Understanding the drivers of student dropout from higher education has been a policy concern for several decades. However, the contributing role of certain factors--including student mental health--remains poorly understood. Furthermore, existing studies linking student mental health and university dropout are limited in both methodology and…

Empirical research on international student migrants has sometimes homogenised this group, framing it as predominantly made up of privileged members of the global middle-class. This has led to calls to acknowledge and address the precarity faced by international students in their respective host countries more comprehensively. This study aims to…

The higher education participation and success rates of students in low socio-economic status (SES), regional, rural, remote, and isolated areas -- who often attend university later in life -- is a persistent concern in Australia and beyond. This article focuses on mature-aged students in low SES, regional and remote areas in Tasmania, Australia,…

Positive teacher-student relationships have been identified as important for teacher and student well-being and for high-quality teaching and learning processes and outcomes. However, research on the perceptions of teachers in higher education on a high-quality relationship with students and the perceived antecedents is still scarce. This study…

A significant number of university students are leaving their institutions before completing their degrees. The present research project applied embeddedness theory, from organizational research, to understand student retention in a tertiary student population, and develop a quantitative instrument that measured university student embeddedness. In…

This paper reports on research exploring the academic workload and performance practices of Australian universities. This research has identified a suite of activities associated with teaching, research and service, each with an associated time value (allocation). This led to the development of the academic workload estimation tool (AWET). In…

Crisis makes bold policy actions possible. In responding to socioeconomic and technological ruptures, policymakers create new imaginaries or revitalise existing ones. With the Australian Government's Job-Ready Graduates (JRG) reform during the COVID-19 pandemic as an empirical case, this paper shows how crisis instrumentalism and policy…

The 1988 Dawkins reforms were designed, at least in part, to encourage public universities to organize themselves as if they were corporate enterprises, in order to create a more efficient and competitive sector that was less reliant on government funding. This paper assesses whether successive policy changes since the 1988 Dawkins reforms have…

Higher education is increasingly concerned with providing students with experiences that enhance employability. Sitting outside the curriculum, extra- or co-curricular activities that focus on career development, leadership, service or recognition can lead to positive employability and employment outcomes. The extent to which different student…

A number of commentators have recently called for a re-examination of the purpose and value of undergraduate education, arguing that change is required if universities are to deliver the value in educational outcomes that students and communities now require for a changing and challenging world (for example, Aoun, 2017; Bok, 2020; Davidson, 2017;…

COVID-19 forced the digitalisation of teaching and learning in a response often described as emergency remote teaching (ERT). This rapid response changed the social, spatial, and temporal arrangements of higher education and required important adaptations from educators and students alike. However, while the literature has examined the constraints…

One fundamental aspect of organizational transformation in higher education is the change to the profile of universities' non-academic workforce. Key staffing trends identified in recent studies conducted in a variety of national settings include an increase in the proportion of non-academic staff at universities and a shift toward more highly…

Complex and rapidly evolving work contexts augment industry calls for future-capable graduates that can demonstrate enterprise capabilities such as critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, and value creation. Gaps between employers' expectations and evaluations of higher education (HE) graduates' enterprise capabilities continue to drive…

Humanitarian migrants are amongst the most marginalised population groups in countries within the Global North, including Australia. An important channel for these migrants to successfully settle into the host society and improve their socio-economic outcomes is participation in the local education system, particularly in higher-education options.…

In the higher education (HE) landscape worldwide, team teaching has become increasingly common. The growing prevalence of team teaching in HE has mainly been driven by the necessity to cope with larger classes, workload requirements, and the complexity of delivering multi-disciplinary courses or to provide a more stable quality of course portfolio…