In the first seven months of this year, a staggering 685,000 international students came to Australia to study. About half headed to university to study for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, most often following on from an intensive English-language course. That’s 82,000 more students than the same time last year – a 15% increase. In stock market parlance, that’s a bull market. More...
Universities address student drop-out rates through retention policy initiatives such as peer to peer mentoring programs. Faculties or schools develop further retention strategies appropriate to their cohort. One successful support strategy for Indigenous students that is already in place and effective according to students and higher education bodies, is the Indigenous Tertiary Assistance Scheme (ITAS). More...
Incidents of Chinese students being offended by Australian lecturers have become a heated topic in the media. Some reports blame lecturers for mentioning sensitive matters (such as the status of Taiwan), others express concerns about preserving the freedom of speech in Australian campuses, and some attribute the students’ reaction to deliberate influence from the Chinese government. More...
New analysis of the Federal Government’s Quality Indicators of Learning and Teaching (QILT) and the Times Higher Education (THE) reveals a divide between what academics think defines quality and what students actually experience. This is demonstrated by world university rankings and student satisfaction surveys. More...
This issue has deep roots in university history. University students were (and are) expected to be much more self-directed than school students. Partly as a result, the academic workforce did not make university teaching into a profession. More...
Legislation to drop the minimum HELP repayment threshold for 2018-19 from $57,730 to around $52,000 was passed by the parliament last year. The government is now proposing to further reduce it to $42,000. This is around two-thirds of annualised average weekly earnings (AWE). This threshold will not apply to everyone with a HELP debt. More...
The recent report from the Institute of Public Affairs on history teaching in Australian universities is the latest salvo in the “history wars”. Left-liberal “elites” have been accused for decades of undermining the nation and its roots by indulging in fanciful or biased history teaching by focusing on “identity politics” instead of the “canon”. More...
Male teachers may face extinction in Australian primary schools by the year 2067 unless urgent policy action is taken. In government schools, the year is 2054. More...
Young Indigenous people constitute 8% of Queensland’s population aged 10 to 17 years, but make up 53% of those under youth justice supervision on an average day. This is higher than the national level at 45%. More...
The influence of genes on school achievement has now been well established by researchers using the “natural experiment” afforded by identical and non-identical twins. Between 50% and 75% of the differences among students in the same grade in literacy and numeracy is estimated to be attributed to genes; the rest to environmental factors. More...
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