Not long ago, the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum published a short book entitled: Not for Profit. Why Democracy needs the Humanities (Princeton NJ, 2010). Nussbaum identifies a crisis facing the humanities, in the United States as well as internationally, with higher education coming under increasing pressures from commodification and corporatisation. More...
The IPA is a conservative think-tank, founded by big business in the early 1940s, to counter the rise of perceived dangerous left-wing sentiments. Over the decades it has championed the free market. It insistently advocates for the privatisation of state-owned enterprises and wage deregulation. More recently it has trumpeted climate change skepticism. More...
Buoyed by the overwhelmingly positive outcome of the marriage equality campaign, it’s easy to think everything’s rosy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+) communities and cultures. IDAHOBIT reminds us that:
Twenty years later: International efforts to protect the rights of higher education teaching personnel remain insufficient is the title of a new Education International (EI) report launched at a special event marking the 20th anniversary of the 1997 UNESCO Recommendation on Higher Education Teaching Personnel (R97). More...
When sociocultural anthropologist, Professor Homa Hoodfar spoke at the opening session of a recent conference in Berlin on ‘The University and the Future of Democracy’ about her research and teaching in Iran, it sounded like familiar terrain. Australian colleagues would take it for granted that they could examine sociocultural mores in marriage in our society, without being arrested for ‘dabbling in feminism’. More...
Information & communication technology (ICT) has been deployed for many years in the service of marketing and, more recently, in the service of electioneering. The leading exponents of harnessing ICT for election campaigns were the Democrats in the USA, but they may have been over-taken recently by the Republicans. More...
On 14 June, the ABC published data obtained under Freedom of Information from the Commonwealth Department of Education and Training which showed how much the Department expected each university’s funding to be reduced as a consequence of the funding freeze announced as part of the Turnbull Government’s Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) Statement of December 2017. The data revealed that, as a result of the freeze, universities will be more than $2 billion worse off over the period 2018 to 2021. More...
The primary objective of the inquiry should be on developing a coherent and consistent regulatory and funding framework for post-secondary education, that avoids the temptation of focusing upon exploring different funding models which simply distribute a limited and inadequate funding envelope. Instead, the ALP should commit to providing the level of public investment necessary to ensure Australia has a world class public post-secondary education system. More...
In May, the Higher Education Standards Panel (HESP) released a final report on improving retention, completion and success in higher education. This report is the culmination of a longer investigation initiated by the Minister for Higher Education into factors affecting attrition rates at our universities following the release in late 2016 of the Department of Education and Training’s cohort analysis on completion rates. More...
Almost six-out-of-ten of 2,500 respondents to a recent NTEU survey of members reported a response rate on student evaluation surveys of 30 per cent or less. Almost nine-in-ten believed that surveys are used to appraise and manage staff performance. More...
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