Australian universities offer diverse approaches to bachelor’s (honours) degrees as a means of dealing with a range of contemporary demands. These demands include responding to (i) the Bologna Declaration, (ii) tensions between the conventional role for honours as a PhD pathway and an emerging role for honours as professional development, and (iii) the rigid Commonwealth funding model for honours. More...
‘My study is the purpose of continuing my life’: The experience of accessing university for people seeking asylum in Australia
People seeking asylum in Australia face complex and significant barriers accessing higher education. Due to the temporary nature of their visa, their only pathway to university is being granted admission as an international student, which is financially prohibitive. This paper focuses on the lived experience of people seeking asylum with regard to accessing higher education, and identifies six major themes: the importance of accessing studies; the stress of struggling to meet living expenses while studying; mental health issues; support for people with disabilities, health challenges, and family responsibilities; the importance of language support and navigational brokers; and the role of higher education in the settlement of people seeking asylum. More...
Australian Universities' Review, vol. 61, no. 2
The latest edition of Australian Universities' Review, vol. 61, no. 2, is now available. More...
Media Release: NTEU Action Outs Wage Theft in Private Tertiary Education
The first admitted example of what NTEU believes to be widespread underpayment in the tertiary education sector has been revealed after the Union intervened to obtain time and wages records for affected members. More...
Napthine Review of Regional Education Strategy
The report found that there is a significant city-country divide when it comes to accessing, participating and attaining tertiary education. Someone living in regional, rural or remote Australia is less than half as likely to have a Bachelor’s or higher qualification when compared to their metropolitan counter parts. More...
Back to basics (AUR 61 02)
The Good University retains the marriage of research and teaching within universities, addressing both issues separately and together throughout its chapters. As such, chapter two discusses teaching within the university, presenting this as a revered role (rather than as a distraction from research, as many academics see it). More...
Working people into misery (AUR 61 02)
Whether lab or workplace, the principle is the same. The rat is made to become a responding organism. The worker is made to respond to HRM stimuli called KPIs (key performance indicators). Workers are deliberately exposed to dehumanisation. This happens to those who used to be identified as human beings. Now they are merely human resources. More...
Dumb and dumber (AUR 61 02)
The book is designed to help the reader identify the key qualities that cause people to become incompetent leaders and conversely, to become good leaders. What the author describes as the bad leadership epidemic is caused, he argues, by our inability to distinguish between confidence and competence. More...
An insider’s account of wages campaigns for women (AUR 61 02)
Winning for Women tells the story of Iola Mathews’ career as a journalist working with The Age, then with the Public Service Board, followed by a tumultuous decade (1984-1994) working as an advocate at the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). Parallel to this career trajectory was her political activism as a founding member and supporter of the Women’s Electoral Lobby. More...
Per aspera ad astra? (AUR 61 02)
The question of whether the people in countries where most secondary school completers go onto tertiary education are any the happier as a result remains unexamined, but there is a sense that because countries with high participation systems of higher education (HPS hereafter) are better off economically, in general the people will be living a better life. High Participation Systems of Higher Education doesn’t explicitly make a case for or against the idea; that isn’t the purpose of a volume like this. More...