Public universities in the US are now confronted with conflicts in their missions of access and quality, in the form of legitimacy, as they face severe funding reductions as a result of states' responses to the Great Recession. With an US$800 million budget shortfall, the University of California has chosen to maintain its preeminent position…

Education is regularly publicised as Australia's third-largest export behind coal and iron ore. Although it cannot be disputed that education is a major export, the published figures are inflated because of three broad factors. First, estimates of student expenditure on goods and services in Australia are based on students with different…

This paper describes some of the drivers for "education for sustainability" that exist in universities and also explores some of the rationales that underpin higher education's reluctance to engage more formally in education for sustainability. It attempts to provide a balanced commentary on the role and capability of higher education in promoting…

Little has been written about the relationship between academia and the media. This essay describes three models through which academics can engage with the media: as generalist or public intellectual; as advocate or activist; and as educator or sub-disciplinary expert. It couches these models within both the traditional wariness of academia…

Two decades on from the abolition of the binary divide in higher education in Australia, what has happened to the relative research performance of institutions that started from quite diverse positions? We use two databases, Thomson Reuters ISI and Scopus, to measure growth rates in research output. We find that there has been some convergence in…

The use of casual staff, including casual teaching staff, is a common practice in Australian universities and the numbers of casual staff in the sector has increased significantly in the last decade. The traditional profile for casual teachers was that of industry expert and students. Recent research has shown that the casual teacher is now more…

Non-medical research involves the same issues of justice, beneficence, and respect for persons that apply to non-medical research. It also may involve risk of harm to participants, and conflicts of interest for researchers. It is therefore not possible to argue that such research should be exempt from ethical review. This paper argues that…

Markets have a number of uses. One increasingly important use of markets by politicians is as a means of regulating the supply and distribution of goods and services formerly supplied and distributed by governments on non-market bases. The use of markets as a regulator of higher education is not novel. However, the increased reliance on markets as…

This paper examines why the development of a world class university system represents a rational, even inevitable, policy approach for Australia in response to world university rankings. It assembles evidence questioning the value of policies which direct undue emphasis on the concentration of resources and the development of elite universities,…

As temples of higher learning, universities are particularly partial to Latin phraseology. The more obscure the phrase, the better. Latin froth can also convey a potent image of lofty intellectualism that emboldens vacuous claims to "higher education" and "excellence". The motto is indeed a wonderful window to the university's soul. It is what…

School choice is most commonly considered in the context of private/public schooling and access to university. University entry remains a key element in family decision-making about which school they would like their children to attend. Debates about school choice are most commonly framed in relation to marketisation and the relative popularity of…

As a key performance indicator in university quality assurance processes, the retention of students in their studies is an issue of concern world-wide. Implicit in the process of quality assurance is quality improvement. In this article, we examine student retention from a teaching and learning perspective, in terms of teaching and learning…

This article reports on a focus group study of student experience and learning in a large humanities and social science faculty in Australia. The study explored student study/work/life issues, and student learning experiences. The article reports specifically on a discussion about combining meaningful learning in university classrooms with other…

From the inception of post-Colombo Plan international education in Australia, three broad research emphases have been evident: the student as student, as migrant and most recently, as victim. The victim role plays easily into preconceived notions, helping to sustain an exploiter and exploited framework in which deeper issues remain unaddressed.…

This paper suggests rethinking the doctoral examination process in Australia to enable a closer alignment with the aims of the learning programme. The doctoral examination processes generally aim to assess the candidate's research capability, the quality and originality of the candidate's contribution to knowledge, and to authenticate that the…