Search

Martin Davies' paper seeks to vindicate the efforts of the Ramsay Centre to fund courses in 'Western Civilisation' at selected Australian universities. He begins by lamenting the rejection of vast amounts of philanthropic money for the humanities, and all too quickly dismisses the stated grounds for the Australian National University's decision to decline a deal with the Ramsay Centre: 'The issue of academic autonomy has been raised as a reason, but this is, at best, ostensible', Davies writes. He then goes on to defend the concept of courses in Western civilisation more generally. This article will briefly address a number of relevant points in reaction to Martin Davie's paper: (1) the concept 'Western Civilisation' has its own, comparatively recent, history, and needs to be viewed in its own historical context; (2) the term 'civilisation' has relatively little utility as a unit of scholarly analysis; (3) proponents of an academic program on (or for) 'Western Civilisation' are operating with a reified and artificially unified concept that breaks up under closer examination; and (4) that some of the advocacy for a 'Western Civilisation' program betrays an animus against the modern, secular, public university. [For "Three Cheers for the Ramsay Centre," by Martin Davies, see EJ1228236.]

Organisational narratives are foundational to inform the actions and directions of an organisation. Modern organisations often place great weight and invest significant time crafting their narratives that are communicated through mission statements, strategic plans, policies, directives and self-promotion. Sometimes these narratives align with the lived reality of the workers and those who deal with the organisation, but at other times there is a significant gap, or even chasm, between the portrayed ideal and the reality. This paper situates such narratives, and the lived experiences within critical organisational theory and a neoliberal framework. Utilising autoethnographic accounts of four academics within a higher education context, it highlights this gap and the need to voice concerns about this misalignment. The paper raises awareness of both organisations and workers to the importance of being true to narratives and ensuring they are an accurate representation of what happens. It offers ideas for resisting the disjunction between narrative and reality and a way of challenging neoliberalism within higher education.

Sixteen articles discuss the implications of Australia's Green Paper, a public policy statement recommending substantial changes in the higher education system to improve access. The issues discussed include labor force development, educational equity, women's education, and the financing of higher education. (MSE)

This article is a condensed analysis of the developing sustainability crisis of Australian universities. It is based on an address to National Council of the National Tertiary Education Union, Melbourne, 3 October 2014. Thanks to all my fellow-members, who have kept my hopes for the modern university alive.

After 40 years as a hardworking and productive academic, here I was on a Zoom call fronting two senior colleagues telling me I no longer appeared on the new 'organisational chart'. In short, I was being made redundant. It was no surprise really, as another 40,000 professional and academic staff were to suffer the same fate. And really by then I was over what university life had become: stressed, thankless, driven by meaningless metrics and bereft of social values. But how did we get to this and was COVID-19 but a ruse, a smokescreen for an acceleration of the processes of politicisation, corporatisation, marketisation and casualisation which had brought my beloved system to its knees. Here then is a personal/political reflection on what has occurred in Australian universities over the last few decades -- their long slow agonising destruction.

This paper discusses the impact Chinese students' culturally-specific features might have on the processes by which they commence their higher degrees by research candidature. We explain how existing frameworks in cross-cultural studies and an appreciation of the different educational background might be used to create a better understanding of the Australian supervisor-Chinese PhD student relationship. We provide strategies to deal with features of Australian academic culture which the Chinese candidate might find confronting so as to maximise the chances of a successful start to candidature and a reduction in the possibility of problems arising. (Contains 1 table.)

Mechanisms that allow the strengthening of market and patriarchal forces in higher education, especially as they relate to the academic labor market, are illustrated. The Dawkins paper, "Higher Education, a Policy Statement" (the White Paper), represents an attempt to implement major restructuring in Australia. (MLW)

The major changes mandated by Australia for its higher education system and the apparent reasons for the changes are outlined, and the strategies adopted for change are critiqued. Changes relate primarily to administrative organization, governance, resource allocation, and accountability. (MSE)

This article attempts a critique of the higher education policy overview, with a particular view to how policy is made through that process. The higher education sector in Australia has become reliant for the answers to its most important policy questions on a process that has not delivered adequate answers, and which becomes less likely to deliver them with each successive iteration. Continually activating that process without addressing the reasons for its failure becomes an exercise in bad faith. The perpetual restructuring of the higher education sector has become an industry in itself. This article argues that the only way forward is a new--and as yet unrealised--policy consensus. The author's concern here is with the development of a self-sustaining policy overview process or cycle, arbitrary in its relationship to the needs and aspirations of higher education in Australia. The author notes the unsustainability of Australia's higher education system as presently configured, and concludes with a discussion of two interdependent phenomena: (1) a perpetual political cycle; and (2) a critically inadequate policy framework. (Contains 7 endnotes.)

Launched in 2010 by the Gillard Labor Government, the Australian Tertiary Admissions Rankings (ATAR) system is the first national unified system for reporting the educational attainment of successive cohorts of Year 12 school leavers. The system is widely regarded as fit for purpose, being both predictive of academic success and rates of completion (Higher Education Standards Panel, 2017; Marks, 2007; Wilson, 2020; Shulruf et al., 2018). The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) infer the minimum entry standards for initial teacher education be set at ATAR 80 and above, drawing prospective teachers from among the best and the brightest. However, this is not the trend, and neither side of politics has a serious national plan to redeem falling standards. Moreover, since its inception, the ATAR system has become increasingly politicised and dragged into 'culture wars' over access, funding, standards and social justice. The aim of this commentary is to highlight the profound systemic problems of falling standards in school student outcomes; in part due to lowered ATARs as well as problematic standards in teacher education.

What sorts of skills and training will graduates need for the jobs of the future? Are universities equipped to deliver job-ready graduates? Where will the necessary funds come from? What role will academics play, and what sort of workplace conditions will they face? The paper reflects the role of the university sector to do its mandated duty as a feeder for the neoliberal economy? According to the author, it depends on 'the future'.

This article questions the use of the term 'siloed' to describe certain degrees or subjects in the Australian university curriculum. Education Minister Dan Tehan used the term as part of a justification of a re-set of funding priorities for university education from 2021 which he announced in June 2020. The Minister partly turned his argument on the floating of an impression that humanities degrees are 'siloed'. They or, more specifically, units within them, would become more expensive for students since 'job readiness' needs to be prioritised. The author analyses the term, its uses and applications to fields of knowledge, and concludes that such a term is neither accurate nor useful. He suggests that focusing on needs arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic might provide a less conflicted and future-oriented way of thinking about the problem rather than making superficial judgments of the merits of particular undergraduate degrees as a foundation for dictating education and education funding policy.

University law schools have been beset with a sense of schizophrenia ever since first established in the 19th century. They were unsure as to whether they were free to teach and research in the same way as the humanities or whether they were constrained by the presuppositions of legal practice. More recently, this tension has been overshadowed by the impact of the neoliberal turn and disinvestment by the state in higher education. Ironically, as government has provided less money to universities, it has arrogated to itself increased control over teaching standards and research productivity. At the same time, the mastery of the legal profession continues to be exercised through the specification of 11 subjects required for admission to legal practice, known as the 'Priestley 11'. Drawing on Foucault's idea of the self as a kind of enterprise, it is argued that law students have also assumed an element of mastery over what is taught and how it is taught. It is suggested that all elements of mastery are imbricated with one another so as to reify enterprise and capital accumulation within the neoliberal economy. [This article was presented at 'Satisfying Many Masters: Teaching into Professional Degrees in Law and Engineering in the 21st Century', University of Southern Queensland, September 30, 2019.]

Education Minister Tehan's recent announcement to double the cost of an Arts Degree has been a bombshell like no other in recent higher education policy. Many have rightly seen it as a policy that makes no practical sense -- if teachers are wanted, as is claimed in the overall policy, a sizeable number of these trained in the humanities are of course needed. More concerning though, is the perception that the decision is just another dismal episode in Australia's never-ending culture wars, where national policy seems to be driven, as much as anything, by a desire to vanquish one's ideological foes -- real or imagined. In this article, Tim Moore asserts Australians should fervently decry this latest plan by the Government and its motivations. In this piece however, he argues that Australia's critical gaze should be directed as much at their universities -- or at least at that class of administrator that has come to run them in recent decades. In the directions and strategies that have been pursued over this time, there has been little defence by Australian 'institutional leaders' of the broader educational mission of universities, leaving them seriously exposed to the anti-academic, anti-democratic policies now being imposed. Moore describes two notions that have been key in the directions that have been pursued, and which lie at the heart of the intellectual enfeeblement of Australian institutions. The first of these, is the so-called employability agenda, which has come to construct higher education in almost exclusively instrumentalist terms; the other, is the highly flawed notion that skills in university study can be unproblematically prioritised over the learning of disciplinary knowledge.

This paper reports on research conducted with staff employed in the Australian higher education sector during the COVID-19 pandemic. The sector has been significantly impacted, particularly those institutions heavily reliant on revenue from international student enrolments. Universities moved swiftly to introduce cost-savings measures such as, deferring capital works spending and reducing non-salary expenditure, scaling back casual and fixed term staff and cuts to executive staff salaries, followed by rounds of redundancies, early retirement offers and termination of staff, often framed as organisational restructuring. However, financial data for the 2021-22 period indicate that some institutions have actioned disproportionate staff cuts related to net income, often badging this downsizing as organisational restructure. This information is discussed in terms of the potential implications for the higher education sector in planning for, and meeting workforce needs, as it seeks to regenerate a sustainable business model post-pandemic.

Speech at Australian universities is restricted in various ways. A few of them, such as student protests against visiting speakers, receive lots of attention. Others seldom do, such as defamation threats and cyber harassment. Self-censorship may be more significant than overt censorship. Those who want to raise awareness of hidden limitations on speech can learn from the methods used to raise the alarm about student protests.

In 2018 Australia's leading national university, the Austrailian National University (ANU), decided to break off consultation with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation over a bequest to fund a course on Western civilisation. It is not every day that a university decides to turn down a $3 billion bequest to fund a humanities program (Groch, 2018). The issue of academic autonomy has been raised as a reason, but this is, the author believes, ostensible. He suspects the 'autonomy' issue is a red herring. He believes the real reason for the decision seems to hinge on the notion of 'Western civilisation'.

This paper addresses the important and linked questions of how to manage academic performance and workload effectively. It highlights the need in a modern, corporatised university to consider the nature of academic work and optimal ways to develop workload allocation and performance management processes. This paper complements two previous papers on time associated with teaching and research components of academic work by exploring service/administration workloads. Data were collected from 665 academics with recent administration experience through a nation-wide survey in 2016 and 2018. The data were analysed to understand the median annual work hours for a range of internal and external service activities, and for a range of formal administrative roles. The analysis showed a further categorisation of academic service into operational and strategic activities. Together, the three papers underpin holistic academic workload model development using empirical annual hour allocations from a large and representative national sample of academics. This article provides an essential basis for any future consideration of performance assessment based on output measures such as research expectations, impact or quality.

The universities said it! Arthur provides a (thinkable) scenario, via the University of Central Tasmania.

In this article, Richard Hill addresses the topic of China supposedly undermining Australia's national security and way of life, and causing ructions on university campuses. He writes that Chinese infiltration, or so it seems, is everywhere, from excessive housing investments and land buy-ups to dodgy dinner dates with ALP officials; and from Confucian Institutes (as fronts for espionage activities) to the take-over of student unions by Chinese students. Concern has even arisen over the spread of Chinese takeaways and the growing demand for Mandarin courses, both clearly promoting Chinese influence across the nation. Hill goes on to say that three journalists from the "Sydney Morning Herald/The Age" (Baker, Hunter & Bonyhady, 2019) took the brave step of striding into the murky world of Chinese students to expose the shadowy goings on. Hill opines that following some general observations on 'the Chinese issue', their report morphs into a more general discussion of how Australian universities deal with international students -- no trivial matter, given their contribution to university coffers. Apparently, to no surprise, not all of these student visitors are happy campers. Hill asserts that after all, Australian journalists inform the public, that these students have to fork out up to three times more for their education than domestic students, often live in dilapidated and over-crowded accommodation, and feel estranged, lonely and depressed. Many of them struggle with the most basic English, which makes reading turgid academic texts and assignment completion tough going. Worried by such questionable investigative reportage, Hill shares a slightly amended version of a letter he wrote directly to the journalists. He concludes that 'corruption risks' notwithstanding, it has become glaringly obvious that Australian universities are massively over-reliant on overseas students for their income and face an epic implosion when this revenue stream dries up, which it will once China and India build up their own sectors.

International professional experiences have long been esteemed by universities and pre-service teachers alike. This paper analyses the experiences of six academics who have supervised Australian pre-service teachers undertaking international professional experience (PE), with a view to better understanding the problems and prospects that they encounter during their overseas supervision. The respondents reported concerns about duty of care, blurring of relationship distinctions, and pre-service teachers' and the local supervising teachers' expectations. Using a narrative inquiry approach, this paper examines the interface between visiting academic supervisors or pre-service teachers, and the host culture, against a backdrop of globally normed, Western approaches to pedagogy. The paper also explores implications for support needed for international PE academic supervisors.

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 costs of education for those who wish to improve their qualifications. This paper revisits a paper by Smith and Frankland in 2000, regarding the 'marketisation' of postgraduate coursework degrees in Australia and addresses the likely implications of recent proposals for a cap on the combined cumulative fee debt for current and prospective postgraduate coursework students. It finds that many of the predictions made by Smith and Frankland in 2000 have been borne out and that the prospect of limits on cumulative debt from multiple degree programs has the potential to have an impact on increasing numbers of graduates with fee debts well in excess of $100,000. [To view "Marketisation and the New Quality Agenda: Postgraduate Coursework at the Crossroads," see EJ623399.]

This article provides insight into the nature of research workload allocation for Australian academics. It explores the distinction between research performance and research workload allocation. Research performance can be judged at an institutional level, a work group level or an individual level. The process by which an institution's research performance is judged is not necessarily suitable at the level of the individual academic. The research performance of individual academics is based on their 'research output', in the form of publications, grants or supervision of research students, but historically, little attention has been paid to the 'input' or the time required to achieve these outputs. To determine the real costs of research, and to examine academic working conditions, this paper argues the clear distinction must be made that 'output' is about research performance; whereas 'input' is about research workload allocation. Therefore, what is needed is a suite of reasonable time allocations which can be associated with research activities, as is the case for teaching related activities. The paper analyses data from an online survey, circulated to academics across Australia in 2016, in which staff estimated the typical time spent on a wide range of research related tasks. The findings from the 2059 respondents show staff strongly support a transparent and holistic approach to workload planning which acknowledges the full range of activities they undertake. Analysis of the times associated with the research tasks led to the development of a table of suggested time estimates, based on the median values, for many common research activities.

This paper engages with current debate on the role of the university following COVID-19, exposing the ongoing corruption of traditional values of the tertiary sector, and the shift in teaching and learning expectations across the academy. It highlights the negative impact of the huge decline in government funding since the 1990s, salary inequity, ongoing job loss and decline in teaching and learning conditions within universities, alongside proven wage theft and exploitation of sessional and casual staff. Government neglect of the higher education sector is obvious in its refusal to support any university staff through JobKeeper funding. These issues, together with an ongoing public apathy towards the education sector, have demoralised, disenfranchised and fragmented this vital knowledge-rich professional cohort. The critique argues that government funding to the tertiary sector must be increased to positively incentivise and restore the role of the public university in a democratic society. There should be a clear recalibration of higher education within the public sector. Staff need to work together across disciplines and hierarchies to address proven dysfunctional practices within the academy with a strong, united voice. It advances some recommendations to recapture the spirit of the once idealistic university mission, while also addressing the many-stranded, utilitarian functions that are demanded in a complex, changing landscape.

The governing boards of Australian public universities, known as Senates or Councils, are bodies with broad legislated powers. The composition of these bodies is crucial to ensuring sound strategic management of universities and maintaining academic standards. The key aspect of Council processes in Western Australian (WA) that this article seeks to highlight is the mechanism by which new appointed Council members are selected, and the dominant role that a committee composed predominantly of appointed members plays in this process, thereby creating a risk of a self-reinforcing selection bias. This is a noteworthy, but as yet unrecognised, effect of changes to State legislation in 2016. Changes to the legislated membership rules for key committees, particularly the Nominations Committee, mean the appointed members control the appointments of new appointed members. Such self-selection mechanisms carry the risk of reducing diversity amongst new appointments and consequently further increasing group homogeneity. Too high a degree of homogeneity, in turn, may negatively impact on the quality of Council decision making, particularly in relation to groupthink bias. In practice, membership of Councils in Western Australia is skewed to those without substantive experience in or affiliation with the higher education sector. This paper presents the conditions that may have enabled this shift in the expertise and competencies of University governing bodies and considers the consequences of this transition for the governance of universities.

Traditionally, threats to academic freedom are associated with repressive government actions, and sometimes also with compliant university managers. In democracies, academic freedom can be undermined in more subtle ways. Where public funding for university research and teaching has diminished, universities have increasingly pursued relationships with, and money from, the private sector. Private funding can come with expectations that have the potential to limit academic freedom. There is a body of literature that documents ways in which some pharmaceutical companies, in particular, have sought to exercise undue influence on research and publications by academics. So-called 'philanthropic' funding can also function as a Trojan Horse for corporate influence and the business or ideological objectives of donors. This paper examines the problem of corporate power on campus and considers possible remedies, including binding codes of conduct for universities' relations with external partners.

Ostracism in the academic workplace has not received attention commensurate with its frequency and seriousness. One of the more detailed models of workplace ostracism incorporates the organisational antecedents of ostracism, its pragmatic and psychological impact and behavioural outcomes. Using a detailed written account of experiences within an Australian university, the model is examined to determine its limitations and suggest extensions which may make it more applicable to academic environments. This paper advances a modified version of the model, tailored specifically to cater for ostracism within academia, by taking into consideration the nature of the academic workplace and the significance of scholarly reputation. Future research may identify additional extensions for academia as well as modifications to the original model to ensure its applicability to other specialised workplaces. This may also lead to better ways in which to anticipate and prevent the antecedents of workplace ostracism and ameliorate its consequences.

In this essay, the authors talk about higher degree supervision as a human relationship, and shares how to supervise a PhD. There's a tendency now to talk about supervision as if it's a technical process one needs to learn the rules of. This paper urges educators to think about this as a human educational relationship, which has all the ups and downs that any human relationship does. The paper aims to get people to think in a rounded way about supervision, not just a technical matter. It also aims to get graduate students to be thinking about the nature of this relationship, to see the supervisor not just as the authority figure or the bureaucratic figure, but as someone who is engaged in an educational interchange. (Contains 1 endnote.)

Taking up a theme raised by Stuart Cunningham in a recent issue of the "AUR"--that the innovations of Australia's humanities, creative arts, and social sciences are not getting the recognition that they deserve from the nation's government--this paper, dealing only with the social sciences, offers a cautionary note. If the social sciences are to hold the serious attention of the government of any modern Western nation, including Australia's, they cannot continue to fall prey to the tendency, displayed by too many of their practitioners, to criticise ceaselessly such government. That is, to employ a style of criticism called here "unengaged critique". This style of criticism targets modern Western governments because they are not seeking perfection, because they are seeking only to do the best they can with the resources they have at hand. The paper offers an explanation of the basis of this tendency, an explanation focusing on one of two understandings of "the social" or "society" available to the social sciences--the abundant reason-natural morality understanding--and it offers a means of avoiding it, by using the rival to this understanding--the politico-legal understanding.

In 2015, the Australian Government's Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) assessment of research quality declined to rate 1.5 per cent of submissions from universities. The public debate focused on practices of gaming or "coding errors" within university submissions as the reason for this outcome. The issue was about the in/appropriate allocation of research activities to Fields of Research. This paper argues that such practices are only part of the explanation. With the support of statistical modelling, unrated outcomes are shown to have also arisen from particular evaluation practices within the discipline of Psychology and the associated Medical and Health Sciences Research Evaluation Committee. Given the high stakes nature of unrated outcomes and that the evaluation process breaches public administration principles by being not appealable nor appropriately transparent, the paper concludes with recommendations for the strengthening ERA policy and procedures to enhance trust in future ERA processes.

The Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme-Tertiary Tuition (ITAS-TT) has provided Australian government funding for one-to-one and group tutorial study support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students attending Australian universities since 1989. It has been a central plank supporting Indigenous university students in their studies. However, evaluation of the scheme has identified quality limitations, under-utilisation, administrative burdens, and eligibility issues, and criticised the deficit or low academic expectations assumptions inherent in the scheme. In the 2016-2017 Budget the Australian government modified ITAS into an Indigenous Student Success Program. Reporting on research undertaken at a time of impending changes to funding arrangements and the continuation of ITAS, this paper builds on recent research into the transition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders into higher education. The paper investigates the scheme through the perspectives of ITAS tutors and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students receiving ITAS tutoring in two regional universities in New South Wales. Qualitative research found that ITAS tutoring has enabled many students to manage their transition through university and complete their studies. Students and tutors identified limitations in the scheme in terms of guidelines, institutional expectations, access to learning management systems, and the timing of support. The study outcomes suggest that ITAS provides valuable support but has become static, and is not keeping up with developments in online learning and administration.

This paper examines what it means to be an activist and to do activist work in the Australian contemporary university. In a context of globalisation, massification and marketisation, what does academic or scholar activism look like? In a time of political uncertainty about fee deregulation, further cuts to public funding and changes to the income-contingent loans scheme, what does it mean to be an activist or to do activist work? And what happens when activist attention turns to the higher education sector and the operations of the university? This paper examines these broad questions at an intimate level, presenting a reflective narrative of an individual career in academic activism marked by a long-standing scholarly interest in the nature and work of universities, academic and professional roles, teaching experience in multiple disciplines and involvement in union representation. In this paper, the reflections of an individual academic activist, Rosie, are embedded in a contextual discussion of university governance, regulatory and auditing frameworks, the academic workforce, gender inequality, and learning and teaching in higher education in Australia.

This paper highlights some of the challenges being faced by Australian higher education which are likely to have an impact over the next ten years and beyond and opportunities to deal with them. In doing so, the policy settings from the Dawkins reforms in the late 1980s to the present which have shaped the higher education landscape are described, bringing into perspective the operating context for Australian universities. Two key themes are discussed: universities' reliance on international students, and demographic shifts. The discussion that follows is how these drivers are likely to shape demand for higher education and what impact these will have on universities over the next ten years.

In this paper, we discuss findings from a research project in which barriers to and facilitators for promotion with women academics were explored. Four focus groups of women academics at an Australian university were held. Data including responses to semi-structured questions were analysed and interpreted using coding and thematic analysis. We found that multiple barriers and facilitators still exist in the university sector for women applying for promotion, covering structural, organisational, and individual levels. The barriers for promotion included workloads and huge expectations, the multi-pronged promotion process, competition, not being valued, juggling family life and not wanting to risk happiness. Facilitators for promotion included mentoring and collaborative nurturing, giving back to others including the university and flexibility.

'First know your students', is a well-known saying in teaching. But do Australian universities really know their students? In this paper we present findings from research conducted in remote and very remote Australia where Aboriginal higher education students and educators were asked about their learning and teaching needs, and their views on things the sector could do to better support them in their journey into and through university. They shared with us experiences and thoughts about their ways of learning in face-to-face and online contexts, in particular the role of cultural security; community partnerships; Aboriginal knowledges; pathways and transitions; and student assessment and support strategies. The depth and richness of the skills, knowledges, and capacities of Aboriginal learners, and indeed of the communities in which they reside and study are vital foundations for participation, retention and completion. However, respondents related that in the main, these attributes are not acknowledged by metropolitan-based course designers nor university administrations. We conclude that learning experiences and university operations that are designed to embrace these students' strengths and to work in and with their communities, are more likely to retain Aboriginal students and facilitate their participation and success, enabling beneficial outcomes for all university students and ultimately society as a whole.

This paper proceeds from the view that managerial capture has already become a fundamental problem after a couple of decades of largely untrammelled managerialism in our public universities, and that this problem is likely to be compounded by further shifts towards deregulation and de facto privatisation, which is the direction that current federal government policy is trying to take in the higher education sector. Greater managerial capture and greater susceptibility to steering by corporate interests promote greater diversion from the public good missions of public universities and increasingly dysfunctional internal governance with grave consequences for workplace culture. The paper argues that a counter-movement to democratise public universities is overdue.

The need to articulate and validate creative practice has been made more urgent by the inclusion of the creative arts in the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) process. The proof of research quality is tied to government funding and universities have strategically sought to increase their share of funding by targeting their own research output. A variety of research fields have been working through their own unique methods and discussing the decisions of criteria, especially regarding the ranking of journals as a measure of quality. Traditional researchers are confronting problems within these new definitions and alignments. This author recently went through the ERA evidence gathering process. The measurement of creative work as research output as part of this process has raised a number of issues for him, as a creative scholar, which he feels will be useful to share. This paper is intended as a case study focusing on the author's experiences in being measured for the ERA. It is therefore, necessarily personal. He seeks to share the fruits of this encounter and subsequent analysis with creative and traditional researchers in the belief in common ground rather than difference.

This paper brings together recent statistics relating to the participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in higher education. A number of key statistical realities relating to their enrolment into, retention during, and completion of, their university courses are depicted. Foremost among these realities is that despite initiatives over recent years to redress their under-representation, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students' participation in higher education remains significantly below the population parity rate. This paper also warns about the need to exercise care about definitions, sources, measurement, collection, interpretation and analysis of data in the higher education field relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It concludes that successful transitions to university involve not just success in enrolling more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, but in improving their retention and completion rates, and moreover, the qualities of their engagements and experiences in university life during their journey through higher education.

The higher education sector in Australia is operating in an ideological context in which the ideas of managerialism and neoliberalism combine to create a discourse shaping the lives of both workers and students. The practices that emerge inside higher education organisations as a result combine to form an organisational neoliberal managerial culture that shapes practices, operating in a vicious cycle. In this vicious cycle, managers set the organisational culture through the roles they take on in this figured world, leading to particular ways of behaving and engaging in the practice of management. These experiences are received and internalised by their recipients who come to believe their reality reflects the only way things operate. In this paper I take an autoethnographic approach to reflect on my experiences of the practices emerging from this culture as I have experienced them within one higher education organisation in Australia. I argue that we are seeing the operationalisation of a discourse of managerial privilege that, in the long term, is not only detrimental to the functioning of higher educational organisations but puts at risk the wellbeing of the nation through its impact on both staff and students.

What do attacks on 'unpalatable' research reveal about academic freedom? When academic work is curtailed, this cherished yet misunderstood concept is undermined. Silencing based on moral objection -- rather than wrongdoing -- suggests academic freedom is more constrained than we believe. On paper, academic freedom is rule-bound, yet 'dangerous' ideas produce overwhelmingly visceral reactions. It was these emotional responses I examined to explore the difference between what we believe academic freedom to be, and how it manifests in contentious fields. I conducted qualitative interviews with 18 researchers whose work elicited condemnation or constraint beyond 'legitimate' scholarly critique. I used mixed-methods data analysis to determine shared themes and characteristics. While academic institutions uphold their commitment to unfettered enquiry, 'academic freedom' is highly contingent and subject to the values of players in a range of disciplinary and institutional fields that together yield a generalised field of 'academic research'. This research challenges assumptions about 'freedom' by identifying parameters that bound the notion. I argue the concept is indeed bounded, and that academics become aware of those bounds when they bump up -- often unexpectedly -- against them.

In the current political economic dispensation, it is important to revisit the opportunities for citizenship, cooperative, and public economics and the responsibility of economics teachers. In doing so, it is essential to analyse the nature of the dominant pedagogical philosophy of individualism, probe what alternatives could be embraced, investigate whether citizenship is a superior compass, and ascertain how students respond to alternatives. The case study reported in this paper demonstrates not only that individualism is problematic but also that citizenship, public and cooperative economics have much prospect of success. Students who are enrolled in economics subjects could show substantial awareness of social justice and, based on their own account, that awareness could be increased. Overall, students appreciate the opportunity to challenge the status quo. If so, citizenship and cooperative economics have a place in the study of economics -- contrary to the widely held view that they are irrelevant. It is the responsibility of teachers to expose the ideology of this impossibility view, emphasise the possibilities for cooperative economics and citizenship, and empower students to question and become citizens.

People seeking asylum in Australia face complex and significant barriers accessing higher education. Due to the temporary nature of their visa, their only pathway to university is being granted admission as an international student, which is financially prohibitive. This paper focuses on the lived experience of people seeking asylum with regard to accessing higher education, and identifies six major themes: the importance of accessing studies; the stress of struggling to meet living expenses while studying; mental health issues; support for people with disabilities, health challenges, and family responsibilities; the importance of language support and navigational brokers; and the role of higher education in the settlement of people seeking asylum. The research indicates that more university and community support is needed to foster access and participation, but the priority should be on addressing the Australian Federal Government policies that underpin the most significant barriers facing people seeking asylum in accessing higher education. This recommendation is most pressing in light of the re-election of the Coalition Government in May 2019, which has committed to continue these restrictive policies.

The author states that in earlier pieces (O'Neill, 2002, 2010, 2012), he chewed on and tried to digest newspaper advertisements made by universities. Byproducts did not come out smelling like roses: universities are scarcely able to present themselves without boasting, crass displays of salesmanship, and brazen invocations of virtue. This article examines recent advertisements for people to fill layer after layer of senior and middle management positions.

In the Australian higher education sector, the challenges to successful engagement and retention experienced by Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students and communities are considerable. They persist despite many well-intentioned attempts to address this issue and to strengthen equity in participation in the sector. Implicated in this is the absence of a culturally-informed data quality framework for the sector, and the resulting persistence of associated issues such as confusion with data ownership; consistency; standards; usage; and storage. In this paper we argue it is essential that rigorous inquiry be carried out into the type and nature of data required or sought in the higher education sector on, for and with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This inquiry must involve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander educators, researchers, evaluators and communities to bring into effect their aspirations for data sovereignty including stewardship and ownership of data, and for culturally beneficial outcomes relating to the use and application of data. It also mandates a collaborative approach with existing government and independent organisations, and Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers from higher education institutions, working together towards the development and implementation of an agreed-upon and decolonised Indigenous data framework for the sector.

The number of Indigenous people enrolling in and completing higher education courses in the Northern Territory slowly continues to climb. Since the first policies supporting the Australian Government's self-determination policy that encompassed training of Indigenous teachers in the Northern Territory, Charles Darwin University and Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education have played vital roles in increasing opportunities for Indigenous people to participate and succeed in higher education across all industries. From a policy perspective, these institutions are responsible for implementing Indigenous higher education policies at the local level in order to ensure that practice is guided by policy. Yet, there are other factors at play when considering policy implementation. This paper will provide a historical narrative around the institutional responses to national Indigenous higher education policies and summarise how implementation has often been constrained by parallel economic and socio-political forces.

The implementation of the national Research Engagement and Impact Assessment in Australia provides a timely opportunity to review attempts to improve the non-academic impact of academic research. The impact agenda represents a new phase in academic research evaluation and funding, characterised by a heightened need to demonstrate a return on public investments in research. New imperatives seek the reorientation of some academic research towards more directly driving national innovation, meeting the needs of business, and contributing to improved social and economic outcomes. This paper reviews the policy journey of research impact in Australia from the proposed, but never implemented, Research Quality Framework (RQF) to the National Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA). Our analysis of policy developments from the Howard to the Turnbull Governments highlights the controversial nature of research impact assessment and the political and methodological challenges that have accompanied its implementation.

During the past three decades, the student populations of Australian universities have become more heterogeneous as the higher education sector expanded and new alternative entry pathways were established. Broadening access to university study and, therefore, to professional and semi-professional occupations, provides avenues for social mobility. In this paper, we examine whether students entering university via alternative entry pathways, and in particular, on-campus tertiary preparation programs, have similar levels of achievement and attainment as students who entered via the more traditional pathway after completing Year 12. Our analysis is conducted on data from one regional university and our results show that students who were not eligible to enrol on the basis of their secondary school results were no more likely than traditional students to discontinue their studies.

While there has been considerable research on doctoral examination there is little that examines the various roles of the oral component and what issues one might consider if introducing or revising that aspect of the thesis examination process. This matter is of particular importance in Australia where it is not usual to have an oral component as part of the final assessment. However, there are a number of Australian institutions considering the introduction of an oral component. This paper, based on the literature and three research projects initiated by the Centre for the Study of Research Training and Impact (SORTI) at The University of Newcastle, Australia, addresses a number of the key issues that would need to be addressed if an Australian institution were to introduce an oral component to the doctoral thesis examination process.

Brian Martin describes a difficult committee meeting he once attended which consisted of one representative from each department. When the meeting ended it left a bitter taste for many who participated. Having learned from this experience, Martin became a chair of the committee and tried a new system that overcame many of the previous problems. The meetings for ranking scholaships and grant applications were shorter, and less contentious. The method is called "ranking by medians", and is currently used at the University of Wollongong for ranking scholarships at the university level. This article provides a discussion of how it works, and why it works. An example is also provided. Technicalities are provided in the appendix.