higher education

Universities Accord: Why this urgent deadline is mission (almost) impossible

By Andrew Norton

Every year Job-ready Graduates continues, with the top student contribution now above $15,000 a year, students charged this amount sink further into a debt that will take them many years, and potentially decades, to pay off.

What happens now to students who are first-in-family to go to university?

By Garth Stahl and Sarah McDonald

Students who are the first in their family to attend university remain severely under-represented, despite policy efforts to

We asked academics to be real about work. Here are our new findings

By Roxanna Pebdani

My children were two and three years old in March of 2020 when Sydney went into its first COVID-19  lockdown.  At the time, I was in an education-focussed leadership role but also still teaching and conducting research. I was supporting my colleagues as they pivoted to online learning at the same time as helping implement

The kids aren’t all right. Neither are staff.

By Sally Kift

Good morning on R U OK? Day 2022. Today’s the perfect day to ask our higher education (HE) students how they are doing. According to the latest national 2021 Student Experience Survey (SES) released late last month, the answer is a depressing ’not so good’. The 2021 data again show that the top ranked reason

Broken but alive – COVID’s gender impacts in Australian universities now

By Emily Gray, Jacqueline Ullman, Mindy Blaise and Joanna Pollitt

“Two days to pivot online, it’s business as usual. We care about you, but your student evaluation scores are low. We’re in this together – where are your three research outputs?”

How to fix the fascinating, challenging, dangerous problem of cheating

By Phillip Dawson

Cheating is a big problem. By my reading of the literature, around one in ten Australian university students has at some stage submitted an assignment they didn’t do themselves. Add to that other types of cheating such as using unauthorised material in exams, and emergent threats from artificial intelligence, and you have a fascinating, challenging

Academics, we need useful dialogues not monologues

By Ameena Payne and Ashah Tanoa

(Illustration by Oslo Davis Copyright Oslo Davis 2022. Used with permission. www.osldavis.com) Some things in academia become normalised

O’Shea: All I want for higher education now and tomorrow

By Sarah O'Shea

Fresh from delivering a widely-applauded keynote at this year’s HERDSA conference, “Fragility or tenacity? Equity and participation in

Is this now the Federal government’s most bone-headed idea ever?

By Inger Mewburn

Apparently international PhD students in Australia now have to seek ministerial approval to change their thesis topic or