By Michael Gallagher. This paper explores the key public policy assumptions underlying three of the four sequential and overlapping phases of higher education and university research in Australia:

• The academic-elite phase (1945 – 1985)
• The state-mass phase (1985 – 2005)
• The market-universal phase (post-2005).

The pre-1945 phase, which largely pre-dated Australian government involvement in higher education, is not explored in this paper, except to the extent of its academic-elite and market legacies. More...

By Frank Larkins & Ian Marshman. In their second article in the Australian Universities Finances series, Frank Larkins and Ian Marshman focus on the highly competitive international student market and analyse our universities performance over the period 2004-2014. Their analysis reinforces some of the conclusions in their previous paper and the 2013 LH Martin Institute/ACER University Profiling Study, namely that our university sector shows clear signs of differentiation that reinforce the stratified nature of the system. They also highlight the increasing importance of educational services as a major export industry in strengthening the Australian economy. More...

By K. Johnson, D. Warr, K. Hegarty and M. Guillemin. The university system, like many work sectors, has a problem with gender equity in leadership positions (Bell, 2010). This is a problem not just in Australia, but globally. For instance, a recent survey of 32 Pacific Rim universities, including 4 Australian universities, found that men are significantly more likely to occupy senior management positions than women (Brewer, 2014). There are many reasons for this ongoing gender inequity (Bagihole & White, 2011). It was assumed that gender inequity in higher education was the result of restrictive work practices from the 1960s and 1970s – the pipeline theory. The expectation was that as more women took part in higher education as students, and then took jobs within the sector, the leadership cohort would change to reflect the greater number of women being employed by universities in the 1980s and 1990s. More...

By Frank Larkins & Ian Marshman. The latest publicly available financial data for Australian Universities are for 2014. Universities sourced revenues of $27.15 billion and expended $25.34 billion for their higher education and independent operations. Some 60.4% of funding came from government sources, including HECS payments. The University of Melbourne had the most revenue at $2.12 billion, equivalent to $590,440 per academic staff FTE. Five universities had revenues of more than $1.6 billion. These five highest revenue earners had a combined income that was more than the total revenues for the 22 smallest universities. More...

By Jim Davidson.  In 2009, the Commonwealth developed a National Partnership Agreement for Vocational Education and Training (VET) that proposed the introduction of competitive funding arrangements into training. 
This agreement did not proceed because of State reluctance and ACTU pressure not to extend the recent reforms by the Brumby Government in Victorian VET into the other States. The exposure of TAFEs to competition, notably from community, private and employer-operated registered training organisations (RTOs) was strongly resisted. More...

5-11 May 2016, Parkville campus (venue to be advised)

This course is an interdisciplinary program which explores research and develops research skills from an Indigenous perspective, and considers 'Indigenous research' as not only research by Indigenous individuals but also research on Indigenous topics. It is taught over a week-long intensive at the University of Melbourne's Parkville campus with accommodation provided for participants of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent. 

Read more about the course on our website or contact Course Coordinator Dr Emmaline Bexley at bexleye@unimelb.edu.au or 03 8344 8436 for more information.

The central philosophy of the Centre for Advancing Journalism is to provide Masters-level professional education that has strong roots in research, theory and practice. And at its heart is The Citizen, a website purpose-built to give effect to the practice aspect of the degree. The Citizen provides a bridge between the academy and the profession by giving students the opportunity to be published under industry-standard conditions. Just three years old, the site continues to build its audience, closing in on 450,000 page views. Increasingly, Citizen content is also being distributed through social media channels, adding to its reach. Articles from The Citizen have been co-published in a range of established local media outlets; two stories last year were published overseas. More...

Digital environments have the potential to support learning in many different ways. The seminar will present an account of how we can use what we know from neuroscience, cognitive science and pedagogy to develop a theory-driven approach to designing a digital environment for learning.
The idea will be exemplified in terms of ‘dyscalculia’, a developmental neural deficit simply defined as a lack of ‘number sense’. The neuroscience can help us understand what the educational implications might be; cognitive science demonstrates the behavioural difficulties it generates; pedagogy tells us what learners need to do to build this type of formal conceptual understanding. More...