John Ross was right to report the problems with the Victorian government’s decision to restrict its subsidised vocational education for students over 19 years to qualifications at a higher level than any qualification they already hold (CR, 19.04.10).He might have ...

Being able to accurately measure a student’s socioeconomic background is critical under the new policy agenda. But what’s the answer? By Sam Sellar and Colin MacMullin. The federal government is developing a new measure of socioeconomic status (SES) for the ...

Increased fees, coupled with income-contingent loans, could be the only way forward for a stretched TAFE sector, writes John Ross. The Victorian government’s skills reforms are copping plenty of stick from the community, mostly over TAFE fee hikes. “Whatever happened ...

Henry Barnes ponders whether he should call the new professor a chair or wardrobe? As the linguistic secret police will tell you, language in any form is a tricky business. It’s endlessly fluid, subjective and weighed down with those nasty ...

The government has elevated the art of pork barrelling to new heights, by directing infrastructure enhancement funding to the places where the infrastructure already exists, writes John Ross. A special Campus Review investigation has unearthed signs of a carefully constructed ...

The trend towards peer review of teaching is simply a reaction to the current debate on how to assess quality of teaching. It should have been on the agenda years ago, writes David Woodhouse. When I was a dean in ...

Are VET learning specialists an endangered species, asks John Mitchell. There are nearly 10 times more commercial specialists in the VET sector than specialists in learning and assessment. More pointedly, the number of learning specialists is very low, at 2.4 ...

The trend towards peer review of teaching is simply a reaction to the current debate on how to assess quality of teaching. It should have been on the agenda years ago, writes David Woodhouse. When I was a dean in ...

The feminisation of universities might be real, but there is no such thing as equality in the research arena, writes Sharon Bell. The concurrent visits to Australia of two female Nobel Laureates, Professors Elizabeth Blackburn and Ada Yonath, is cause ...

A new survey tracks the vital first year experience and finds some encouraging and also some worrying trends, writes Sally Kift. As the sector embarks on the implementation of the Bradley review and seeks to attract (and retain and graduate) ...