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Research educators, scholars, and employers often debate the nature and purpose of doctoral training. Should doctoral degrees exist only to make new knowledge and replenish the academic workforce or are they part of broader societal-enhancement and employment agendas? Or both? This study aimed to identify and analyse tensions in Australian employability discourse in the doctoral degree. We systematically reviewed 41 articles published in journals and conferences on Australian doctoral employability training from 2000 to 2022 and put them in context with the broader debate about doctoral employability in the so-called 'grey literature' of government reports and policy papers. Our findings indicated that stakeholders are all grappling with the difficulty of meeting diverse learning needs and there are contested understandings of the value of the doctoral degree beyond academia. At the same time, we found a relatively poor evidence base for many claims that outcomes of doctoral education are poor for both students and employers. This paper will be of interest to research educators seeking to implement new training programs and policy makers trying to craft new initiatives to connect doctoral education with industry.

This paper reflects on the recounts of a group of 'old boys' about their transition from elite schools to university. Analysis of semi-structured interview data reveals that this transition was not always straightforward. Although educational background has traditionally determined access to, and progress through, university, this paper details the challenges that confronted a group of old boys as they negotiated a landscape that did not align with the positionality they had assumed in their schooling. Defining this as a 'bubble bursting' moment, the participants relay how negotiations of their positionality provoked a reflexive accounting of what to keep and what to reject in the formation of undergraduate identities. The discourses that surround the educational choices made by elite school students indicate how tightly bound notions of achievement and academic excellence define expectations and concomitant senses of Self. Exposure to a larger, and more diverse student population, as well as changed social strata, resulted in the questioning of the elite school environment and the preparation that it provided. This paper explores a currently under-theorised aspect of the literature to detail how the emotions and feelings that elite school alumni experience frames the transition to university.

Graduate attributes are now a fixture in higher education. They are perceived as statements of desirable graduate learning outcomes, yet this space is becoming increasingly crowded. In this study, we examine how universities contextualise their graduate attributes statements for the curriculum quality space. We analysed the way Australian universities represent the aims and function of their graduate attributes statements on publicly available web pages, in policies and in documents. Identified themes included the way graduate attributes were conceptualised and framed, their location, and how their integration with strategic internal documents and relevant external, sector quality standards was represented. Based on our findings, we make three recommendations. First, that universities critically examine their statements to ensure there is alignment with strategic institutional and sector aims and outcomes. Second, that they develop detailed policy implementation plans to contextualise and integrate them with key strategic, policy, and regulatory documents. Third, that universities develop a standards framework to articulate the relationship between their graduate attributes, other desired graduate learning outcomes, and relevant sector standards.

This paper reports on a study that replaced marks with digital badges in an undergraduate Initial Teacher Education course. The aim was to examine the impact of badging on students, and on the quality of university provision. Data collection consisted of surveys and focus groups. The study found that while digital badges had considerable potential to improve the student experience in terms of engagement with feedback, motivation and reducing 'grade anxiety', delaying the awarding of marks caused significant student anxiety. The effect on university provision was more positive, and digital badges promoted constructive alignment between university-based assessment tasks and external professional standards frameworks. The student findings pointed to an underlying tension associated with implementing student-centred, outcomes-based assessment methods in contexts designed to accommodate traditional high-stakes assessment. Five recommendations for future practice were made: (1) Remove marks altogether where digital badges are used; (2) Do not substitute written feedback with digital badges; (3) Developing a badge framework is important for both students and staff; (4) Inform students about what to expect; (5) Develop a 'Badge Tree'.

A range of structural, interpersonal and individual factors contribute to the extent to which people can access higher education and experience inclusion and equity once there. This paper considers the experiences of parents in higher education settings, and examines the extent to which universities in two countries support parents' inclusion through the facilities and services evident on their campus maps. The inclusion of such parent-related facilities and services on campus maps reflects not only a commitment to providing support infrastructure, but importantly to making them visible, promoting a culture of normalisation of parents and parenting in higher education. We used manifest content analysis to examine the campus maps of Australia's n = 37 and New Zealand's n = 8 public universities, with a total of 281 distinct physical sites identified. Childcare services, parents' rooms, baby change tables, nursing areas and parking-related services were identified, although the prevalence within and across sites varied greatly. A lack of clarity in labelling and inconsistency across different modes of maps pose barriers to access and visibility in some cases, and overall, reporting of parenting-related infrastructure was limited. Our analysis indicates that parents attending university campuses may face ongoing challenges as they navigate their dual academic and parenting responsibilities.

The strengthening employability paradigm within higher education has led to a situation where the practical value of liberal arts programmes is contested. While the potential for such programmes to develop valuable generic skills is recognised, critiques of liberal arts programmes centre around their loose structure and lack of clear alignment with distinct professional employment pathways. This paper focuses on the representation of recognised employability skills within liberal arts curricula. It details the use of a Students as Partners methodology to investigate the inclusion of employability skills defined by the Future Work Skills 2020 framework within a Bachelor of Arts curriculum at an Australian comprehensive university. Our findings suggest a substantial disparity in the representation of employability skills within the curriculum studied. They prompt us to question the dynamics underlying the uptake and explication of employability skills in liberal arts contexts, and implications for the design and communication of liberal arts programme designs are discussed.

The pursuit of an academic career has been characterised by competition and precarity, which can negatively impact individuals' academic aspirations. This paper examines academic aspirations of doctoral candidates by providing an in-depth analysis of their career prospects using Weber's notions of 'inward calling' and 'academic hazards'. It draws on qualitative research using semi-structured interview data with 32 aspiring academics, who are doctoral candidates at a research-intensive university in Australia. The paper discusses the 'essence of academia' that underpins 'inward calling' and is central to aspiring academics' motivation. Findings suggest a range of 'academic hazards' that aspiring academics expect to encounter in their academic pursuit. Despite the perceived challenges, aspiring academics distance themselves from an idealised 'golden' past, and demonstrate an acceptance of and adaptation to the current situation. The paper concludes by discussing some implications for improving the attractiveness of the academic profession in Australia.

This paper reports on a project conducted between July 2020 and March 2021 that was developed within the context of COVID-19 and explored the ways in which Australian universities responded to the pandemic and the gendered effects of these responses. This paper demonstrates that sexist and gender discriminatory practices were amplified by the pandemic and that the gendered division of labour within higher education was made more apparent. We contribute to a growing body of work on gender and the COVID-19 crisis by reporting on a survey conducted in Australia. The survey asked participants to reflect on their experiences qualitatively. It is this qualitative element that has been missing from much of the research in the field thus far. In addition, the diversity of participants means that we bring an intersectional lens to the ongoing effects of the pandemic upon higher education, including exploring the experiences and reflections of academics who identify as culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD), LGBTIQA+, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experiences and reflections. This paper, therefore, reports on some of the key findings from the survey and focuses upon the gendered dimensions of the pandemic, domestic life and pandemic living-working, and affect, emotion and wellbeing.

In Australian higher education, there is a tension between international students' English language proficiency (ELP) seen as inadequate, thus prompting the need for firm gatekeeping for quality control, and on the other hand, the financial dependence on international student revenues, and therefore, striving to attract international applicants. Against this backdrop, this paper examines the way discursive forces interact in the context of ELP as an admission requirement. This paper analyses ELP admission requirements webpages of Australian universities, using Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis. It finds that the textual and visual data have distinct messages enabled by the linguistic features of the legal discourse and the neoliberal marketing discourse, respectively. Their combination creates a representation of ELP as a requirement for the idealized student lifestyle in Australia. This strengthens the monolingual mindset operating in Australian education by referencing the authority of legislation.

Universities in many countries are developing strategies to enhance the student experience. This focus has never been so important since the development of rankings and the use of student experience measures in institutional performance assessment. Australian government policies to link student experience measures to performance funding were a key driver to increase the prominence of the student voice between 2004 and 2008. This paper analyses the strategic plans of 33 Australian universities with the aim of outlining the extent to which the enhancement of student experience is embedded as one of their key priorities. This review comes at a time when universities in Australia and elsewhere are realigning their future strategies and directions to achieve government aspirations for tertiary education with the introduction of various policy instruments including the possibility of rewarding universities on the basis of student experience measures. The paper also provides a comparative analysis of government policies in Australia and the UK on the measurement and enhancement of the student experience.

Business education continues to be very popular among students across the globe, however, business schools have been criticised for not preparing 'work-ready' graduates. This paper investigates how business schools enhance organisational reputation, and in particular, how relatively younger and non-accredited business schools compete with longstanding business schools and those with established reputations. In so doing, the paper investigates the reputation drivers that are perceived to give business schools a competitive advantage. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with academics, experts and students. The results of this paper indicate that engagement with industry and the community is considered the key to achieving quality business programmes and to producing quality business graduates. In addition, we found that the two emerging themes of work placement (WP) and transnational education (TNE) programmes also contributed to quality business programmes but not without some risks.

The Dawkins white paper of 1988 was introduced by the Australian government to reshape the Higher Education (HE) landscape. Dawkins' discussion paper of 1990, Nelson's policy document of 2003, the Bradley Review of 2008 and the Lomax-Smith Review of 2011 built on and extended Dawkins' white paper. Such policy reforms have transformed the culture of Australian HE and contributed to shaping the employment outcomes of graduates of Australian HE institutions (HEI). However, rather than HE qualifications enhancing a resume, such qualifications are now expected. Today, HE graduates in Australia can face long periods to secure full-time jobs with many experiencing underemployment and unemployment. Using document reviews to research for this article, the article contributes to the discussion of HE graduates in Australia in several ways. Firstly, it reviews five key policies that led to the massification of HE in Australia. Secondly, it presents a comparison of the composition of university graduates in the period from 1989 to 2019. Thirdly, it examines how policy reforms contributed to shaping graduate employment prior to the COVID-19 global pandemic occurring. Finally, and importantly, this article will assist as a point of reference when researching graduate employability outcomes post COVID-19 global pandemic. This article represents a knowledge base for all stakeholders in the HE sector to draw from in terms of policy and planning with the end goal to enhance the employment prospects and employability of HE graduates. This article also presents numerous areas for future research.

For many years universities around the world have sought to articulate the nature of the education they offer to their students through a description of the generic qualities and skills their graduates possess. Despite the lengthy history of the rhetoric of such policy claims, universities' endeavours to describe generic attributes of graduates continue to lack a clear theoretical or conceptual base and are characterized by a plurality of view-points. Furthermore, despite extensive funding in some quarters, overall, efforts to foster the development of generic attributes appear to have met with limited success. Recent research has shed some light on this apparent variability in policy and practice. It is apparent that Australian university teachers charged with responsibility for developing students' generic graduate attributes do not share a common understanding of either the nature of these outcomes, or the teaching and learning processes that might facilitate the development of these outcomes. Instead academics hold qualitatively different conceptions of the phenomenon of graduate attributes. This paper considers how the qualitatively different conceptions of graduate attributes identified in this research have been applied to the challenge of revising a university's policy statement specifying the generic attributes of its graduates. The paper outlines the key findings of the research and then describes how the university's revision of its policy statement has built upon this research, adopting a research-led approach to academic development. The resultant two-tiered policy is presented and the key academic development processes associated with the disciplinary contextualization of this framework are considered. The discussion explores some of the implications of this novel approach to structuring a university's policy, in particular, the variation in the relationship between discipline knowledge and generic attributes which was a key feature of the qualitative variation in understandings identified in the research. (Contains 1 figure.

Higher Degree by Research (HDR) students are an important part of Australian university research culture. They contribute significantly to the generation of new knowledge, research outputs, industry engagement and the continual development of higher education. This article is the first to systematically review existing research to synthesise the key areas of HDR student experience within the Australian context. A systematic review of the literature was conducted following PRISMA protocols, and 7 themes were identified across the 68 papers included in the review. Themes reflected supervisory relationships, challenges for international students, engagement with research communities, balancing life contexts, administrative challenges, thesis by publication, and industry-based research. The overall findings suggest a need for universities to be more proactive in supporting the unique needs of HDR students in a changing educational context.

Doctoral education and supervision have changed in recent decades. The increasing prevalence of co-supervision has been a notable aspect of this, but change also includes stricter accountability and quality assurance measures, such as the quantification of workload allocations in supervision as well as of academic work more broadly. This paper focuses on challenging issues pertaining to such workload allocation in co-supervision, an important and underexplored feature of doctoral supervision, with the aim of informing policy and improving practice. This qualitative study was conducted in a research-intensive university and data sources were semi-structured interviews with 14 academic staff across multiple disciplines plus a short survey comprising mostly of open-ended questions completed by 106 participants. These data were complimented with institutional supervisor workload allocations. Ambiguity was found to be a dominant feature of the co-supervision allocations and this had both advantages and disadvantages. The concept of 'supervision peripherality' is introduced to capture the phenomenon of co-supervisors with a very low share of supervision, which we argue is a phenomenon that challenges what constitutes being a doctoral supervisor and thus warrants further exploration. We also argue institutions should examine the adequacy of having such peripheral supervisors in order to determine when these are truly required.

This study is a critical-autoethnographic exploration of the intellectual trajectories of three international doctoral scholars in an Australian research-intensive university in terms of the development of their academic identities. It looks at the various institutional and discursive forces that influence their academic adjustments and how they navigate their intellectual and scholarly journeys while studying abroad. In particular, the paper investigates the tensions inherent in the intersection of institutional governmentality and individual sense of empowerment within and outside the third space. International doctoral students experience both overt and covert pressures to conform and accept institutional norms to 'fit in' when coming to study in Australia. Rather than simply adapting, they also 'fight out' against these norms, thereby reconfiguring their academic identities through interactions with supervisors, senior colleagues, and wider academia. Using narratives from their learning experiences, the study locates the interface of these two forces and the creation of a third space -- emerging from how these three novice scholars bring in their own learning academic conventions from their home countries in an Australian academic community. This research has implications for understanding international doctoral students' stories of becoming academics.

Although the importance of developing students' academic literacies has been well-established, academic oracy has been forgotten. There is a paucity of attention to oracy in higher education, despite the key role played by students' oral communication in academic achievement and graduate employability. This study offers a scoping review of the international scholarly literature that does exist, to explore how oracy has been framed and discussed in higher education, and whether connections have been made with the equity agenda to widen participation to traditionally under-represented groups. Following Arksey and O'Malley's framework for scoping studies, the 31 papers reviewed suggest that oracy is framed in disparate ways, reflecting disconnected understandings of the range, breadth and possibilities for oracy teaching. An oracy as product perspective prevails in the studies, with oracy predominantly explored through monologic, monoglossic activities, assessments, and graduate attributes. The review has highlighted the need to recognise an "oracy for learning" perspective; to establish shared understandings of the features of oracy; and to embed the teaching of oracy practices that support all students, regardless of linguistic and educational background, within their disciplinary learning.

This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study examining the influence of professional development (PD) on tutors' teaching philosophies. It found that tutors construe their role in three ways: as transmitter, facilitator, or reflexive practitioner. The findings suggest most tutors, prior to a PD program, hold a teacher-focused conception of teaching and learning (that is, as transmitter) but shift toward a student-oriented conception following the completion of the PD program (facilitators or reflexive practitioners). Epistemic shifts among tutors were attributed to three specific features of the PD program: workshops, peer mentoring, and peer networking. This study provides insights into PD features that cultivate student-oriented teaching philosophies reflecting contemporary pedagogical strategies that promote experiential and constructivist teaching approaches.

The practice of students as partners can be applied to numerous facets of the university, including curriculum design, governance, and co-curricular programs. However, while scholars have also conceptualised that student partnership can occur through co-research, adoption is far from mainstream. In this paper, we seek to go 'under the hood' of students as partners in co-research by exploring and reflecting upon our own recent co-research project. By doing so we aim to understand why the practice of co-research with students has failed to gain widescale traction in higher education. To support our study, we use collective autoethnography which helps to structure our reflections of the co-research process and create dialogue and shared understanding among the research team. Our findings identify two central points of tensions that prohibit partnership in co-research, including how to best support collaborative and reciprocal learning between students and staff in research projects and how students' contributions can be reconceptualised to be different, yet equal, to experienced researchers. Through our findings, we advocate for universities to consider sustainable practices to support students in co-research and for scholarly journals to reflect on how student authors can be appropriately recognised.

Within Australia, Vocational Education and Training (VET) is promoted as a pathway for low socioeconomic status (LSES) students to enter Higher Education (HE). However, greater equity will only occur if these students achieve successful university outcomes. But how should such success be defined? This paper examined two data sources (i.e., nine years of archival achievement data from one multi-campus Australian university, 18 qualitative interviews with LSES VET students who had transitioned to HE) to consider varying measures of this group's success. Quantitative achievement measures indicated that although VET-entry students performed as well as or better than those entering based on secondary school results, LSES students had systematically lower academic achievement across both groups, suggesting equity goals are yet to be realised. While interviewed students frequently mentioned grades, they also described seeing improvement, making connections, experiencing satisfaction and growing confidence as markers of success. Data highlighted the negative consequences some LSES VET students experienced when grades were viewed as the sole metric of success. Findings suggest it is important for universities to continue to promote VET pathways and normalise diverse conceptions of success to encourage persistence when academic achievement goals are not immediately reached.

In this paper we explore perspectives of academically successful students from low socio-economic status (LSES) backgrounds in an Australian university regarding their success. In response to initiatives arising from the Australian Government's 2008 "Review of Australian Higher Education," university cohorts have increasingly diversified. This diversification of student cohorts has been especially apparent for students from LSES backgrounds, who were found to be underrepresented in higher education. Previous researchers have investigated how traditional cultural norms within the field of higher education, and deficit perspectives of LSES background students, place these students at a disadvantage. Utilising a capital-based approach, we were interested in understanding students' awareness of their strengths, and how they utilised and exchanged resources (i.e., capital) to leverage these strengths for success. It was indicated by participants that whilst they entered the field of higher education with little formal 'know-how', through a strong sense of identity and motivation they developed strategies to succeed. Of significance, these processes occurred with little institutional assistance.

Collegiality is at the heart of the academy's collective endeavour. It is central to how we think about academic governance structures, academic cultures, as well as the norms guiding academic work. This paper examines the less-explored affective dimensions of collegiality, probing the relationship between the collegial affect and the power and hierarchy in modern corporate universities. Three interview accounts describing academic practices in Australian universities are analysed to examine collegiality as academics' capacity to attune to certain collective affects. This analysis demonstrates how collegial relations can reproduce exclusion in universities. Alternative types of relations that are attentive to differences are then examined, charting possible new directions for a more inclusive academy.

Australian public universities are struggling to maintain parity with international counterparts in an environment that is becoming increasingly competitive globally. While most universities are now heeding calls from sector leaders to become more competitive, any strategies that they implement to effect change in this regard might be too late to save some. A systematic content analysis of published strategic plans of Australian public universities, undertaken during 2005-2007, indicates that universities were not taking the threat of rapidly intensifying competition seriously enough at a time when foreign competitors were making inroads into their markets and when deregulation and new communication technologies were spawning rivals in many new forms. This research has three principal implications: all Australian public universities need to re-examine their strategic planning processes to determine whether (1) adequate attention is being paid to rapid intensification of competition; (2) strategies already implemented in response to increasing competition are appropriate; and (3) more can be done to develop better models to guide competitive behaviour in a university sector with unique characteristics. (Contains 1 table.)

In April 2019, educators from around Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Australia came together to share their experiences of teaching Indigenous public health. The inaugural International Indigenous Public Health Education Leadership Symposium provided an opportunity to (i) discuss the range of challenges of this work, and (ii) to affirm a collective aspiration to strengthen the contribution of public health education to improved Indigenous outcomes. Talking across the borders of individual institutions, distinct cultures and nations enabled a rich conversation about the interface of health and Indigenous education. We explored the twin agendas of decolonisation and indigenisation, meeting the respective needs of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, and how to best mobilise Indigenous public health leadership. This article will outline the discussion that unfolded and that led to the establishment of an inclusive Australia/Aotearoa/South Pacific Indigenous public health education entity and network.

There has been significant interest in developing academics through Teaching Scholar Development Programs across the USA, Canada, the UK, and more recently in Australia. At their core, such programs develop academics across teaching scholarship, leadership, promotion, and award opportunities, where universities reap the benefits of developing such a cadre of leaders. This paper pays witness to one such a program in an Australian university to highlight enactments of caring passionately. We use qualitative survey evaluation data, metaphor analysis and reflective practice to nuance the pleasures, passions and challenges of the lived experiences using phenomenological and metaphor lenses to describe our experiences. Metaphors provide powerful insights into the dimensions of experience as they open up how programs are perceived and experienced. Our paper disrupts traditional linear writing through rhizomatic, multivocal and multitextual encounters to challenge dominant authorial voicing. The academic identity work and emotional work required in the program is unfolded through evolving, experiencing and reflecting on the program to inform design and highlight what we have come to (re)value in our academic work when we come together to learn, share, and lead. We forge ways to be and become with and against neoliberal agendas that have choked the soul of 'the university' to evolve rich spaces and practices of/for reciprocity and kindness where not only learning can thrive, but where "love acts" -- a much needed "revolutionary praxis" for our time.

In this reflective piece, I consider the degree to which Australian universities have become financially dependent on income from foreign students, the reasons for that dependence, the risks it poses and the potential consequences now that COVID-19 has undermined this revenue stream.

The Bologna Process (BP) was used as an instrument to construct a European Higher Education Area that would be competitive in the world and to attract foreign students and academics to Europe. For a country such as Australia, this higher education innovation process constituted a possible challenge, especially since Australian HE is a marketized system relying on the influx of overseas students. The BP was, therefore, topic of a discussion spurred on by the Australian government. In this article, the results are presented of a literature review of Australian scholarly papers addressing the discussion on the BP in Australia. An overview is given of the scholars and their publications, of the reasons why they studied the BP, and of their stance regarding the BP. Neo-institutional theory is used to explain the findings.

Over recent decades, peer review of teaching has become an important mechanism for improving the quality of teaching in higher education. While there is considerable international research on peer review of teaching outcomes, these are not widely reported within Australian universities. This paper reports on a systematic review of published studies examining peer review of teaching characteristics that contribute to teaching development in Australian higher education. Following a search of peer reviewed literature published over three decades, 19 studies were included in the qualitative synthesis. A thematic synthesis revealed teaching development outcomes gained through peer review of teaching span factors at organisational (N = 16), program (N = 13) and individual (N = 4) levels. Organisational factors included disciplinary context, program sustainability, collegiality and leadership. Program factors included framework, program design, basis of participation, observation, feedback and reflective practice. Factors at the individual level included prior experience and participants' perceived development requirements. In addition to reporting on teaching development outcomes, some studies reported on enhanced student learning outcomes (N = 5). Improved reporting of program design in addition to validated tools to assess outcomes are required to better understand how peer review of teaching supports teaching development. The growth of peer review of teaching within Australian higher education presents an important opportunity to advance our understanding of practices influencing academic teaching development.

Study abroad programs at university are supported as a means to expand university operations beyond the study walls of the institution, and to help students become aware of and cope with the demands of an increasingly interconnected and globalised world. This paper questions the assumptions that underlie the tendencies in contemporary study abroad programs, whose ethos it is argued, at the same time misunderstands and underestimates the potential effects of the study abroad practice. Using a theoretical framework derived from the French philosophy of science of Gilbert Simondon, Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem, this paper puts to work fully elaborated and contextualised concepts, which look to change and expand one's notion of the learning possible due to study abroad programs, beyond experiential change. Simondon's individuation questions the ways in which particular student agencies and learning characteristics are constructed in study abroad tours, Bachelard's concept of space questions the reality of precise coordinates and concrete analyses of the study abroad tour itinerary, and Canguilhem's vitalism puts under pressure "the life" of the tour learnings and effects. This paper will be furnished with empirical evidence taken from a recent overseas tour involving Australian students performing teaching practicums in schools in Penang, Malaysia.

Using data collected from a recent national survey of Australian first-year students, this paper defines and validates four scales--belonging, feeling supported, intellectual engagement and workload stress--to measure the student experience of university. These scales provide insights into the university experience for both groups and individual students, to assist institutions in supporting and managing successful outcomes for their students. These data highlight the particular importance of a sense of belonging and mitigating workload stress to addressing attrition risk. Many traditional equity groups were found to only differ significantly from "traditional" students on the stress scale. However, these groups potentially contain enormous individual variation, and even the average experiences of these groups reveal that complexity in the engagement, motivation and sense of belonging of students from equity backgrounds. Importantly, the scales presented in this paper can easily be used by practitioners, researchers and institutions to identify risk of attrition at an individual level based on attitudinal factors rather than background or behavioural factors. This may inform university strategy and practice to enhance the student experience and increase retention across the sector.

Since 2010, the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program (HEPPP) has provided funding for Australian universities to 'raise aspiration' among under-represented groups. Underpinned by utilitarian discourses of human capital and individual capacitation, these resources have transformed the ways that universities seek to engage prospective students. This paper turns to an overlooked cohort that is integral to widening participation initiatives, but has rarely been the focus of research. These are the student ambassadors--university students who work within HEPPP programs. This paper reports findings from the alumni component of a mixed-method study which examines how widening participation programs, which are ostensibly directed at future university enrolments, might also help university students who work as student ambassadors to become successful professionals and citizens once they graduate from university. Alumni accounts of their experiences and self-reported impact of their ambassador work advocate a more holistic view of graduate success and how activities beyond mandatory coursework can contribute to success beyond university graduation. Evidence from student ambassador alumni suggests that these positive impacts are broad and long-lasting, contributing to students' professional successes and personal lives.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students are still grossly under-represented in Higher Degrees by Research (HDRs) when compared to non-Indigenous students. Developing the pipeline of Indigenous students from undergraduate to postgraduate study remains key to increasing the number of Indigenous students undertaking HDRs. While much of the existing work has historically focused on explaining failure, more recent research has argued that the focus should instead be on deepening our understanding of the factors contributing to Indigenous student success. This paper reports on findings from a National Teaching Fellowship that explored how universities can increase the number of Indigenous students transitioning from undergraduate study to HDRs. Drawing on interviews with Indigenous HDR graduates, key success factors to enter into a HDR are examined. The paper also discusses outcomes from the fellowship that include strategies for successful pathways into HDRs for Indigenous students for university Faculties/Schools, individual staff, Indigenous Centres, and Graduate Research Schools. By knowing and acting upon the kinds of mechanisms that can assist Indigenous students to pathway into HDRs, universities can build successful strategies to increase Indigenous HDR enrolments across Australia and stimulate change in universities to implement stronger research pathways from undergraduate to postgraduate study for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

This paper explores the conceptualisation and measurement of higher education (HE) student success relating to the world-of-work. It first considers the factors that catalysed a shift in perception and understanding of student success from engagement and academic achievement at university to post-graduation employment outcomes. It summarises and critiques approaches to measuring graduate employment outcomes for a range of developed countries. There are fundamental flaws in utilising current measures of graduate employment outcomes to gauge student success. These include devaluing the social, cultural and economic value of graduates; favouring full-time employment measures; tracking graduates in their transitional phase to the labour market and encouraging HE providers to manipulate the metrics to raise institutional status. The paper suggests a more coherent approach to gauging student success in the world-of-work, which is aligned to a broader definition of graduate outcomes, realities of contemporary working practices and the sector's locus of control.

Conventional wisdom encourages educators to cultivate student success by creating expectations among students, with the intention of boosting motivation and empowerment. If students feel that their learning is in their hands, they are more likely to fulfil the learning outcomes. But this paper argues that vulnerable or sensitive students are paradoxically disempowered when we insist that success is within their control, because the positive emphasis on willpower denies the agency of luck. The paper first examines the structure of success as defined in practice, by students meeting the learning outcomes. The paper then proposes a history of success, which reveals how much the theme of chance or luck lies at the philological heart of the concept. Matching this historical evidence, the student learning experience--and consequently the success within it--is shown to have ineradicable elements of chance and luck. Finally, the paper discusses how Monash honours the theme of empowerment for the sake of student success.

An increasing amount of scholarly literature exists that examines the relationship between students and universities, and their role in university governance and quality assurance of their higher education experiences. The traditional mechanisms for involving students in university governance -- for example, through representation by student associations -- have been challenged and expanded as part of a broader movement towards students as partners and co-creation of their educational experiences. This paper provides a critical review of student engagement in university governance and quality assurance systems, using the Australian system as a grounding example, and with particular focus on student equity and the increasing diversity of the student body, and its implications for quality assessment and assurance. Our critical review of the literature suggests that there is still progress to be made in integrating the complex roles students can assume within universities, but that considerable opportunities exist in meeting the challenges of massification, student diversity and the structural barriers some students face to success in higher education, provided that the full diversity of the student body can meaningfully engage in student governance.

The question of how to embed transformative change through the implementation of sustainability principles in our education systems has become increasingly important as complex situations, like pandemics and climate change, challenge societies. Education underpinned by a sustainability paradigm requires students to develop the ability to think critically about the nature of knowledge and about the ways in which knowledge is produced and validated. Educating for these skills will require shifts in educational practice, pedagogy and new approaches to learning and teaching. As the relationship between education and sustainability has matured, there has been increasing debate around whether capability or competence frameworks best underlie the type of education we seek to embed in sustainability professionals. Within an Australian context there is a philosophical difference between these two terms and an understanding of how this relates to different typologies of sustainability and education; Education about Sustainable Development, Education for Sustainable Development or Sustainability as Education (Sustainability Education) and this has yet to be fully explored. This is increasingly important as higher education is under pressure to be efficient producers of work-ready graduates. This paper provides an overview of the context of capability and competencies in the Australian higher education context and the associated implications for education, and sustainability education. It compares a competence approach with that of a capability approach and then situates this debate within the evolution of sustainability and education. Finally, it addresses some key consequences of the contemporary approaches to sustainability and education and emphasises the role of the capability approach.

Despite the shift from elite to mass education, the odds of accessing university remain stacked in favour of those with a university-educated parent. Not only are first-generation students less likely to engage in higher education, but the dominant narrative surrounding their enrolment emphasises cultural deficiency, constructing individuals as 'too different' to succeed. Drawing on data from focus groups with 198 school-aged students in Australia, this paper reframes this narrative by using the concept of familial habitus to examine how aspirations for higher education are shaped and nurtured by the home lives of prospective first-generation entrants. We develop three characterisations of familial habitus -- 'projected', 'meritocratic', and 'supportive' -- each of which demonstrates the inventive and transformative power of habitus. Cautioning against pathologising accounts of first-generation entry, we argue that the social justice motives of widening participation will be thwarted unless first-generation students are repositioned as legitimate participants in higher education.

Academics working in higher education institutions often take part in research activities as part of their role and are often under pressure to publish papers and source grant funding. In addition, academics going through the peer review process often experience negative feedback, criticism, and rejection on a regular basis. In this initial, small-scale, exploratory study, data was collected to answer the question: What factors influence the resilience of academics when receiving criticism and rejection of their research? Participants (8 female, 4 male) were academics from the Faculty of Health Sciences at a university in Australia. Participants were from varying levels of appointment and all had a research component in their current role. The emotional, behavioural, and cognitive responses to rejection and criticism -- and the strategies used to manage these responses -- were explored through semi-structured interviews. Three themes emerged from the data following thematic analysis: beliefs and values, experience, and external context. Results revealed that the experience of rejection and criticism has a significant impact on the emotional functioning of academics. These emotional responses are influenced by the academic environment, years of academic experience, and the individual's interpretation of feedback received. Further research would benefit from interviewing academics from different countries and faculties, and academics who have exited academia. This study offers insights into strategies that may assist academics to remain resilient in high-pressure university settings.

The publish or perish adage is alive and well for early career academics (ECAs), who are under increasing pressure from higher education institutions for improved research performance. This paper explores the way in which ECAs respond to the managerial imperatives of one Australian regional university; specifically, a meta-reflexive lens was used to examine narrative data from ECAs to determine how institutional performance measures influence their participation in research teams. Three main themes were identified in the data: "The 'pull' of institutional priorities," "'Getting a leg up' through teamwork," and "Finding a way forward in personal values." ECAs responded to managerial imperatives through compliance and showed awareness of the importance of collaboration with established researchers in furthering their own personal career interests. At the same time, the data also reveal that ECAs working at this regional Australian university refused to compromise on the educational and research contributions they could make to their disciplines and the cultural capital of their local communities. This latter "pursuit" of autonomy provided these academics with personal satisfaction and a sense of academic integrity in relation to conducting research with impact while simultaneously meeting performance targets aimed at raising the reputation of their institution.

In this article, the author comments on two highly cited articles and how they link to wider trends in higher education research. The two papers in question, Angela Brew's article from 2003, "Teaching and research: New relationships and their implications for inquiry-based teaching and learning in higher education" and Gerlese Akerlind's article from 2005, "Variation and commonality in phenomenographic research methods," are from highly respected Australia-based researchers, both with roots and extensive networks outside Australia as well. Needless to say, those roots and networks are almost a prerequisite for a paper to become noted and cited at an early stage in its history. The author notes that each paper pertains to different aspects of higher education research and development and appeals to somewhat different, though overlapping, groups of the research community. She first offers her interpretation of what each paper is about. Following that, she reflects on what she thinks makes them stand out from the crowd of publications, then studies the ways in which some of the citations of each paper were made, attempting to analyze the underlying reasons for the citation. Lastly, she considers the importance of these papers from her particular standpoint. (Contains 1 note.)

This paper examines the reworking of gender in the measured university and the impact this has on gender equality in academia. Neoliberal market rationalities and measurements embedded in academic publishing, funding and promotion have transformed Australian higher education and impacts upon the careers of academic women in ways that are gendered. Based on a series of in-depth qualitative interviews with female academics, this paper focuses on the performative and discursive decisions women make in regards to their academic careers, and argues that the mainstreaming of gender equity in Australian universities seeks to render gender inequality invisible. It employs "cruel optimism" to highlight how our optimistic attachment to gender equity and diversity policies as tools for improving the representation of women may be detrimental to academic women's career progression and the realisation of gender equality in academia.

While Australian higher education agendas and literature prioritise Indigenous knowledges and perspectives across policy, curriculum and pedagogy, enacting this in practice remains problematic and contentious. Often the result is the inclusion of simplified Indigenous knowledges, rather than sustained engagement with and embedding of multiple and "messy" ontological and epistemological positions. This paper explores ways of engaging with this "messiness." Taking messiness as a focal point within our own context of teacher education at a regional university, this agenda and tension inform an ongoing dialogue about ways of assuring a conscious approach to cultural sustainability to embed, value and foreground Indigenous knowledges and ways of being and doing in curriculum. This endeavour can be conceptualised as a heuristic project, an ongoing conversation in response to multiple stimuli rather than a fixed endpoint or framework. In response to this exploration, this paper presents the stimuli for our conversation: situated, plural and reflexive knowledges that work together in inherently relational ways to nourish the cultural sustainability of Indigenous knowledges.

Embedding academic literacies in higher education courses has been a major focus of the work of learning advisers. A number of studies present the results of embedding in specific courses without discussing the processes of negotiation or the different people involved. This paper is about embedding academic literacies in the Business faculty as part of an English language proficiency model at an Australian university. After initial slow progress, a team of learning advisers began to evaluate the process by reflecting on practice. This reflection focused on the space between the top-down process as planned and what actually happened in the complex academic environment. There were tensions between the proposed plan and the expectations and understandings of the disciplinary academics. These were used as a starting point to explore the issues in more detail. This paper argues that the task of embedding academic literacies bears all the hallmarks of a "wicked problem" which eludes a linear formulation and is open to multiple framings. The botanical metaphor of the rhizome from the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari and an adaptive leadership approach offer ways of responding to this problem. This paper reinterprets the team's experiences using these theories and suggests alternative work practices. By moving away from the concept of a model, more opportunities to bring about attitudinal and curriculum change can be created to make academic literacies explicit for students.

As in other Anglophone nations, a large percentage of Australia's postgraduate international students come from English as an additional language (EAL) backgrounds, and many require development of their academic language and learning (ALL) capabilities to successfully navigate a higher degree. This paper investigates those capabilities through the eyes of experienced ALL practitioners (n = 42), whose views on the issue were sourced via an online survey. The paper further explains how the findings were used to implement a trial of an ALL enhancement strategy at one university in the form of adjunct tutorials within selected coursework masters programmes. Both the research and the pedagogical model depart from monolithic conceptualizations of international students by identifying the issues of vertical transition peculiar to EAL postgraduate coursework students, a task that is addressed through the tripartite perspective of the personal, the linguistic and the academic. Findings suggest that, while EAL postgraduates have previous study experience, motivation and maturity, they benefit from opportunities to address disjunctures between the knowledge base they bring to higher study and the expectations of that knowledge base held by universities. Successful transition is also facilitated by explicit (re)orientation to the academic norms of the host institution and nation. Academic writing was noted as a particular area requiring attention, along with the related matters of research skills, information literacy, academic integrity, independent learning, and time management.

This study considers the conceptual space, or extent of autonomy, given to coursework Masters students before, during and after a Business Ethics course that explicitly developed and assessed their research skills. This vocationally oriented and academically challenging course used the "Research Skill Development framework" as its conceptual model to reshape the learning and assessment environment, articulating to students not only the research skills required, but also clarifying the resulting autonomy in their research-orientated learning. In the study, seven students attended semi-structured interviews and transcript analysis of interviews revealed the level of student-declared autonomy before commencing coursework Masters, while completing the Business Ethics course, and near the end of their Masters degree. All of the students interviewed were studying part-time and working part-time, and so the applicability of the research skills to students' work environment emerged as a major issue of interest. This paper richly represents the students' perceptions, and is the first paper to directly address coursework Masters student autonomy in research in a longitudinal manner; as such it provides a deep and nuanced understanding of the conceptual space that students need for success in study and as preparation for employment.

Performance management systems have been an inevitable consequence of the development of government research evaluations (GREs) of university research, and have also inevitably affected the working life of academics. The aim of this paper is to track the development of GREs over the past 25 years, by critically evaluating their adoption in the UK and Australian higher education sector and their contribution to the commodification of academic labour, and to highlight the resultant tensions between GREs and academic freedom. The paper employs a literature-based analysis, relying on publicly available policy documents and academic studies over the period 1985-2010. GREs are a global phenomenon emanating from new public management reforms and while assessments of university research have been welcomed, they have attracted critique based on their design, the manner in which they have been applied, and the unintended consequences of their implementation on academic freedom in particular. Consistent with international research on the impact of GREs, Australian research assessments appear to be undoing the academic freedom that is central to successful research. Further empirical research on the impact of GREs on academics is urgently needed.

This paper discusses a cross-cultural pedagogical approach, couched in a theory-practice nexus, used at a Victorian regional university to guide non-Indigenous pre-service teachers' (PSTs) engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives and cultures. We have drawn on qualitative and statistical data, and current issues in Australian and international literature, to explore the relevance and success suggested by data from this cross-cultural pedagogical approach, in particular the notion of teacher ethnicity in racialised spaces. In doing so, we have addressed recent sentiments about a lack of quantitative and qualitative research that explores inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content and discussions of ways in which tertiary educators construct and influence teachings about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. It is anticipated that this paper will generate further dialogue and research-based evidence on ways in which other tertiary education providers may draw on cross-cultural theories to guide inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content and perspectives in PST education courses.

The marketisation of higher education (HE) has created a number of tensions and ideological dilemmas that may influence how academics see their roles and teaching practices. This paper explores how academics in the discipline of social work (who were also in leadership roles) perceive their roles and identities and manage the tensions and dilemmas that arise for them as teachers in the current HE environment. Unless the tensions and dilemmas are articulated, it is not possible to understand and manage their impact on academics. This may lead to the loss of quality learning experiences for students and lower workplace satisfaction. This paper addresses the research question: were there ideological dilemmas experienced by social work academics in the current environment and if so, what subject positions did they adopt in response to these? A discursive psychology approach was used to answer this question. Data showed a range of ideological dilemmas represented by each of the different subject positions adopted. The paper concludes with questions for readers to consider, generating ideas for transferring understanding of these ideological dilemmas into positive action within the workplace.

In Australia, the number of female graduates in some science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines is as low as 15%. Previous reviews exploring the issues affecting female undergraduate STEM students are primarily based in North America and there is yet to be an Australian focused review. This review identifies the factors contributing to the gendered experience of Australian undergraduate STEM students. A systematic review was conducted in November -- December 2018 using ERIC, PsycInfo, ProQuest and Scopus databases. From this review, 36 papers that focus on gender differences and university STEM students in Australia were identified. The Australian research suggests the most prominent issue for female STEM students is their lower self-efficacy. Gendered preferences for learning, gendered motivations to pursue STEM degrees, the masculine culture of these fields and gender differences in science identity were also themes identified through the review. This review indicates some gaps in the Australian literature, namely that identity, and other emotional factors, are understudied in the Australian context and an avenue for future research. The findings suggest that science educators should be aware of the gendered experiences of their students to ensure female persistence in university STEM degrees.

The crisis surrounding COVID-19 has unsettled some of the key assumptions underlying the dominant understanding of internationalization in Australian higher education. In this paper, I discuss how Australian universities have talked about their recovery from the commercial turbulence, and what this reveals about the hegemonic construction of internationalization and about the prospects for reimagining and reconceptualising internationalization in terms beyond commercial.