in forums other than the media and the Productivity Commission. They have, but no-one was listening. 

Skills and attitudes of aged care workers were one part of Rhonda Nay’s thesis in 1993. A result of her willingness to highlight deficits incurred the wrath of some facility managers and according to the media at the time, Nay was banned from doing further research in some facilities. In 2002, Somerville investigated how students in a Certificate III Aged Care Work program, learnt to care for older people.

Her work demonstrated the significance of providing skilled mentors in the workplace so that the nuances of caring for the heterogeneous cohort of people with multiple chronic conditions could be explored and explained in the clinical setting. Further, through interviews with the students, it became clear that the students valued the opportunity to reflect on their clinical experiences as part of their formal education.This significant research received recognition within adult education forums but has been ignored by the aged care sector.

Margaret Somerville and Alison McConnell-Imbriotis (2004) examined the value of using the learning organisation framework for determining learning needs of an aged care organisation and Stephen Billet and Somerville (2004) articulated the significance of learning to the aged care workers’ sense of self. However, the paucity of aged care workers’ clinical decision making skills were again demonstrated in Anita de Bellis’ thesis in 2006. None of this research has been used to change and evolve aged care education instead kudos is given to those who implement the most cost effective strategiesirrespective of their outcome.

My own PhD thesis (2009) exposed the level of bullying between aged care workers when a different approach to skills development was introduced. The thesis articulated the price paid by aged care workers when they spoke of the abject nature of the environment in which they worked. When I spoke of those conditions to managers of aged care facilities, I then became the target and felt the repercussions; the poor level of care and the bullying between staff was my doing because I was a “poor educator.” The cost of speaking the abject in aged care has professional, personal and financial cost which many find too high a price to pay.

The choice is to remain silent or, as many other very valuable and experienced workers have done and continue to do, leave the industry. Some move away from the clinical to the academic where there is a chance to have a voice. Organisations who are recruiting aged care workers can be assured of one thing and that is, there is no surety of the standard of education and skills of the person presenting with a Certificate III aged care qualification. Yet, uniformity of standards at each level of qualification is purported to be one of the reasons for the existence of the Australian Training Framework.

Dr Maree Bernoth has over 20-years experience in aged care in roles including registered nurse, educator, researcher and academic. Her initial research was related to aged care workers’ safety particularly when they participate in manual handling tasks. Currently, Bernoth is a lecturer in research and aged care at Charles Sturt University and is course coordinator for post-graduate mental health studies. She is researching impacts on rural families with members in aged care.

At a recent conference in Madrid, Ian Hawke, interim CEO of TEQSA, commented that: “A formal standards-based approach in the information domain at the domestic level is new…A broad expectation that can be anticipated through this domain is a requirement for higher education providers to make a range of specified information available to students to enable them to make more informed decisions about where to study.”

Given the range of consultations already underway, it could be tempting to postpone decisions on appropriate Information Standards until the other standards are settled. However, TEQSA’s likely data requirements resemble a complex jigsaw, where pieces may become locked in place before it is clear what overall picture they need to represent. DEEWR is already putting together the My University website and has placed a tender for a new information system, so presumably TEQSA information requirements will need to be fleshed out soon.

Likely data requirements for the five TEQSA standards domains will be partly interlinked, and relate in turn to those for the My University website, performance funding indicators, compacts, annual reporting requirements, the TEQSA risk matrix and (probably) TEQSA’s foreshadowed thematic reviews. Compliance with growing lists of requirements has resourcing and systems implications for institutions, and if the data requirements are separately scoped, TEQSA could end up with an overall data jigsaw where pieces overlap or leave gaps.

Quantitative indicators underpinning TEQSA Standards will be based on data already being collected from universities, together with new requirements. Both old and new requirements will now apply to all higher education providers and will require consistent data definitions, collection and verification processes.

Again, quoting Hawke’s presentation, “One of the challenges which TEQSA must confront is the adequacy of data collections…While comprehensive data collections from universities have been undertaken for decades, the same is not true of Australia’s 150 private providers. Under current arrangements, annual reports by private providers to State and Territory regulatory agencies are mandated. But there has been no standardisation of data definitions or quality audits to verify the accuracy of these returns (audited financial statements aside).” 

Given the increasing numbers of institutions offering both VET and HE qualifications, it’s not surprising that both TEQSA and its VET counterpart, the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA), recognise the need to work together on developing information requirements for dual sector providers. Alignment of compliance requirements such as reporting timelines and processes will assist providers who are currently burdened by inconsistent reporting requirements of multiple accreditation agencies.

A future merger of TEQSA and ASQA should facilitate more effective cross-sectoral benchmarking of quality and standards, although this will require the combined agency to tackle significant structural differences. At present, the two sectors retain different approaches to student survey processes and to defining and monitoring indicators such as student enrolments versus headcount, student contact hours versus effective full time load, and module completion rate as compared to academic success rate.

State VET funding priorities on efficiency measures such as delivery per full-time staff member, as compared to Federal HE emphasis on student-staff ratios, continue to drive VET and HE approaches to quality assurance in rather different directions. Governmental data publication priorities do strongly influence institutional behaviour – witness previous institutional strategies to maximise outcomes from the Learning and Teaching Performance Fund. If, for example, questions on co-curricular social opportunities are included in the new University Experience Questionnaire, then related funding proposals may well receive more sympathetic hearings within institutions in future.

The My University website is likely to represent a key component of the jigsaw, even though it won’t have the status of a TEQSA Standard. Hawke commented that medium term TEQSA priorities will include the “relationship of TEQSA information requirements with those of the Commonwealth as funder and any new requirements for the My University website”. In this context, it’s instructive to explore the companion My Schools website. The first-time user is naturally drawn to data that allows comparisons between schools, just as the comparative ‘stars’ ratings in the Good Universities Guide grab the attention of its readers. My School provides comparative indicators such as ‘per student net recurrent income’, index of socio-economic advantage, and national literacy and numeracy (NAPLAN) test results.  

Early indications are that the My University website will also allow institutional comparisons on issues such as ‘results of student surveys, measures of graduate skills, and the quality of teaching and learning outcomes’. If the My School use of NAPLAN results is any indication, users of the My University website are likely to pay particular attention to student survey results when comparing institutions. This highlights the importance of the current debate on the validity of testing the skills of Australian students via the US Collegiate Learning Assessment test (CLA).

Given the complex interplay between teaching and research funding within universities, any introduction of My University financial comparisons based on ‘per student net income’ would be nothing if not controversial. Indicators of the ‘quality of teaching and learning outcomes’ will also need to be handled very carefully.

The current TEQSA discussion paper on Teaching and Learning Standards emphasises the importance of qualitative approaches such as peer review. Such qualitative approaches can provide rich data to inform internal quality improvement, but may not easily provide indicators that can be compared across institutions. The developers of the My University website may choose instead to rely on the same quantitative learning and teaching indicators that DEEWR intends to use for performance funding via compacts, but even here pieces of the jigsaw are missing, as the current compact template refers only to a yet-undefined “composite indicator of teaching quality”.

The discussion paper speculates that this composite indicator “may include data about staff qualifications, professional development, teacher induction programs and institutional approaches to peer review”. Currently no agreed bases of comparison exist on these issues between universities, much less across the higher education sector, and this debate also needs to take place in a tertiary context: as John Mitchell observed in Campus Review on July 25, issues of appropriate quality measures for teaching and learning are important for the success of ASQA as well as of TEQSA.

The current absence of well-accepted comparative measures in some standards domains, together with new implications for institutional resourcing and systems, will provide TEQSA with interesting challenges. If TEQSA is to gain respect, it will be important that pragmatic considerations such as data requirements for performance funding and for the My University website don’t tip the balance too far in the direction of compliance-based data provision and away from facilitating quality improvement.

The art in putting together this jigsaw will be to balance the desire for rich, qualitative information to support evidence-based improvement within institutions, with blunter but more cost-efficient quantitative measures to facilitate benchmarking across the sector.

Professor Margaret Mazzolini is Pro Vice Chancellor and Chair of the Academic Senate at Swinburne University of Technology.

Professor Spencer Zifcak, Allen Myers Chair of Law at the Australian Catholic University, told the National Summit on the Mental Health of Tertiary Students that too often, students found themselves in a cold, confusing and bureaucratic world when attempting to seek help for their problems. Zifcak is a member of the Mental Health Tribunal of Victoria, and spoke on the importance of legal and regulatory frameworks when dealing with the mentally ill – with “legality, fairness and engagement” being key principles, he said.

Zifcak related a series of emails between a student, a lecturer and a head of school at a major university, in which a request for help was met with a form response stating that a hearing would be arranged in line with university regulations and the matter could be dealt with there. “I’m afraid I’ve got myself into a lot of trouble. Could I make an appointment to see you?” the letter from the student read.  The head of school responded, “You will shortly be contacted by the university regarding the student advocacy process. The student advocacy process is a formal requirement of the university…. It is recommended we follow this process.”

Zifcak said he had probably read the emails and the exchange that followed between staff discussing whether to refer the student to counselling “about 50 times and gaped in utter despair. We’ve got a student over here in trouble. We’ve got a head of school over here who responds to a cry for help by saying, ‘no, I won’t see you. In fact there are procedures for this. I’m not entirely sure what you want to talk to me about, but the procedures relate to that’.” “I could not think of worse way of responding,” said Zifcak.

Staff at universities need to be better versed in their options – and the law – when recommending help for students, or when considering disciplinary action. Exclusion – that is, removal from university – in the case of poor behaviour should be an option of last resort, he said. Staff, and in particular counsellors, also need to be aware of the range of services that they can refer the student to. 

One area where universities need to institute change is in disciplinary tribunals, where mentally ill students may find themselves after acting out. The adversarial nature of tribunals can make them a deeply distressing experience for a student with a mental illness, and an effort needs to be made to make sure they are fully prepared for the meeting, said Zifcak. They should be fully briefed beforehand on the charges, regulations they have breached, their rights and then consequences of the tribunal – and they must be given reasonable notice.

“It would be best that the notice is not couched in overly legal language but rather with precision to explain what is being claimed and what they are allowed to do,” he said, “It would also be best to advise that they can come with a family member, a support person or a legal representative.” The role of support people in proceedings involving the mentally ill is particularly important as it may allow the student to better present their case, he said.

Since students with mental illnesses could often engage in behavior that could antagonize tribunal members, it was important that the hearing be kept as calm as possible. Questions needed to be asked in a “conversational” tone, and students should not be “badgered”, Zifcak said. Zifcak emphasized that exclusion as a disciplinary measure should be seen as a last resort for universities.

Finally, to staff were looking for ways to reduce problems as a result of mental illness among their own students, he advised: “Learn people’s names right at the start of semester” – it will help you identify problems more quickly, he said, and students will be more likely to come to you for advice.

“Regional universities matter,” said Professor Peter Lee, vice-chancellor of Southern Cross University, in his opening address. “Too often regional Australia is defined by what it is not, areas outside of the major capital cities, instead of what it is – seven million people (one-third of the country’s population), 67 per cent of the country’s export revenue, 99 per cent of the country’s land mass.”

New England University vice-chancellor Professor Jim Barber advocated a step further, issuing a challenge to government to develop a tertiary education policy specific to regions – an idea Independent MP Rob Oakeshott said he’d like to spearhead. At the conference, Oakeshott told Campus Review he would look at the details of Barber’s proposal. He added he was concerned that not just regional tertiary education, but education as a whole, might fall from the nation’s agenda. 

“We are nuts if we don’t place a real value on national education reform as a major contributor,” Oakeshott told CR. “I’m a worrier, so I’m constantly worried about good ideas not landing.” It was a theme echoed in his address, when Oakeshott told delegates that although he supported the carbon tax package, it was education – not climate change – that presented the great moral and economic challenge of our time. 

“If we cannot take this moment in time to start to seriously address the inequities around access and participation rates in education in Australia, we have all failed, and failed badly, and I don’t want to be part of the great failure of our time,” he said. Academics said they were equally anxious to caplitalise on the unprecedented opportunity afforded the regions by the current state of national politics. Several derided a report produced by the Grattan Institute in May that claimed regional universities made little difference to regional economic development. 

“As with their metropolitan counterparts, the core business of regional universities is to teach students and conduct research. Why should regional universities be required to anything more than that?” asked Barber. “When was the last time you saw a media outlet or a research institute examine the [economic] contribution of the University of Sydney to the Sydney local government authority? The idea is absurd, but it’s precisely the logic that the Grattan Institute proposed.”

By far the biggest threat discussed, however, was the introduction of a demand-driven system in 2012. The reform is designed to help meet Bradley Review participation targets, but many regional universities fear it will create a winners and losers situation in which they will not be able to fairly compete. “Arguably, metropolitan universities are better placed to capitalise on the opportunities that this development brings,” said CQ University deputy vice chancellor (academic and research) Jennelle Kyd at the conference.

“The availability of places at prestigious metropolitan universities increases, and more prospective students from regional areas are likely to gravitate towards these institutions. It’s about the prestigious reputation – I’ve seen no arguments yet that the quality of the educational outcomes for students differs significantly.” TAFEs would be increasingly threatened, too, by competition from private RTOs, said Michael O’Loughlin, CEO of Wodonga Institute of TAFE. He called for a more concerted effort in Victoria to get “the bulk of low-performing organisations out of our space”.

In delivering a paper on new regional loading arrangements, however, Charles Sturt University vice chancellor Professor Ian Goulter reminded delegates that the new system also afforded opportunity. “In the end, the key driver is [providing] courses that students want to study… If you put the right course on, people will come,” Goulter said. Again, the regions found a friend in Oakeshott on the issue, who said he would do whatever he could to prevent the loss of students and closure of institutions.

Professor Simon Marginson from the Centre for the Study of Higher Education told those attending a national summit on the mental health of tertiary students that social isolation and dislocation played a large role in international student experiences in Australia. He was drawing from the results of a study he and two colleagues conducted last year with 200 international students. He said a larger national study was now needed.

“A national study is needed and merited because international student needs are distinctive,” he said. “[This was] not because international students are more fraught or more disadvantaged than other students, although in extremis that’s probably true, but because international student experiences, pathways and worlds are different.’ International students are “outsiders, temporary residents without citizen status”, said Marginson, and they usually stay that way.

“Second, most international students experience information asymmetry, or a gap. This diminishes over time, but it affects areas such as housing, a lack of local knowledge, unfamiliarity with the education system,” he said. 

With most international students coming from non-English speaking backgrounds, problems with language proficiency and communicating presented another set of problems, affecting economic progress and the development of cross-cultural relationships. And “cultural difference” played a constant, though diminishing role in the international student experience, said Marginson.

“Most international students experience cultural difference with the need to adjust to different cultural requirements and cultural zones at once, for example in relation to study regimes, expectations about teachers, and institutional behaviour,” he said. “The effects of cultural difference diminish over time and become easier to manage but they rarely disappear.”

Marginson said these factors don’t operate on their own, either, but interact with each other, resulting often in informal segregation, as well as stereotyping and abuse of students. Depending on the recency of a student’s arrival, for instance, cultural differences may well be aggravated by communication gaps. 

Their treatment by governments and institutions reaffirmed their outsider status too:  charging international students full price for public transport and making them pay for their children to attend public school were among the ways they were made to feel like outsiders.

“International student well being and success are nested in the intersection of three factors: language proficiency and communication, personal advocacy and efficacy, and cross cultural experiences and relationships.  Those three things together determine much of the international student’s experience of success or failure,” said Marginson.

Language proficiency in particular was key to international students forming cross-cultural friendships and being able to act for themselves, and manage their education and personal relationships. Any strategies on managing mental health in international students needed to focus on building strong personal agency in students. “Assumptions that international students are weak, dependent students, incapable of occupying the pilot position in student-centred learning” are wrong, however, said Marginson.

“I found most international students are strong, determined and resilient. They know what they want… they have much agency. In the first few weeks these students must adjust to Australian tertiary education, without having gone through secondary school, find a place to live, often with persons they don’t know, navigate the streets and find out where things are, budget in the local context and perhaps find and start working in a new job in a new country, often without language proficiency,” he said. “That’s a big ask.”

See related story  

Minister for Tertiary Education, Chris Evans, said the government expected to make an announcement about the permanent appointments to TEQSA shortly. Until that time, Bradley would act as chief commissioner and Ian Hawke would become an acting commissioner, following on from his role as interim CEO.

TEQSA brings together the regulatory functions previously undertaken by the states and territories and the quality assurance activities undertaken by the Australian Universities Quality Agency, reducing the number of higher education regulatory and quality assurance bodies from nine to one.

“The implementation of a single national regulator for the higher education sector is a key step in improving the quality and consistency of higher education regulation around the nation,” Evans said in a media statement. “It will see the foundations of the higher education system being based on quality, integrity and sustainability and will allow for universities and higher education provides to grow in response to their unique goals and missions.”

TEQSA will regulate providers using a new national framework which will set out the threshold in which all higher education providers must meet in order to be registered and deliver higher education in Australia.

Its regulatory approach was developed after extensive and sometimes fraught consultation with the states and territories and the higher education sector.
Yet to be decided are the threshold standards to be met by higher education providers. These include provider, qualification, research, and teaching and learning standards, among others.
 

Final decisions on such minimum standards are expected to rest with an advisory panel that TEQSA will establish. Teaching and learning standards are also on the agenda, with a discussion paper released by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations in June.
 
Related links http://www.campusreview.com.au/pages/section/article.php?s=News&idArticle=21246

http://www.campusreview.com.au/pages/section/article.php?s=News&idArticle=20931
http://www.campusreview.com.au/pages/section/article.php?s=News&idArticle=20061

Here in New Zealand it has been the between-semester break for education institutions, not that educators get a break with the conference season in full swing.

I get a sense that a mood for change is developing.

New Zealand has moved ahead of other English-speaking countries in putting together the pieces of the educational jigsaw that will allow for new approaches to be made in tackling the issues of disengagement and the development of more effective pathways between secondary school and further and higher education.

Those jigsaw pieces are the development of a policy setting that allows for flexibility, the existence of a legislative framework, the solution of cross-sector funding arrangements and the development of new and innovative programs.

Two conferences held in the break have driven home the points that the educational environment in New Zealand needs to change and that there is no longer any excuse not to change.

New Zealand and Australia share a pretty grim set of statistics of failure, of disengagement, and of poor performance by priority learner groups (i.e. indigenous groups, migrant groups, students with special needs). It is clear that continued tinkering with the current education system cannot lead to the sort of changes that improve results. Nor can it result in changes that are achieved quickly enough to beat the speed of the demographic changes.

The first conference brought together a wide group of educators involved in working across the interface of secondary and tertiary – secondary/tertiary programs, trades academies, service academies and mentoring schemes. It was exciting to learn of changes happening in small ways, to hear of results that thrilled and offered new hope for many students.

It was even more exciting to see the energy being brought to the challenges of providing new and multiple pathways that reach out to students and lead them into higher-level programs and qualifications. It was the view of one international speaker that something very special was happening.

The conference was put together by the Centre for Studies in Multiple Pathways at Manukau Institute of Technology, the site of New Zealand’s first Tertiary High School – a radical new program that integrates the school qualifications (NCEA) with post-secondary career and technical qualifications. It has reported some encouraging results after its first year of operation especially in the performance of Maori and Pasifika students.

This was of particular interest to the second conference that brought together a wide range of educators engaged in different endeavours in Maori education. Again the focus was on pathways and pipelines and the need to promote pro-active interventions in both if we are to lift the performance of Maori students – something we simply cannot afford not to do.

A project reported to the conference has seen the development of a web-based tool for Maori students to design and to identify pathways into programs that already exist. We know the provision of accurate and detailed information is central to intelligent career advice and guidance, and this is a great start.

What has been exciting is that both conferences were evidence of action that encourages us to believe there is a hope developing that by working differently we really can get different results. As the title of a major report released in New Zealand in the past fortnight said – we need “more ladders” and “fewer snakes”.

What educators are realising is that action is possible and no longer - well, at least in New Zealand - is there any excuse for inaction. It is no longer a case of “us” and “them”. You know the scenario: “We want to change but they won’t let us!”, “The regulations are so restrictive!”, “It’s the curriculum that isn’t appropriate!”, “Secondary should be ...!”, “tertiary should be ...” Same old, same old, boring, boring!

I pointed out to the conferences that while the education pipeline may be badly leaking, quite a number of students are getting through it with great success. Long may that continue. But now is the time for us to once and for all fix those leaks.

Bill Gates once summed it up: “We used to say that we needed to do something about all those young people who were failing, because it is hurting them. Now we say we need to do something about all those young people who are failing, because it is hurting us!”

For those interested the material presented at the two conferences mentioned above are available at www.manukau.ac.nz/multiple.pathways and at www.twoa.ac.nz/mite. 

If international students can’t or won’t travel to your university, take your university to them: that has been the guiding idea behind the University of Canberra’s Centre for Customs and Excise Studies, which has just launched a joint venture in Sri Lanka.

Run by LAUGFS Australia Higher Education Services in Colombo, the school will initially offer vocational programs on border management, security, customs and excise, although postgraduate programs are also planned. 

It is hardly the centre's first overseas venture. Students from 35 countries are studying its postgraduate programs either online or in Canberra, Thailand, Kenya and Abu Dhabi. About 60 per cent of the students are public servants, with the rest are from the private sector. 

Demand for courses on border security expanded greatly after the September 11, 2011 attacks, says Associate Professor Stephen Muller, the centre’s manager of offshore programs. Suddenly the CCES found its programs immensely popular.

“After 9/11 the security issues of border protection became a focal point because countries completely revamped their customs roles," he said. "We were the first to get into the market. Customs was not in the academic field. 

“We are in a niche market, there is no other leading university that offers these specialised courses [in English]

“Munster does it in German, Riga does it in Russian, so we have a kind of competitive advantage over the others, and agencies like AusAid, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and some governments themselves sponsor the students.”

The centre’s main focus for recruitment is the international market, and in the past year or so it has become concerned by the decline in international students coming to Australia. 

But this was no reason to stop targeting the overseas market, he said.

“We thought it was a good time to explore the possibility of taking our services to them,” he said.

“In our courses most of the students are senior public servants. For them to come to Australia and study for 18 months is a huge opportunity cost for their respective agencies, and most of them are the good workers in those places, so even if the financial arrangements are in place, the administrations are reluctant to part with them for 18 months." 

Students will initially attend intensive classes at the Colombo campus. The bulk of their work, however, is via distance education, with the students returning for several sessions over the course of their degree.  

At first the programs will be vocational but by next year the eight postgraduate degrees in customs and revenue offered by the CCES will also be available.

The school will not only be open to Sri Lankans – Muller hopes students from across South and Southeast Asia will be attracted. Postgraduate programs taught with the University of Colombo have already lured students from the Maldives, for instance. 

“We think there’s a good potential,” said Muller, adding that the CCES was also open to the possibility of other Australian universities, institutes of technology and TAFES using the centre to offer their own courses in Sri Lanka.  A law now before the Sri Lankan parliament will, if passed, allow foreign universities to set up full campuses in the country.

Students assured entry to postgraduate courses at the University of Western Australia because they have entered with a high year 12 score will still have to perform at the same level as their classmates, the academic in charge of the university’s course restructuring says.

From next year, UWA will adapt the Melbourne Model by introducing its New Courses program, in which undergraduate degrees will be streamlined into four general degrees that students must complete before going on to specialised professional study at postgraduate level. 

The university hopes that by guaranteeing a place in a postgraduate course to students who have performed well at high school, they will offset the concerns of students who do not want to spend three or four years doing a generalised degree before entering vocational study.

But there is a caveat, said Professor Ian Reid, senior academic reviewer at UWA. 

“We are not offering unconditional guarantees. We’re calling it assured entry, but it is of course conditional on continuing satisfactory performance: we don’t want to have them imagine they can just coast along.

 “What they will get is, if they’ve got a suitable level of achievement, will be a formal, conditional, offer to commence a particular postgraduate course at a given time. It won’t be guaranteed forever, but it will be an incentive to students who have already shown how good they are.

“What we’re trying to say is we want you here, we value high performers, we will put your name down on a place for postgraduate as a message that we’d like your enrolment.” 

Up to one-third of places in some postgraduate courses could be reserved for students who scored well in their HSC, although numbers would vary from course to course depending on demand and other constraints. 

The number of medical students, for example, would be restricted because places are already limited due to the finite number of internships available at hospitals every year. 

Reid said he was unable to give specifics such as the score range or the number of students who could be involved.

“We’re not using the ATAR rank as the line. We’re not saying students over 98 or whatever are in the mix for this because we do need to calibrate it very carefully, so we’d prefer to go the quota route. 

“It’s going to be restricted to high-performing students who wish to book a place on the basis of their confidence in where they want to go. We’re not being more specific because we simply can’t know until we see what the range of people is who want to nominate for preferred entry.”

Reid stressed that not every high-achieving student would necessarily want to nominate for a postgraduate program on arrival at university.

 “What we’re trying to do is balance two different and equally important principles in our new course structure.

“We want to enable students to [be informed] and have a merit and equity basis for seeking access to postgrad, but on the other hand also ensure that those who already have a strong sense of direction and a high level of accomplishment before they begin their first degree can be assured of an eventual place in postgrad, rather than be tempted to enrol directly in vocational degrees. We want the good students to look out and say, 'I’m going to have to wait but they’ve offered me an assured entry'.”

Reid had previously told ===Campus Review=== that part of idea behind the university’s move to the new structure was that it would allow students to develop and overcome disadvantages in their schooling before applying for specialised degrees in medicine, law and engineering.

“We are very concerned that in the prestigious professions like law and medicine, entry has very much been based on what school you happened to go to – it will now be based much more on performance at the undergraduate level,” he said last month. 

“There is more equity, more opportunity for people to develop their interests and discover what they want to do. By the time they graduate they will be in a position to show what they can do and level things out, so that any disadvantage they suffered during their schooling has been minimised.”

Reid said the assured places plan would not change this.

“They’ll need to maintain a minimum weighted average mark and satisfy specified prerequisites for the program. It may involve an interview, a suitable test of aptitude, like the GAMSAT for medicine.

“It’s not a free ride and it’s not something that puts them into a privileged category. It’s simply recognising the reality that a certain number of students do well throughout their studies and that we want to assure them that we’re keen to have them.”

There will be limited number of assured entry places, and they will be reserved for the students with the highest year 12 scores, although Reid could not say how many there would be.  He said the university was trying attract a range of backgrounds to its degrees, not just “high-flyers”.

“We’re not saying you are automatically given a place. People have to apply, there will be a quota and that will ensure the majority of places will remain open for competitive entry. 

“This isn’t actually a radical change, relying on the quota principle: it’s in line with what we already do. 

"Medicine, and dentistry have places reserved for quotas, which include 25 per cent for rural medicine and other smaller proportions for outer metropolitan area and indigenous students. 

"This is just another part of that pre-allocated mix but it still leaves plenty of place for people who are not initially shining to show as they mature to show what they can do. Even those who get a guaranteed place need to show what they can do.”

Reid said he doubted the assured entry program would cause much upheaval in Western Australia, in contrast to Victoria, where a similar scheme at Melbourne University has been criticised. 

===The Australian=== quoted an unnamed academic as claiming the move “represented the ‘revenge’ of parents of elite private school students, upset that Melbourne doesn’t automatically give high year 12 scorers direct entry into professional study”. 

“We don’t anticipate that we’ll have a problem and there hasn’t been any heated debate about that here,” Reid said. 

"We do draw some of our best students from outside the elite schools and we have a number of programs [in the new model] that will be drawing people from other areas, special access and equity programs, and it may well be a case that a significant number of these people will have places booked for them.

"Some of the top performing year 12 students are not necessarily from the elite schools.”

 UWA also benefits from a different market to that which Melbourne operates in, he said.

“We are the only Group of Eight university west of Adelaide – we don’t have a ‘Monash’ here in town and I think that makes a difference to the configuration of things,” he said. “We are overwhelmingly the top choice of the top students and we expect things to stay that way.”

University of Oxford vice-chancellor Professor Andrew Hamilton is on an Australian tour that will culminate in a panel discussion this week on the challenge for universities to “change the world”.

The panel, to include Oxford alumni and former Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull, and Dr Rufus Black, master of Ormond College at the University of Melbourne, will meet in a private event at the Sydney Opera House on Wednesday.

Hamilton’s jam-packed itinerary has included multiple meetings with sector representatives in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney over the past week. Last Tuesday, he had discussions with the Group of Eight and the Grattan Institute. He also has attended Oxford alumni events: there are branches in most states.

Hamilton, a chemistry professor, was admitted as Oxford vice-chancellor in October 2009. He holds the position during a time of tumult in the UK higher education system, the most controversial change being the raising of tuition fee caps to £9000 from next year.

The changes led Oxford to declare in June it had “no confidence” in the policies of Universities Minister David Willetts. A term message Hamilton wrote in July outlines his concerns about the university funding environment but also the ways his university will widen student access and offer financial help.

“Oxford’s financial support for lower-income students is likely to be the most generous in the country…. While many universities are offering either fee waivers to offset tuition charges or bursaries to help with living costs, Oxford will provide both …” he writes.

“But such generosity comes at a price. It means having less funding available to do other important things that help make this university one of the best in the world. And it means that the gap between the true cost of an Oxford education and the income we receive for it will remain painfully wide.”

Hamilton writes that Oxford will be more reliant than ever on philanthropic support — which could at least partly explain his current travel. Hamilton’s journey takes him to New Zealand next, the home of his predecessor, John Hood, who in 2009 raised the idea of Oxford going private through donations from wealthy alumni.

Oxford has developed strong ties with the higher education sector in Australia since opening its Melbourne offices. Currently, 120 academic staff teach there and 249 Australians are students, of whom more than 100 are on scholarships. Alumni here number 2657, the fourth largest concentration after the UK, US and Canada. 

The university also has strong linkages programs in law with several Australian universities, and it is working with the Australian government to deliver learning materials to schools in Papua New Guinea.

With funding from the Australian Research Council, Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum is working on two projects soon to be exhibited here, both on indigenous art and perspectives. The museum holds more than 40,000 objects and 15,000 historic photographs from around Australasia, including a collection from Captain James Cook’s Pacific journeys, from 1768 to 1780.

Famous Australian alumni include three prime ministers — John Gorton, Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke. Three Australian Nobel Prize winners also studied at Oxford —Howard Florey (physiology or medicine, 1945, for penicillin); John Eccles (physiology or medicine, 1963, for his work on synapses); and John Cornforth, (chemistry, 1975, for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalysed reactions).

Five universities have collaborated with leading aged care providers to mount an Australian-first study to reduce social isolation among older people, which the researchers have identified as one of the most serious mental and physical health risks facing the nation. 

The University of Adelaide is leading the study, which has been awarded $348,150 by the Australian Research Council to look at the most effective programs to combat social isolation in an ageing society, where divorce, lower marriage rates and reduced fertility are contributing to a critical health issue.

"Social isolation is equivalent to the health effects of smoking 15 cigarettes a day or consuming more than six alcoholic drinks daily," says chief investigator Professor Andrew Beer. "It is more harmful than not exercising and twice as harmful as obesity."

Beer and his colleague Dr Debbie Faulkner will partner with researchers from the Queensland University of Technology, University of Melbourne, Curtin University and King's College London, which recently won the Sunday Times  university of the year accolade.

Gerontologist and aged-care researcher Professor Anthea Tinkler of Kings College will be one of the chief investigators on the project.She will work with Beer and Faulkner during two intensive periods, but will not take part in the data collection phase. 

“We’re working with a number of industry partners, particularly non-government organisations in the aged-care sector, and with those parts we will recruit older persons who they have contact with,” Beer said.  “The research looks at three levels of intervention, low, medium and high, and we will assess the various forms of intervention that are out there and then we’ll track the outcomes for those three forms of intervention to come to conclusions about what works for whom and why.” 

He said he thought the study would find that no single process would suit all people, and that social isolation was higher than believed. “Current estimates suggest 20 per cent of older Australians might be isolated but I think that figure might well be on the low side,” he said. 

"Numerous studies have documented the health impact of social isolation but there is very limited research on what programs work best, and for whom, to tackle the problem."

It is estimated 20 per cent of older Australians are socially isolated, which results in insomnia, depression, a greater likelihood of developing dementia and elevated blood pressure, among other health problems, Beer says.

"This has a reverberating effect on society, placing extra strain on carers, additional demands on health services, a reduced sense of community and a greater need for acute interventions by local governments, housing providers and other welfare services."

Scientific evidence suggests the most effective programs are those that have an educational component, are targeted at specific groups and involve the recruitment of people from the same neighbourhood.

"We need to look at this in more depth and also examine the differences between gender, location, housing options, age, the presence of a disability, and socio-economic status," Beer said.

About 900 older Australians will be surveyed as part of the three-year study, along with focus groups, service providers and policy makers in this area.

Aged-care and charitable organisations across five states will take part to help pinpoint programs which are successful in reducing social isolation. 

Meanwhile, in a world first, researchers at the Centre for Emotional Health, Macquarie University, are developing psychological treatments that simultaneously target both anxiety and depression in older adults. 

Despite the fact that symptoms of anxiety and depression are typically suffered together, there is at present no program that aims to help older adults tackle both disorders at once.

In this new study funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council, the team will compare two psychological treatment programs to determine the best method for addressing both anxiety and depression in older adults. 

One of the programs focuses on retraining the way people think and behave, and the other is targeted at improving mental stimulation, social interaction and support. 

Previous trials found that those who are taught skills to manage anxiety and depression saw lasting improvements. 

“We found that older adults not only can learn new ways of dealing with worry and low mood, but also were very keen to find ways to improve their lives”, said Dr Viviana Wuthrich, principal investigator for the Older Adult Treatment Study.

The trial is timely given the world’s ageing population. By 2050, a quarter of Australians will be over the age of 65 and studies show 47 per cent of older adults who met the criteria for depression also met the criteria for an anxiety disorder. 

Wuthrich reports “not only do these problems leave people feeling unhappy and isolated, left untreated these disorders have severe consequences including increased risk of developing dementia, mortality and suicide.” She adds that “research into the well-being of older adults has been neglected, and we are trying to change that”. 

The trial is currently seeking volunteers who suffer from anxiety and depression and who are over the age of 60. 

All volunteers will receive free psychological treatment for their anxiety and depression. 

For more information contact the Emotional Health Clinic at Macquarie University on (02) 9850 8711.

Terrible massacres on campuses are fortunately rare, but it is still critical to be alert to warning signs, a conference on threat management was told last week.

Dr Gene Deisinger, one of two American speakers at the University of Newcastle’s Campus Threat Assessment Conference, knows only too well of what he speaks.    As well as being a clinical psychologist who  runs a threat management assessment company,  he is deputy chief of police and director of threat management at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, where a student gunman killed 32 people  in 2007.

Speaking to Campus Review, Deisinger was keen to stress the importance of prevention and identification of violence. “For a lot of people [threat management] focuses on concerns about mass violence, such as at my own institution or what happened at Monash years ago [a reference to the shooting of seven people in 2002]," he said. "But the focus is really broader than that, although a lot of the lessons come from study of those. 

“Sometimes there are larger issues like mental illness and so it’s teaching people how to recognise patterns of behaviour that might be significant problems, and how to intervene and defuse them.” Deisinger sees a multidisciplinary approach as essential to managing and identifying threats at an institution.

“We have to draw on the resources available to the institution to deal with situations that can be highly problematic,” he said.  “As we look at the range of circumstances or disruptions, they tend to take up a lot of resources in any institution, so it’s about applying the most effective strategies possible where possible to prevent violence or to mitigate the impact of violence or disruptive behaviours.”

Far more common than a mass shooting are things like stalking or other disturbing behaviour, but these can be signs of things of come. “It’s really the whole range of behaviours, from disruption through mass violence. Incidents of mass violence are phenomenally rare, but what we’ve learned is nearly everyone [responsible for them] has engaged in these other behaviours that cause concern.

“So the more effectively and completely that we can address those concerning behaviours, the better those situations are resolved.” Kim Foster, the University of Newcastle’s director of corporate services and complaints manager, said it had been useful to  hear how other universities and jurisdictions dealt with such issues.

“We don’t have anywhere near as extreme violence as they’ve had in the states but there were some case studies and they deal with similar issues and it was good to see that we’re dealing with things the right way,” she said. Foster's duties include dealing with staff and student complaints from, bullying, harassment and parking problems. 

The university runs a behavioural risk group in which different units within the campus check in on problems and compare notes. 

Dr Glenn Withers has announced he will return to academia when his term as chief executive of Universities Australia expires at the end of the year. 

Withers will research student financing at the Australian National University under a recent linkage grant from the Australian Research Council. He also intends to co-edit a volume on Australia’s economic history for Cambridge University Press. 

Withers, who has held the UA position since the peak body’s formation in 2007, has a long career pattern of switching between public service and the ANU.  He worked as chief economic advisor in the department of employment under the Fraser and Hawke governments for four years before returning to the ANU, then as commissioner of an economic planning advisory commission under the Keating government for six years before once again going back. 

Withers said it was a pattern he found deeply rewarding.  “I took on the [UA] job for an initial three-year contract only, to help establish the organisation,” Withers said in a statement to Campus Review. 

“I was offered a longer–term contract, but it was my explicit intention to return to academic work. I did agree to a one-year extension to assist with the transition to a new UA board and chair [but] I have not sought any further extension.” 

A search for Withers’ replacement is under way.

Sydney Business School’s $3.8 million harbourfront campus at Circular Quay is already attracting more students less than five months since moving there, its parent university says. The CBD campus of the University of Wollongong school was officially opened on July 27 by NSW treasurer Mike Baird but it has been running since March, when it moved from downtown Liverpool Street.

The school’s executive dean Professor John Glynn said: “Although we’ve only been there for a relatively short period of time, there’s already a sort of 10 per cent growth in domestic students just by virtue of word of mouth.”

Glynn said the school, which take up two floors of the Gateway Quayside, needed increased space to cater for the growing number of students - there are now 650 - but also for areas of the university’s research activity that needed a Sydney presence.

“Where we are in Sydney is not just for teaching but for teaching and research,” Glynn told Campus Review. The newest research element, which was launched by the school at the new campus in April, is the Australian Institute for Business Wellbeing. Headed by Dr Lindsay Oades, it combines psychology and business to explore the tension between the wellbeing of employees and that of an organisation.

Glynn said the institute was an amalgamation of the smaller units of governance and ethics, business coaching and positive psychology and it had reorganised the units because this was becoming an important area in Australia. But he added that although it was novel in Australia, the concept of business wellbeing was more established in North America and Europe.

Glynn said six to eight doctoral students were involved in designing new courses and business had expressed interest in the sector.

“I wouldn’t want to name people at this point, but a number of key corporates have directly contacted us to become involved in some of this work."

Other research at the campus includes the Australian Health Services Research Institute, which Glynn said had expanded rapidly in the past three years and needed a base in Sydney. Fifteen of its staff are now working there.

Another area involves a partnership with UOW’s faculty of engineering and an innovation area, known as SMART (Simulation, Modelling, Analysis, Research and Teaching). The Australian Institute of Survey Design, a joint venture with the School of Mathematics and Statistics, also has a presence at Circular Quay.

In addition to the attractive location, Glynn said the university had worked with their architects “to create a facility that is definitely up there with international standards of what people would actually expect from a graduate business school".

Glynn said design was based on research done locally and abroad that looked at what top business schools were providing for their graduate students.

The new campus totals 5500 sq m and has a 500 sq m external patio. Facilities include a library, breakout area, self-study areas and student canteen.

“It’s very much got a look and feel of a CBD office that would look as good as Westpac or anywhere that you would imagine these days,” Glynn said. 

Tertiary education minister Christopher Evans will travel to India today, the latest in a series of attempts by the Australian government to mend the relationship between the two countries, which soured after a series of attacks on Indian students studying here. His visit comes just as DIAC releases new figures which show that student visa applications have failed to recover from the sharp decline experienced in 2009-2010.

Indian student visa holders dropped 66 per cent for higher education and 93 per cent for vocational education and training in the last year – a drop from 84,000 Indian student visa holders in March 2010 to 54,000 this year.

 India was previously the top source of offshore VET students and the third greatest source of higher education students, after China and Malaysia. Now it is at best Australia’s seventh greatest market.

Evans will meet with the Indian Minister for Human Resources, Kapil Sibal, and attend the annual India-Australia Ministerial Dialogue on Education Cooperation in New Delhi. He will be accompanied by a delegation of Australian university vice chancellors and executives. 

He previously travelled to India in July 2009 at the height of the attacks on students here, which were reported widely in the Indian press. His visit was followed by one by Prime Minister Julia Gillard in August that year. 

“Australia’s bilateral relationship with India is abiding and highly valued,” Evans said in a statement. We hope to further strengthen these ties with a particular focus on education and training and to discuss how our two great countries can best prepare for the education and skills challenges facing the 21st Century workforce.”

In New Delhi and Chennai he will meet with Australian and Indian education and training institutions, faculty and students, technology and research institutes, business and industry, and government bodies.

Topics to be discussed include fostering institutional linkages; growing student and faculty mobility; encouraging credit transfers; and developing industry-led vocational education and training. 

“Both countries have a lot to share and this visit will explore opportunities and provide support for reciprocal exchanges and professional development for government officials, academics and industry representatives,” said Evans.

“Through collaboration, India and Australia will share knowledge and best practices, drive cutting edge research and help equip students and faculty with the skills vital to future innovation and economic growth.”

A series of violent attacks on Indian students studying in Melbourne, along with the closure of many smaller colleges has seen a drop in the number of Indians coming to study in Australia in recent years. A bill will go before Indian parliament today that would modernize its immigration system and track students who go overseas to study.

Latest figures from DIAC on student visa holders in Australia:

The number of student visa holders in Australia decreased by 13.1% between the period June 30, 2011 (332 709 students) and June 30, 2010 (382 716

students). Compared to June 30, 2006 (the earliest available data), student visa holder numbers increased by almost 60 per cent in June 30, 2011. On  June 30, 2006 there were 209 169 student visa holders in Australia.

54.1 per cent of student visa holders in Australia on June 30, 2011 held a higher education (subclass 573) visa and 28.3 per cent held a VET sector (subclass 572) visa. On June 30,  2011, 38.0 per cent of the student visa holders in Australia were either Indian or Chinese nationals.

In the lull before the emergence of TEQSA, the Group of Eight (Go8) will trial a new check of academic quality in its universities, with a focus on final-year undergraduates.  Senior Go8 academics will verify their peers’ grading in a sample that crosses five subjects — physics, history, psychology, accounting and chemistry. Their review will touch five per cent of the total undergraduate cohort, examining at least 25 per cent of the subjects’ final-year work. 

Unlike a similar system in the UK, however, grades would not be changed or standardised, said Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington, pro vice-chancellor (learning and teaching) at Monash University. “This is not a moderation exercise, so the assessors in this pilot do not re-mark student work,” Hughes-Warrington said. 

Describing the exercise as “quality assurance with a light touch”, she said it was not yet clear how the system could dovetail with the national teaching and learning standards being developed. TEQSA (the Tertiary Education and Quality Standards Agency) will use the standards, among several others, to audit higher education quality when the national regulator’s full powers come into effect on January 1. 

But Hughes-Warrington said TEQSA and the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) had acknowledged peer assessment was valuable for checking standards. 

“We see [this] as fitting in nicely with the signals that DEEWR and TEQSA have sent out about the importance of peer standing in these areas. We’ve also said this is an important step forward, because it’s not just peer verification of work in a competency setting, but it’s also peer verification of a proficiency of achievement,” she said. 

Under the pilot, academic assessors will verify grading from a relevant discipline at another Go8 university, rather than their own. They will compare quality across the samples and report on the appropriateness of awarded grades. 

The Go8’s stated goal is “to create a five-year cyclic review of academic standards across all disciplines taught within participating universities”.  Hughes-Warrington said the system would rely completely on the experience and judgement of the reviewers. She said the cross checking of quality standards outside individual institutions also would benefit students. 

“You really are asking another disciplinary expert to come in and look at your work, and that’s great for students, because it says when you’ve studied say, physics, in one Group of Eight institution, the quality not only institutionally is outstanding, but the quality has also got this extra step of verification,” she said. 

The Go8 says there are clear international trends that show students’ academic attainment should be the primary reference point for monitoring standards and that final-year work outcomes are suitable for benchmarking. 

Hughes-Warrington said the group’s system had been designed for minimum impact on the time of busy academics. It was hoped others might adopt the framework.  “We expect it to continue to evolve but we hope it will be of interest to staff and institutions outside the Group of Eight,” she said. “Certainly we’d be interested in sharing with people the insights of the pilot.” 

That said, eight other Australian universities recently began their own peer-review pilot project on teaching and learning, with funding from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council. 

The Go8 trial will involve about 40 academics and begin in late August.

Capitalising on the opportunities and "grand challenges" created by the national broadband network (NBN) is high on the agenda of new Australian Council of Deans of ICT president Professor Janet Verbyla.

Verbyla, dean of sciences and pro vice-chancellor of academic enterprises at the University of Southern Queensland, is the council’s first female president, but said she regarded coming from a regional institution as equally important. “I think some people think that the ICT profession is just grey suits, probably worn by men in a central-city area, and it’s a much broader thing than that,” she said.

The arrival of the NBN will bring great changes to Information and communications technology at universities and these will need to be capitalised on, Verbyla said. “The NBN potentially opens up some really interesting areas but it also means there is a need for people have ICT skills beyond the capital cities in order to capitalise on those opportunities. [USC, for example,] is very into external education, so we have to ask what will be the opportunities there, too.”

The very nature of the computer experience that the NBN will provide – high-definition visuals and faster contact - means the “grand challenges” set in ICT research and development will be far greater than previously. “The NBN is all about that high-end capacity and that’s when you start thinking about what it will mean [for research and development],” she said, suggesting genetics, global positioning monitoring and water levels could be potential areas of research. “It will involve really big data sets.”

Of the world universities face, Verbyla said: “I think there will be more external education, or flexible education, because even on-campus students these days have significant commitments elsewhere, so it will be enriching that educational experience. There is the potential for shared classrooms across the world, that sort of thing.

“The other thing, though, is that people who aren’t ICT specialists but are professors in other areas will need to be thinking more about how ICT changes the way they practise. There will be a need for ICT skills across the whole spectrum." Verbyla was elected at the council’s conference last week in Hobart, during which the need to attract more students to the discipline was discussed.

“I think we’ve really got some momentum going and we’ve started getting in both at the learning and teaching level and the research level and the broader professional engagement space, so it’s a really good time to become president. "

Expanding public understanding of the role and flexibility of ICT jobs was essential, she said, and universities needed to work together to promote the area. “There is a lot of activity going on in that space, but one of the roles of the council is to connect up all that activity – there’s no systematic coherence to it and I think you get more out of these things if we’re all on the same page.

“The council has a role in adding value to what everyone else is doing. For example, there’s a very successful project in Queensland promoting ICT coming out of the universities but not attached to any single one, called Group X. The council is very keen to encourage other states to take up that idea.”

Demonstrating to potential students the flexibility of the industry, particularly once the NBN is rolled out, will be necessary to generate the new jobs industry will need, Verbyla said.

“I come from a regional university and I’m very big on getting the most out of what we do. I think it’s one of the great things about ICT, you name an area [and you can work in it]. If you think, ‘I’ll go into business’, and then later on you decide ‘I’d like to see what I could do in health’, well, you can pack up your ICT skills because they’re really analytic and problem-solving skills and move them to a different area.” 

Industry and educators need to find a neutral space in which they can unpack the language around their commitment to upskilling the workforce.  This is a key message from a communique widely circulated to education policy-makers and business and industry stakeholders after the recent Service Skills Australia symposium in Sydney.

The gathering brought VET, higher education and industry representatives together to consider the future of skills training.  Kit McMahon, general manager of Service Skills Australia, said that for a variety of reasons industry’s voice had not been heard clearly in the education space. 

“It has not been heard because business has been busy getting on with making sure it has people in the right spots at the right time. It has been concerned with supply and quality issues,” she said. At the same, industry had also not been heard because the education system was far too complex to be understood, she said.

Part of that complexity was "wrestling the mutant octopus" as industry struggles with funding and regulatory constraints in the so-called "national" system, the communique states. McMahon backs this with: “We absolutely support national consistency at state and federal level and ASQA [the VET regulator] is a great step in that direction.”

She also said there had to be consistency around the quality of the VET workforce. This was crucial and because industry was interested in contributing to quality delivery it wanted to be involved and to share what it knows to improve outcomes, she said.

On the issue of finding a space for communication between industry, business and the education sectors, the communique says "neutral turf" is required to undertake work to define those needs and provide feedback to the national education system and receive advice.   

McMahon told Campus Review that over many years she had regularly heard anecdotal evidence from employers about how university graduates needed to be vocationalised. “Whatever degree they come out with … they have to hit the world of work,” and they could be better prepared for that, she said.

As reported by CR, the day-long symposium on July 14 resulted in four challenges being identified:

• A lack of understanding between VET, the higher education sectors and industry;

• Industry's struggles with funding and regulatory constraints in the "national" system;

• The need for a better connection between formal qualifications and non-accredited lifelong learning/working development valued by employers;

• Industry's need for greater responsiveness to the advice it provides.

Professor Peter Booth, deputy vice-chancellor at UTS, represented the Australian Technology Network universities at the symposium. He said often the problem was that employers focused on the here and now, while universities were educating for the future.

McMahon said she believed that any employer “worth their salt would agree with Peter Booth’s assessment that you do need to skill for the future sustainability and longevity of your business”. 

It was wrong to assume otherwise, she said. “Training packages by their very nature benchmark skills needed across a sustainable economies,  and good universities understand that in the courses they develop.” 

Although educators and industry were struggling with language and connectivity they had common linkages and interests. “We need to give ourselves  space and time and to understand we are not competing with each other. I think we are trying to start this process with the symposium … to give clear air and ask people to work together.” 

McMahon said the strong turnout from industry showed the interest and commitment to contributing to how skills education policy evolves.

“I think it behoves all of us to include employers, who are actually the end users of the system. No matter how you want to work it, they do hire and pay for the skills that the [tertiary] system  produces, and it behoves us all to listen to that."

The symposium was organised because the range of policy reforms and COAG targets for skills are driving a significant number of changes through the "national" system.

The key messages from the symposium are:

• An emerging tertiary sector means industry and work experience can now be valued, leading to expanded pathways between VET and higher education qualifications. 

• Industry welcomes the emergence of the tertiary sector but there is caution about ensuring entry-level qualifications are not forgotten. 

• Relationships between sectors need to be open and come from an innovative and dynamic base, if required industry outcomes are to be met. 

• Clear and transparent discussion with industry is essential as industry demands a say in the implementation of education policy. 

McMahon said the communique would form part of any future discussion about policy development. 

The quality of Australia’s pathway programs is their most saleable asset and must be seized on if the dwindling international education sector is to recover. That’s the pitch from the International Education Association of Australia (IEAA) in announcing it will launch a related professional interest group at its October conference. 

IEAA executive director Dennis Murray said 60 per cent of international students entered Australian universities via some kind of pathway program. But a range of problems meant pathways were now in serious decline — especially for ELICOS, VET and higher education diploma programs. 

Although prospective students saw Australia’s higher education pathways as the best in the world, their value and importance seemed to be under-estimated here, Murray said. “They’re clearly critical, and I’m not sure the government has realised how critical they are for the health of the sector,” he told Campus Review. 

Murray said the new IEAA group would benchmark and draw together sector-wide data for the first time, so it could make its case and influence public policy. To date, such information exists only within individual institutions.  “The sector is coming to grips itself, both because of government policy changes and in order to better understand what’s going on, and indeed, to defend the sector,” he  said. 

“There’s been some claims that people coming through some pathways are not as well prepared or perform as well when they go on, but we believe the evidence is otherwise.”  The new group has sparked interest from multiple pathway providers, including Navitas and several NSW universities, says interim convenor Paul O’Halloran, regulatory affairs manager at the University of Wollongong. 

O’Halloran said in addition to the decline in international student numbers, the sector had been triggered into action by legally binding foundation program standards adopted by Australian Education International in July. 

Among other requirements, the standards cover curriculum, English-language proficiency, minimum contact hours, and teaching qualifications for providers of courses that prepare international students for entering higher education.  

“All our tracking studies show these programs work,” O’Halloran said. 

“There’s a lot of very abled students coming from source countries, but they’ve got to now suddenly step up a year and learn in a different language, and it’s a different academic culture. The foundation and other pathways programs play a critical role in preparing and setting them up for their success.” 

Murray said changes to student visa and skilled migration policies were still most to blame for the downturn in the international education market. “The various routes that Australia provides are much greater in quantity and greater in variety than anywhere else in the world and the rest of the world has copied us,” he said. 

“The problem is not in the business model that Australia has adopted, but it’s on the visa side, in terms of packaging in a way that allows people to flow through effectively.” 

He said the new group represented a natural development in quality assurance that needed to happen, but pathways also needed better support and promotion from Austrade. 

“The flow-on effect of this decline is evident in 2011. The impact on universities will be even greater in 2012 as numbers of enrolments in pathway programs continue to drop."  A recent Australian Education International research paper on the study pathways of international students is available here. 

 “Most people find it very difficult to imagine what will happen a few years ahead, yet in universities things change quite slowly. Through prototyping learning technology applications in a whole range of new projects we’re planning to show people the way the future could be and then [they] find it easier to work towards.”As an example, she points to the fact that most students today carrying multiple mobile computing devices – phones, laptops, tablet computers – but most of the people working in universities are still using traditional computers to deliver learning materials and to facilitate group work.“

So we’re experimenting with harnessing all the technologies that are out there in everyday life to see what their best application would be,” she said. “We’d like you to think that you had your university in your pocket along with your mobile.”The institute’s website uses an image of the universe to illustrate its approach to developing new ideas and technologies. At its heart is the solar system, followed by the Milky Way, neighbouring galaxies, and finally “deep space”. The solar system represents the start of the institute’s research, looking at existing technologies and making them more useful, the Milky

 Way the examination of how technologies can be used to broaden learning, neighbouring galaxies new and emerging technologies and finally deep space represents the future of technology and education. Salmon says that presenting evidence to academics is necessary to convince them of the usefulness of new technologies.“If you give academics a chance to try them for themselves, if you provide proper research about what a new process is good for, then they’re more than willing to try it,” she said. In many ways, attempting to predict future uses was difficult but when transformation came, it was dramatic, she said.

“If someone asked you ten years ago, ‘do you want a little device in your car that will tell you when to turn left and when to turn right?’, you’d have said, ‘no thank you, I have a map’. But now it’s unlikely you’d go many places without your satnav, and you can think of many examples like that,” said Salmon.“I have a colleague visiting from England, and yesterday morning we had some wallabies and kookaburras in our garden. He was able to go very close to them while talking on his iPhone to his 11-year-old son, who was in England and very excited to see the kookaburras. That kind of connection was unthinkable ten years ago.

 “If you start to think about how incredibly useful that could be for learning purposes… you start to see how sharing knowledge in a visual and engaging way becomes transformational.”So far the institute is still recruiting new researchers and learning technologists, but it’s already attracting some attention from parts of USQ. “We’re getting the early adopters and innovators camping outside our door, but we’re also taking the ideas out to those who are very busy,” she said. 

One of Australia’s leading climate change modelling experts, Dr Wenju Cai, has been awarded a five-year CSIRO fellowship to establish a new research team examining climate influences on Australia. Cai will build the team with funds provided through a 2011 CSIRO Office of the Chief Executive Science Leadership Award. The project team will include two post-doctoral researchers, and two PhD students, all based at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research Laboratories in Melbourne. Since 2005, Cai has been lead-author and co-authored some 40 peer-reviewed scientific papers on climate variability, change, predictability, and detection and attribution, and on the response of Australian climate to climate change forcing factors, such as increasing carbon dioxide and anthropogenic aerosols.

Macquarie Graduate School of Management (MGSM) has appointed Dr Debbie Haski-Leventhal to the role of senior lecturer of management. Haski-Leventhal is a highly-respected academic with specialised skills in the areas of Australian third sector, volunteerism and corporate social responsibility. Haski-Leventhal is a current consultant for the United Nations Volunteers, and is a key contributor to the organisation’s State of the World Volunteerism Report due for release in December.

Victoria University researcher Dr Caroline Symons has won the Australian Society for Sports History Book Award for 2011 for her history of the Gay Games. The citation for the award, announced last week, said the society chose to honour the book because it was a “meticulously researched and sophisticated social history” that promoted the “centrality, as opposed to the marginality of gay, lesbian and transgendered people in global sport”. The Gay Games: A History was described as an engaging narrative that reveals both the lived experiences and personal stories of individuals, groups and communities involved in the organisation and participation of various Games. Symons’ use of oral history, participant observation and archival research in her book, which traces the history of the Gay Games from its origins in 1980 to the Chicago Games in 2006, was commended. She is an historian and sociologist who lectures in sports sociology and event management.

Trevor McCrystal, has been appointed ACPET’s new executive officer for Western Australia. McCrystal has worked within the Western Australian Education and Training sector for the past 10 years in both public and more recently, private VET institutions. He began his career in a trade apprenticeship, becoming a qualified engineering tradesperson specialising in heavy fabrication. After a number of years he became an engineering technical officer /trainer at the Western Australian College of Agriculture Narrogin, managing the department for almost six years. He was also a key member in the establishment and management team of the Perth South organisation which was designed as a standalone RTO and Secondary College in one, not linked to any other established organisations to deliver WACE, pre-apprenticeship, school based, full-time apprenticeship training and specialist short courses.

Law academic Andrea Durbach says her secondment as deputy sex discrimination commissioner is a “wonderful opportunity” to work with the primary national human rights institution to promote and advance equality. Associate professor Durbach, director of UNSW’s human rights centre, recently took up the role with the Australian Human Rights Commission while Elizabeth Broderick, sex discrimination commissioner, conducts a review of the treatment of women at the Australian Defence Force Academy. The role continues Durbach’s prominent career as a human rights advocate. Prior to joining UNSW, she worked as director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, an independent policy and litigation centre focusing on human rights and public interest matters, and as a human rights defender in South Africa. During the six-month secondment, Durbach will continue her work at the UNSW Law School.

Dr Michele Bruniges has been appointed as NSW director-general of the Department of Education and Communities and managing director of TAFE NSW. Bruniges started her career as a teacher in New South Wales public schools. She recently led the national school reform agenda as an associate secretary with the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. She also taught at TAFE in Western Sydney and worked with the Adult Migrant Education Service teaching English. Bruniges has a Doctorate of Philosophy in Educational Measurement, a Masters Degree in Education from the University of New South Wales, a Graduate Diploma in Educational Studies and a Diploma in Teaching from the Goulburn College of Advanced Education. She is a Graduate of the Institute of Company Directors and the recipient of numerous professional awards, including a Churchill Fellowship to study student achievement in education in the US and the Netherlands, an Exceptional Service Award from the Professional Teachers Council New South Wales for promoting teacher professionalism and is a Fellow of the Australian College of Educators.

Former ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope will join the University of Canberra as a professorial fellow next month. Stanhope, who stepped down after 10 years as Chief Minister of the ACT in May this year, will take on a varied role at UC, including teaching, research and strategic advice to vice-chancellor Professor Stephen Parker. Parker said he was delighted Stanhope had chosen to continue his contribution to the capital. His academic activities will take place through the ANZSOG Institute of Governance at UC (which is a part of the Australia/New Zealand School of Government).  His role will be to develop a new stream of applied research on political management issues in State-Commonwealth relations. He will also add practical high level insights to the University’s Master of Public Administration degree and teach in the leadership and professional development programs that the ANZSOG Institute currently offers to elected and non-elected office holders in the ACT and Commonwealth Governments. 

Quality placements for student teachers are vital components of all education degrees but they are currently underfunded and poorly structured. The lack of incentives for experienced teachers to supervise students on placement makes it increasingly difficult for universities to secure enough spots. 

These comments from the University of Melbourne’s submission to the Gonksi school funding review highlight the ongoing issue confronting teacher educators in Australia. And, according to experts, despite best efforts, the issue isn’t going away. 

The Melbourne submission, released publicly in April, said that for teachers who agree to mentor a student, their work was still compensated at the 1990 award rate of $21.20 per candidate per day.

Releasing the submission, dean of education, Professor Field Rickards, said mentor teachers receive little or no professional development for the role, nor do they receive any significant support from their university colleagues – the resources just aren’t available. 

Toni Downes, president of the Australian Council of Deans of Education, agrees with the thrust of the Melbourne submission. The availability of clinical places for student teachers in Australia is a national crisis, she says.

“However, the phenomenon is not unique to education, you hear the same conversation in medicine; they can’t find enough clinical places in hospitals or private practices for medical students, physiotherapists and so on,” she says.

Downes says Australia needs a national response to the set of issues it’s facing. 

“We need government(s), professionals and the universities around the same table to sort through the issues. Some of these are already happening behind the scenes. But this is an incredibly long term, complex issue and there are no easy solutions,” she adds.

Indeed, the issue appears profound.

Just last year, the Advertiser reported that South Australia’s three universities were struggling to find enough classroom placements for all their student teachers.

The paper reported that deans of education were considering adopting “an interstate placement model of tapping into rural schools”, as a potential solution to the worsening problem.

“It’s true, no matter what state you talk to,” says Downes, who is also dean of the faculty of education at Charles Sturt University. “The issues raised by the universities in South Australia are repeated across the country. Universities are all talking about the difficulties of securing the right number of placements and securing quality placements for teacher education programs.”

She says the recent federal government initiative to create Centres of Excellence as clinical schools, like teaching hospitals, has not lived up to expectations. Universities had no input into the design, and the designated schools had many roles and little funding, so partnering with Universities to improve access and quality never became a high priority.

Like Downes, Christine Ure says the real issue in teacher education currently is the challenge of securing placements. 

Ure, the head of the school of education at Edith Cowen University, points to a 2005 ALTC study conducted in Victoria.

“It found the number of placements needed to keep the state’s universities’ requirement going was 22,000 a year. We also found you would need one in four teachers to supervise a student teacher. That’s a quarter of the teaching workforce taking on a student teacher,” she says.

The Victorian study also asked the schools about who contacted them asking for placements. Each was approached by an average of seven or eight providers. They were also being contacted by interstate and international providers, Ure says.

Competition for places is also flagged by Lisa Bell, Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Western Australia, as a contributing factor.

“The emergence of teaching programs through Open universities who also require placements for students mean that we are also competing with them. Also, we try and give our students the opportunity of a rural and remote placement. However, increasingly, other universities, some from other states, are trying to do the same. So we’re competing with other states on occasion,” says Bell, who oversees placements for UWA and is responsible for developing positive relationships between the university and the schools.

There are also other factors at play, she adds.

“Schools and teachers are less reluctant to take on student teachers because they are often overwhelmed with other priorities. There’s the issue of a crowded curriculum, outcomes based education in WA, the teachers’ workload, the moves to a national curriculum – these all impact. 

“There is also the issue of an ageing teacher workforce, many in their 40s and 50s who may have an attitude of, ‘I’ve done my bit; I’ve mentored in the past’. Schools and teachers are often overwhelmed with other priorities. There’s the issue of a crowded curriculum, outcomes based education, the moves to a national curriculum – these all impact. NAPLAN is a further source of pressure on schools,” says Bell.

The Melbourne submission raised the issue of monetary compensation for mentor teachers quite strongly, perhaps understandably, given it was to the Gonski school funding review.

However, while Downes agrees the rate is too low, she doubts money is a leading cause of teachers’ reluctance to mentor the next generation. Although, she sees merit in the idea of more funding directed to school networks in order to provide and remunerate clinical supervision.

However, while giving more non-teaching time to mentor teachers and establishing designated schools with a funded clinical coordinator works for Melbourne, it won’t necessarily work for the entire country, she says.

“It’s a lovely model for urban populations, but it wouldn’t work for Charles Sturt University, for example, where the majority of our local schools are too small to be considered a centre. And many are 100km from our campuses. So, it can’t be the only model we value or promote; we need a variety of models to suit the various contexts.”

Further, Downes is keen to emphasise that each university has its own model, developed over time to suit its own needs and overcome its specific challenges. 

“My university [CSU] is in regional NSW and we need to be careful about the amount of weekly contact we expect our students to have [with schools], simply because of the distance. Consider the cost of petrol for students to do a 100 km round trip once or twice a week; and the wear and tear caused by the travelling time. We continually innovate to maximize pre-service teacher contact with schools, but we don’t have the access the urban universities do.”

Regional universities also cannot support the mentor teachers by being on the ground on a regular basis, she says, adding CSU has “excellent documentation, a very good website, a highly sophisticated phone contact system”, and works continually with principals and principal associations and provides professional development where possible.

This is an edited version of an in-depth report carried by our sister publication Education Review.

The VET and higher education sectors are entering an exciting but uncertain phase, as both sectors begin to focus on a previously elusive goal, defining the quality of teaching and learning. The real excitement will be experienced when or if the two sectors attempt to develop a shared definition. 

In the public arena the higher education sector is moving more quickly, with the new regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) launching a discussion paper to stimulate debate about the issue of teaching and learning standards. Meanwhile in the VET sector, the new regulator, Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA), has its hands full sorting out a family feud with two states and has given itself another six months to appoint staff and settle into its role. 

ASQA will be drawn into the quality debate in the very near future, says Dr George Brown, from private provider Think Education. “ASQA is primarily designed as a regulator but it also has a quality improvement mandate.” But a key issue for Brown is whether ASQA will engage with TEQSA’s consideration of the issues.

Brown is one of the growing number of people who work in the two sectors and are monitoring the opening up of the quality debate. As a board member of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC), he is proud of the work the ALTC undertook on the threshold learning outcomes project, and hopes that the ALTC work is taken up by TEQSA. As academic director of Think, which operates eight private colleges on the eastern seaboard, he is interested in the debate because Think offers both VET and HE programs. And as a member of the national board of ACPET, he wants to represent the interests of the many private providers who operate across the two sectors.  

Brown is passionate about an integrated tertiary sector with a shared approach to defining the quality of teaching and learning, but also he sees major obstacles. This passion for a tertiary sector stems from a commitment to offering students a seamless movement between the sectors.

“I believe in an integrated sector because I believe in seamless pathways for students and offering them choices. Students as consumers don’t want to know about the complexities and intricacies of the two sectors; they just want to know about job outcomes. Is this program going to get me to where I want to go? Are my qualifications transportable and transferable across sectors, both nationally and internationally?

“I firmly believe that we need one holistic integrated sector that doesn’t discriminate between VET and HE and removes the historical snobbery that has occurred between sectors.”

Snobbery is a major impediment to seamlessness, says Brown. “Snobbery exists in both sectors and both are guilty of it. Both think they’re better than the other and they do things differently, they say, for the sake of better student outcomes. But there is no clear research that could show or prove one sector is better than the other in achieving better graduate outcomes.”

Brown is hopeful that the new Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) will facilitate the integration of the sectors. “I’ve been a strong proponent of the AQF since its inception. I think it’s a maturing model. It sets us apart from the rest of the world and is without question leading edge. I’ve done assessments of others around the world and it is, without question, the envy of other countries; it’s an excellent next-generation framework.”

However, a progressive AQF is only part of the solution. “The AQF will act as an enabler but of course the AQF is not an assessment tool and it’s purely a framework.”

Brown believes that “the nexus between learning and teaching, the missing link is clearly assessment”. However an impediment to VET and HE agreeing on standards for teaching and learning is the awkward fact that the two have very different approaches to assessment: the VET system is criterion-based and the HE system norm-based. 

Controversially, Brown also believes that HE might benefit from informing itself, more often and where appropriate, about the criterion reference approach to assessment used in VET. 

“The VET sector is more attuned and far more comfortable when trying to deal with criteria and the measurement of outcomes. The HE sector would benefit from looking at this ‘deconstruction process’ and see where it might learn from this process.”

“Assessment is going to be the be-all and end-all of this debate about the learning and teaching standards; it’s the clincher. In the higher ed sector assessment can be up to the individual academic to create and implement across a unit of study or across a course. In the VET sector there’s some flexibility available to assessors, but assessment is very well honed and informed by the units of competence that are part of training packages.”

For academics to let go of a norm- based approach to assessment, says Brown, “could raise the heckles of our traditional academics and bring forth the age old argument of challenges to institutional autonomy, the autonomy of the academic and challenging the diversity of their offerings”.

However, Brown also concedes that VET has to face up to some systemic deficiencies, and pointedly criticises the rollout of the Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF) prior to the introduction of ASQA.

“AQTF 2007 was meant to deliver the new age of quality auditing for the VET sector and it was supposed to include a quality improvement focus. That certainly has not been the sector’s experience. The auditing process with AUQA (Australian Universities Quality Agency) in the higher ed sector has been far more focused on quality.  ASQA has the opportunity to make a fresh start and learn from the excellent work undertaken by AUQA.”

Brown’s main fear is that VET will leave it to the new ASQA to impose a definition of quality in teaching and learning. “I think VET could, to its detriment, look at a compliance-focused method of approaching the issue of learning and teaching and it would not serve the sector well. VET needs to understand what quality improvement is and how it’s employed and how to use a risk-based approach to address it.”

In the short term Brown would like to see the VET sector imitate the HE sector and conduct a healthy public debate about how to measure the quality of teaching and learning, rather than leave it to ASQA to impose an approach on the sector. 

In the end, the challenge of defining quality needs to be addressed by the two sectors working in unison, says Brown. “Ultimately they’re both trying to measure graduate outcomes. The two sectors need to assist and inform each other.”

John Mitchell is a member of the academic board of Think and is a Sydney-based researcher and consultant who specialises in VET workforce development and strategic leadership. See www.jma.com.au

There have dramatic changes in the regulation of the VET sector over the past two years.  The well documented impacts of changes to immigration pathways, college closures and reputational damage to the brand of Australia as a destination for international students have culminated in significant legislative reform.

The recent passage of Commonwealth legislation establishing the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) is set to transform the regulatory landscape nationally.  Victoria and Western Australia have elected not to refer their powers over VET regulation to the Commonwealth over concerns that the interests of the VET sector in those states are not adequately protected by the new national regulatory framework.  For example, Victoria has significantly strengthened its own legislation to provide for enhanced consumer protection measures that are not replicated in the ASQA legislation.

Whilst many in favour of the move towards national regulation have lamented the fact that Western Australia and Victoria are not content to join the national system at this stage, it is conceivable that at some point in the future both states may elect to refer power to the Commonwealth. This depends on whether the concerns of both states can be adequately addressed by the Commonwealth in the short to medium term.

Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania are yet to pass the necessary legislation to transfer their regulatory powers over to the Commonwealth (although it is envisaged this will occur before the end of this year). Once that occurs ASQA will be responsible for the regulation of the majority of RTOs throughout Australia, save for certain categories of RTO in Victoria and Western Australia that will continue to fall outside ASQA’s jurisdiction (essentially RTOs that do not deliver education and training in at least one referring State or a Territory and that are not registered on CRICOS).

For the time being the sector is faced with the resulting patchwork system where some RTOs will still be regulated by reference to the Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF) by existing state and territory legislation and others under the new VET Quality Framework under Commonwealth legislation.  

The reality is that despite the different nomenclature the current VET Quality Framework is in substance a refinement of the AQTF, albeit supplemented by more detailed requirements, such as those relating to data provision and the fit and proper person test.  Nevertheless, RTOs that are (or soon will be) operating under ASQA’s jurisdiction will need to understand the key differences and ensure they are compliant in order to avoid unnecessary regulatory scrutiny.

Hopefully, in the near future the Commonwealth, Western Australia and Victoria, will be able to reach agreement on a common regulatory framework that will apply to all RTOs regardless of who is legally responsible for their regulation. This will be vital to ensuring certainty as well as the achievement of consistent regulatory outcomes in this new regulatory landscape.

The increased complexity in regulatory arrangements, along with the pace of regulatory reform, has also seen a growing demand for legal advisers to assist VET stakeholders in navigating the complex web of regulation that now confronts them.  As the regulatory environment becomes increasingly sophisticated this will also require a sound understanding of the functions and powers which regulators exercise and the manner in which they can be discharged.  

The implementation by ASQA of its regulatory model is likely to see this trend continue. Interestingly, (some would argue wisely) the Commonwealth has opted to move away from the standards and guidelines which formed the basis of the AQTF and has instead elected to establish the VET Quality Framework through legislative instruments. This move away from what Professor Arie Freiberg describes in his recent book (“Tools of Regulation”, Federation Press, 2010) as ‘soft law’ indicates a significant shift in regulatory approach. 

The tougher approach to regulation that has been foreshadowed by ASQA will require a significant increase in resources.  There will be inevitable challenges to its decisions and resolving them in a Tribunal or even a Court will be time consuming, will divert resources away from other important regulatory activity and may be frustrating for all parties.

Ultimately, whatever regulatory approach is to be applied, it is the content and clarity of regulatory requirements and consistency in their application are the keys to effective regulation.  This will be the challenge of ASQA as new regulatory challenges emerge such as the off-shire provision of vocational education and training.  How ASQA responds to these challenges will be critical and we should not rule out further changes to the VET Quality Framework if they will result in better regulatory outcomes.

There is no question that VET regulators are now equipped with a broader range of powers (including many coercive powers) in their regulatory ‘toolkit’. However, they will need appropriate human and financial resources to discharge those new powers.

Ultimately, prevention is a better strategy than cure.  Both RTOs and regulators need to focus on ensuring they have systems and processes in place to focus on compliance. Regular dialogue, early disclosure of issues and a clear and ongoing commitment to addressing those issues can help achieve desirable regulatory outcomes.  

As we have all seen, Australia’s reputation as a provider of quality education and training can be easily damaged when providers collapse, standards are not met or quality is lacking.  However, these are challenges for the sector as a whole not simply challenges for VET Regulators.  The sector as a whole suffers when regulators and the regulated do not work together constructively.  The proof of the pudding with the new regulatory environment will be how the risk based and proportionate approach that has been advocated by ASQA is implemented. 

Stakeholders have every right to be concerned about how this will be played out. Without sufficient resources no regulator can be expected to enforce the regulatory framework which it is tasked with overseeing.  Whilst challenges abound, now more than ever it is important to focus on the path ahead and to ensure that the VET sector emerges from these reforms healthier and more robust if Australia is to capitalise on the important contribution vocational education and training makes to our society.

Haroon Hassan is a senior associate in the education industry team at Maddocks Lawyers in Melbourne. His expertise covers regulatory and compliance matters affecting the education sector. 

Socrates was probably the first investigative journalist. He is also one of the greatest philosophers as relevant and inspiring today as he was 2500 thousand years ago. According to the Oracle of Delphi he was also the wisest. Accused of “being irreverent to the gods and corrupting the youth of Athens” he told the court at his trial that like a “gadfly” his mission was to engage his fellow-citizens in debate on matters of virtue, truth and wisdom. He was sentenced to death by hemlock for his troubles. In his closing speech to the jurors he reprimands his fellow-citizens for caring more about money and reputation than about morality and knowledge: “… why do you care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth…? Are you not ashamed of this?” That would be a good question to ask the chief executives of News Corporations.

Since Socrates, many good and worthy of the name journalists have followed in his footsteps. Some like legendary US journalist Edward R. Murrow who took on Joseph McCarthy and won at a time when all walked in fear of McCarthy, the respected Australian journalist Chris Masters who exposed wholesale police corruption in Queensland, and two women journalists, the Irish Veronica Guerin and the Russian Anna Politkovskaya, who like Socrates paid with their lives for informing the public. Recently, we have the Guardian journalists who exposed the News of the World corruption. These journalists, whether consciously or not, shared Socrates’ unshakeable conviction that truth is the bloodline of a free democracy. This highlights the important self-regulatory ethical role that the media itself provides. 

The News of the World scandal by extreme contrast has shown us that very bad things happen when journalists turn from seeking truth to engaging secretly in crime and corruption, putting profit above propriety. Rather than engaging in the dissemination of information that is the legitimate and expected role of the media, the News of the World engaged in stealing information from unsuspecting citizens. It was both illegal and unethical. Worse still, and this is when it becomes unconscionable, it was ethically corrupt. 

In an age where information is a valuable marketable commodity we need ethical journalism more than ever. We also need the inculcation of an ethical culture. And for that we need good educational programs for young journalists that crucially include ethics as an indispensable core subject. 

Ethics and its essential twin subject epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge, are at the heart of good journalism. The reason for this is quite simple. Since the primary role of journalism is the truthful, accurate, balanced, and fair dissemination of information for the public interest (the epistemology of information) then journalists are committed by virtue of that role to certain unavoidable ethical commitments such as truthfulness, honesty, trustworthiness, a sense of fairness and moderation, as well as a commitment to what best serves the public interest (the ethics of journalism). 

Public interest is not what is often confused as “interest to the public”. The latter merely feeds the unwholesome curiosity of readers who are more interested in gossip than worthwhile news. That as the News of the World case has shown undermines the public interest rather than promote it. If truth is the first victim of war, privacy is the collateral damage of the misuse of the term “public interest” by journalists. Even when it serves the public interest, the right of the public to be informed should be balanced with the right to privacy. The former does not automatically override the latter. 

The ethical education of journalists in tertiary institutions requires both the acquisition of ethical and epistemological knowledge for the proper dissemination of information wisely. 

It requires not only knowledge but also wisdom in the form of reflection, understanding and judgement in knowing when and how journalists are to apply that knowledge for both their professional and public good. Wisdom is essential because it provides practical “know-how” of how to act for the enhancement of both personal and social wellbeing. Wisdom is the lighthouse for a meaningful and well-lived life both offline and online, as we now live increasingly in the “infosphere”. 

That type of education requires more than just teaching journalism students to learn a few rules in professional codes of ethics and merely apply them to case studies. More than that, it requires an understanding of the concepts and principles that underlie those rules and codes – concepts such as “truth”, “public interest”, “information” and “privacy”, rather than the uncritical and unreflective application of those terms that often results in their misapplication. It also requires the ability to apply a conceptual framework that provides an explanation and justification of those concepts and principle; as well as the ability for empirical examination in identifying the relevant issues and the application of the concepts and principle for their evaluation. As Socrates would say, a lot of unethical activities are the product of ignorance rather than ignobility. 

Rules don’t work because often they seem imposed externally. They come across as punitive that can be easily broken if there’s nothing more fundamental to support them other than the fear of being caught. Principles and virtues by contrast are internally generated through the cultivation of reflective thinking that empowers rather than alienates. That is because the commitment to them emanates internally by the students themselves through their own rational reflective learning. As Aristotle rightly observed, thinking is our most basic and essential human attribute. And as the French 17th century philosopher Blaise Pascal profoundly remarked “all our dignity consists in thought. It is on thought that we must depend for our recovery, not on space and time, which we could never fill. Let us then strive to think well; that is the basic principle of morality”. Ethics involves clear, rational, and reflective thinking – wise thinking. Good thinking also helps cultivate and civilize emotions – what David Hume, the 18th Scottish philosopher, called the moral sentiments. 

What is often missing in the education curriculum of ethics courses in journalism, apart from properly qualified academics in ethics and epistemology to teach them, is the learning of how to think clearly and conceptually. In the age of Google the skills of description have become nothing more than a “cutting and pasting exercise” of information gathering. It requires little if any reflective thinking and judgment of how to evaluate and apply information wisely for one’s personal, professional and public good. 

Wisdom should become the primary learning objective in education in the Humanities, and journalism specifically because it is wisdom that can equip future journalists to engage in ethical journalism. Not because they are told they have to but because they want to. Not as slaves of information but as masters and lovers of knowledge for the sake of truth, virtue and the public good for oneself and others. Perhaps, the News of the World debacle has been the wake-up call that journalism and journalism educators had to have. Let’s hope we learn from it.

Dr Edward Spence is a Senior Research Fellow at the ARC Special Research Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. He teaches communication ethics and media ethics in the School of Communication and Creative Industries at Charles Sturt University. His co-authored book Media, Markets and Morals (Wiley-Blackwell 2011) was published recently. 

The Council of International Students Australia (CISA) president ousted by his executive board says the election that ushered in his rival is unconstitutional and one he intends to officially dispute.

Robert Atcheson, a juris doctor student at the Australian National University, said voting had been erroneously opened up to non-paying CISA members and the result unfairly pushed through at CISA’s recent annual general meeting in Melbourne. He said he would fight the result, which saw Melbourne Institute of Technology business student Arfa Noor win the CISA presidency, and the election of other officers.

“You can dispute the AGM and the process of the election. I’m going to get advice from Consumer Affairs Victoria on the best way to go about doing that,” he told Campus Review. Atcheson was the object of a slew of complaints outlined in an open letter by CISA committee members that was circulated to the media two weeks ago. At the heart of the complaints was the claim he had adopted a unilateral approach to his activities as CISA president.

But Atcheson has vehemently denied this, saying the inexperience and self-interest of CISA board members are to blame for tension within the group. He also denies the complaint that his networking has failed to reach out to grassroots international students. “I did both. I wasn’t just concentrating on government and industry; I worked with the student associations directly as well,” Atcheson said.

He also implied that Noor seemed to be holding a grudge left over from her defeat at the organisation’s first election. “Arfa ran against me last year and she lost and was absolutely upset about it… She never let go of that and it just carried through into her position for the next 12 months,” he said.

Although the fledgling organisation’s membership constitutes only about 50 students, of which just 18 are financial members, CISA has earned the respect of other peak bodies in the export education space, who see it as a legitimate voice for hundreds of thousands of foreign-born students.

Recently, some of those groups, including TAFE Directors Australia and the Isana International Education Association, have offered to mentor the organisation’s board, according to Noor. Dennis Murray, executive director of the International Education Association of Australia (IEAA), said it was normal for a new group to take a good five years to settle into its role. He said there had been no hint of the upheaval to come during his encounters with Atcheson.

“Our interactions with him were quite effective,” Murray said. “There was no sense in which I was trying to see other office holders or expecting that he would produce them when we were having conversations. He’s the president and I’m the CEO, so that was a normal dynamic. “They were at the level that we’re operating at, in terms of politicking and positioning and strengthening their voice.”

Last week newly elected president Noor told Campus Review that:  “The new team basically wants to keep our objectives the same, which is welfare and safety of international students, working towards accommodation and transport concessions, and more specifically, to make sure that the students in the private and VET sectors are looked after, because they usually get left behind,” she said. There would be a bid to increase membership she said and alleged there had been internal problems with Atcheson’s “dictatorial”  approach.

CISA has only about 50 members, of which just 18 are financial members who have paid $200 joining fees. Noor said increasing membership numbers would be a key activity going forward.

The Indian government will consider a bill next month that would modernise the country’s immigration system and track and protect higher education students who study abroad.

To be introduced during the next parliamentary sitting, starting August 1, the Immigration Management Bill would represent a major overhaul of India’s existing regulations. 

Under the new law, students who planned to study overseas for more than six months – and all Indian education agents – would be required to self-register on an online ‘e-migrate’ system, yet to be developed.

Secretary for the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, Dr Didar Singh, said the registry would be a first for India. He said it would allow the government to monitor students’ whereabouts so it could act on their behalf. 

The legislation was partly a response to safety concerns that arose due to past attacks on Indian students in Australia, Singh told Campus Review.

“We won’t put in a licensing system of any kind, but just an information system, so that when the student arrives in say, Australia or Canada or the USA, that information is then also available with our Indian missions overseas, so they can keep a watch on issues that may arise, as they arose in Australia,” he said. 

“We got quite a shock two and a half years ago, when suddenly the problem started [in Australia], and we didn’t even know how many students there were and where they were and what the issue was.”

If it passes, the new Immigration Management Bill will replace India’s Immigration Regulation Act of 1983. 

Singh, who will introduce the bill, said the proposed legislation would give India an open and transparent immigration management authority. 

The Indian government would have the power to collect data on all migration to and from India, mostly through the Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Additionally, the legislation would, “for the first time provide for the issue of student mobility, and in the chapter on student mobility, will introduce the concept of registration of all education agents”.

“If [the students] inform that they’ve gone through some particular agent who is not registered separately with the education ministry, then that matter will be obviously enquired into,” Singh said.

He complimented the Australian government on its response to the Indian student crisis. Any related damage between the two countries had been repaired. 

“Essentially the requirement of young Indians wanting to get higher education in good places remains,” Singh said.

The recent appointment in Australia of an Overseas Students Ombudsman to safeguard international students receiving their education from private providers was another “step in the right direction”, he said.

The ombudsman, Allan Asher, officially began his post on July 12. As CR recently reported, one of Asher’s first stated objectives is to crack down on unscrupulous agents operating in the source countries of Australia’s international students. He has already discussed the issue with numerous high-level officials in those countries, including Singh.

While Australian universities have never experienced violence like the shooting at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in the USA in 2007, safety on campus is still an issue of concern for most institutions. Attacks on international students in recent years have caused rows both at home and overseas and have had a damaging impact on Australia’s reputation internationally.

So when word got around that the University of Newcastle had invited institutional security experts from America to speak on the topic what was meant to be a few lectures turned into a three-day conference. Twenty-two Australian universities and three from New Zealand will attend the Campus Threat Assessment and Management conference, the first of its kind in the country, at the university from July 25 to 27. The conference will look at directing effective strategies to prevent violence and encourage collaboration and delegates include senior decision-makers, psychologists, counsellors, administrators and human resources staff, along with police and TAFE representatives.

Chief amongst the speakers are Dr Gene Deisinger, deputy chief of police and the director of threat management services for Virginia Polytechnic and State University, and Rich Wilson, a commander with the Arizona State University Police Department. Both a have coordinated institutional responses during times of crisis.

 “This could have been hosted on any campus in the country,” said Newcastle chancellor Professor Trevor Waring, who will also be speaking about mental health issues at the conference. He said that while violence on Australian campuses was relatively uncommon, it still paid to be prepared, and to work to prevent it.

“I think those rare occasions of violence that have occurred and that have been well publicized overseas have caused people to dot their ‘I’s and cross their ‘t’s,” he said. “We don’t want to be caught unawares, so it’s really a case of saying, what more can we do to ensure that those experiences aren’t going to be ours in the future.

“A lot of that has to do with ensuring the student experience is one of attachment and inclusion, and making sure that every student is aware of all the support services that are available on campus – not just counseling, but assisting all students with their study programs to ensure they don’t get distressed and upset,” he said.

The chancellor, who is also conjoint professor of psychology at the university, will give a speech dispelling myths about mental health and highlighting the need for students to be directed towards support services. Waring said he did not believe universities were any more prone to violence than any other concentration of young people “but they are like small cities” and require looking after.

“I think there are all the practical things you can do in terms of the design – making sure there are open spaces and that they are well lit and places where people can congregate, but I think even more important is that we can develop a culture among students so that they see themselves as being responsible for each other,” he said. 

Also coming up is the first National Summit on the Mental Health of Tertiary Students, to be held by Melbourne University from August 4 to 5.

TAFE Qld and the University of Southern Queensland signed an agreement on Friday to smooth the pathways between the two sectors  

Through the collaborative development of the Queensland Tertiary Education Participation network (QTEPnet) both TAFE and USQ will look to increase the take up of tertiary education in regional areas across Queensland by making it easier for students to move between TAFE and university courses.

The agreement will also put in place staffing and student support services using existing TAFE networks and USQ’s online expertise.

The involves significant collaboration with six key regional and outer-metropolitan institutes of Southern Queensland Institute of TAFE, Wide Bay Institute of TAFE, Mt Isa Institute of TAFE, Barrier Reef Institute of TAFE, Tropical North Queensland Institute of TAFE and The Bremer Institute of TAFE, and the three metropolitan institutes of Skillstech Australia, Brisbane North Institute of TAFE and Metropolitan South Institute of TAFE.

It was signed by USQ vice-chancellor Professor Bill Lovegrove and the deputy director of TAFE Queensland, Carol Webb

It was reported locally the agreement would  involve TAFE institutes providing classroom and face-to-face support to students enrolled in online courses that will cater for a range of industry related needs and career opportunities.

Through the collaborative development of the participation network, both TAFE and USQ will look to increase the take up of tertiary education in regional areas by making it easier for students to move between TAFE and university courses.

USQ’s vice-chancellor Lovegrove said  the initiative was a response to the federal government’s recommendation to build Australia’s skill-base and progress regional sustainability, through the provision of personally, professionally, industrially and regionally relevant education pathways.

“QTEPnet will open up a range of opportunities for integrated TAFE and University awards to be developed that will cater for workplace demands and which will allow students to get the support they need close to home, ” Lovegrove told the Toowoomba Chronicle

He said that significant efficiencies would be gained by not duplicating teaching resources. By using existing TAFE facilities, students enrolled externally will have the added benefit of accessing a range of support services which normally would not be available because of their 

Webb said, that “TAFE Queensland institutes were enthusiastic about the opportunities to bring more higher education opportunities and pathways to regional Queensland residents through this agreement.

An UWA’s transition program, represented by assistant professor Lee Partridge, won an award for programs that enhance learning in the first-year experience category. The ACE (Academic Conduct Essentials) program is a compulsory online module that all new students at UWA complete in order to understand ethical scholarship and the university’s academic conduct policy. 

The award builds on previous recognition for the ACE initiative, which is also included in the AUQA good practice database. UWA vice-chancellor Professor Alan Robson congratulated Blaze Kwaymullina and Lee Partridge and her team on their outstanding results. 

“I warmly congratulate our Teaching Excellence Award recipients for such recognition in a highly competitive national context.  Their success attests both to individual excellence and to an institutional context which strongly supports teaching activities and programs of high calibre,” Robson said in a media release. Meanwhile an American history academic at Newcastle University who begins every lecture with music has won an award for teaching excellence. 

Dr Michael Ondaatje, from the faculty of education and arts, will receive the teaching excellence award from the ALTC at the national ceremony in Sydney next month.  Ondaatje’s inspiring teaching methods have engaged his students and resulted in an influx “Enthusiasm is a vital ingredient for inspiring students to learn,” Ondaatje said. 

“I tell my students why I am so passionate about teaching American history and I use my lectures to bring the past alive for them through music, visual footage and multimedia.  “I encourage students to express themselves and take chances with their thinking. 

“Quite often sparks will fly during debate but my students tell me that my passion and approach to teaching enable their learning.”  Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic and Global Relations), Professor Kevin McConkey, said the Teaching Excellence Awards were among the most competitive higher education awards in Australia. The high standard of teaching at The University of Western Australia has again been recognised in the national Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) teaching awards for 2011.

It’s easy to forget, if you’re the sort of person who spends all day on the web, that not everyone’s life is so digital. Sarah Thorneycroft, an academic developer at the Teaching and Learning Centre at the University of New England, encounters this problem on a daily basis as she helps teachers and lecturers find new ways to get their lessons through to students. With so many of UNE’s students studying by distance, online engagement is essential.

“We’re there to provide teaching and learning and support to staff,” she said. “Depending on current need or demand we’ll do special research projects for academics who want something new, who might need new support.”

But that’s not tech support, or at least it’s not meant to be – a recent post on Thorneycroft’s blog Mind The Gap – Rethinking Academia, Education, Technology and Research  suggested that academic developers like herself might want to start using coffee mugs displaying labels like “not tech support” and “yes, I’m actually an academic”. But she and her co-workers are gradually winning over the rest of the staff.

“A lot of the things they approach us with are technical, say they’ll have an issue with getting content to students, but we do see people approach us who’ve heard about things or they’ve heard of colleagues doing things and are interested in redesigning how they’re teaching – doing things differently, more creatively, more collaboratively,” she said.

A recent example was a music lecturer who came to her asking for help with a unit in which students had to design a musical instrument and keep a process diary while doing so. It was a project that had always been standalone but more and more students were becoming anxious about how they were progressing: What was a process diary meant to look like? What did their classmate’s work look like? 

“So we implemented a blogging project where there was a collaborative blog that all the students could see – they all had their own blogs, but the posts were syndicated into a group blog and they could see a feed of everyone’s work,” she said. “They were effectively creating the course content themselves.”

Thorneycroft has her fingers in many pies, with her blog covering everything from game-based learning, social media, making universities ‘radical’ again and engaging with students. It chimes well with her statement that “there are no conceptual limits to what you can teach online or how you can teach online”.

“I think most of the limits are perceived,” she said. “Everyone has their own concept of what learning looks like, and a lot of the time online doesn’t factor into that, especially in higher education. If you asked Joe Blogs in the street about university, he would say, you go to lectures, you go to tutorials, you write essays, and that’s a pretty standard concept that most people have.” 

Her blog attracts a mixed bag of readers – academics, K to 12 teachers, tech people – to go with its mixed contents.

“[The blog] kind of evolved as a really organic thing. It just started for me as a way to get things down and out of my head… it was a great to start getting feed back and to see responses to what I was doing,” she said. “There’s a really wide demographic [of readers] and you find that a lot with people’s online networks in general… I think if you publish to a narrow audience you miss out on a lot of people who could be engaging with you.”

http://sarahthorneycroft.com/

Thorneycroft’s blog picks

• The Scholarly Kitchen 

http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/

A $200,000 eLearning Innovation Fund has been established to identify university developed e-learning projects that could, with a little more work and funding, be integrated with the Moodle open source learning system and implemented more widely. Grants worth up to $50,000 will be made available to universities able to demonstrate a successful prototype deemed worth of some second round funding.

Moodle is an open source learning management system which is gaining traction in Australia’s tertiary education sector, with 13 universities including ANU, Monash, Macquarie, Canberra, Flinders and West Australia now committed to the platform. A wide range of TAFEs and schools, besides some commercial and government enterprises also use the learning management system.

What the organisers of the Innovation Fund are clearly hoping is that the projects receiveing funding create a richer selection of Moodle-ready tools or add ons which encourage more organisations to adopt the system.

The fund was announced at last week’s Moodle user conference held in Sydney which attracted over 500 delegates.

Established by NetSpot, an Adelaide-based IT services company and Moodle partner which provides universities access to Moodle as a managed service via AARNet, the fund has secured the support of a number of professional bodies which will along with NetSpot, decide how to allocate the $200,000 worth of grants. According to Allan Christie, managing director of NetSpot, the involvement of the professional bodies was important as it delivered extra legitimacy to the initiative.

Ascilite (the Australian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education), HERDSA (Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia), ODLAA (Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia), ACODE (Australasian Council on Open, Distance and E-Learning) and CADAD (the Council of Australian Directors of Academic Development) have all lent their support to the initiative.

 NetSpot itself emerged out of the university sector in 1998 when Christie, then senior lecturer in orthopaedics, left the University of South Australia to establish the company.  In May 2007 it became an official Moodle partner, and today has a staff of 43 and revenues of just over $8 million.

Christie said the fund was an attempt to ensure that good e-learning initiatives, which often got going as a result of a project being funded in universities, were not orphaned when the project money dried up. 

Instead a degree of “innovation sustainability” would be possible as the NetSpot innovation funds could take the initial idea through additional development and then provide what he described as “a degree of commercial scaffolding”. This could involve taking the e-learning tool and integrating it with Moodle, marketing the tool, or providing professional services such as installation and training to encourage wider adoption.

“Normally with innovation you get some seed funding and one or two ideas show benefits in terms of their uptake and acceptance – but they will fail if the money dies up,” said Christie. NetSpot’s Innovation Fund is intended to seek out university e-learning initiatives that show early promise and then provide additional funds and support in order to develop both more traction within individual institutions and something of interest to the wider e-learning market.

Christie said that NetSpot worked with universities to build customised learning environments, and already had access to a range of open source tools which could be connected to Moodle. With the fruits of its Innovation Fund investment, the company is hopeful that the range of add-ons available will swiftly expand and that it is also able to demonstrate that it is “Authentically engaged with the community.”

To be eligible for consideration prototype innovations being put forward as a candidate for additional funding must be open source and use the GPL v3 (open source) licence; must enhance Moodle; and, be shared with the wider academic community. Also at least one member of the development team must be a member of ascilite, HERDSA or ODLAA.

Further information is available from info@netspot.com.au

ALTC’s CEO Dr Carol Nicoll said the awards were given to truly outstanding individuals and teams who have made a lasting impression on the quality of Australian higher education. “I congratulate the 22 teachers who have encouraged and motivated their students to achieve great outcomes. Their commitment and dedication to students is inspirational.”

“And I applaud the 10 programs and the teams of people behind them who have worked tirelessly to give Australian students better learning opportunities and a better chance of success.” The ALTC Awards, worth $25,000 each, will be presented during a ceremony at the Sydney Opera House on Tuesday August 16. The nation’s premier teaching award, the Prime Minister’s Award for Australian University Teacher of the Year, will be presented to one of the 22 teachers receiving an Award for Teaching Excellence. The ALTC closes at the beginning of 2012 with some of its functions being rolled into DEEWR.

See also:

The breach of trust with the public will have global ramifications. The majority of today’s journalists are graduates with degrees in which the study of ethics has been a key component. The scandal therefore will resurrect some of those old debates about journalism education such as, where is it properly sited? What is the relationship between theory and practice? What does industry, in this case media organisations, expect from journalism graduates?

Journalism as a stand-alone university degree is a relative newcomer. There are traditionalists in the academy who do not respect or understand its presence. Some believe if it has to be there at all then it should be rolled into broad spectrum communications studies along with public relations and advertising. Journalism educators across the country, committed to the important role of journalism in an open democracy fight these battles constantly within the academy while also grappling with elements of the industry dismissive of what journalism students learn at universities.

 This industry/education tension is not of course confined to journalism. Currently it is a key focus across both the VET and higher education sectors as the government pushes its skills agenda. It begs the question: If education at any level is meant to be nothing more than a production-line for industry? 

Senior Research Fellow at the ARC Special Research Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Dr Edward Spence teaches communication ethics and media ethics at Charles Sturt University. In this edition he writes that journalism education requires more than just teaching students to learn a few rules in professional codes of ethics and merely apply them to case studies. It requires an understanding of the concepts and principles that underlie those codes – concepts such as ‘truth’, ‘public interest’ and ‘privacy’, and critical and reflective practice.

 But students go into newsrooms where these principles are poorly understood or ignored. Our journalism model is based on that of the UK and although there is no evidence of phone hacking here, there are some elements on newsroom culture in Australia that mirror the worst of Fleet Street arrogance.

HOW JOURNALISM LECTURERS TEACH ETHICS

‘I don’t think the problem is whether journalism ethics is taught in universities or whether there should be more of it,” said University of Canberra professor of journalism, Matthew Ricketson, who has worked at The Age, The Australian and Time Australia.  “One of the issues is that you can teach various things at university, but like with most degrees, there are certain things you can learn at university and then there are certain things you learn in the workforce,” said Ricketson referring to comments made by former ABC-reporter Pru Goward 10 years ago and more recent statements made to himself by an editorial training manager.

“I’ve been in the journalism education business on and off since 1993 and I can’t think of many courses I know where ethics is not taught – if anything we’ve, as a group, been accused of putting too much emphasis on journalism ethics at the expense of teaching pure practical skills or other sorts of knowledge, ” he said.

 “The other thing is the culture of the newsroom and the influence of that culture on a young journalist is equally, if not more powerful, than what they’ve learnt at university. It’s quite common that young journalists will be told, don’t worry about that ethics stuff you learnt, suck up, go out there, and get that story.  “I’ve had young journalism graduates tell me that’s what they’ve been told and that’s what I’ve heard in newsrooms myself. It’s a very common refrain.”

He said there also needed to be more honest conversations about what happened in newsrooms, in which a lack of time to reflect on the ethics of their work often led reporters to make poor moral decisions. “The journalists who were hacking into the phones of Milly Dowler and 7/7 bombing victims... if you’d asked them to go home and tell their wives or friends or parents that that’s what they’d done at work that day and defend it, you can’t really see that happening,” he said.

“If you don’t ever stop and think about it, if there is no culture in a newsroom, then that is exactly how that sort of thing happens.” At Canberra, ethics is woven into practical and theoretical classes on journalism so also is it at the University of Technology, Sydney, which has just created a Graduate School of Journalism headed by Professor Alan Knight.

Knight was unavailable for comment but the director of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at UTS, Professor Wendy Bacon told Campus Review: “We tackle it from a number of different directions, but it’s got to be within the context of teaching practical journalism.” 

“But it’s also very important to have staff that has a lot of experience as journalists themselves so they can be transparent about their experiences. If it’s just a set of instructions, that’s not going to be any good at all once you’re out in the workplace, some media environments in Australia aren’t really following the code at all.”  Charles Sturt University takes a different tack, running full ethics classes for its students. The classes are run by Dr Edward Spence and combine students from different degree programs, so journalism students will find themselves considering ethics alongside public relations students. 

“The reasons we do that is a lot of the ethical issues that arise cross over these areas,” he said. “For example when media releases prepared by PR firms are public without any disclosure that they are releases. You can see that a lot of the ethical questions rise at the interface between PR and journalism.” Spence said this encouraged students to think about why something was unethical as well as recognising problems.

“The important thing about teaching ethics is not just getting them to see an issue. It’s getting them to explain why it is not ethical. They often find it hard to give a reason why it is ethical or not. For students, how to think for themselves is really important sot that if they’re called upon to defend [themselves] they can.” Spence said he saw the News of the World scandal as being an example of where the core principles of journalism, to inform the public in a balanced way, was undercut by the actions of journalists.

“The [News of the World] undermined the very legitimacy that supports what they do,” he said.

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) journalism program director Maree Curtis a former News Ltd employee, said she did not believe the excesses of the News of the World would have happened in Australia and that students would still be encouraged to seek employment with the company. “I think that a lot of university students have a little bit of a look-down-your-nose attitude to News anyway. They come from this that this view, ‘oh I don’t want to work at the Herald Sun, (A Melbourne-based News Ltd. paper) everyone wants to work for The Age and the ABC but the reality is that most journalists in Australia are not employed by Fairfax, they’re employed by News,” she said.

 “If you want to get a job, the chances are that you’re going to work for Murdoch and you could do a lot worse than getting a cadetship at the Herald Sun. Journalism students at RMIT do core subjects on ethics, law and regulation regardless of whether they are undergraduates or postgraduates. “It’s focused on the practical side as well as the theory side, and we use anything that’s in the news at the time,” she said.

 “In my courses, I teach news writing and reporting and we often will discuss how to go about gathering stories, the ethics of the message, the responsibility to the people who pay us and the people who give us their time, the people we write about, the people whose lives might be affected by the things do. Just because something’s legal doesn’t mean it’s ethical. One would think most working journalists would understand that.”

A debate on climate change held at the National Press Club last week would have been a perilous undertaking for any scientist, says Professor Dave Griggs, director of Monash Sustainability Institute.

Griggs, who is also chief executive of the non-profit ClimateWorks Australia, said the debate format was unsuitable for communicating complex information. “It’s so easy for a sceptic to say, ‘Climate change has been caused by the sun’. And we say, ‘No, it hasn’t’. And they say, ‘Yes, it has’…” he explained. 

“Then we need to go into a 10-minute explanation of why it’s not being caused by the sun, but of course, you don’t get 10 minutes in a debate. By the time you’ve said, ‘I can prove it is’, ‘I can prove it isn’t’, you’re off to the next question.” Griggs said the quandary was discussed often among the nation’s climate-change scientists, who had become deeply frustrated in recent years by the growing media traction of so-called denialists.

Out of that frustration, he and 12 prominent colleagues formed Climate Scientists Australia two years ago, to help lift the influence of peer-reviewed science on national policy. The group gives regular briefings at state and federal parliaments to business leaders and others.

“We don’t have a political agenda. We’re not a lobby group, we’re not advocating for any policy. We just want whatever policy that is decided to be made on the basis of the best science, and not the science that you hear in the media,” said Griggs.Climate Scientists Australia is just one example of the groups scientists are forming to hit back against sceptics, especially online.

A few months ago, scientists at the University of Western Australia (UWA) launched Shaping Tomorrow’s World, a web site to inspire discussion about climate, energy, and resources, including peak oil and food insecurity issues. “There is a very active group of scientists not only at UWA but nationwide who have started to hold so-called climate ‘sceptics’ accountable for their actions,” said UWA psychology Professor Stephan Lewandowsky.

“One platform for this has been The Conversation. We also have climatescienceWA.org, which is a portal for climate-related information within the UWA web tree. “So [our] approach is two-pronged: On the one hand, encourage constructive discussion of solutions that build on an evidence-based scientific background, and on the other hand, hold accountable those who create distractions by non-scientific and ethically dubious means.”

Last month, the newly branded Science and Technology group, representing 68,000 scientists and technologists, launched a Respect the Science campaign, also with a fact-based web site. A University of Queensland physics graduate is running another portal – Skeptical Science. It includes a section called “Monckton Myths” about the claims by one of the most cited climate-change sceptics.

Christopher Monckton was, of course, one of the debaters at last week’s press club event. As Campus Review reported in a previous story, his appearance was highly controversial. The federal government’s top climate science advisor, Professor Will Steffen, of the Australian National University, said the press club was partaking in shoddy journalism, not least because Monckton’s claims – especially that human activity is not contributing to climate change – have been repeatedly debunked.

At the debate, CR asked Monckton why he had not submitted his own research to a quality, peer-reviewed journal. His response was to cite Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered, a paper he penned in 2008 for the quarterly newsletter, American Physics and Society. However, the publication clearly states on its web site that the Monckton paper has not undergone scientific peer review. Griggs wished good luck to any scientist who was prepared to debate a sceptic, but said other formats were more effective.

“We will respond to sceptics, but we will do that in a considered way and in a format where we think we can get the information across. Of course, then we’re always accused of, ‘Well, you don’t debate me, so I must be right’. You can’t win,” he said.In related news, the CSIRO has awarded one of its top modelling experts with a five-year grant to build a research team examining climate influence on Australia.

Recipient Dr Wenju Cai has been the lead author and co-author of some 40 peer-reviewed papers on climate-related science.In a CSIRO press statement, chief executive Dr Megan Clark said there had “never been a greater need for Australian science to secure its knowledge base with expanded observations and modelling expertise”.

Related stories:

http://www.campusreview.com.au/pages/section/article.php?s=News&idArticle=21561

http://www.campusreview.com.au/pages/section/article.php?s=News&idArticle=21323

Researchers told a recent National Vocational Education and Training Research Conference in Coffs Harbour that while the number of such institutions was increasing, onerous regulations and competitive pressures continued to dog them. Listed among the research findings were numerous complaints about the complexity of FEE-HELP applications, double reporting and funding arrangements, and different regulations between sectors and in industrial regimes for teachers.

“This takes up a lot of resources at a small private provider or a university with a small VET department,” research fellow Dr Nick Fredman wrote in the related paper he presented at the conference. The research pertains to the 57 mixed-sector private providers and 22 universities that offer some VET courses and did not include dual-sector universities. It’s based on 61 stakeholder interviews and is part of ongoing research on educational transitions by the University of Melbourne’s LH Martin Institute of Higher Education Leadership and Management and the Centre for the Study of Higher Education.

While student participants in the research were generally positive about their educational institutions, many teachers and managers raised concerns about differences in teaching and learning between the two sectors. They also tended to brand other higher education offerings as “elitist”.

“A number of comments suggested that the existence of status differences could in some cases undermine efforts at broadening participation and constructing pathway opportunities,” wrote Fredman. “Most of the institutional leaders and teachers spoken to made comments about academics not valuing or understanding VET teaching or learning.”

In his paper,  Mixing it up: what’s driving mixed-sector provision and is it a good thing? he warned about the relatively recent blurring of VET and higher education boundaries. While interviewees said pathways and linkages had evolved in response to the demand for increased participation, he said that reality could run counter to policy directives to keep the sectors separate.

Fredman cited the final report of the Bradley Review, which stated that, “While improving pathways is important, it must be recognised that this form of provision is not primarily a feeder for higher education, and its primary purposes must not be distorted by the need to increase higher education participation”.

Among the report’s recommendations is the need for a single national registry of tertiary education and more streamlined regulation. “Although the creation of two separate national regulators may be unfortunate, there is the opportunity to work together at a national level on the basis of a more coherent qualifications system in the AQF [Australian Qualifications Framework],” wrote Fredman.

The researchers are continuing to dissect related statistics from numerous sources about increasing numbers of students who use VET as a direct pathway to higher education, and also increasing numbers of reverse and horizontal pathway use. LH Martin associate professor Leesa Wheelahan and RMIT policy advisor Gavin Moodie are on the research team.

“One thing we already know is that the use of formal pathways to higher education varies considerably by field and institution,” says the paper.Fredman told Campus Review that in the context of greater demands for skills, qualifications and study pathways, mixed-sector institutions were filling important gaps. “Policy change that simplifies pathways, keeps a closer watch on quality and better supports teacher development could really help,” he said.

Chubb said that the centre would help Australia face the challenges of the contemporary world. “We have to secure our place in the world and the future by being a vital component of the future,” he said. “Nanomedicine will be a part of that, I have no doubt, because it will enable a better delivery of systems and drugs and vital therapies to individuals who would not prosper without that treatment, and delivering that better, more efficiently and more economically is an important part of that.”

He also said nanomedicine and nanotechnology were not without their detractors, however, it was up to scientists to communicate their research to the general public, particularly when the topic at hand was controversial. “I think it’s important that the public knows that there’s a serious regulatory and ethical environment,” he said.  “It’s pretty easy to run scare campaigns, you don’t have to have evidence,” he said.

 “[Science] is taken for granted, and as a consequence of which, when people are thinking about science, it’s easy for them to be put off by the doubts of people who don’t have to be right, they just have to create anxiety,” said Chubb. “I think we’ve all got to raise the profile of science. It does mean being being vocal, it does mean being out in your communities… if we don’t tell people how will they know what we do?”

Professor Justin Gooding, one of the centre’s three directors, said he hoped the multidisciplinary approach to would attract biomedical researchers to try out new technology, resulting in better diagnostic tools and better therapies. “[The centre] is trying to draw upon three strengths – strengths in medical research, strength in nanotechonology and strength in teamwork,” he said. 

The centre has not one, but three directors representing the faculties combining to run the centre: one from science, one from engineering and one from medicine. Gooding comes from the School of Chemistry, where he leads the biosensors and biointerfaces research program; Professor Tom Davis is the director of the Centre for Advanced Macromolecular Design at UNSW and is a polymer chemist; while Professor Maria Kavallaris is the head of the tumor biology and targeting program at the CCIA. 

 Gooding said he hoped the combination would result in good things and mean that “the right decisions will be made right at the very beginning” of the centre’s research into nanomedicine.

Nanotechnology manipulates materials at the atomic scale, and nanomedicine uses this technology to develop new ways of delivering drugs. The centre’s directors hope to attract chemists, engineers and medical practitioners from around the world, and will begin promoting nanomedicine through forums, conferences and the media. The ACN already has its first visiting professor, Molly Stevens, professor of biomedical materials and regenerative medicine, and the research director for biomedical sciences in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London.

Deputy vice-chancellor of research at UNSW, Professor Les Field, said he had been amazed by the level of interest in the centre, which had started a conference on nanomedicine last year.  “I went there thinking, ‘who would come to a conference on nanomedicine?’ and the room was overflowing with people from all disciplines,” he said. “We had clinical medical practitioners all the way through to what I would call hardcore surface physicists, all wanting to get a glimpse of what nanomedicine was, and what nanomedicine could do.”

 Among the first diseases to be targeted by researchers at the ACN, in partnership with the Children’s Cancer Institute Australia and UNSW’s Lowy Cancer Research Centre, will be neuroblastoma, the most common form of tumour in children under five years old, and also one of the most difficult to treat, with survival rates of 40 to 50 per cent. 

But the centre is also already working on new treatments for lung cancer, in which gene silencing is used to make tumors more sensitive to standard chemotherapy drugs. CAN and CCIA researchers also hope to use nanoparticles to develop new tumor drugs. Other research at the moment includes treatments for liver fibrosis, researching the development of new pain management drugs, and detecting and treating the eye disease uvetis.

CISA has ousted its inaugural president, Robert Atcheson, after publishing an open letter alleging unilateralism and related complaints. Signed by eight committee members, the letter outlined frustration with their perceived lack of power in CISA decision-making.

At a two-day CISA annual general meeting held in Melbourne a few days later, a “landslide” election saw Atcheson defeated by business student Arfa Noor. 

Noor, who studies at Melbourne Institute of Technology, told Campus Review that representatives from several peak bodies had offered to help CISA smooth its operations and governance, including TAFE Directors Australia and the Isana International Education Association. 

She said CISA had been run as an “absolute dictatorship” and Atcheson had failed to engage CISA’s core clients — international students.

CISA has only about 50 members, of which just 18 are financial members who have paid $200 joining fees. Noor said increasing membership numbers would be a key activity going forward.

“The new team basically wants to keep our objectives the same, which is welfare and safety of international students, working towards accommodation and transport concessions, and more specifically, to make sure that the students in the private and VET sectors are looked after, because they usually get left behind,” she said.

 In addition to her new role as CISA president, Noor is the Victorian vice president of the Australian Federation of International Students, and she sits on the executive committee of the Pakistani Students Association Australia. She also is community projects officer at the Victorian Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Coalition.

 The letter that lead to his replacement read: “The conduct of the CISA president (Atcheson) has restricted the executive committee’s ability to function [and] the morale of the executive committee has been severely compromised.”   Atcheson did not return a call for comment, but has rejected the committee’s claims in other media stories. 

In the year since CISA was formed, it is understood he has built good relationships with other organisations, including the International Education Association of Australia.  The new CISA committee is: Arfa Noor (president); Heather Richards (vice president); Tong Seng (secretary); Aleem Nizari (treasurer); Adrian Ramos (education officer); Dominik Schmid (welfare officer); Erasmus Norviewu-Mortty (public relations officer); Princewill Mengot (general member for TAFE/VET); and Dzung Ta (general member).

Pam Christie who leads TAFE NSW higher education strategy told industry and education leaders that there was not the flow of students from TAFE to universities that people thought there was. “We need to improve it,” Christie said. What had been done traditionally was endless mapping of TAFE curriculum to get articulation right. TAFE NSW now had over 500 articulation agreements with individual universities.  “This was a waste of time and effort compared to the actual flow of students that have been granted entry to university on the basis of that credit,” she said.

“It is not working. What we believe is we have to fundamentally re-think the relationships between VET and universities.” Christie was addressing questions raised during an all-day meeting of industry representatives and higher education and VET leaders arranged by Service Skills Australia in a bid to promote understanding and better connections between the education and industry sectors.

In the course of the symposium a number of hurdles to that understanding had been identified and chief among them was traditional VET/ university stereotypes and future avenues for advice from industry. A panel discussion was chaired by education consultant, Professor Rod McDonald, who said there was a need to overcome stereotypes to avoid ending up with some “horrible (dual sector) amalgam.”

Both Christie and Professor Peter Booth, senior deputy vice-chancellor at UTS agreed a strong element of snobbery still existed within universities about taking students from the VET sector. Booth said the relationship was complex. UTS and the Australian Technology Network (ATN) of universities had strong relationships and there was a “strong flow of students”, but in some universities there was an elitist view of lower level qualifications and questions about how much advanced standing those students should have.

“Within our own academic staff you will find that range of views, some who understand,  some who accommodate and some who are reasonably negative and look down at lower level qualifications”, he said. However generally there was a positive view and there was an extremely large flow of students.

However, Christie disagreed that the current student flow was strong. She said that in the post-Bradley environment there was an eagerness for universities to engage more in the VET sector. “We have to take that opportunity and challenge the stereotypes and assumptions and start partnerships that are winning for both,” she said.

At the moment some universities were doing this better than others, Charles Sturt University in west NSW for example had high enrolments from VET while others had very low enrolments.

Anthony Bohm, CEO of distance learning providers, Cengage, said he thought there was a strategic misalignment when you tried to deal with universities as VET providers. “As a VET provider, a private one, we have a very simple agenda, skills’ agenda you live and die by the skills training you provide and the employment that it provides for graduates.”

He said universities had a more diversified mission “when their commercial argument fails it becomes a community service.”  Bohm said this strategic misalignment created a tension. “If you look at the skills shortages in Australia I do not think the solution is higher education.” He said he was not necessarily an advocate of an integrated sector because he thought the requirements of the workforce were more at the skills level.

Robin Shreeve, CEO of Skills Australia said the boundaries were blurring. He believed the VET sector needed to look at the quality of its products and accessibility to them. The issue of industry input into design of courses and training packages was also discussed. Christie said working with industry was fundamental to TAFE. She thought the issue was about being customer responsive across the VET sector.

TAFE was currently measuring the value added from industry input. She also mentioned that TAFE NSW has developed a program for a dual sector degree in accountancy which involved TAFEs, universities and industry, through the CPA.

Booth said at university level you had to have staff who wanted to engage and were open to industry views. “You have to have a culture of listening; universities generally are not good at listening. The ATNs do but we also debate what industry wants and whether it is appropriate. Often the advice we get from industry is not future oriented, it is about the here and now, and frankly if we did that, it would be a great disservice to our graduates.”

He said getting industry to push the future agenda is one of the most difficult issues to be tackled.

Part of the appeal of pre-apprenticeships lies in giving a potential apprentice a realistic preview of what life in a trade involves, generating a better match between apprentice and occupation, but also ensuring students have the necessary formative skills and knowledge to successfully complete their training. In theory, the preview should result in apprentices who are more satisfied with their training and higher completion rates, because apprentices begin their training with a better idea of what is involved. But in reality, this is not always the case. In fact, research that I recently completed with Tom Karmel for the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) highlights that the design of pre-apprenticeships are in need of a rethink if they are to make a real difference to improving low completion rates. 

Apprentice and trainee completion rates have been receiving a lot of attention recently, with governments stressing that they are not happy with the current level of completions. While a range of factors play a role in whether an apprentice or trainee will complete their training, such as personal maturity and having supportive supervision at work, NCVER data show that the individual completion rate for apprentices who started their training in 2005 is around 56.6 per cent. Low completion rates are problematic as it means that there are fewer skilled workers available to fill jobs, not to mention a poor return on investment for employers who put their time into training an apprentice. So do pre-apprenticeships have any impact on apprentice completion?

Our research finds that there is no universal benefit associated with completing a pre-apprenticeship; the effect of completing this type of training varies by prior education level and occupation. These mixed results suggest that getting the design of pre-apprenticeships right is a challenge and it seems to me that there are two key design issues that warrant deeper consideration if pre-apprenticeships are to deliver value for money. 

First, there is the question of the curriculum. Our research shows that the impact of pre-apprenticeships depends on the apprentice’s highest education level and they are on average beneficial if the apprentice has completed Year 10 or Year 12, increasing the likelihood of completion by a modest 3.7 and 4.0 percentage points respectively. But there is no benefit attached to a pre-apprenticeship if the apprentice already has a certificate III qualification or higher. Among such apprentices, a pre-apprenticeship reduces the likelihood of completing their training by 2.7 percentage points. Furthermore, among apprentices who have completed year 11, those who have also done a pre-apprenticeship are 0.8 percentage points less likely to complete their training. 

As we can see, there are limitations to what a pre-apprenticeship can achieve so the curriculum should focus on finding an appropriate balance between providing an introduction to the trade while also giving the student generic skills such as literacy, numeracy and employability. For someone in Year 11, undertaking a pre-apprenticeship may be a poorer alternative to completing Year 12, therefore, policies designed to integrate school completion with a pre-apprenticeship, may deliver a better result. 

Second, there is the link between pre-apprenticeships and apprenticeships. We found that pre-apprenticeships increase the likelihood of completion for apprentices in the construction, food and electro-technology trades, with the largest effect in construction. On average, a construction apprentice is 4.1 percentage points more likely to complete their training if they undertook a pre-apprenticeship. However, pre-apprenticeships reduce the likelihood of completing an apprenticeship for hairdressers and apprentices in the automotive and engineering trades. The effect in the automotive and engineering trades is quite small but on average, a hairdressing apprentice is 4.6 percentage points less likely to complete their training if they had undertaken a pre-apprenticeship. 

One possible source of occupational variation is the value accorded to a pre-apprenticeship in the different trades. An apprentice who has completed a pre-apprenticeship may question the extra effort if there is no payoff in terms of recognition of prior learning, starting wage or accelerated completion. This is where Modern Award provisions and other regulatory arrangements come into play. By and large, it is modern awards that regulate apprentice pay so changes to award provision may be required to entice those who have completed a pre-apprenticeship to complete an apprenticeship.  

While pre-apprenticeship programs have recently generated interest as a means of boosting apprentice completion rates, our research shows that there is no widespread benefit associated with undertaking this type of training. Pre-apprenticeships, when carefully designed, can assist in improving completion rates in some trades, but if the ultimate goal is improving apprentice completion rates, their impact so far is mediocre at best.

Dr Damian Oliver is a Senior Research Officer at NCVER.

Copies of Pre-apprenticeships and their impact on apprenticeship satisfaction and completion are available at www.ncver.edu.au/publications/2353.html  

Copies of Individual-based completion rates for apprentices are available at  http://www.ncver.edu.au/publications/2357.html

A general lack of social and political appreciation for vocational education and training has been at least partly self-made, a national conference of VET researchers heard last week.

In a soul-searching opening address at the 20th National Vocational Education and Training Research Conference in Coffs Harbour, Elizabeth McGregor, institute director of North Coast TAFE, challenged delegates to communicate VET’s worth and purpose by sharpening the focus and quality of their research.

“To make you think about why, possibly, the [VET] system as a whole is not necessarily recognised for having that amount of power and value, maybe it’s partly to do with the kinds of things we’ve been researching and measuring…” McGregor said.

“Currently, there’s lots of research about the VET sector, though I would argue that not a lot of it has been focused on questions about our value and our impact.” 

For example, she said, observers had theorised in 2007 that VET contributed significantly to regional growth. But this still needed to be checked through the right research questions about skills development, civic engagement, mobilisation of social capital, supply chain connections, and enterprise development and support.

“I’ve been waiting to see the research to flow from that, and maybe I’m not looking in the right places, but I actually don’t think we’ve got it yet,” McGregor said.

Delegates responded that they would like to undertake such research, but it was outside the current policy framework that seemed to dictate the topics.

“The one thing we all struggle with as researchers is the political nature of research in vocational education and training,” said Berwyn Clayton, director of the Work-based Education Research Centre at Victoria University and 2011 VET Researcher of the Year.

“We all would love to challenge some of the policy questions and perhaps examine more closely some of the issues and imperatives that government has put in place, [but] we’re blocked to some degree… So whilst I’d love to answer some of those very difficult questions, I know if I did find the answers, I certainly wouldn’t get them published.”

Another delegate agreed. “The story of, for instance, public value, isn’t a story that’s being asked for by government. The story [asked for] is about the economic plans, it’s about volume, it’s about the numbers,” she said.

However, Francesca Beddie, general manager of the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER), said the opportunity existed to stretch past such constraints.

“I think there’s quite a lot of space there to go beyond the politics of the day and do things which help us incrementally get further towards goals of the best sort of education and training,” Beddie said.

McGregor said VET had failed tell its story within the context of major political reform, with the Gillard government clearly stating it viewed education as a primary driver of economic productivity.

Looking at how VET can contribute to business enterprise was another big challenge for the sector, which had a better understanding of its impact on the development of individuals, communities and regions, she said.

“There really is a rich and diverse picture, but what I often read, as a customer of research, are single slices of information that are easily turned into headlines, that tell a story different from the one we know to be true.

“Maybe I’ve just got to get over it. Maybe the time for a VET sector has passed,” said McGregor, adding, paradoxically, that VET’s relationship with the other education sectors may be more important than its uniqueness.

Skills and productivity and the contribution of education and training to social inclusion are among the 2012 priorities for research that NCVER unveiled at the opening address. 

About 190 delegates attended last week’s ***No Frills*** conference, where NCVER also launched a book that explores the relationship between skills, innovation and industry.

Copies of Fostering enterprise: the innovation and skills nexus – research readings are available at http://www.ncver.edu.au/publications/2367.html .

Broadening the range of acceptable English tests for student visa applications may lead to more students coming to Australia to study the language, according to the national peak body. “Because there are more options, it makes it less of a barrier to students overseas in terms of being able to meet that requirement,” English Australia executive director Sue Blundell told ***Campus Review***.

Under the change in regulations, due to take effect later this year, the international English Language Testing System (IELTS) will no longer be the only test accepted for visa applications.  Equally valid will be the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), the Pearson Test of English Academic (PTE Academic) and Cambridge Advanced English. 

“Our principle is, English-language testing for visa purposes is bad but seeing as we’ve got it, it’s better that there’s competition there to improve accessibility,” Blundell said.She gave the example of someone who lived in a city in Brazil where the IELTS test was not available. The potential student would have to decide if the expense and time of travelling to another city to do the IELTS test was worth it against choosing an alternative country that had no such restrictions. 

However, she said if a test available in their city was allowed for their application, it would make applying to Australia more accessible.  Blundell said it was more about consumer choice than which test was best. “They’re all very good tests; independent testing has proven that in terms of the research.” 

Most Australian universities accept all the tests. But depending on which country the potential student is from, the applicant may have to take an English-language test before coming to Australia to actually learn English. “We don’t believe that if someone is coming to Australia to study English, they should be asked to demonstrate their ability to speak English before they come,” Blundell  said.,

That aside, she said that in addition to improving accessibility, she hoped the competition would lower the price of the test. “At the moment, with a monopoly, IELTS have the position that they could do what they like.”

Navitas English test centre director Eileen Morley echoed Blundell by saying her group believed broadening the range of acceptable tests was constructive because it meant greater choice and flexibility for students and institutions. “We believe that the widening of test options is a positive move for all stakeholders,” Morley told  Campus Review regarding the IELTS previously being the only accepted test provider. 

The newest language test on the block is Pearson’s high-tech fully automated test. The four testing areas of reading, writing, listening and speaking are all done online and marked by a computer.  Pearson Asia Pacific vice-president of government relations Fraser Cargill said this meant greater consistency in marking and thus scoring. 

“When you talk about automated, you’re talking about ruling out that level of subjectivity and making it really objective, and I think that speaks to what candidates want to see,” he told CR. 

Subjectivity has been an issue in the Federal Court recently in a number of skilled migration visa appeal cases. ***The Australian*** reported that Justice Nye Perram noted a disjunct between the apparent ability of an appellant to conduct his or her own case in fluent English but that their IELTS results deemed them unable to speak competent English at all.

Cargill said that because the test is automated it had an element of speed. It offers a guaranteed turnaround for results within five working days but he said at the moment it was one to two days. All tests are scored by the same Pearson proprietary technology and Cargill said the technology was far more advanced than the voice recognition software often encountered when booking a taxi, for example.

Cargill said it was not totally new technology -  his group had been working with it for 20 years - but it was fresh to Australia. But while he said one of the biggest strengths of the test was the guaranteed consistency of a fully automated marking system, Morley said there were different ways to achieve consistent marking. 

In addition to fully automated marking, Morley said another aspect was to have trained and regularly moderated human markers. “The issue is to ensure that all tests selected for student visa or immigration purpose have rigorous standardisation or moderation procedures and that they all meet the required DIAC standards in this regard,” she said.

Along with automating the test functions, security plays a big part too for Pearson. Cargill said it had integrated biometrics to record everything digitally so it could see who had actually taken the test.  “All of these can be pulled at any stage to check the validity of the person who’s fronting up with these scores,” he said.

Blundell also said security was a big part of testing now to ensure the right student was taking the test and that the same student was then coming and getting the visa. Moreover, she said the stakes were raised even higher when they became the basis for life decisions, not just academic ones.  

“Entry to university, yes, you know that’s high stakes to some degree but as soon as you make it entry to migration or ability to get a visa, suddenly it becomes more high stakes. And therefore security measures become much more important."

Blundell said there were always students who found ways of getting around the system but she believed the security mechanisms of the IELTS test successfully ensured integrity in the process. IELTS still holds the monopoly for migration-related visas, but whether the changes will extend to that area is yet to be known.

However, Cargill said he hoped it did and that doing so would be good for the immigration department as well as the test providers.  “I think you need to work closely with partners like the department of immigration to look at what are the real areas in testing that you need to work with them on.” 

IELTS Australia was unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/judges-air-concerns-about-english-tests-in-visa-cases/story-e6frgcjx-1226093298468

Researching the true cost of teaching in universities will be one of the first projects undertaken by the Grattan Institute in its new higher education program to be run by Andrew Norton. The University of Melbourne policy adviser has been appointed director of the program, which was set up with the support of the Myer Foundation. 

The philanthropic body granted $500,000 a year for three years to enable the institute to analyse higher education policy issues, publish proposals for reform and engage the public and decision-makers in discussions. Norton leaves his job of 11 years and takes up the job at the institute on August 15. In doing so he leaves his role as editor of Policy published by The Centre for Independent Studies .

A frequent and distinctive commentator on higher education and VET issues, Norton said researching base funding and teaching issues would be a priority area for him at the institute. He said it was too soon to state firmly what he would tackle but that teaching costs at public universities had received a lot of attention lately.

He was interested in finding a way to unpack costs in public universities. At present so much was intertwined with research that it was hard to work out “what the teaching itself is really costing”.

“There is a case for universities being distinctive and doing both teaching and research but that is not the only possible funding model we could have," Norton told  Campus Review. "Even in the Australian context it is a relatively recent monopoly model from the commonwealth view going back to the Dawkins reforms.

“The issue is what kind of education is appropriate for the student cohort in the future years, and  how can they be given a good-quality education at reasonable costs to themselves and to taxpayers? Norton said he thought that if the public universities received a teaching-only funding rate they would obviously be against it, "but I am not sure they would be against a teaching-only funding rate for some of the institutions that are currently outside the publically-funded system". 

“That would suit them. Occasionally you hear grumblings that the private providers are getting the same rate as the public universities are but they are not doing any research. People ask, ‘What are they doing with all this extra money?’

“The cost of the student loan scheme, the cost of HELP - that all tends to get interlinked and  overlooked and actually is a very expensive part of the whole higher education funding package. 

"It amounts to $1.5 billion a year but because universities do not receive it, they do not see it as a cost but it is certainly seen that way by the government." The teaching-research nexus is already under the microscope. Later this month the L.H. Martin Institute will explore issues around it in a seminar. Panelists will address whether, with pressure for high-quality research specialisation increasing, and teaching and research duties crowding each other out, the teaching-research nexus is heading for divorce. 

In announcing Norton’s appointment Grattan chief executive Professor John Daley said: “Andrew is well-known within the higher education sector and is a thoughtful and original thinker about higher education reform,” He said Norton's appointment signalled the institute’s emphasis on improving the higher education sector.  

 “Grattan Institute has engaged Australia’s best strategic and public policy thinkers to conduct independent and rigorous analysis and propose practical solutions to the issues that will make a difference to Australian society,” Daley said.

New research shows students transitioning from VET to higher education can handle a few bumps, but they expect good information and academic support along the way. 

The research by the University of Western Sydney (UWS) also finds that although VET students experience transitional stress, they are tougher than previously thought. And it dispels certain myths about the ability of VET students to succeed in higher education. 

Janelle Davis, UWS/VET relationships manager, presented the research at the 20^th National Vocational Education and Training Research Conference in Coffs Harbour last week. 

“We would challenge the notion that students from the VET sector have deficits or gaps in skills and knowledge that cause ongoing disadvantage,” Davis told the ‘No Frills’ delegates. “Overall, we found students to be resilient, and many welcomed the challenge of new social and learning conditions.” 

UWS’ conclusions are based on 2009-10 focus groups data and a survey of more than 500 students. 

According to the survey, 33 per cent of students entering the university’s business, nursing and early childhood courses came from VET. Davis said approximately 20 per cent of overall UWS undergraduates were former VET students, representing about 2400 students in 2011. 

“About half enter through prescribed pathways,” she said. “The remainder mostly enrol in disciplines unrelated to their VET studies.” 

Her work uncovered the university’s ad-hoc pathway arrangements and subsequent negative impacts on students, such as inconsistent credit assessments and a lack of guaranteed entry to higher education. 

To address the problem, UWS launched a VET transition web site for students in 2010. It also developed a bucket load of tools and resources that came into effect this year. They include discipline-specific seminars for VET students and welcome packs with information on bridging programs and support services for university students who come from VET. 

“UWS has acknowledged that it is the university’s responsibility to provide appropriate support when offering pathways and admission to VET students,” Davis said. “VET entry and transition support are a package deal.” 

She said the university had moved away from grading VET student qualifications. 

“They’ve either achieved the qualification and are entitled to that pathway and that credit, or they haven’t, and it’s as simple as that. We’ve had a few academics wanting to go back down that path, and we’ve managed to convince them not to,” she said. 

Sponsored by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research and North Coast TAFE, the conference showcased research from more than 50 new and experienced researchers working in university and VET institutions. 

In another paper presented about the nature of tertiary education pathways, the LH Martin Institute at the University of Melbourne found that in 2008, 9 per cent of university students and 19 per cent of TAFE students were admitted from the VET sector. 

The paper points out pathways are increasingly reversed, too. For example, it cites the total number of students in the public VET system remained stable between 2002 and 2009, at about 1.7 million students. However, those with a prior bachelor degree rose from 88,000 to 121,000 during the same period — an increase of 5.2 per cent to 7.1 per cent, respectively. 

Campus Review recently reported that the number of VET students rose 5.4 per cent between 2009 and 2010 and now sits at 1.8 million. See related story: http://www.campusreview.com.au/pages/section/article.php?s=News&idArticle=21485

Among the more traditional topics at the Australian Conference of Economists last week was a slightly odd one named Academonomics.

As the tricky-to-pronounce neologism suggests, this is economics with a higher education bent.

Speakers included some of Australia’s leading economists, such as professors John Quiggan and Paul Frijters, who used their discipline to consider the academic environment in which they work every day.

The discussion was the brainchild of Associate Professor Philip Clarke, a research economist in public health at the University of Sydney, who was inspired by the hit book Freakonomics, in which economic principles are applied to the fiscal lives of drug dealers and sumo-wrestling.

“I was reading it and I started thinking about why academic economists spend so much time thinking about the outside world when what impacts on them happens in universities,” Clarke said. 

“I’ve been writing a few columns for The Australian about various bits and pieces - why are there so many forms, why is it so complicated to get grants, that sort of thing - and that led to this idea. Why don’t we take it more seriously and talk about this stuff instead of whinging about it.”

The two sessions, on Tuesday morning, proved hugely popular, easily filling the lecture theatre and generating healthy debate.  “I was very happy,” Clarke said. “I thought the quality of the speakers was great and we had a diverse range of topics.”

Several of those who spoke noted the difficulty of getting full and accurate data for their work. Clarke said he was of the opinion that problems needed to be analysed with the data that was available.

“There are some traditionalists that take the view that we should spend several years trying analyse these things,” he said, noting that while some of the best economists in the country had attended Academonomics, none were specifically studying economics in higher education.

“I thought they were all of pretty good quality and I thought most people had something interesting to say,” he said. “People had put quite a bit of effort into their presentations, given that it’s not people’s main sort of work.”   

“The object of [this] was to have a bit of a panacea of different ideas and issues but next time we will probably try to get several people to focus on the same thing,” he said. “If you got several very good economists working on the same issue they’d come up with different solutions.” 

Clarke said he was hopeful the Academonomics sessions would run again at next year’s conference.

“Probably we’ll be more focused on a particular issue,” he said. “It’s useful for economists to talk among themselves, but they need to try talking to others within universities and at the Department of Education about how things can change.”

The $5000 award will go to outstanding research in vocational education and training that has affected policy or practice in the sector. “We shouldn’t underestimate the importance of good research, nor its impact,” NCVER managing director Dr Tom Karmel said in a statement.

“From governments to providers, from teachers to students, there is a need for research that improves our understanding of education and training and its links with the broader economy and our society.” The most recent VET researcher of the year was Berwyn Clayton, director of the Work-based Education Research Centre at Victoria University. Clayton addressed the NCVER No Frills conference in Coffs Harbour in NSW last week, recounting her journey from a young physical education teacher to the best-known VET researcher in Australia.

Nominations for the 2012 award close on Friday, September 30. The winner will be announced in December 2011.

Copies of the award guidelines are available here: http://www.ncver.edu.au/research/opportunities.html

Academics are happiest in institutions where they are free to teach classes they way they wish and without administrative interference, a conference in Canberra heard last week. But this is rarely happens, a senior lecturer in economics told the special session on economics in higher education.

“We are all feeling very overburdened by the administrative demands on us and we would like to be taken out of that situation and be given free leeway to do what we like,” Dr Gigi Foster told the Australian Conference of Economists. While she said she sympathised with university administrators, differences between their aims and those of academics caused “friction” – partly because academics were not given the sort of freedom their overseas counterparts received.

“We in Australia do not have the kind of prestige in our university sector that exists in the top 20 institutions worldwide,” Foster said.  “Somebody at Harvard or Cambridge or Stanford – the administration knows that because of the prestige of the institution it’s going to attract excellent academics, who are just going to do their thing and produce excellent students. 

"Here in Australia you don’t have that kind of prestige so I think that creates a different kind of structure.” Foster, who researched the role of administrators and academics in quality student outcomes, compared regulations surrounding teaching and pedagogy in Australia and the US, also looking at student experiences. She found students tended to have the most impact on their own success.

The fight for funding and students in Australia means administrators are constantly looking for ways to measure and demonstrate the success of teaching – something that may not always be possible. “University administrators are motivated primarily by competition with other universities; they’re competing for students, but they’re also competing for prestige and research dollars," Foster said. 

“They’re thinking about that kind of objective function, whereas academics do not think of that kind of objective function. There’s natural friction and that natural friction can have negative consequences for students.” Academics and administrators did have a similar long-term goal – producing a healthy university that created good students – but getting there was the problem. 

“Students perceive their teachers as having a strong influence on academic standards in classes, instead of the administration, [and] they themselves are the primary drivers of their outcomes.”  Using a basic game-theory analysis, in which high and low academic effort was played off against high and low levels of administrative control, Foster found high academic effort teamed with low administrative input produced the happiest academics.

“The key population that is being paid off in this game is the students, but the players themselves are the ones making the decision about what [choices they make].  “In the climate we have, where you have less funding from the commonwealth and more pressure to compete with other institutions on the basis of demonstrable outcomes, administrators find it very helpful to be able to measure the output of their institutions.

"But how do you measure research and teaching output? It’s been a problem for years. Because of this, administrators who have these market-based concerns find it very hard to make a case without having some kind of metric. When they have that high control, part of it means being able to say, we’ve done this process and we can say for sure that this quality has been produced in our graduates. They’re able to make that case to the market and attract more students.”

The downside is that this sort of control rarely sits well with academics. “I think academics by nature are very autonomous beings,” Foster said. “We’re picky and fickle and we don’t like being controlled in what we do. I want to teach what I want to teach, I know what’s important, I’ve got a PhD in this discipline. I’m going to teach it the way I’m going to teach it, I’m going to assess it the way I’m going to assess it and I know best, and what is this administrator doing telling me how to assess my students or what the outcome should be? ... The pay-off from a high-effort, high-administrative control situation is low for academics. I think that’s behind a lot of the friction.”

Universities in Australia exert far more control over their academics than those in the US, Foster said. She pointed to guidelines from American universities that addressed basic administration elements such as office hours and class times and compared them with Australia, where everything from assessment requirements to templates for handouts was set down. But little of this has any impact on the outcome of teaching, she said.

“Administrators seem to think we can just change out teaching practices in certain ways and it will result in a different set of outcomes. Is that the case? In fact, the outcomes are mostly coming from the students themselves.” Studies of students suggested year 12 performance was a far greater predictor of student success than teacher effectiveness or teaching strategies. But the perception of students was that their lecturers and tutors did have an impact – and that they believed lecturers and tutors were in charge of setting standards, not administrators.

“In the long term, what we really need to recognise is the things we produce, primarily, are good students, and secondarily teaching, so you want a high level of effort from teachers,” Foster said. “And to get that high level, you’re going to want to incentivise teachers. You really need to increase that control in teaching-related things.”

Foster's findings that universities were soft marking international students caused controversy earlier in the year.

Since the early 1980s New Zealand and Australia have had a formal agreement to work closely in trade and financial matters. The Closer Economic Relations protocol was thought to be a recognition of the need for two countries with clear differences but many more similarities to work together to their mutual benefit.  Now, however, the time has come for a closer 'education-relations' agreement between the two.

Why? Well, perhaps the key reasons would be the advantages of a synchronised curriculum that would ease the flow of students between the two systems.  Resourcing the development of curriculum, supporting its implementation and refreshing it through professional development and activity is expensive. 

The scale of economy in setting out to work co-operatively in this would be not only have potential fiscal advantages but also professional ones. New Zealand teachers would benefit from having a larger canvas on which to work and Australian teachers from contact with those areas in which they could learn. 

These areas come and go a little but at different times New Zealand had an advantage in its approach to reading instruction; at others Australia was clearly ahead in the use of technology. As a generalisation, New Zealand is strong in generating ideas while Australia is strong at putting ideas into practice.

At the tertiary/postsecondary level there would be gains in a trans-Tasman approach to synchronising the collection of student loans after graduation. 

International Education might well have a much stronger brand were it an Australasian brand rather than two separate brands, both of which had their own issues.

Initial reactions to this brief sketch will probably be driven by nationalism and a belief that our separate national identities were so different that the outcome would be an inevitable loss of something precious, something we had each “fought for” and which was inviolate. 

But that is from a former age and the modern world is now a global world, a world made flat (to use Thomas Friedman’s term); a world in which communicating across oceans is as easy as across the street; where collaborative work (especially in education) is simple; a world in which our graduates see job opportunities and careers wherever they occur and not necessarily in the old home town.  There are other areas where co-operation, if not amalgamation, could be considered.

Qualifications frameworks could be synchronised (now, there’s an idea that has languished), with fewer qualifications taught across our two countries. School-leaving qualifications could be the same (that would be a hard one) and reporting systems brought together (in a saga perhaps called National Standards meets Naplan).

Both our education systems share indicators that are similar in terms of disengagement, success rates in schooling systems, access to early childhood education and completion rates in post-secondary education. We also share similar levels of skill shortages (but in different areas), struggle to find a modern expression of apprenticeships that works, and are heading towards producing too many degree graduates and too few middle-level technicians.

If we share the problems and issues, might not there be sense in working together towards solutions?  That, however, would require a different kind of thinking. Solutions could only emerge if the thinking could get beyond such searching questions as “Who invented the pavlova?” and “Was Crowded House an Australian band?” It would have to move beyond referring to or perhaps even caring about Test cricket's underarm bowling scandal of 1981. It would have to forget the us and them mentality that cuts both ways.

In short, we would have to rediscover the Anzac spirit but this time in the battle against ignorance and educational failure. WE would have to take a lesson from those sporting codes (soccer, basketball, rugby league and netball) where we have found few issues in operating across national borders. 

Of course, our history would continue to taught but would we not each benefit from understanding the history of our neighbour? How much better off would we be if there was a developed knowledge of each other’s literature? Mathematics, science, business subjects, international languages, engineering and many technical areas all operate with ease in a global environment and indeed rely on an international context to exist. 

It is worth thinking about but later – I have to dash off to renew my passport so that I can get into Australia!

Students who find themselves in a research-intensive environment improve their chances of completing their studies and finding full-time employment afterwards, a study has found.

But many feel less than satisfied with the quality of the teaching they have received, it says. The study, published at a time when the debate about research-focused and teaching-only institutions is resurfacing, found higher-performing research environments generate high-quality learning and teaching in “economic outcomes but not in perception outcomes”.  

Professor Garry Barrett of the University of Sydney, who presented the paper  Are Excellent Research Environments Better for Teaching and Learning?  said students benefited from being in a high-research-intensive environment even if they did not feel engagement was high. The findings of the study, the result of collaboration between Barrett and UTS vice-chancellor Ross Milbourne, were presented at the Australian Conference of Economists in Canberra last week,

“There’s a bit of policy discussion around how best to encourage research and how to get better teaching and learning outcomes,” Barrett told Campus Review. “We thought with the recent ERA exercise that this would be a good opportunity to get quality data measuring research performance and then use those measures on learning and teaching performance, whether we can find if there is a relationship or not.”

The chief finding was that despite having gained much intellectually and economically, students finished their studies feeling largely dissatisfied.   The paper measured outcomes in terms of staff performance and activities, disciplinary group ethos and leadership, teaching and research infrastructure, industry and partnership connections, and student support. 

Learning and teaching outcomes were also influenced by curriculum and assessment design and learning pedagogy.  “In these respects learning and teaching and research are complementary activities where active learning challenges existing knowledge, and research engenders a spirit of enquiry, new knowledge and curricula,” the authors wrote. 

But the paper also acknowledged the two areas competed for staff time and budgets. Barrett and Milbourne used information from the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) outcomes on research performance and aligned it with learning and teaching performance data from the Learning and Teaching Performance Fund (LTPF) process to consider the effects of the research environment on learning and teaching results. 

The LTPF results looked at the following indicators: student progress and retention rates; full-time employment of bachelors degree graduates; the proportion going on to further study; perceived satisfaction with generic skills and teaching; and overall satisfaction rates. These results were aligned with ERA assessment data for universities. 

Milbourne and Barrett also considered the varying demographic elements of different student populations, such as ATAR cut-off scores; full-time, part-time and external students; indigenous students; and gender and disability balances. In doing so, they acknowledged that old, more research-intensive universities attracted students with higher ATAR scores, all of which was informed by other variables including infrastructure and socio-economic status, both of which were factored in.

Their results showed studying in an excellent research environment led to an increased  likelihood of students completing their studies and finding full-time employment afterward. At the same time this also had a negative effect on their perception of the teaching. 

“That is, while students may be unhappy with teaching in research intensive environments, it is more than compensated for by the entire learning environment,” the paper found.  Why this is so is a matter for speculation, Barrett said. “We’re thinking there could be an important distinction between teaching and learning. It could be that there are large classes and students aren’t so happy with the actual teaching delivery. "It could be that they don’t get as much support directly from a teacher in a unit but they can go to the web and they have the flexibility to download notes and podcasts. 

"They benefit from that, but the actual teaching in the lectures they may be less happy with, possibly because they might go to them less often.” Meanwhile, the students could well be benefiting without realising it from the “spirit of enquiry” their teachers are working in.

 “The people in this area are generating new knowledge, updating the curricula and incorporating this knowledge, so students are learning more contemporary, frontier material,” he said. “We were surprised by these findings, by the strength of the effects,” Barrett added.

 “The way the research environment, when controlled for other factors ... still had these impacts on economic outcomes for students. I was surprised that in a relatively small sample, we were getting these results. The most striking thing was how research affected the economic success of students but that this was totally unrelated to student perception measures. “

Risk-averse governments are stifling scientific innovation in dementia research, acclaimed neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield says. In times of economic constraint, public investment in research tended to favour current scientific approaches or follow band wagons rather than challenge the status quo, the visiting Oxford professor said. 

 “With Alzheimer’s disease that’s not good news because there’s no clear, obvious, proven and accepted theory as to why the neurodegeneration occurs,” Greenfield said. “We’re at an early stage in dementia research where we shouldn’t all be adopting the same approach and yet the research councils will favour the classic approach or the accepted paradigm just when it should be challenged.”

The brain researcher said the conservatism of the research councils was a problem.  “Left-of-field approaches should be funded but they’re not. We’re not - in the words of Karl Marx - letting 1000 flowers bloom,” she said in an interview. In the UK, only 10 per cent of grant applications received public funding approval by the academic research councils, she said. For a breakthrough to happen, a much broader investment in a range of scientific theories was needed.

“If people were allowed to have the free reign, we could have as many approaches as possible. Epidemiologists, molecular biologists, geneticists, neurochemists and psychologists could all be on the case. There are a lot of questions that could be asked or that could give us insight into the disease.” 

Greenfield, the former director of the Royal Institution - the world’s oldest independent research body - was in Sydney as part of a national speaking tour sponsored by Alzheimer’s Australia.  She said funding arrangements did not support scientists to challenge scientific thinking or to participate in pioneering research. 

“We need to abandon the dogma for grants. In times of economic hardship people tend to be risk averse and my own suggestion is that we need to entertain as many different ideas as possible, including the left of field.”  One of the clues to finding a cure for Alzheimer’s, she said, could actually lie in the similarities that exist with Parkinson’s. In response to declining research opportunities, Greenfield said scientists should look to the private sector for creative funding alternatives.

There is a whole new breed of private money – the young digital entrepreneur - that could be targeted, she said. “It might be that there’s more entrepreneurial, pioneer-spirited investors who want to take a punt or who can see a chance in a way that the research councils feel that they can’t.” 

Greenfield said she believed governments had yet to really come to terms with the scale of the disease. “In terms of the political climate there is a lot of work that still needs to be done. It’s such a striking thing to have to recognise - not just the burden on society in terms of cost but also the impact on quality of life.” Unlike other conditions, the number of lives touched by Alzheimer’s vastly exceeds those suffering from it. Greenfield said the disease had a fairly young history when compared to other chronic diseases and a greater degree of fear and stigma attached to it.

The brain, she said, was also unlike any other organ in the human body because it made every individual unique. “No-one in the 100,000 years we have been around on this planet as a species has had your life story. And that life story that you are in the middle of now, wonderfully, is embedded in the connections in your brain. That is what makes you so unique and different from the next person.  “If you succumb to this devastating condition, we could see that this could be interpreted as a dismantling of those unique connections. So you retrace steps back to childhood, where you lack the checks and balances of the adult mind.” 

On the subject of voluntary euthanasia, Greenfield said she did not have a firm position on the issue but agreed it needed to be treated sensitively. “Until you’re in someone else’s shoes, I find it very hard to make generalisations about how a person should behave. I respect the rights of people to make choices but it is a delicate issue and we can’t go the other way and say ‘let’s just dispatch everyone’. Let’s hope people won’t have to make that decision by finding an effective treatment.”

In Australia, dementia research received $20 million, or four per cent of the total research budget for chronic diseases. In comparison, the national medical health research council spent $144 million on cancer research and $97 million on cardiovascular disease.  NSW Health Minister Jillian Skinner, who attended the event, said she supported more competitive funding for dementia research. But she stressed the need to get the right funding mix across all areas of chronic disease.

“I’m very happy to support the proposition that Alzheimer’s disease should take greater priority in a search for research grants,” she said. Skinner, who also handles the medical research portfolio, acknowledged the need for more open community debate to reduce the stigma associated with dementia.

She also spoke of the loss of her mother to the illness. 

But Professor Will Steffen, executive director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University and science advisor to the federal government, said neither Monckton nor Denniss were qualified to debate science. “Richard’s a very good guy and he’s a very smart guy but he’s an economist; he’s not a scientist. And Monckton, as far as I know, has no qualifications in either, so I don’t know what the press club in on about trying to do something like that,” Steffen told Campus Review. The debate on climate change science had been settled 20 years ago, he said.

“My complaint to the National Press Club is that simply by having a debate and billing it like that, they’re sending exactly the wrong message,” Steffen said. “The medium in a way is the message — that there is a ‘debate’. Well there isn’t one. I think it’s really shoddy journalism.” Discredited in his British homeland, Monckton has been on a speaking tour of Australia for the past several weeks. Recently, his creditability has begun to wane here, too, especially after reports emerged that he had labelled the Australian government’s chief climate-change advisor, Professor Ross Garnaut, a fascist.

The University of Western Australia publicly distanced itself from Monckton at the end of June, when an outside group hired a space at the university to host him. Since that time, other venues have closed their doors, forcing Monckton to cancel multiple Australian speaking engagements. The press club’s decision to give him a platform tomorrow has caused surprise and even disbelief amongst academics.

“I have no problem with Mr Monckton sprouting his nonsense in a pub or on a soapbox, but I do find it problematic that the Australian media have, by and large, failed in their duty to expose him for what he is — namely an obvious charlatan who has no scientific knowledge of any kind, but is perfectly happy to malign and misrepresent science and scientists,” said University of Western Australia psychology Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, who has published research on the influence of misinformation.

“Mr Monckton is of no relevance in the UK because the British media have at least in part done their job and exposed his fantastical claims. In my view, it is an embarrassment that the Australian Press Club would tacitly give credence to Mr Monckton by providing him with a forum.”

Lewandowsky said it was possible the forum would generate more hate and vitriol against Australian scientists. In recent years and as recently as last week, some have been the target of abusive phone and email attacks, including death threats. Press club president Laurie Wilson defended tomorrow’s debate in the interests of free speech and because, he said, there were Australians who agreed with Monckton’s views. However, he told CR the club had not approached Monckton — and would not.

“I’d be lying if I in fact suggested there was any great sympathy for Mr Monckton’s position in terms of the board of the National Press Club,” Wilson said. Nonetheless, when Monckton had asked to speak at the venue, a board member had convincingly argued that, “The louder the campaign to have venues rejecting guests, the more convinced I become that we should have a debate with [Monckton] involved. Surely bad ideas are exposed with a little light shone upon them”.

Wilson said it was not the first time the press club had hosted a controversial figure. For example, former One Nation party leader Pauline Hanson had spoken there. He noted many eminent scientists also had spoken there. “We’re not exactly unfriendly to scientists and certainly not unfriendly to scientific debate, thought, and indeed, values,” he said.

Further, it was his personal view that, “It’s pretty obvious that the [climate] science is accurate. I believe it, and we’ve got to do something.” Anna-Maria Arabia, chief executive of the peak body Science and Technology Australia, agreed Monckton was entitled to express his views.
 

“I certainly encourage debate, and I wouldn’t be advocating for anything that would prevent Christopher Monckton expressing his democratic right to speak,” she said. “However, the challenge for him is to have his views tested in the peer review process, as every scientist has done, and then if his views do stack up, the peer review process will sort that out.”

Tomorrow’s National Press Club forum seemed to have opted for sensationalism over quality, Arabia said. It would be important for the media in attendance to press Monckton on his claims. 

Professor Denise Bradley has been appointed as chair of the new National Trade Cadetship (NTC) minister’s advisory panel.

Minister for School Education Peter Garrett today announced her appointment at a meeting of federal, state and territory education ministers in Melbourne today .

Bradley will oversee the formation of the advisory panel which will guide the development and implementation of the NTC initiative. “Professsor Bradley has been extensively involved in national education policy for more than 20 years, including chairing the Australian Government’s Review of Australian Higher Education,” he said.

Bradley has also been a member of the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission, a member of the National TAFE Staff Development Committee, a member of the South Australian Council of Technical and Further Education, and chair of the South Australian Training and Skills Commission.

She was also the vice-chancellor and president of the University of South Australia from 1997-2007, and was president of the Australian College of Educators, and is a director of Open Universities Australia.

“Her expertise and on-the-ground experience will be invaluable as she carries out this important role, helping to ensure that students who want to pursue a career in the trades are able to do so with clearly defined, high-quality learning pathways in our schools.”

The other members of the panel are yet to be appointed, and will include members of industry, education, the vocational education and training sector, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, parents and unions.

 Garrett said the panel would be asked to provide guidance and advice to government on the best ways to prepare school students for further vocational education and training, providing school-based vocational learning, and ensure that vocational school learning is given equal value as more traditional academic pathways.

The government has committed $3.1 million to the initial development of the NTC initiative .

Dr Tangerine Holt has been appointed as the new executive director for the Fulbright Commission.

Holt has a PhD on human service management from the University of Melbourne as well as a masters in social work from Washington University in St Louis, USA. She graduated from the University of Madras, India with a masters in social work and bachelors in economics. 

She will take up her appointment to the position of executive director in late August. 

Board chair, Professor Steven Schwartz, welcomed Holt to the role acknowledging her extensive knowledge of studying, teaching and leadership in not-for-profit management in Australia and internationally. 

“Dr Holt will bring to the Commission vast experience in managing key strategic initiatives and overseeing transnational education programs with key international partners,” Schwartz who is vice-chancellor at Macquarie University said. 

He thanked Lyndell Wilson for her contribution and leadership as acting executive director of the commission.

The Fulbright program is the largest educational scholarship of its kind and was created by US Senator J William Fulbright and the US Government in 1946. It is aimed at promoting mutual understanding through educational exchange, it currently operates between the US and 155 other nation. n

Australia’s new Overseas Students Ombudsman has begun a series of high-level meetings in the source countries of international students to crack down on shoddy education agents.

Allan Asher recently visited New Delhi to address the agent issue with the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs. He has held talks also with senior government officials in Malaysia. He said he wanted to have similar discussions with officials in China and all other major providers of international students to Australia.

Asher told Campus Review that limiting the activities of unscrupulous agents operating overseas may require India, China and other countries to establish their own regulations.

“We really want to take this strategy of pre-emption further, by encouraging them – and India looks like they might be prepared to do this – to set up their own regulatory bodies,” he said.

“We’ll be able to see a complaint where somebody’s been deceived and has greater expectations and to go back to say, the Indian authorities, and say, ‘These folks who are operating in India are causing a lot of problems, causing a lot of anxiety and expense for people unnecessarily, do you think you can deal with them?’”

Asher’s post begins officially tomorrow, with jurisdiction over complaints brought by international students receiving their education from private providers.

For disreputable agents operating within Australia, he said the ombudsman’s office was expecting to collaborate with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) – which Asher formerly served as deputy chairman.

“If they’ve got commercial activities here in Australia, similarly, we’re going to be signing up a deal with the [ACCC] in the hope that they can use their very, very quick enforcement processes to stop those problems…” he said. “We want to stitch up both ends.”

The ACCC declined to comment for this story. 

Paula Dunstan, academic manager with Professional International Education Resources (PIER), which provides the bulk of training to education agents, said the sector contained many well-qualified professionals.

More than 12,000 agents are registered with PIER globally, with about 2100 having completed an accredited certificate III training course.

Dunstan said general scrutiny also was provided by education providers, who were responsible for the conduct of the agents they contracted to, under the Education Services for Overseas Students (ESOS) act.

However, she noted that agents were largely self-regulated and, “like any industry, there are opportunists who will set up an agency without really having the right information, and therefore students may well be misinformed”.

“I think [the ombudsman] is needed. It’s very important to protect students’ interests and rights, so it’s a very good appointment,” Dunstan said. “Any kind of scrutiny from an independent body on education agents obviously is welcome.”

Australian Council for Private Education and Training (ACPET) chief executive Claire Field said she was very comfortable with the ombudsman’s actions regarding agents.

“I don’t think it is the issue that it once was. I think some of the changes under the ESOS act and making it much clearer about the separate roles of migration agents and the separate roles of education providers has been important,” she said.

ACPET had substantially tightened its code of ethics for members, making it very clear they were responsible for the promises of their agents.

“One of the reasons we’re supportive of the shift to the national [VET] regulator and the ESOS act changes is that the industry as a whole has been let down by a small number of unscrupulous providers, who were allowed to operate by the state regulators,” Field told CR.

Asher said he and foreign governments took the huge investment families made in securing their child’s education in Australia very seriously.

“We are absolutely conscious of the commitment made, and we want to ensure that to the greatest extent possible, through the marketing, information provision, delivery of services here and access to remedies, that we do our best to optimise the outcomes for folk who are in that stream,” he said.

Last week’s news of a $2.6 billion bailout for the Canberra Institute of Technology due to a 30 per cent drop in international student enrolments further demonstrated the risk inherent in the sector.

“I think the government is really getting message, that to the extent that it’s not global financial crisis or [Australian] dollar related, that we are actually in what is increasingly a fiercely competitive global market and better service provision is what’s going to work,” Asher said.

The ombudsman will deliver the keynote address at the Council of International Students Australia (CISA) inaugural conference in Melbourne tomorrow.  

Related story http://www.campusreview.com.au/pages/section/article.php?s=News&idArticle=21387

The Indian government has confirmed it will introduce a bill to parliament to help tackle the problem of corrupt education agents operating within its country.

Speculation that India would consider a new law for registering and monitoring education agents has existed since at least February. 

The secretary for the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs in New Delhi, Dr A Didar Singh, has confirmed to Campus Review that a bill will be introduced in an upcoming parliamentary session.

As CR reports, Australia’s new Overseas Students Ombudsman, Allan Asher, recently met with Singh as part of a wider effort to crack down on shoddy education agents working in the source countries of international students.

Singh said it was important to remember, however, that agents were the responsibility of the Australian education providers who hired them, and not the Indian government.

“The so-called ‘unethical’ Indian education agents are appointed by Australian education providers as part of the Australian education system,” Singh told CR. 

“They are neither appointed nor recognised by any Indian authority. The Australian authorities therefore need to address the issue from within.”

He welcomed additional oversight by the new Australian ombudsman.

“We also believe that by reviewing the system of approvals for [education] providers in Australia, the issue will be addressed – hopefully in some measure,” said Singh.

The bill is expected to make it mandatory for education agents to register with the Indian government or face fines or incarceration. n

TDA chief executive Martin Riordan said the legislation that established the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) on July 1 lacked a clear definition of quality, leaving the same “loose pool” of 5000 RTOs that existed prior to ASQA without proper guidance. 

In addition, he said TDA was concerned the regulator was understaffed and could not provide adequate oversight.

“I’m certainly optimistic that quality providers will find it easier [under ASQA] but I hope the low-quality providers that are clearly in the marketplace are put out of business, and the sooner the better,” Riordan told Campus Review. “It was a key issue promised and we hope it can be enforced.”

In March, a parliamentary committee found several provisions within the national VET regulator (NVR) legislation were lacking in detail. That did not stop the bills from narrowly passing later that month, and tertiary education minister Senator Chris Evans has since committed to introduce amendments, probably in August. But without seeing the amendments, TDA was concerned the new regulator would continue to lack teeth.

“There seemed to be no option but to go ahead with inadequate legislation to at least get the regulation up,” said Riordan. “But we’ve got quality left hanging, we have staffing concerns. We’re hopeful the legislation itself can look closely at these areas, but still, these are outstanding issues.”

Earlier in the year CR reported there were tensions between TAFEs and the government who was anxious to prevent roadblocks to achieving ASQA. 

 At the time, TDA voiced concern that the NVR legislation was not aligned closely enough with its higher-education equivalent, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency.

Riordan was still sceptical last week of the government’s plan to roll the two regulators into one body by 2013. 

“While TEQSA reports to the commonwealth, ASQA reports to a ministerial committee of commonwealth and state. We’re already seeing uncertainty about how that will operate; I think that’s a fault line,” he said.

Riordan’s comments run counter to an upbeat picture painted by ASQA’s new acting chief commissioner, Chris Robinson.

In an interview with CR, Robinson said ASQA was phasing in the capacity of its offices as the states referred their power to the national regulator. About 2100 education providers had come across to ASQA on July 1. 

Robinson said 83 staff were in place and recruitment to fill the remaining 80-odd positions was underway. He expected ASQA to be fully functional by early 2012 – a timeframe within which Evans hopes to capture the holdout states of Victoria and Western Australia.

Robinson said the notion of a single NVR enjoyed broad support across the sector. He was sure ASQA would simplify VET providers’ experience of regulation, especially for those operating across multiple states and territories.

Asked if ASQA had sufficient power and will to shut down non-compliers, Robinson said: “At the end of the day, if people are not doing the right thing, they’re not providing a sufficiently high-quality product, then there will be sanctions that apply. The act makes provision for the sanctions of not renewing registration or not approving an initial registration.”

However, he stressed ASQA would give education providers information and opportunity to do the right thing before it wielded a stick. It also intended to take a risk-based approach to regulation.

“We’ll be a more regular visitor to some providers,” Robinson said. “We’re not necessarily going to give everyone the same registration period. If we’ve got concerns with providers, we’re going to follow up with them more regularly. We’re not going to renew their registration and not see them again for five years.”

The Australian Council for Private Education and Training (ACPET) said it was disappointed the peak TAFE body was dissatisfied with the current NVT legislation. 
Chief executive Claire Field said ACPET supported the risk-based approach the regulator was adopting, but not a “provider categories” idea that TDA had advocated for inclusion in the legislation.

“The sector is highly diverse and one of its real strengths is its diversity,” Field said. “To try to put people into categories and make pre-determined judgements about them is unhelpful… We are looking to the new national regulator to bring an even-handed approach.”

She said ASQA could potentially simplify regulatory requirements for private education providers, but that remained to be seen.

“I think it’s too early to form a judgement,” she said. “I’m not sure I’m quite as confident as [Robinson] and the ASQA staff. They’ve only commenced business on [July 1]. Most providers and most state regulators who had transferred powers had finished up most of their regulatory work, so there isn’t a lot of work ongoing at the moment. Providers aren’t yet dealing with the new ASQA processes and the new ASQA approach.”

Field said ACPET had been a staunch supporter of the NVR idea for many years – an overall claim with which Riordan shared.

“We’ve been the strongest of advocates for a national VET regulator and still remain hopeful the commonwealth can negotiate WA and Victoria to join the group at some stage,” he said.

Until that happened, TAFEs were caught in a world of red tape – the opposite intention of ASQA. 

“I think it’s absurd for a national TAFE network to be dealing with different registration and regulation authorities,” Riordan said.

---

Getting the word out to VET

As the states refer their powers and thousands of education providers are corralled under a national VET regulator, questions abound about the new requirements.

The Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) says it’s ready to help answer them. 

A hotline, which received about 500 calls in the first three days after ASQA’s official start on July 1, is available at 1300 701 801.

VET providers can also email queries to enquiries@asqa.gov.au.

Information is available about the new VET regulations on the ASQA web site: http://asqa.gov.au.

Training providers should also be receiving an ASQA newsletter.

ASQA acting chief commissioner Chris Robinson said he was not surprised by the volume of enquires already received.

“There’s a lot of interest in this. People are just making queries and checking things about what they’re meant to be doing,” he said. “We want to make sure they get as customised a set of information as they need to do their business.” 

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A survey carried out by Times Higher Education showed that some planned to recruit students with top grades.

The magazine contacted vice-chancellors in the Russell and 1994 groups of research-intensive universities to ask them how they planned to respond to government proposals to allow unlimited recruitment of students with the best A-level grades.

The 20 universities in the Russell Group receive two-thirds of research grant and contract funding in the UK and the 1994 group is a coalition of 19 top smaller research-intensive universities.

Of the 12 who responded, six said they planned to expand their recruitment of students with AAB grades or better, with one aiming to boost total undergraduate numbers by as much as 10 per cent via such recruitment in 2012-13.

One vice-chancellor, speaking anonymously, said he would “respond to the emerging market for AAB students by increasing the availability of merit-based scholarships”, THE reporter John Morgan wrote.

Asked for comments on the changes ushered in by the White Paper, two vice-chancellors were critical of plans to make another 20,000 student places “contestable” by auctioning them off to institutions that charge average fees, after waivers, of below £7,500.

One expressed concern that “the debate is about cost and not value for money”, adding that “low cost does not necessarily equal good value for money”.

Under the government’s proposals, universities with students who secured grades of AAB or higher would lose those students from their standard allocation of places, but would then be allowed to recruit as many above the AAB threshold as they wanted, provided they could attract them.

As an estimated 65,000 such places become contestable, some universities will lose AAB students and will be forced to drop their average fees below £7,500 if they want to claw back their numbers. It is understood that an elite group of just 10 institutions have 40 per cent of all AAB students.

On the AAB plans, most vice-chancellors planning to expand student numbers in 2012-13 said they were considering “modest” rises, but others were more expansionist.

One told THE that he was aiming for an increase in the total undergraduate intake of “about 5 per cent”; another planned “at least 6 per cent” more; and a third envisaged a rise of “5 to 10 per cent in the first year as a proportion of total intake”.

However, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge said they had no plans to increase undergraduate numbers. An Oxford spokeswoman said: “Our collegiate and tutorial systems put a natural ceiling on the numbers we can admit.”

QS released its social sciences league table last week, completing its series of world rankings by 26 subjects and allowing a full picture to emerge.

In the social sciences, ANU ranked 10th in the world for politics and international studies, 13th for sociology and 15th for law. It ranked in the top 25 for the other three social sciences disciplines – accounting and financing, economics and econometrics, and statistics and operational research.

In previously released QS tables by subject, ANU ranked 6th in the world for geography, philosophy and modern languages, 9th in earth sciences, and 10th for linguistics, environmental sciences, and politics and international studies. It also ranked 12th for history and 18th for mathematics.

 “As Australia’s national university, ANU strives to set the standard for teaching and research,” the university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Ian Young, said in a statement.
“I congratulate all ANU staff on this excellent result. The overall success of ANU in these rankings has reinforced the university’s position as a world leader in quality education and research.”

QS is the only global university ranking to break down its data by subject. Its methodology is largely subjective, based on university reputation amongst 15,000 academics and 5000 employers globally. QS also considers citations per scholarly paper.

“It should be noted that while the rankings show Australia is definitely a strong performer and competing with other world-class universities in areas where employment is the outcome of study, the rankings themselves are simply based on opinion surveys, existing reputation, and a heavy emphasis on academic peer review,” Angela Magarry, executive director of The Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS), told Campus Review.

“Therefore, while CHASS acknowledges that rankings are clever tools for marketing purposes, the volatility in results and use of opinion surveys are not necessarily useful for management purposes and are noted as part of a suite of information in relation to the delivery of social sciences in Australia.”

 University of Melbourne was another high-ranking university in the social sciences data released last week. It ranked 9th in law, 12th in politics and international studies, and 14th in accounting and finance.

Rhiannon’s party now holds the balance of power in the senate and will have the final say on whether the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill, which uncaps the number of student places at universities and ties funding to them, not courses, is passed.

The bill has yet to go through the Greens party room, but Rhiannon said that a concern was that it did not address the funding gap or add new funding to the current pool.

“It certainly gives the impression it’s not going to address (funding) inequities, and that’s the sort of thing we’ll be taking up in the consultations we’ve got coming up,” she said.

Rhiannon will be using the winter recess from parliament to meet with higher education stakeholders such as Universities Australia, the Group of Eight, unions, student bodies and TAFEs to get their input on changes currently going through parliament.

The ‘caps off’ demand-driven funding system which the government plans to operate for 2012 has led many universities to over enrol on the expectation that they will get the cash when the system is introduced.

The overall funding rate per student is already not meeting costs and education policy commentators have expressed concern that the quality of education will suffer if universities compete to grab market share in an uncapped system.

When parliament resumes on August 16 after the winter recess the bill has a third reading in the House of Representatives and will then go back to the Senate.
Universities clamouring for more funding will find a supporter in Rhiannon, who took her seat in the Senate on July 1.

She has signaled that improving financial support for universities and students is a key aim for the Greens.

“We see [education] as absolutely integral to the future … ensuring we have a well-educated Australia will be vital,” she said.

 “We already have a comprehensive policy but you want to get emphasis to areas that will give the most benefit. We support the right of academics to maintain a research career and to increase research funding of universities.

 “We believe that it is very critical to ensuring that our universities remain at a high standard that is not compromised. We do recognise that higher education is able to assist the transition that society and industry needs to go through, and we’re about to go through a major one with the transition to clean energy and manufacturing.”  
Rhiannon said on the government plan for industry-led skills focused vocational education agenda, that it was important to identify what skills were needed and find out if we had the capacity to be able to provide that training. 

“I’m certainly not ruling out the need for industry to be able to identify what’s needed but again we need that balance there. Higher education shouldn’t just be at the behest of the business community.”

Among the topics Rhiannon is keen to focus on is improving equity in student access and attendance, particularly between rural and city universities.

“Only about 30 per cent of [rural] students who defer return to study, and I understand it’s much higher for students at city universities,” she said. “I’m interested in looking at those inequities so you can ensure there is greater equity, along with working class students and recently arrived migrants. Whatever their background is, ensuring they have equal opportunities.”

The debate over the role of international students is also one that Rhiannon has followed since she was on the board of the University of New South Wales in the early 2000s, and she’s aware it is a contentious issue.

“You can see there are different views there. We certainly believe those students should be given the same conditions under which all students study here,” she said, adding that the refusal of the NSW state government to allow transport concessions for international students was an issue of concern. Rhiannon has recently moved from state to federal politics. She was in the NSW Upper House for eleven years.

“I’m aware of [suggestions that international students are just used for financial gain by universities] but at the same time people have the right to study at different universities. The issue is how those universities are operating and how they’re funded, rather than demonising certain groups of people.”

Improving student amenity payments is an important part of this, with previous Greens’ education spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young saying earlier this year that the party wanted to see at least part of the proposed student amenities fee going to student groups so they could determine how it was spent.

“I’m aware that there’s a range of viewpoints and that’s why I really want to initiate a discussion that I’m involved in so we can determine where it’s best to put student fees,” she said. “We are concerned that there is no guaranteed say in how the money is spent and what services are needed – it’s not a fair way for universities to interact with their student bodies.”

The Greens also want to see universities participating in the green technology revolution but maintain that there needs to be a balance between the needs of business and the needs of academia.

“We support the right of academics to maintain a research career and to increase research funding of universities,” she said. “We believe that it is very critical to ensuring that our universities remain at a high standard that is not compromised. We do recognize that higher education is able to assist the transition that society and industry needs to go through, and we’re about to go through a major one with the transition to clean energy and manufacturing.  

“Often we need to identify what skills are needed and do we have the capacity to be able to provide that training. I’m certainly not ruling out the need for industry to be able to identify what’s needed but again we need that balance there. Higher education shouldn’t just be at the behest of the business community.”

The report, compiled by Deloitte Access Economics, predicted short term student losses would see total enrolments fall until 2013. Enrolments at Australian universities were then expected to rebound in the medium term before beginning to grow again.
The report said developments in Australia’s international education sector, as a major contributor to the current fall in overall migration rates, looked like affecting the supply of labour.

“In the short term Australia looks like having too few workers to spread across too many jobs, meaning that some of the benefits of current high commodity prices will be lost in higher inflationary pressure. 

“Policymakers need to realise that, because of developments in the international education sector in particular and migration more generally, interest rates are now more likely to go up than they were before,” the report said.

According the DAE’s modelling, reduced higher education spending by international students and the labour force will reduce GDP by $6.2 billion by 2015 followed by a slight improvement in 2020 to $6.1 billion.

The report found that the expected decline of international students studying in Australia would have financial implications for universities on both the income and expenditure sides of the ledger. 

And the report said a fall in student numbers that would translate to one-third of international student income for universities by 2015.

“A fall of this magnitude is substantial, and some universities’ bottom lines will come under Pressure,” the report said.

But the report said savings universities’ made from less spending would partially mitigate the loss of income if there were fewer international students. 

The report found that individual universities had their own strategies in place to lessen some of the effects of a downturn such as through offshore enrolments.

But Deloitte suggested the government could make a difference in the areas of student visa requirements, migration policy, higher education quality standards, whole of sector support, public safety, student transport concessions and student accommodation, and funding.

The report suggested changing visa requirements to distinguish higher education students because higher-qualified students were more likely to return overseas after their studies. 

Deloitte said Commonwealth policy changes to student visa regulations and to the General Skilled Migration program were central to the downturn in international student enrolments.

The report has been criticised by higher education policy experts with the University of Melbourne’s Simon Marginson telling The Australian the report underestimated the extent of the downturn. Others criticised the modelling used by Deloitte.

However CEO of Universities Australia, Dr Glenn Withers, told Campus Review that he did not see the comments as criticisms of the findings. “In the sense that some people felt that the assumptions of the modelling were conservative, such as if you like predictions and assumptions, about policy improvement by government.

“The main forecast used by Deloitte assumed that the outcome of the present Knight Review process was a restoration of more balance in the policy settings.”

“It is a matter of judgement,” he said and added that he was optimistic that those policy changes would happen.

His optimism was based on what else the report showed Withers said.

The new enterprise agreement at the University of New South Wales, affecting more than 4000 academic staff, places restrictions on the use of short term contracts and provides an annual pay rise of 4.2 per cent.

The agreement, in which the length of contracts was a key sticking point, has taken two and a half years to reach.

Contract staff at the university will be offered the opportunity to convert to ongoing employment after five years and provided they meet set criteria and performance requirements.

“One of the big sticking points with [vice chancellor] Fred Hilmer was that he didn’t want to have any limits on the university using fixed term appointments rather than permanent… but we did have them inserted,” said Genevieve Kelly, the NTEU’s NSW secretary.

“We also got some provisions around conversion for contract research. We did a survey and found heaps of people on up to their fifth, sixth contract, they’d been on them for up to 15 years, and they just applied for [Australian Research Council] grant to ARC grant, and their wages and conditions varied.”

“People should be able to get more certainty in their employment,” said Kelly. “If you’re a PhD on a contract, for instance, and you want to take out a home loan, it can be very difficult. We’re very pleased with the outcome.”

Kelly said that the union was also happy with the agreement’s decisions on wages and parental leave. She said UNSW now had the third highest wages structure of universities in the country, after the University of Sydney and the University of Western Sydney.

A spokesperson for UNSW, said the university was waiting for word from the NTEU that its members had endorsed the agreement before putting it to a staff vote.  She said the university was happy with the outcome.

“We feel that there are some really good conditions in there for staff and that we’ve retained flexibility [around contracts],” she said.

“We’re pleased to have kept that flexibility, which is pretty important to heads of schools and deans, and the other thing is there’s no limitation on the use of casual staff - the union had been wanting a quota,” she said.  “At the end of the day a compromise has been reached.”

The conversion from temporary to full time positions was also a feature in the industrial agreement reached between Macquarie University and the union in early May, which was also the result of long-running negotiations.

 “The parties have established a workable compromise on types of work provisions that provide new career paths, improved levels of job security and flexibility for the university to respond to changes in the education market,” Macquarie said at the time.

Kelly said the union’s members had approved the UNSW agreement and would be notifying the university in the coming week.  

The agreement leaves the University of Wollongong as the last university in the state still involved in enterprise negotiations with the union and the second last in the country after the University of the Sunshine Coast.  Discussions will start again next week.

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The draft, which has been circulated for comment to all students and staff, states that the university needs to reassert its position in the Australian university system hierarchy. A key part of that is having a greater impact on public debate and the development of government policy.

Vice-chancellor Ian Young told Campus Review that ANU was trying to clearly differentiate itself and saw its role in public policy as an outreach role. “We’re got an important third leg to what we do in terms of being able to take our research into the public domain, to be able to provide advice to government and advice to organizations around the nation in shaping Australia’s future.

“We can’t just be closeted within the university itself, we’ve got to be sure our research and teaching shapes policy for the future.”

The government has been pushing for more public engagement by universities and just two weeks ago, the secretary to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet Terry Moran told a Sydney conference that academics and the public policy sector should be working more closely. He said that inside government the most difficult policy frameworks required extensive collaboration in short timeframes. These were not characteristics of scholarly research.

 He thought many academics worked in isolation and found it difficult to be heard.
“Improving the working relationship between academics and policy makers would go a long way towards improving the impact of research taking place in universities,” Moran said.

“Most public policy draws on many disciplines but most universities struggle to knit disciplines together around the major problems of our times.”

Moran’s position was not shared by his predecessor Peter Shergold, who told a humanities forum earlier in the year that many academics were worried about the pitfalls of working with government.

“There is nervousness that by participating in this way, you can almost become co-opted – that your ability to step outside and criticise is lost. And of course it is – you’re making a decision that you can be more influential,” he said.

However Young told CR that he believed that researchers could remain independent and should feel confident about critiquing public policy.

“We think that’s one of the roles of an academic, to be out there putting forward views on what is the best public policy. Governments may agree with that or disagree but that’s an important role, to allow independent scholars to critique what happens in government and provide their advice and their public discourse based on what they believe,” he said. 

“We think it’s quite an independent role from government in being able to provide evidence-based scholarly input to the debate.

“I think it’s fair to say ANU has a broad range of people right across the institution that have an interest in public policy, whether it’s in our political area or our environmental area, lots of those people have an interest in public policy. 

“We really want to put that together in a much more cohesive way so that it’s understood that this is an important thrust for the university, and invest in new people, in very prominent world-leading scholars, to strengthen the already excellent base that we have.”

The ANU by 2020 plan calls for the majority of staff at the university to be involved in active research, publishing in quality journals, with at least 35 per cent of staff to be chief investigators on at least one current category 2,3 or 4 research grant or consultancy. This will be achieved through investing in a “world-class” staff, encouraging students to participate in research, improving alumni relationships, building better infrastructure and connecting with other institutions nationally and internationally.

“The plan is probably the first plan that ANU has had that is clearly driven by metrics and key performance indicators and I think that’s an important evolution for the institution and one that has been very positively received by staff,” said Young.

The draft plan received more than 150 submissions from staff and students, which Young said were “overwhelmingly positive” and would be considered for the final plan, which is expected to be finalized in the coming months before being put into operation in the spring. n

The statistics contained in The Students and Courses 2010 report showed there were 1.8 million students enrolled in the public VET system last year. This is an increase of 5.4 per cent from the 2009 numbers – an increase of 92,300 students.

The figures also show that Commonwealth and state-funded students increased by 6.7 per cent, from 1.3 million to 1.4 million students but that international full-fee-paying students in the VET sector declined by 5.5 per cent, from 47, 600 to 45, 000 students.

Tertiary education minister Chris Evans said the increase highlighted the impact of the Labor Government’s $10.9 billion investment in VET. “These figures confirm that the Gillard Government’s record investment in skills and training is paying dividends.” He said it was particularly pleasing that the number of students enrolled in Certificate IV and Diploma level qualifications increased by 16.3 per cent and 20.2 per cent respectively on 2009 figures.

All states and territories experienced a growth in student numbers and subject enrolments.

Students: Tasmania (14.6 per cent), Australian Capital Territory (10.8 per cent), New South Wales (6.1 per cent), Western Australia (5.5 per cent), Victoria (5.2 per cent), Queensland (4.5 per cent), Northern Territory (1.8 per cent), South Australia (1.6 per cent)

Subject enrolments: Victoria (12.5 per cent), Tasmania (9.2 per cent), Queensland (8.1 per cent), Northern Territory (6.7 per cent), New South Wales (5.6 per cent), Western Australia (5.5 per cent), South Australia (4.4 per cent), Australian Capital Territory (4.0 per cent)

The figures also showed that Commonwealth and state-funded students increased by 6.7 per cent, from 1.3 million to 1.4 million students and that overall the participation rate for persons aged 15 to 64 years increased to 11.6 per cent.

Indigenous students increased by 11.3 per cent, from 74 800 to 83 200 students and the number of apprentices and trainees undertaking off-the-job training increased by 4.0 per cent, from 345 800 to 359 500 students.

Males made up more than half of the student population (52.4 per cent). Students aged 24 years and under, represented 43.4 per cent of all students. One in five (20.0 per cent) students enrolled in public VET was an apprentice or trainee undertaking off-the-job training.

Over one-third (34.4 per cent) of students studying full-time were enrolled in higher-level (diploma and above) qualifications, compared with 9.3 per cent of part-time students.

In 2010, compared with 2009: Students enrolled at ‘TAFE and other government providers’ and ‘other registered providers’ increased by 2.0 per cent and 34.0 per cent respectively, while numbers at ‘community education providers’ declined by 10.5 per cent.

Hours of delivery and FYTEs increased for ‘TAFE and other government providers’, and ‘other registered providers’ by 2.1 per cent and 50.0 per cent respectively, while they declined by 2.6 per cent at ‘community education providers’.

The number of training organisations delivering publicly funded VET increased from 2455 to 2794 training organisations.

Selected training provider characteristics for 2010 show:
Approximately three out of four (74.4 per cent) students were enrolled at ‘TAFE and other government providers. Almost four out of five (79.8 per cent) students enrolled at ‘TAFE and other government providers’ were enrolled in an AQF qualification.

*The NCVER study provides a summary of 2010 data relating to students, courses, qualifications, training providers and funding in Australia’s publicly funded vocational education and training (VET) system. The information came from the National VET Provider Collection, which is compiled under the Australian Vocational Education and Training Management Information Statistical Standard (AVETMISS and covered  VET activity delivered by:, TAFE and other government providers, multi-sector higher education institutions, community providers and private providers.

 This week we start with The Thesis Whisperer, friend to anxious PhD students around the world, and run by RMIT University research educator Dr Inger Mewburn.  The Thesis Whisperer  provides help and suggestions on writing long-term projects, and is run in a “newspaper” style, with multiple contributors. Topics have included ‘How to Avoid Going off on Tangents’, ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go Now: aka, Divorce My Supervisor or Learn to Live with It?’, ‘How to Write a 1000 Words a Day’, and posts on organisation, emotions and stress.

“The blog kind of had these vague aims, but I’ve been surprised at how well it’s unfolded,” said Mewburn.
“I could never explain what I did to anyone. A lot of people work in academic development and teaching writing, but… I study the history of research degrees and look at things like attention and attrition, but I also teach. Then one day this student rang me up and said, ‘I hear you’re the thesis whisperer’, and I said ‘yes, I am’.”

Mewburn had been thinking about starting a blog for some time, and the name The Thesis Whisperer  seemed perfect to her. She knew she would not be able to keep up on her own, so she started enlisting other researchers and students to write for her. “People need to be able to rely on you, that’s how you build readership,” she said. “I started by translating what I spoke about when I teach, I’d just sort of pick off bite-sized chunks, but I haven’t really dipped much into what I do in my teaching because a lot of people have started writing for me. I know PhD students really love to read what other PhD students have to say because it’s authentic, it’s lived, and it gives them the opportunity to write in a different register and share that tacit knowledge.”

 The Thesis Whisperer is now a year old, has 14 contributors and has racked up just over 100,000 hits, averaging about 1000 a day. Many posts create active discussions in the comments, and she seems to have a higher profile outside of Australia than in.

“It’s really helped me make a lot of connections and it’s raised my professional profile in a lovely way,” said Mewburn. “There are a lot of readers in the UK. I think they’re the closest equivalent group, and I’ve got a little following up there in Denmark and Norway, and then a few Americans. I think I went viral about four months after I started, I suddenly noticed a huge acceleration because key people like the Guardian Higher Education section and the Times Higher Education supplement wrote about me.”

“There’s been two points where I really went viral, the bigger one was where I wrote about how to write 1000 words in a day, the other was the about the top five PhD emotions,” she said. “Those ones that are really hitting on the major issues and difficulties are the most popular. Once I get the readers I tend to keep them. It sort of snowballs, I’ve got a very consistent readership.”

The blog has also increased her profile at RMIT, as students and other staff members realise her area of expertise.

“I study research students, so I’m speaking to them all the time and they’re very responsive to what I have to say – they’re a very critical, receptive bunch of people and if they don’t agree, they’ll tell you,” she said. “I get called in on the hard cases and the broken birds. I sort of feel like I’m supervising without boundaries. The best part about doing the blog is just the connectivity on multiple levels with your peers and the students and people on the outside doing public policy. If you give you get back more than you give in my experience. So far I haven’t run against any brick walls.”

Mewburn said she encourages all academics to blog.
“I think they should try and think about it collaboratively if they don’t have time to be regular with their posts. They just need to have a strong idea of what they’re about, what they’re aiming to do,” she said.

If you know of a good higher education blog – maybe it has a big audience, or shines a light on a neglected area, provides great policy analysis or is simply extremely funny, let us know.

http://thethesiswhisperer.wordpress.com

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Mewburn’s favourite blogs

• Explorations of Style: A Blog About Academic Writing (“I read every post,” says Mewburn) http://explorationsofstyle.wordpress.com 

• Study Hacks http://calnewport.com/blog 

• Tenured Radical http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/tenuredradical.

Speaking in Banff last week, Carr told delegates at the Fourth International SKA Conference that Australia had allocated $40 million in the 2011 budget for pre-construction of what will be the largest and most sensitive radio telescope ever built.
The international science community has shortlisted a joint bid by Australia and New Zealand as one of two potential locations for the SKA. The other location is in Southern Africa.

An independent selection panel is due to decide the SKA site in February.
“We have glimpsed the potential of this telescope in the Outback, and we are prepared to pursue this mission with you, through all the swings of economic fortune,” Carr said at the conference. “To this end, I am confident in the independent expert judgement of the site selection advisory committee.”

By linking together thousands of receptors into a collecting area of one square kilometre, construction of the SKA telescope is expected to cost the international community 1.5 billion.

The telescope’s capability will exceed that of current astronomical technology by at least 10,000 times. It will be able to peer into the outer reaches of time and space to address fundamental unanswered questions about the universe.

Speaking to journalists in an online forum last week, Carr said the SKA would also have application here on Earth.

“There are a range of new technologies that I believe will flow from this, as we have seen in the past, with technologies that flow from astronomical research,” the minister said, naming green power, high-speed computing, advanced engineering and information and communication technologies.

Carr said Australia’s strong research base made it an ideal candidate for the SKA.
“We’re able to support the discovery of this project as a result of the strength of our universities and our scientific agencies and our people,” he said. 

“It’s important to be able to provide ongoing scope for young Australians to be encouraged to take up science as a career, and this is the sort of project that is iconic and will produce enormous inspiration for many, many people,” he said.

The 50-year project also is expected to generate many high-wage employment opportunities.

All of which should draw our attention to the specific contribution that Australian higher education is making to the study of war and peace. It’s in such a setting that we might reasonably expect a concentration on what is a crucial area of inquiry; but alas no.

We’ve all heard about the assaults on arts, humanities and social sciences in English-speaking countries, but much less is known about the demise of peace and conflict studies in Australia. It appears that our market savvy and fractious universities are either unable or unwilling to retain anything as patently useful as peace and conflict studies, preferring instead to respond to what they perceive as ‘market demand’.

So what’s the story about peace and conflict studies? This area of study emerged in the 1980s and expanded through the 1990s when there were nine centres and programs in Australia. The future looked very bright at the time but it turned out to be a false dawn. Of the healthy crop of peace and conflict offerings that existed a few years ago, only two remain: one at the University of New England and the other, the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney. One of the first peace research centres to emerge in Australia was the Centre for Peace Research at the ANU which opened its doors in the late 1980s and closed abruptly in 1996. The centre was the brainchild of a number of then leading ALP government members like Bill Hadyen and Gareth Evans, and was funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs. Following the election of the coalition government under John Howard in 1996, the newly installed Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer,  set about closing the centre. It is understood the closure reflected Downer’s preference for a Centre for Democratic Institutions. 

A number of academics also objected to the centre, insisting that peace studies intruded on their turf or was intellectually inferior to other more established disciplines. Melbourne’s Centre for Conflict Resolution, while not explicitly referring in its title to peace, produced some well regarded research work on precisely that, as well as other related areas. However, the problem was probably that it had no separate funding or rooms, and lacked a coherent identity. The precarious nature of its funding base meant that the existence of the centre was always likely to be temporary, and so it proved. Other peace and conflict programs at Murdoch, Curtin, La Trobe and Macquarie also closed their doors because of financial shortcomings, lack of support, and tensions over funding and discipline boundaries, leading to what one former ANU peace studies academic described as a “landscape of wrecks and relics’’. 

Perhaps one of the more surprising closures was that of the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (ACPACS) at the University of Queensland. Led by Professor Kevin Clements (now in a similar position at the University of Otago in Dunedin), and under the aegis of UQ’s Institute of Social Science Research, the centre was funded initially with a $2 million endowment from the Amitabha Buddhist Society through Venerable Master Chin Kung who also founded the Interfaith Centre at Griffith University and the Buddhist Pureland College in Toowoomba. Additional funds were also acquired through several grants. 

Housed in a demountable building, the centre drew academics from other faculties in the university and had a steady stream of highly regarded overseas scholars such as Professor Peter Wallensteen, University of  Uppsala, Professor Hebert Wulf, Hamburg University, Professor Kurt Schock and Professor Saul Mendlowitz from Rutgers University, and Professor Richard Falk from Princeton University. In short, the ACPACS had all the features of a well-established, cross-disciplinary centre undertaking research that promoted something we all want: peace. Couldn’t be better, right?
However, ACPACS found itself having to pay high overheads and this inevitably impacted on the centre in terms of its ability to carry out a number of academic activities. Additionally, the ACPACS faced opposition from some academics who argued that peace and conflict studies should not constitute a discrete area of inquiry and was in fact integral to subjects covered by other disciplines.  

To make matters worse, a leadership vacuum arose in 2008 when Professor Clements left the University to take up his directorship of the national Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies in Otago. Without a strong advocate at the ACPACS, the program was gradually dismantled and in 2010 was hived off into the School of Political Science and International Studies under the watch of the Institute of Social Science Research. Two graduate peace and conflict units remain in the program although their focus is on resolving conflicts rather than preventing these from arising in the first place. 

Although peace and conflict studies have radically diminished in Australia, various programs and centres are thriving in New Zealand, the UK, Europe and North America.  They are making major research, theory and policy contributions to the debates about how best to promote and maintain peace, security and individual well being. Such specialised work has been reduced to a minimum in Australia.

Richard Hil is honorary associate, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney.

It’s an image which Professor Michael Fraser, director of the Communications Law Centre at the University of Technology, Sydney, can relate to. 

As we move from the industrial age into a ‘knowledge economy’ we are finding ourselves just as ill-equipped as the farmer for ‘virtual’ chaos being wreaked by our contemporary ‘steam engine’ – the internet and associated technologies.

Instant, digital global communications has put the world at our fingertips. But, the infrastructure and systems we built to keep the industrial economy ticking over just aren’t up to the new challenges of a “virtual age”, he says.

Consider the recent lot of the world’s “content creators” – our writers, musicians, singers, designers, animators and film makers, to name a few, as well as all those people producing original work subject to copyright for educational, library, information and legal services.

In Australia, ‘content providers’ already generate about ten per cent of GDP, and as internet speeds, applications and uptake grows, the contribution of our creative industries will just continue to grow.

But, digital tools are so adept at copying, multiplying, manipulating and transmitting images, videos, words, sound and ideas that an original thought can ricochet around the world in seconds. So, too, a pirated copy of a movie or song, or a rip-off of a newly-minted digital version of a book, or a copy of a new design program. Of all the music currently being accessed online worldwide, for example, only five per cent is being legally purchased.

“The creative industries are in crisis. People who wouldn’t dream of shoplifting a CD from a music store think downloading a pirate copy for free is normal behaviour. So the business model is broken and there are enormous financial losses occurring,” Fraser says.

The consequences is that many creative professionals are finding it harder than ever to monetise their talents, the music industry has contracted by 30 per cent, only four per cent of the film market is legitimate sales and 80 regional newspapers went bankrupt or closed their doors in the UK in the past year. At the time the burgeoning web space is crying out for quality content. It’s a disastrous combination. 

“The creative industries should be the future, but they won’t be unless we have a market place in which we can build these industries sustainably. We have to take the opportunity now to build a framework for the knowledge economy.”

Fraser is working on a solution for Australia. And, it’s attracting interest in other jurisdictions suffering similar problems which began in earnest when the digital pirates took on the music industry in the 1990s with easily copied and shared MP3 formats, but just continues to roll on. Books are the latest creative product facing the online onslaught.  

The starting point is the pirating business, itself, Fraser says. There is no point defending or trying to claw back out-dated, pre-internet business models, he says. To provide a fair and stable income stream to support the creative industries we need to be looking at what the pirates do well and taking them on online with a clever, expansive new market model.

The copyright protection of original creative works goes back 300 years.  Prior to the famous UK Copyright Act of Queen Anne there was little to stop ‘pirates’ copying books or works of art; although the copying process was expensive, laborious and required skill. 

At the recent World Copyright Congress the contemporary failure of the ‘content market’ in the internet age was laid out in staggering detail. Globally, the creative industries will lose an estimated $35 billion (Aust) through the internet transmission of unlicensed content this year; and unlicensed content makes up 25 per cent of all downloads by the world’s 1.7 billion internet users.

In India, for example, 20 million legitimate DVDs are sold a year, compared to 700 million pirated copies. And the list just goes on.

However, the conference also revealed some important trends relevant to Fraser’s proposed solution.

Detailed studies of several markets showed that consumers are actually willing to pay modest sums for downloaded content, so long as there is an efficient, convenient online mechanism available to allow them to do so. 

For example, in the UK only 16 per cent of people said they would not be prepared to pay for a subscription music service, but would stick with illegal downloads instead. The rest were willing to pay between £1 or so to £15.99. The total amount consumers who wanted the service were willing to spend was £6.8 million per month.

Which might be well short of the profits turned by the music industry when their monopoly on supply and distribution prevailed; but it still far better result than no returns at all.

This suggests a new ‘digital gateway’ model managing multiple, modest transactions has promise.

Fraser first conceived his National Content Network (NCN) model in the 1990s when slow internet speeds meant most people couldn’t yet imagine that books, for example, would be easily downloaded for free. Yet, as Fraser says, less than 24 hours after the release of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, 100,000 copies had been illegally downloaded on file sharing sites. Book piracy now cost the industry $660 million a year globally. 

Fraser says when hecame to UTS he met Professor Gobinda Chowdhury who had independently come to a similar view from the perspective of information and knowledge management. They have jointly published a number of articles and conference papers about the model. The proposed NCN turns conventional approaches on their head. When videos and DVDs were first physically pirated in large numbers, police could swoop down, seized the evidence and charged the perpetrators. The “no” approach of trying to protect existing business models won’t work in “virtual” world, says Fraser.

 “Corporations in the creative industries will have to get used to the fact they no longer control an exclusive “hub” of access to content; everyone is going around them, artists themselves can go direct to their audiences,” he says He says we need to build a “yes” business model; an online national rights registry which links digital content to the owner of its rights, so that content can be downloaded one way, and a permission transaction can go the other way at the same time. Artists and amateurs might still choose to tag their work as free access, but they will have the choice to charge and a reliable online tool through which they can collect revenue.

Today, over 50 per cent of internet traffic is peer-to-peer; that is from one individual to another, with no big corporation in between.

Fraser envisages a NCN as core infrastructure component of the ‘knowledge economy’ of similar importance as the NBN – which should be brought to us by governments. Last month he was asked to present his model to the Federal government strategy group, and a similar proposal is under consideration in the UK.

“The industrial revolution didn’t happen by itself; governments had to put the foundations in place like electricity networks, rail lines and property rights. It’s the same for the knowledge economy, you have to build the right infrastructure.”

In large enterprises, and perhaps especially in universities, feral systems which replicate the data or functions of formal systems are very common. Just how common, and what proportion of standard IT functions they account for, is hard to say, because they are often undocumented due to their underground nature. 
In the past decade most medium to large scale organisations whether in education, business or government have moved to centralise IT functions with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and more recently, service-oriented architecture. In the old days it was all done with ledger books, card files and front office personnel with acute memory for detail.

As computers became mainstream, institutions moved incrementally to digitized, automated systems for handling business processes, often at the initiative of self-nominated individuals within departments or faculties who claimed the distinction of being technically literate. For years organisations ran on a plethora of piecemeal systems, many of which duplicated each other’s functions and none of which “talked” to each other.

Centralised IT systems, usually consisting of a series of software modules that communicate with each other seamlessly, have been progressively adopted because in one package they seek to meet all the functional and operational requirements of an organisation, from payroll and HR to timetabling and student accounts. 

Yet, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on such systems every year, and the mushrooming of dedicated central IT departments peopled with highly trained personnel, so-called feral systems – separately sourced software and/or internally designed applications which covertly circumvent the core IT system – have proven persistent across universities and in the TAFE system. A department might keep its own class lists. An academic may keep an independent register of his or her consultancy activities. The alumni division may keep its own records of contacts with donors, or a medical school may keep its own file on student internships.

The reasons for the persistence of feral systems are usually pragmatic. Often formal enterprise management systems are perceived as inadequate by users, who engage in underground innovation to “get the job done”.

Users frequently struggle with the complexity and perceived “unfriendliness” of formal systems, so they look for simple and “friendly” solutions which help them improve their job performance. A 2004 study by Sandy Behrens and Wasana Sedera at Central Queensland University recorded that 26 steps and two separate applications were required to extract a class list from the university’s ERP system. End users may also perceive the centralised system as too rigid with limited options which hamper their creativity in achieving innovation. 

Core systems may have been heavily customised to meet requirements at the time they were introduced, but there may be no effective avenue for staff to raise the need for enhancements to meet new needs. Suppliers may not keep their products current, or there may be no budget to pay for updates.

The IT department may be sitting on a large backlog of applications which can take months or even years to process. Or it may be perceived that in areas where the information collected has special  characteristics or is subject to different regulatory and processing requirements, such as for international enrolments, an alternative system will result in better front line customer service.

 In some cases – including international enrolments – the sheer complexity of the task of switching from one system to another with the potential for confusion and errors or disruption to an important revenue stream, may be a deterrent to setting up a fully integrated system. 

The CQU study also noted that when formal systems have been championed by some groups with vested interests in the system, implementation may favour the champions (for example, in the finance and IT divisions) while other users (for example, in the faculties) may find their needs have low priority. In one case, a division was told its needs were “out of scope” for the new ERP system, yet it was required to keep feeding the system its latest data.  

Clearly feral systems meet genuine needs and can be highly effective locally when they are developed and maintained at or near the front line of customer service. But they carry costs and risks both obvious and hidden.

Good governance is compromised if management is in the dark about the processes supported by shadow or feral systems. Such a system can constitute a power base and therefore be the source of political wrangling or even factional warfare between management, the IT department and end users in the schools or faculties who seek to retain control over data and processes. 

There is cost and inefficiency in developing and maintaining covert systems and in rekeying duplicate data.  There is a risk to business continuity in the event of a local systems failure or departure of the key staff member responsible for establishing or administering the system when there is no backup and recovery plan in place.

Customer service can suffer if information about staff and students is not synchronised with the organisation’s formal systems. Shadow systems cannot usually support the options for self-service and mobile access which staff and students have come to expect.

Users of informal systems who extract data from the centralised system and manipulate it for specialised purposes may not see the need to feed the data back into the formal system where it can support wider operational or forecasting functions.

The security of data, including personally identifiable information, is compromised when it is spread across a number of disconnected data bases, and the chances of erroneous updates or security and privacy violations is also increased.  

While the existence of feral systems is probably inevitable given the human factors which motivate their development, prudent institutions will take steps to minimise their costs and risks for the sake of good governance and organisational cohesion.
When formal IT systems are being developed and implemented, clearly a comprehensive, open consultation process with end users which gives full play to their creativity and specialist knowledge and perspectives will increase the chances of producing an effective and innovative system that satisfies all needs and obviates the need for covert, feral alternatives.

Once a formal system is in place, institutions need to provide avenues for offices and departments to raise their system requirements formally. They need to set aside a portion of the annual budget to meet prioritised business needs. They need to move to agile development methodologies and explore ways that open source initiatives can accelerate the meeting of requirements.

A register of local systems should be developed and the level of risk associated with each of them should be assessed to assist in prioritising, where necessary, their shutdown or integration into the core system. Feral systems which are allowed to persist should be subject to regular audit, and the institutional strategy should aim to implement a framework to manage them.

Mark Ellis worked in the financial services industry for 15 years before moving into the higher education sector in 2001. In 2005 he joined Macquarie University where he managed their Research Office and had overall responsibility for research information systems during a time of organisational and technological change. He is now vice-president, Asia Pacific, of SunGard Higher Education.

 Mobility and personal devices  made their debut at number one on this year’s top 10 list of the most important issues for IT directors and chief information officers at the Council of Australian University Directors of Information Technology. And cloud computing issues came in at number two, up from third place last year and number eight in 2009.

And Mark Bathie, who won the University of Queensland’s Business School Enterprise business plan competition in 2007, has shown it can be a profitable issue. 
Bathie used the $100,000 seed capital prize to take his small cloud-based computing services company from Queensland to Silicon Valley, reportedly selling the business last year for seven figures.

University of Technology Sydney Fellow Rob Livingstone is the author of Navigating through the Cloud, a book about surviving the risks, costs and governance pitfalls of cloud computing.

“More and more mobility is going to be the key, that’s why cloud computing is the power behind that,” he  told Campus Review.

He said that for industry, cloud technology meant operations were “very scalable” and programs were accessed by an internet browser from anywhere without limitations around device types. Livingstone who is giving a public lecture on July 19 at UTS said: “If you’ve got an internet browser you can do whatever you need to do.
“That’s what enterprises are looking for because they want their employees to be mobile.”

And universities are trying to keep up by adding the emerging areas to their IT courses. Mobile application and cloud computing (infrastructure) are two of the newest specialisationsGold Coast-based Bond University is offering from next year in the master and bachelors of information technology programs.  

“Certainly from an industry demand viewpoint there is incredible interest in understanding what the cloud is and what its impact is going to be on industry,” Bond’s acting head of the school of information technology, Professor Gavin Finnie, said.

Finnie said they added the new focus areas as a result of their two-yearly curriculum and program review, a process he said looked closely at industry demand.

 “So it’s obviously important for us to try and ensure our graduates are well up there in understanding how infrastructure will change in the cloud,” Finnie said.

Finnie said the same applied for mobile computing where demand was changing rapidly. It was an area Bond had been teaching in for “quite a long time” mainly in terms of distributed games and ad hoc networks at a postgraduate level but they were now offering it as a major to undergraduates, he said.

At  Queensland University of Technology, senior lecturer in science and technology, Dr Dian Tjondronegoro, said they recognised that mobile and cloud computing and mobile applications in general were very important. 

Tjondronegoro heads the mobile innovation lab and mobile application development course, which he started teaching in 2010 after noticing a gap in that area. Units are offered as special topics but “we’re actually working towards making them mainstream units,” Tjondronegoro said.

With the rate of change in IT, universities can have a hard time keeping pace so how important is it for them to keep up? Mark Ellis, vice-president Asia Pacific of SunGard Higher Education said the heart of that question went to whether the innovation was coming from industry or higher education.

“I would say a lot of what we’re seeing is from the industry side, in which case, the way that a higher education institution can maintain relevance is to actually link in with the vendors that are at the cutting edge of those technology innovations,” Ellis said.

Tjondronegoro agreed it was vital to keep up with the demand and it was something he said QUT could achieve because of their “research being up to date and cutting edge as well.”

 “And we do actually believe it is very important that we keep up especially with ... cloud and mobile because it seems like most of the new platforms are using it.”
But there are risks involved in teaching the latest thing if it turns out to be just a fad or the basics are not covered. 

Livingstone said it was not necessarily essential for students to cover such topics in-depth at university and they should not be done instead of the basic core subjects. 
He said mobile applications were just an extension of normal application development which just happened to be on a “funky device” with appeal to the mass market and cloud computing was really just another set of choices that any organisation needed to make.

“It’s not a panacea for everything,” Livingstone said. “The problem with teaching a course in a university-style program is that by the time you’ve finished the course the technology and the solutions may have in fact moved on.”

However, Ellis said the risk went to the overall design of the course and curriculum and the core pieces were necessary to provide longevity. 

“I can’t see why you would deny a student the opportunity to experience and learn some of the latest technologies before they go into the workplace,” Ellis said. 

Tjondronegoro said at QUT they agreed on the importance of the core subjects and the specialised subjects were for students in the latter stages of their degrees.

“Being for the real world we actually have to keep up with demand from industry obviously, but at the same time being a university we need to make sure we cover the basics first,” Tjondronegoro said.

The same goes at Bond where the specialisations are for students who have already completed the bulk of their coursework. Finnie said the challenge was in delivering traditional core material in addition to the newer basic content.

 “The problem you face is that a lot of foundational stuff that remains the same has to be covered and you then have to try and ensure the new technologies are brought in on a fairly solid base,” Finnie said.

Curtin University has also introduced content on cloud computing. Head of the information systems cchool in the Faculty of Business, Dr Peter Dell, said the area was more prominent at the postgraduate level but that it was also touched on in the first year of the undergraduate information systems course.

Dell also said it was important for students to cover the foundation subjects before heading into the latest specialisation, especially at the undergraduate level.

And he acknowledged there was a risk to “hitch our wagon” to the latest thing if it turned out to “be a fad” but he also said that IT suffered from a bit of a misperception regarding change. 

“People tend to assume that it’s an area where there’s a lot of rapid change [but] there’s a lot of stuff in IT which doesn’t change,” Dell told Campus Review.

Dell said most change tended to be in the form of the next version of the framework which was not that much different to the previous one. 

Livingstone said the biggest thing that students needed to understand was where the technology could be applied because “it’s the application of the technology that allows people and organisations and businesses and communities to do all the cool stuff like network and communicate and share ideas.” 

“So if the course is going to be techno-centric then it’s got a half life of probably a couple of years. Whereas if it’s about the application of technology such as cloud, such as mobile devices… then I think that’s much more of an evergreen approach to particular outcomes,” Livingstone said.

Continuity of progress is central to students achieving a good result and a gap in the educational journey is disruptive, counter-productive and in some cases the cause of failure and disengagement. The cumulative gaps lead to loads that many students simply cannot endure.

There are a number of reasons for this. One is cognitive: as Vygotsky described it, there is a “zone of proximal development”, a point at which students can with help learn. It occurs just on the edge, the fringe, of previous learning not at some spot that is removed from it or distant to it. Therefore the connection to previous learning is critical. Seamlessness in educational journeys is all.

Many students fail early in their further and higher education for this reason alone. There is a disconnection between their previous learning and what they are now encountering. This might be one of generally inadequate academic preparation or it might be a disciple deficiency. Or it might be the result of poor teaching either before or after the transition from school to post-school. As an educational issue it is serious, is often ignored and is generally seen as the fault of the student.

So getting a ‘no gaps’ mentality into the educational system will require a far greater effort on the part of further and higher education. It will also pose some challenges to the high school sector. 

Of course, some higher education institutions simply keep raising the requirements for entry into courses and eventually will have made entry too difficult for such a number of students with the result that they will have taken themselves to a place where students entering courses are prepared to cope with whatever they are thrown. This also enables them to dispense with the support mechanisms required by higher maintenance students. It will depress their numbers and results with under-represented groups but there will be other institutions to pick up that responsibility.

Funding formulae for further and higher education that does not adequately reflect the efforts required to see that there are ‘no gaps’ are simply inadequate. Similarly in high schools there has to be recognition that social class, the way we distribute ethnicity throughout a city and the challenges of low or no income groups make the provision of education in some schools a far greater responsibility and a far harder task than in some other schools. To fund school equally is to fund them unequally.

The final arguments for no gaps approach  hinge around clear evidence that if a student proceeds through school and into a postsecondary qualification without a gap they are highly likely to also undertake and complete a further qualification at a level in advance of the first qualification completed after leaving school. The road to advanced qualifications is perhaps one characterised by no gaps.

It could be that a “lifelong learner” is the result of this smooth and uninterrupted journey from the novitiate of the early years through to the advanced state of being a self-sufficient learner at a later age and a higher stage.

The American dream of a college degree for all has become the nightmare that it is because this smooth passage through educational stages is seriously disrupted. A great confusion of gaps characterises the community college where qualifications are significantly marked by remediation.
 

Most do-it-yourself exponents will tell you that those ‘no gaps’ products have limits and their success relies on a solid structure each side of the gap and there are limits to the gaps they can close. My Dad was always saying of a extension he made to our house many years ago that should an earthquake occur we were would in trouble – “all the putty will fall out!” he would say.
 

Too many students face this threat when the seismic transitions they are asked to make give them a good shake-up. You can’t fill large educational gaps through some quick fix.

These are just some of the clever marketing pitches used in advertisements by one public training provider, previously called West Coast TAFE. In marketing terms WCIT is a boutique competitor to larger, stodgier educational organisations; a nimble player in an era when to be nimble and responsive is everything. 

Such marketing pitches might seem accidental at first sight, but substantial marketing research underpins them, and clever marketing slogans will become increasingly important in the more competitive tertiary education landscape. 

Of course when WCIT framed the words “uni not turned out how you’d planned” it didn’t know ACER was about to release startling figures about the very high drop-out rates in some university courses. WCIT didn’t need to read the ACER report, it already knew it was on to a winner in offering students more flexibility than the ubiquitous three-year undergraduate degree course which is the staple take-it-or-leave-it diet offered by most universities for the last century or so. 

WCIT managing director Sue Slavin was a professional marketer, including at the ABC, before she made the successful transition to managing her award-winning training institute, which she has taken from financial peril eight years ago when she arrived to be now a frequent winner of national awards. 

Interestingly, her institute recently won two awards, both for marketing. And by the way, its enrolments have soared in the last three years and its student satisfaction ratings are now the highest in the metropolitan area. The market is saying something. Mindful that many universities are for the first time showing some interest in a traditional market for training providers, students from low-SES backgrounds, Slavin’s team is sharpening its marketing strategies to compete with university colleagues. And Slavin is particularly focused on improving her institute’s already strong focus on the needs of individuals. 

“Universities are doing some remarkable work, but state training providers like us have a unique focus on and support for the individual.” 

“I think there is a place for both universities and training providers, and while universities are moving to offering their students more practical experience and qualifications leading to jobs, I still think they have some way to go before they have the very powerful fine grained relationships that training providers have with individuals, industry and enterprises.”

While universities show reluctance to abandon the drawn-out three-year degree as their main offering, Slavin is driving hard in another direction, towards flexibility, choice and pathways. 

Compared with universities she lists as her institute’s strength, and the strength of other training providers, “our flexibility and our multiple pathways; the fact that students can go onto a higher qualification or a vocational program”. 
“We recognise existing skills in a way that is not yet and can’t yet be matched by universities, and we offer bite-size chunks of study. Further, there is a shorter lead time to gaining qualifications.”

Importantly, Slavin bases this product positioning on market research; on demand not supply. And student demand is for speed and efficiency. 

“If you talk to any student at the moment and ask them what their key issue is, it’s their time. So as we move to a more robust and competitive market, I still think that our flexibility and our approach to time is a great advantage, as is our delivery of training in the student’s workplace.”

Slavin knows the reason for existence of her organisation is to help students achieve their goals, not help the organisation polish its coat of arms. “Whether it’s an individual, an enterprise or an industry, we know that we only have meaning in terms of adding value to their bottom line - or for an individual, their goal, if not their bottom line. 

“And so what we try to convey through our marketing message is that we can assist them achieve their goals, rather than giving them a set of courses from which to choose.”

Ironically, says Slavin, we are in a complex world “where the individual and the personalised service and the customised rule”. So in its marketing pitches, her institute sends out messages that “we’ll help you make sense of this complex world”.
“We realised that we needed to be able to reach out to individual customers and assure them that we could focus on what they wanted to achieve rather than what we wanted to achieve.”

Slavin is aware that some universities are starting to pick up and use similar messages. 
“One particular local university is now using our kind of language. They are now talking about what they can do to help the students achieve, which has been our area of provision in the past.” 

In particular, universities are now talking more about employment opportunities, which are traditional VET foci. “Universities in Western Australia are certainly indicating that that’s part of their current remit and that is very similar to us, and so we will need to be very clear about what’s different about training providers, as we move forward.” 

“Forgive me for talking in marketing terms, but I am very confident in the unique properties of our product and what we can offer in terms of training and the training environment and especially the way our product is delivered. And I think those are still quite different from a university.”

At a loose end? Square peg in a round hole? Want to fuel your passion and be on the road to success? More messages taken straight from WCIT’s advertisements, aimed at the passionate, ambitious, time-poor individual who wants concrete achievements, not another lecture.

Dr John Mitchell is a Sydney-based researcher and consultant who specialises in VET workforce development and strategic leadership. 
See www.jma.com.au

Brailsford is currently the Frank Finn Professor of Finance and the dean of the Faculty of Economics and Commerce at the University of Queensland. He will start as vice-chancellor at Bond, on the Gold Coast, early next year.
“It’s a challenge, it’s certainly going be something different as one of Australia’s only two private universities,” he said. “I’ve been working public universities for most of my professional life and I think Bond is a pretty special place at the moment. It’s 22-years-old, it’s emerged from the shadows of a fairly fledgling institution to being a serious player.”

He said he believed that the quality of student life it offered was unparalled in Australia, and that it was emerging as a university of “considerable strength” in its disciplines. “It does not cater for all disciplines, it has a professional focus and it does so with an emphasis on quality,” said Brailsford. “Clearly there’s the undeniable balance between the financial model that underpins this institution and the need to ensure there’s a high quality student experience,” he said. 

 “But I think Bond’s reach has improved nationally and internationally. It has a number of extremely good scholarship programs and I’m keen to build on those and expand those and create some opportunities for some of our younger generation to experience university. They might be the first in family, and I see that as a challenge for all Australian institutions. I think Bond is really well placed to build a strong stream of scholarships for students that will make a difference.”
Broadening Bond’s connections overseas will also be a priority.

The university has existing partnerships in North America and Asia, but Brailsford hopes to expand to relationships in Europe.
“I think Bond is at a stage where it can push further on the international stage,” he said. “It does have some really high quality programs but I think they have been kept a secret too long. I think it can push forward with a greater degree of confidence into the international higher education arena.”

“Much of the accounting research produced lacks relevance and is orientated towards other academics when it should set out to improve public policy and accounting practice,” said Professor James Guthrie, head of academic relations at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia and co-editor of the book, Bridging the Gap between Academic Accounting Research and Professional Practice which was launched in Darwin today.

Contributors discuss the interface between the academy and the profession in determining future directions. The book was commissioned by the centre for accounting, governance and sustainability (CAGS) in the school of commerce at the University of South Australia and was launched today at the Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand conference in Darwin. It was edited by Guthrie, Elaine Evans, and Roger Burritt

The book is a report on a forum that investigated contemporary challenges in the relationship between academic accounting research and professional practice in Australia. Various contributions discuss the interface between the academy and the profession in determining future directions.

Burritt, who is director of CAGS, said that accounting academics should not be promoted solely on their publication quality because this can lead to an inward looking and self-serving view of academic accounting research. “Rather, senior university managers, accounting practitioners and the government need to unite to produce relevant and practical research as part of their everyday work,” he said in a statement.
 
The publication recommends:

• Greater incentives for academics to engage more with policy and practice. E.g. business school leaders and faculty members should have prformance indicators set in relation to industry engagement, as part of their accountability and professional development plans

• Placing more academic staff into businesses, regulatory agencies and professional services firms so they can experience the real world of accounting. This cross fertilisation would be for extended periods domestically and internationally, and provide an alternative form of outside study. Conversely, practitioners and policy makers should experience accounting research and teaching so greater understanding is achieved from all sides

• Adapting academic research papers into professional publications so they are more easily understood and useful for practitioners and policy makers.

Some other key themes raised in the book.

Reasons for the Gap:

• Accounting research should improve accounting practice, rather than simply to describe or understand or critique it
• The different timeframes of academic researchers and practitioners is a major contributor to the gap between research and practice
• Academic research papers are difficult to read and understand; more needs to be done to translate academic research papers into professional publications
• Academic research is typically orientated towards other academics, rather than practitioners

How to bridge the gap - develop a workable model

Among the contributors to the book were Professor Tyrone Carlin, The University of Sydney Business School, Professor Keryn Chalmers, Monash University, Professor Barry Cooper Deakin University and  Richard Laughlin emeritus professor of accounting at King’s College London, University of London  as well as Professor Philomena Leung, Macquarie University.

The book is available at www.unisa.edu.au/cags or www.charteredaccountants.com.au/academic

Kaye Schofield, whose role with ASQA ended last Friday when the authority officially set up shop, said a move to "regulation beyond audit" was needed. But VET regulators found it hard to find the space to make this cultural shift and to look at the broader issues when they are being "overrun by a trainload of 5000 providers". Schofield said VET regulation should be about quality assurance of the system, whereas most of the regulation in VET has focused on provider-level regulation and very little on system level by national arrangements. 

ASQA started work as the national regulator for vocational education and training on July 1 at the same time TEQSA, the regulator for higher education officially began its role.

The two regulators are at different stages of operation but do have common purposes. However, by the nature of the sectors they cover, and the regulatory frameworks they each supersede, they face different challenges. TEQSA will regulate about 200, mostly high-end higher education providers, whereas VET will have responsibility for 5000 providers - a mix of public and mostly private RTOs.

The government plan is to have one regulator across both sectors by 2013. It's an ambitious plan, if what unfolded at a higher education conference last week is anything to go by. Both Schofield and Professor Denise Bradley, the interim chair of TEQSA, outlined to an audience of higher education and VET experts points of convergence and divergence between the two new regulatory structures. 

Schofield made no bones about that fact that VET regulation was seriously circumscribed by the complexities of state and territory regulations and funding that were very different to higher education.  The overt remit of TEQSA legislation is quality assurance, but the legislation for ASQA talks more about continuous improvements, Schofield said. The VET mandate was for aggregation, refinement and consistency, not reform. 

Schofield said she had a "somewhat controversial" view on this. She said in VET a move away from provider-level regulation by audit was needed. To date, when state regulators tried to move beyond regulation by audit, it often played out as the regulators acting as consultants to providers helping them over the audit line. Whereas ASQA would be saying, "you are expected to be compliant at any time ... It is not our job to act as a coach. Our job is to make sure we inform you how to do so, but if you want to improve your quality it is not necessarily our job in relation to individual providers." 

She said when she took on the job of interim chair she was a novice on regulation but what surprised her was how under-resourced it was in VET. "This is not about armies of auditors hiding behind aspidistras to catch people out. If you are serious about the link between regulation and quality you invest in it."

Schofield said VET regulation (like TEQSA) should be about quality assurance of the system, whereas most of the regulation in VET has focused on provider-level regulation. Both she and Bradley talked about the increasing marketisation of the university and VET sectors and how this was a driver in the need for clearer, stronger regulation.

In answer to a question about TEQSA's risk-based approach, Bradley said there was an inexorable move towards a market-based approach to higher education and "we thought it would be a quaint notion to get a regulatory approach in place before we had the market in operation".

What was needed was adept regulation that was able to move quickly when it saw a problem. It was not appropriate to have to wait (which was happening) for five or six years to deal with it, "so that inexorably moves you towards some risk-based approach".

She said there were considerable signs of not-very-good behaviour in higher education VET and it was not clear that current regulatory arrangements were picking those up or were able to act on them quickly enough. "We also felt sure that you needed to keep the good aspects of the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AQUA) quality assurance approach in regulation."

The review panel looked at regulatory in other areas and decided the corporate regulator, the  Australian Prudential Regulation Authority,  was effective. "We wanted the two things [quality assurance and risk-based regulation] together and they would inform each other in a complex way." One of the first jobs for TEQSA will be rolling AQUA into its operation.

In an interview with  Campus Review  Schofield said there was much more aggression in the competition for public funds.  "We have drawn in a more diverse range of providers but it is shocking in that it is a tragedy for the sector, that 80 per cent are doing their best to offer quality but there is too high a proportion who are not.

"In VET we went to a higher marketisation model without sufficiently robust regulation. What Denise is trying to do is get the robust regulation in place before the full sweep of marketisation occurs and if we are to have a more robust system earlier we may not be having the same problems."

Schofield had told the Financial Review Higher Education Conference she thought VET regulation needed to be conceptualised differently - not like a logistics supply chain with regulation at the end but more as concentric circles where teaching and learning (service delivery) and regulation would consistently interact and inform each other.

She described the incentives now playing out in VET as perverse - the big institutions represented a significant portion of the students but were just a small number of the providers. Differences remained around the role and influence of industry and "I do not think we will have a national system until we have a national finance system".

She said ASQA and TEQSA could co-ordinate their activities and opportunities existed for developing common standards but the standards were streets apart. In reply to a question from the audience Schofield told people the sanctions ASQA had were probably more robust than any of the state regulators. "I am confident that this gives us a wider range of powers and sanctions to manage (providers) out."

ASQA had seriously beefed up its in-house legal investigations teams and going to the federal court will raise the ante in terms of tests.

From July 1 in NSW, Victoria, Western Australia, the ACT and the NT, ASQA became the designated authority for RTOs delivering courses to international students, including ELICOS (English-language intensive courses for overseas students) and foundation program courses. For providers in South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania, the current state regulatory bodies will continue to be the designated authority until legislation transferring their regulatory powers to the commonwealth is finalised. Victoria and Western Australia have not agreed to transfer state regulatory bodies. These will continue to operate for providers outside the above categories in both states. 

The ASQA authority will comprise three commissioners and a staff of more than 150. Two people have been appointed in acting roles, Chris Robinson as acting chief commissioner and Dianne Orr as acting commissioner. The three full-time position will be filled before the year's end. 

The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Bill 2011 establishing the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) passed parliament on June 22. It became a statutory body on Friday and will also be based on a commission model. It has advertised for commissioners.

ASQA and TEQSA will be both be located in Melbourne and share some back-end facilities. ASQA is also required to have an office in every state and territory. 

The new slogan, complete with logo, capitalises on the main motive to seeking an international education: a better life. Parliamentary Secretary for Trade Justine Elliot said Australia had traditionally relied on its affordability, beauty and friendly lifestyle to attract overseas students, as promoted by the previous campaign, Study in Australia. But increased global competition had forced a rethink. “All available research tells us the desire for a better future is the key factor motivating students seeking an international education,” Elliot said in a recent statement.

“Our new branding responds to this by repositioning Australia as a premium education destination, rather than simply a great place to live while you study.  “We want to make sure the world knows how much our institutions can do to help students build a better life, wherever they come from and whatever their aspirations.”  The new marketing approach is part of a broader national campaign —Australia Unlimited — launched last year with a $20 million budget over four years.

Austrade took over the responsibility of marketing and promoting international education from the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations in July 2010, with a budget of $8.6 million over four years.

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Announcing the 2011 winners today, the ALTC said the early career category recognised sustained commitment to the student experience within the first seven years of higher education careers.

“The ALTC commends the efforts of these staff who have made a significant contribution to the student experience so early in their careers,” ALTC chief executive Dr Carol Nicoll said in a statement. “This formal recognition by peers and the sector is important for encouraging their continued high level of engagement with their students into the future.”

The citations are worth $10,000 each. They will be presented to 185 individuals and 25 teams at an Australian Awards for University Teaching ceremony, to be held at the Sydney Opera House on August 16.

A wide range of disciplines are represented by the 2011 cohort, who work at 42 institutions nationwide. The ALTC said the Melbourne College of Divinity had received its first citation this year. Staff also work in a variety of areas, including the transition of non-traditional students into university and the growing field of education for sustainability.

The 2011 awards are the final for the ALTC, which will be disbanded by January 1, when the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations
will take over the citations and many other ALTC functions.

Since 2006, the ALTC has award $12.8 million to award recipients. In reflecting on the significance of the awards within the sector, Nicoll said, “I am very confident that the winners of this year’s citations will continue to make a lasting impact on the student experience”.

ALTC citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning are part of the Australian Awards for University Teaching. The ALTC will announce the winners of its 2011 Program and Teaching Awards – including the Prime Minister’s Award for Outstanding Teacher of the Year – in late July.
 

A spokesman for the Minister told Campus Review that the state government was not abandoning the idea but was waiting to see what the Commonwealth government was putting in place. The federal government has passed legislation to establish an International Students Ombudsman (ISO) which comes into being in July.

“The Victorian Government does not wish to duplicate the role of the ISO, but remains committed to having in place a complaints handling regime that enhances the accountability of providers operating in Victoria and provides greater levels of consumer protection”, the spokesman said.

He said the plan was to assess the extent to which the ISO met the commitments given by the coalition and if it was required they would address any deficiencies.
The coalition had promised to create a tertiary education and training ombudsman to investigate all facets of the international education market, from substandard courses and colleges to poor-quality housing. The state ombudsman was part of a plan to rebuild Victoria's reputation among international students after enrolments at universities and colleges dropped from 106,007 students to 90,983 between 2009 and 2010, after years of steady increase.

The industry once brought $4 billion a year into Victoria but seriously slumped after the exposure for poor practice and subsequent closure of a number of private colleges.

The spokesman said the minister was concerned that the integrity and quality of the vocational education and training system was maintained and that employers and students had confidence in all qualifications.

He confirmed that the VRQA had been asked to investigate the veracity of recent advertisements after CR reported that a Victorian education agent was enticing companies to enrol their workers in four-day government-funded diploma courses by suggesting they can make a clear profit of about $3500 per employee through government incentive payments – and offering free Bali holidays as a sign-on bonus.

Meanwhile despite the downturn in international student numbers, student enrolements generally had skyrocketed in what is currently Australia’s only fully demand-driven tertiary education system.

CR  in May  reported that Government-funded enrolments had increased by 31 per cent compared to the same time  last year, with gains across most levels and fields of education – mainly at private colleges where the enrolments had risen 112 per cent.

Government-funded enrolments had risen by 14 per cent at community colleges and 10 per cent across the 18 TAFE institutes. Declines at five TAFE institutes had been cancelled out by gains at the others – including significant gains at six dual-sector universities and standalone TAFEs.

Under current arrangements in Victoria, students typically pay 10 to 20 per cent of the costs of lower-level certificate courses. But Hall at the time welcomed Skills Australia’s recommendation that courses up to certificate III level should be fully subsidised by government. “That’s a target to which we can perhaps aspire – it would be a significant advantage if we could achieve that,” he told a Victorian TAFE Association conference in early May.

Hall at the time said the Skills Australia recommendation would be considered as part of Victoria’s review of VET fees. The Essential Services Commission, which is conducting the review, is due to report by August 10.

There is also growing disquiet in Victoria that the establishment of a national VET regulator has left some colleges in limbo because the structure is not yet in place to accredit new courses to meet the skills demand.

While the science over the health effects of mobile phone or wireless networks is far from conclusive, a May report from the European Assembly has recommended children’s access to mobile phones be strictly limited, and that mobile phones and wireless networks be banned from schools.

The report, The potential dangers of electromagnetic fields and their effect on the environment, has been prepared by the assembly’s Committee on the Environment, Agriculture and Local and Regional Affairs. While it acknowledges scientists are still arguing over mobile phone dangers, it suggests it would be folly to wait for conclusive evidence lest another asbestos- or cigarettes-scale problem is eventually uncovered.

The report recommends authorities “take all reasonable measures to reduce exposure to electromagnetic fields, especially to radio frequencies from mobile phones, and particularly the exposure to children and young people who seem to be most at risk from head tumours”.

It also called on education and health authorities to develop information programs, “aimed at teachers, parents and children to alert them to the specific risks of early, ill-considered and prolonged use of mobiles and other devices emitting microwaves”.

Further, it calls for governments to “ban all mobile phones, DECT [Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications] phones or WiFi or WLAN systems from classrooms and schools, as advocated by some regional authorities, medical associations and civil society organisations”.

If the idea gains momentum in Europe, it will almost certainly trickle down to Australia.

Parents and teachers already understand the almost umbilical attachment schoolchildren have to their phones and could likely imagine the wrench such an in-school ban might be.

According to a study conducted earlier this year by Sweeney Research, 87 per cent of Australian children aged four to 16 already own or have access to a mobile phone – a figure approaching saturation.

In the future, many of those will be smartphones.

At present 300 million smartphones  are used around the world. While this remains only a small fraction of the entire mobile phone population, demand for smartphones is soaring, putting enormous power in people’s pockets, and potentially exposing users to more radiation.

School students are also avid consumers of handheld devices such as iPods, which can also connect to wireless networks and become powerful communications tools. And for a growing cohort, Apple’s iPad is the latest techno status symbol, whether or not it’s connected to a wireless or 3G network.

Martin Levins, director of IT at The Armidale School, says the advent of the iPad is already starting to have a big impact in education and is being used quite widely as a classroom tool. He said phones and iPods had also found a place in the classroom, although the limited space on the screens of smartphones or iPod-like devices meant they were being challenged by the larger tablet-style ones.

“Other devices are cool – but there are too small to do things on them,” said Levins, who recently did a presentation on mobile learning at the Technology in K-12 Education National Congress in Sydney.

Nevertheless, mobile phones are being used in classroom settings, often to allow students to capture video or download internet content that can then be used during lessons instead of using school cameras or video recorders that can prove time-consuming to obtain and operate.

However, if the European proposal wins local support, it could seriously challenge such applications.