Campus Review The latest in higher education news

The Victorian TAFE Association has appealed directly to Premier John Brumby to exempt TAFEs from restrictive advertising and communication approval guidelines recently imposed on the state’s public entities. The seven-stage approval process – which can delay ads, brochures and communication ...

Victoria’s VET reform is based on questionable assumptions and offers as many risks as opportunities, according to the head of the state’s second-largest TAFE institute. Virginia Simmons, CEO of Chisholm Institute of TAFE, told a Canberra conference last month that ...

Too much training is taking place in lower level qualifications, and there are compelling reasons why this should shift upwards, says Peter Kell.   The origins of the global economic crisis lie in the low-wage and low-skills economy that has ...

A total of 225 staff will be made redundant at Victoria University over the next six months in what has been described as “the largest proportionate redundancy program in Australian higher education history”. Savings of $27 million will be made ...

We need to develop and nurture a new way of understanding generic competencies, says Larry Smith.   It is now more than 15 years ago that I participated in a national committee, chaired by Eric Mayer, to develop a set ...

Are there alternatives to training packages for remote indigenous communities? Many VET leaders are preoccupied with two looming challenges: preparing for contestable funding and anticipating the implications for VET from the Bradley review of higher education. For Aaron Devine, Charles ...

If Nobel Prizes are the most solemn and esteemed of honours for the greatest of great research, then the Ig Nobels tip their cap to its opposite, saluting research which “first makes people laugh, and then makes them think”. This ...

Victorian skills minister Jacinta Allan last week revealed details of the taskforce that will examine the state’s international education sector. Allan said the taskforce’s findings would feed into the development of an international education strategy, designed to maintain the state’s ...

What is needed for TAFE to take its place as a higher education provider, asks Leesa Wheelahan.   TAFE institutes now offer degrees and associate degrees in five states in Australia. We are no longer discussing whether TAFE should offer ...

Many providers committed to delivering quality training are concerned about the future direction of VET. Their concerns were brought to the surface recently by the low prices offered per student by the Commonwealth for the Productivity Places Program (PPP). For ...