It's become a truism that Australian higher education nowadays is in a state of perpetual change. The next round of changes to research and teaching funding, however, will permanently alter the face of the sector. We asked five of Australia's most prominent Vice-Chancellors to anticipate the future face of higher education. NTEU's Carolyn Allport…

"The Dawkins era is over," Commonwealth Education Minister Julie Bishop told a Perth audience in late July 2007. This turning point in Australian higher education is not being driven by a decisive legislative change; the rapid abandonment of the old in favour of the new that everyone has seen before. It is as much the accidental result of policy…

There has been much critical comment in recent years about the tensions between the regulation imposed on public universities and the flexibility needed to compete effectively in international and national markets for students and funding. In the partisan world of politics each side points the finger at the other as the author of "too much"…

Ever since the radical reforms of the Dawkins years of the late 1980s and early 1990s, change has been a constant for university administrators, as well as for university staff. In the earlier years, change was driven directly by Government, as witnessed by the huge expansion of student numbers, the introduction of tuition fees and the first real…

Federal research funding is increasingly pointed towards models of innovation derived from the sciences. And yet, argues Stuart Cunningham, this is an increasingly outmoded model of research discovery. The humanities and social sciences--the poor relations of innovation policy--have been pioneering new and sophisticated paths of research and…

In the increasingly research and innovation-driven landscape of higher education, the Federal Government's Teaching and Learning Fund is supposed to redress the balance. Leesa Wheelehan is unconvinced. She argues the fund simply encourages game-playing between institutions in manipulating their teaching outcomes, and rewards good teaching on…

Just about everyone suspects that the rush to enrol distance-learning students in on-campus degrees tends to disadvantage them. Monir Mir and Abu Shiraz Rahaman set out to test this intuition, using accounting students as their guinea-pigs. (Contains 6 figures and 5 tables.)

Last December's riots in Sydney's south raised once again the ongoing controversy over Australia's version of multiculturalism. The author of this article argues that 1970s multiculturalism, whatever its strengths then, needs to be revisited and revised to allow for a stronger affirmation of our common humanity. (Contains 9 endnotes.)

An email calling for support against racism during the late 2005 Cronulla riots left some wondering about the incapacity of critical intellectuals to consider the riots and revenge attacks which followed them in the same light--as an instance of inter-communal strife. The author of this article argues that the call for support against racism was…

In the latter part of last year a Macquarie University academic aroused outrage with his comments over the supposed links between race and criminality. For his colleagues and the union alike, the case provided a difficult example of the clash of shared academic values and the right to speak. Here four participants in the controversy-- from NTEU's…

Last year's Australian sedition laws were the latest and most controversial installment in a raft of legislation since the war on terror was announced five years ago. In this article, the author argues that, while some security measures were necessary, the recent laws have far exceeded the modest scale of the threats that confront Australians. He…

The Federal Government's "Anti-Terrorism Act 2005" updates the sedition offenses previously found in the Crimes Act 1914. The Act is the latest and most comprehensive--and controversial--of a long list of legislation to respond to what the Federal Government has claimed is the changed security situation facing Australia. This article provides a…

Over the last decade the Australian higher education sector has become increasingly reliant upon the income generated by overseas fee-paying students. Yet the experiences of these students are sometimes traumatic, and institutions have been slow to develop appropriate structures to support them. The authors report on recent efforts to overcome…

On current projections in could take thirty years for women to be equally represented in the academic workplace. Traditional methods of mentoring by senior staff often seem relics of an earlier era, but here a group of more junior academics reflect on the success of a peer-mentoring exercise which helped transform their first experience of…

After nine years spent in opposition, it's still hard to know what Federal Labor intends by way of an economic policy platform. Kim Beazley still seems to believe that the prime purpose of opposition is to oppose. John Quiggin disagrees. Without a coherent and well-understood economic direction, he argues, Labor's sniping will continue to look…