Eight Australian universities hold the “dubious honour” of enrolling over 50 per cent of their students from high socioeconomic backgrounds. The University of Canberra tops the list, enrolling 68.2 per cent of its students from high socioeconomic backgrounds and only ...

TAFEs are virtually excluded from the federal government’s $2 billion Productivity Places Program (PPP), with 98 per cent of jobseeker enrolments in the flagship vocational training program going to private training providers. The federal education department told Campus Review that ...

We can’t redress social inequality in higher education without doing something about it in VET, says Leesa Wheelahan. Many assume that pathways from vocational education and training to higher education increase access to university for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. ...

Properly funded, the recommendations in the Bradley and Cutler reviews on could transform the Australian research climate, write Peter Høj and Caroline McMillen. Faced with the stark reality of the global financial crisis, there is no more urgent task for ...

International experience shows that research excellence is more likely to flourish in large, properly funded concentrations, yet the Bradley review struggles to come to terms with this, says Vin Massaro. The recommendations in the Bradley report on the development of ...

Academics need to get their hands dirty if they want to boost higher education participation among under-represented groups, according to US equity expert Professor Bill Tierney. “We need to rethink and reorganise academic work,” said Tierney, director of the University ...

The Bradley report’s recommendations can deliver the egalitarian higher education system the government says it wants, a national equity forum in Adelaide heard last week. But cultural change will be just as important as funding boosts, equity experts said. The ...

The Bradley report’s calls for massive funding boosts may hit a road block in the Canberra bureaucracy because finance officials are believed to be unconcerned by the level of cross-subsidisation. Bradley’s big-ticket recommendations – a four-year $1.8 billion increase in ...

Victoria University staff vote to restart industrial action Staff at Victoria University voted to restart industrial action, the NTEU announced. VU NTEU branch president Richard Gough said last week that “strikes will commence [this] week and continue for the next ...

A new row has broken out over student unionism, with the Opposition accusing the government of breaking an election promise by imposing a $250 fee on students. “It’s a return to the bad old days of effective compulsory student unionism,” ...