Tertiary education needs a transparent and independent federal financing body to ensure funding is allocated on the basis of a solid evidence base, a new report from Victoria University’s Mitchell Institute has argued. A New System for Financing Australian Tertiary ...
More »ANU physicists’ achievement like something out of ‘Star Wars’
Star Wars: The Force Awakens villain Kylo Ren and a team of physicists at the Australian National University have something in common – they’ve managed to stop light in mid-air. Though, unfortunately, the physicists didn’t use the mystical Force that permeates ...
More »Work for the Dole ‘coerces’ students into private VET, report finds
Work for the Dole programs have funneled many young people aged 15 to 19 into the scandal-ridden private VET sector, a new report from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research has found, even though representatives from many of these ...
More »Entrepreneur says entrepreneurs should teach entrepreneurship
The saying “never trust a skinny chef” has been applied to academia by education entrepreneur Mat Jacobson, who said university lecturers who’ve never run a start-up should not be teaching courses in entrepreneurship. Jacobson, founder of Dūcere Global Business School, which partners with ...
More »Tougher uni prerequisites could help arrest maths decline: AMSI
University course prerequisites are one remedy to the decline in Year 12 students taking harder maths subjects, a representative from the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute has said. AMSI has released data showing that the number of Year 12 students taking on higher-level ...
More »‘THE’ rankings: Caltech not on top; UniMelb still leads locals
California Institute of Technology has finally been knocked off its perch atop the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, after six years in the top spot. Four Australian institutions have broken into the chart for the first time, while the University of Melbourne has outdone ...
More »Local anti-jail programs lack scientific rigor: study
An evaluation of 108 interventions aimed at keeping young people out of jail has found that only 13 target the multiple factors that lead to teens getting into trouble. The remainder target only individual risk factors, such as alcohol and ...
More »La Trobe’s reputation ‘damaged’ by involvement with Safe Schools: professor
A University of Sydney child protection and family law expert has argued La Trobe University’s reputation could be damaged by what he called the “academically irresponsible” conduct of its researchers working for the Safe Schools Coalition. Professor Patrick Parkinson has published ...
More »FedUni marketing helps drive up enrolments on the cheap
Western Sydney University has forked out $20 million for marketing to run between 2015 and 2017. The University of New South Wales, RMIT and the University of Queensland all spent between $12.5 to $15 million, each, on their marketing in 2013. That makes the half a ...
More »Open-source research makes Ebola, Zika cures more likely
It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but research into deadly diseases often doesn’t get funding because pharmaceutical companies can’t make money out of it. This includes work on cures for malaria, Ebola and the Zika virus. That’s the blunt statement from University ...
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