There has been substantial growth in postgraduate coursework study in Australia since moves towards deregulation began in the early 1990s. This growth in postgraduate coursework education has brought benefits for both institutions and individuals. However, in a deregulated fee environment these benefits now risk being outweighed by the mounting…

Many universities have introduced team supervision as a means of intervening in the intensity of the traditional supervisor-student dyad. This policy is intended to provide students with a great support during their candidature and to share the burden of sole supervision. It is also a pedagogy that seeks to support students' engagement with new…

Globalisation has brought increasing diversity in student populations and therefore the potential for different sorts of knowledges to enter the academy. At the same time there is heightened surveillance brought about in response to the pressures of global competition, including increasing standardisation, marketisation and performativity…

Use of the Australian research assessment exercise, Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) to influence the policy and practice of research education in Australia will undoubtedly have many consequences, some of them unintended and potentially deleterious. ERA is a retrospective measure of research quality; research education is prospective.…

This article discusses a variety of women's studies courses available in Australia at the pretertiary, undergraduate, and postgraduate levels. The article specifically describes the Interuniversity Exchange program (offering an undergraduate degree based on external courses at three universities) and postgraduate external degree programs at…

The key to improving the position of women in academe is improvement at undergraduate honors and graduate levels. Analysis of Australian enrollment trends in these areas since 1980, particularly in comparison with the United Kingdom, indicates gains have been minimal and the potential for further improvement is limited. (MSE)

Proposes a model of graduate-student supervision that broadens the traditional focus on subject-area expertise to include support for the student and capacity to balance creativity with criticism in supervision. Data are drawn from a survey of graduate students in agriculture at the University of Western Australia. Implications for staff…

Provides an analysis of some of the consequences of the deregulation and marketization of postgraduate education in Australia, such as a declining number of students in strategic areas such as biological sciences and agriculture, limiting of access to only those who can pay high up-front fees, and the strong incentives for programs to "dumb…

Origins of and issues in the debate over the need for a pedagogy specific to graduate-level teaching and research are reviewed, particularly as they apply to the Australian higher education context. The concerns reflected in a series of papers in this journal issue on this topic are outlined. (MSE)

This article examines changes in Australia's higher education system (institutional mergers, market forces, expansion of enrollment) that threaten the quality of graduate-level research and comparability of Australia's standards internationally. The role of the research supervisor, the process of supervising research, and students' perceptions of…

Evolution of an Australian program to provide professional development for university faculty involved in graduate student supervision is described. The externally-funded program began with an action research project to study the collaborative relationship between supervisors and students. When a group process was found impractical, individual…

Pressure to make graduate study in Australia more responsive to individual learner needs and autonomy is discussed. It is proposed that in this context, three groups of individuals will have important roles: those involved in institutional administration; educational technologists and computer software designers; and teachers. Those evolving roles…

A survey of 341 graduates of a 3-year bachelor of teaching program, a 4-year bachelor of education program, and a 1-year graduate diploma of education program at 1 Australian university investigated the students' paid employment while attending the program, career aspirations, the extent to which the programs were preparation for teaching or other…

It is suggested that Australian higher education must change as student exchange increases. Issues discussed include a broader array of delivery methods for instruction, cooperative learning, teaching of generic skills (critical thinking, weighing evidence), curriculum design, teaching location, student communication skills, computer-assisted…