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This paper examines how universities reconcile the need to project themselves as successful global competitors with the need to respond to national policy expectations, particularly around equality. It does so through a comparative analysis of the language used in the publicly available documents of universities in England and New Zealand. While a discourse of ‘distinctiveness’ is employed across the board by universities to denote superiority, there are differences in the extent to which differently ranked universities signify their preparedness fully to embrace economic priorities. The analysis reveals the sidelining of ‘equality’ and its replacement by a discourse of ‘diversity’ and ‘potential to succeed’ which is more compatible with elitism than with social justice. The language of ‘distinction’ and ‘diversity’, it is argued, supports a logic of accumulation - for both institutions and students - in which those who are already advantaged are likely to reap the greatest rewards from a competitive educational market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the first postgraduate certificate in higher education teaching and learningwas offered in Australia in the late 1970s, similar courses have become a majorpart of academic development in universities in Australia, New Zealand and theUnited Kingdom. This paper describes the outcomes of a survey designed to determine the key higher education teaching and learning concepts developed in such certificates, the readings recommended, and the challenges participants face in their learning. An email survey consisting of four open-ended questions was emailed to coordinators of certificates in higher education teaching and learning programs in 147 institutions spanning Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Based on responses from 46 programs, this paper reports on the concepts of higher education teaching and learning emerging from the survey results, the scholarly readings associated with each concept as reported by coordinators, as well as the challenges experienced by course participants learning these key concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]