With future funding now flagged for student services and amenities, an ideological argument over unionism is giving way to jibes over who best runs student services. Youth minister Kate Ellis announced last week that universities would be allowed to set ...

The National Union of Students (NUS) has asked education minister Julia Gillard to investigate the charges Australian universities levy for undergraduate course materials, after Queensland University of Technology (QUT) was found to have breached the Higher Education Provider Guidelines. The ...

When Shadow Treasurer Julie Bishop found herself in the middle of a media storm recently over plagiarised wording in a chapter for a book, her loyal chief of staff Murray Hansen jumped to her defence. He was the plagiariser. Mea ...

Youth minister Kate Ellis tried to defuse the polarising issue of compulsory unionism in her response to VSU, by drawing a line between student representation and student services. Ellis stressed that her changes wouldn’t be a return to compulsory student ...

Holidays are good for the soul. If you can disconnect from work, peak hour traffic, feeding the cat and the gas bottle running out halfway through the first BBQ of spring, holidays are an opportunity for reflection, reading the paper ...

Higher education struggled to make it to the fore as a core topic in the US election campaign. With the war in Iraq and the collapse of the economy, that may not be surprising. But over the course of two ...

Professor Ian Chubb enjoins government to stay on track and deliver compacts with teeth.   When the Jiao Tong rankings first came out five years ago, there were seven Chinese universities in the top 500. This year there are 18. ...

The Education Investment Fund (EIF) and other major federal infrastructure funding schemes face a dark future, after Treasurer Wayne Swan last week cast strong doubts on whether they’d receive the extra allocations foreshadowed in this year’s budget. Releasing the Mid-Year ...

There is widespread belief that the Bradley review of higher education will encourage universities to compete in the market for vocational certificates and diplomas. However, the movement of schools towards the trade-level certificate III is potentially a bigger threat to ...

The adult and community education sector plays a significant role in the social inclusion agenda, says Kaye Bowman.   Governments tell us social inclusion is important. The best future for Australia will rest on its ability to develop the capacities ...