“I have no patience for people who tell me that a person with a PhD who starts a company, or goes into the public service, is a waste of a good academic researcher. “The purpose of a PhD is to ...
More »Blockchain and the disruption of higher education: Opinion
I recently wrote about why business leaders should embrace blockchain technology. As CEO of RMIT Online, I would be remiss if I didn’t heed my own advice and look at how this new technology could benefit higher education’s existing services ...
More »Migrants competing with graduates for scarce jobs: demographer
A surplus of skilled migrants is potentially leading to even greater job competition for graduates, a population expert has suggested. Dr Bob Birrell, the founding director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University, and now the President ...
More »Measuring success: how can we help teachers to help themselves?
The Teaching Teams trial promises teacher education students and their supervisors a new approach to self-reflection and assessment. With the current push for new teachers who are ‘classroom ready’, it’s no wonder our teacher education students, teachers and schools are ...
More »Students collaborate to fight changes to HELP scheme
The National Union of Students (NUS) and the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) have launched a campaign to fight proposals to changed student loan legislation. The Bury the Bill campaign has seen the two organisations collaborate to instigate change ...
More »Unis erecting ‘Taj Mahals’, ‘prepared to let standards slip’: Grattan debate
Despite having worked at several of them, Judith Sloan is sceptical of universities. The conservative economist and contributing economics editor at The Australian recently told an audience that she “doesn’t trust” universities, and thinks “they’re prepared to let standards slip to put bums ...
More »Gen-Zs not mini Gen-Ys: lessons from #UAConf18
Ben Pilkington wants you to know that although Z follows Y alphabetically, these human generations are vastly different. Generally, while Y values education, Z prefers experience. Y is optimistic, whereas Z prefers to be pragmatic. Y is rebellious, collaborative and searches ...
More »Students as co-creators of universities #UAConf18
How can universities give value to students as partners, rather than as consumers? This question formed one of the major themes of the 2018 Higher Education Conference, and not just in speaker content – it was also reflected in the ...
More »In AI age, universities will matter ‘more than ever’: #UAConf18
In the US, people are literally dying because of automation. These ‘deaths of despair’ occur when people lose their jobs, as, for instance, factories replace human workers with machines. As the only developed country where working-class people’s lifespans are declining, ...
More »Vive la résistance: The persistence of the university education model in a rapidly changing world
What does the future hold for our universities? Inside the academy, plenty of experts – from Glyn Davis at the University of Melbourne to economist Ken Rogoff of Harvard – are speculating eloquently about imminent threats to the ‘standard model’. ...
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