By Geoff Sharrock. In any campaign, truth is an early casualty. Political leaders use simple facts and figures to prove one policy good, another bad. But reality is more complex. As John F. Kennedy said to students at Yale in 1962:

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.”

Scholars have a duty to debunk such myths with independent analysis. But our own sector has skin in the policy game. More...

By Tim Pitman. The Group of Eight (Go8), which represents Australia’s elite universities, has called for university places to be recapped, saying that the demand-driven system has failed to sufficiently boost numbers of disadvantaged students entering higher education – one of its primary goals – and therefore the additional cost to the taxpayer is unjustified. More...

By Andrew Harvey. Allowing universities to recruit as many students as they wish is unsustainable and does not improve equity, the Group of Eight (Go8), which represents Australia’s elite universities, has stated in its latest paper. More...

By Michael Spence. A successful innovation nation needs three things from its universities: excellence in teaching and research, high levels of participation, and equity of access. More...

By Andrew Norton. Whichever party wins the 2 July election, changes to the Higher Education Loan Programme (HELP) scheme are on their way. More...