International students are overwhelmingly portrayed as victims – both here and especially in the Indian media. The general picture is of well-intentioned, hopeful, law-abiding yet hapless individuals who get done over by dodgy training providers and unscrupulous employers. But the ...
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ESOS amendments aren’t enough: Coalition
The opposition has signalled in-principle support for Julia Gillard’s amendments to the Education Services for Overseas Students Act, but wants the federal government to go further. “The Coalition will be proposing three amendments to this Bill to ensure the legislation ...
More »The bottom line for e-learning
Do educators and business people share the same view of e-learning, asks John Mitchell. Over the past decade Australian VET has actively investigated e-learning from the perspectives of policy, theory and pedagogy, but not so much from the point of ...
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Tenders called for green jobs corps The federal government has called for tenders to provide 10,000 training places under its National Green Jobs Corps. Parliamentary employment secretary Jason Clare said several changes had been made to the original tender following ...
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Delay of bill could cost $100 million
University heads are grimacing at the dawning likelihood that it will be second semester next year before the long-awaited student amenities fee can be levied. The delay will be a $100 million blow to the sector, which had been counting ...
More »Higher education in TAFE hampered by poor policy
Current policies which do not provide funding for places or give students access to HECS hamper the expansion of higher education in TAFE and run counter to the government’s social inclusion agenda. A new report by a team of researchers ...
More »Women right on target
The government’s ambitious higher education completion targets have already been achieved for women, but are being hampered by men who underperform on most higher education measures when compared to their female counterparts. For the past five years, just 28 per ...
More »International VET now, PPPs next: AEU warns of domestic meltdown
The problems that have emerged in VET for international students could replicate themselves in domestic VET unless the federal government curtails its “ideological obsession” to foster competition in the training market, according to the Australian Education Union. AEU federal president ...
More »Stepping into standards
Establishing standards does not demand standardisation of curricula – if we get it right. Kerri-Lee Harris takes an international perspective. Academic standards are currently a hot topic in Australian higher education – at least among university leaders and commentators. In ...
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