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The paper proposes a metric, the research quality index (RQI), for assessing and tracking university research quality. The RQI is a composite index that encompasses the three main areas of research activity: publications, research grants and higher degree by research activity. The public availability of such an index will also facilitate benchmarking (internally, competitively and generically) by academic units in universities. This has become an important activity in Australia with the proposed introduction of the Research Quality Framework (RQF) as the future research funding mechanism for Australian universities. The RQF is a quality-based system that will replace the existing funding system that is focused on the volume of research output, not quality. Benchmarking, using the RQI, will allow academic units to track their progress towards their quality targets and facilitates internal and competitive benchmarking, allowing academic units to assess the efficacy of their research quality enhancement strategies and policies on an annual basis. The paper illustrates the compilation and operation of the RQI. The RQI is a short-term tracking methodology for use in between the cyclical major research quality assessments. With modifications, it is applicable in a wide range of countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the idea of the university from the first-in-family enabling students' perspective. It provides an overview of the current crisis of meaning in scholarly commentary that points to a spectrum of meanings about the university. This spectrum ranges from the ancient imaginary of the monastic university as 'ivory tower' to the instrumental idea of the entrepreneurial university. The analysis then reports on the idea of the university in over 40 interviews and surveys of first-in-family enabling students who attended two large regional Australian universities in 2014. Their metaphorical understandings of the university constitute a powerful imaginary about what a university is and can do for individuals and the wider society. For many, the resolution of the individualistic passion for knowledge of 'ivory tower' studies and the commitment to the social and economic usefulness of the fully engaged entrepreneurial university can be found in the pursuit of the passionate career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of the application of performance indicators on the teaching and research activities of 152 university academics from four representative Australian universities. Most of the participants reported an increase in pressure to focus on the activities measured by the teaching and research performance indicators. A majority of the participants also indicated that their approach to teaching and research have changed. In research, this essentially meant focusing on external research grants applications and publications, and maximising the quantity produced from these activities. Some staff did use various strategies to increase their scores such as writing shorter papers in order to increase the quantity of publications. Moreover, a sizeable proportion of the participants indicated a shift in their work priorities towards research at the expense of teaching. One possible reason could be the lack of special incentives to increase their emphasis on teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traverses three consecutive policy periods with respect to Australian higher education equity, the first two driven by the policies of successive Labor Governments and the third by a highly deregulatory market liberal Coalition Government. It identifies the distinguishing characteristics of the national equity policy, planning and reporting framework put into place by Australian Labor Governments in the first of these periods (mid 1980s-mid 1990s). The second and abruptly concluded period is significant in terms of the evaluation it provides of the achievements of that framework and the elaboration of the principles, policy and procedures required to entrench progress over the longer term. The paper goes on to identify what remains of that framework in the third and contemporary era, given that the policies of the current conservative Coalition Government have brought about changes in higher education funding and policy directions which threaten to reverse what progress had been made in the two earlier periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments in the UK and many other countries have long sought to promote the diversity of their higher education institutions. However, diversity is hard to define, harder to measure and even more difficult to compare between countries. Most empirical analyses of the diversity of higher education systems use categorical variables, which shape the extent of diversity found. This study examines continuous variables of institutions' enrolment size and proportions of postgraduate, fulltime and international students to find the extent of variation amongst doctoral granting and all higher education institutions in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia. The study finds that there is less variety amongst all higher education institutions in the United Kingdom than in Australia, which in turn has much less variety than the United States. The paper argues that the extent of government involvement in higher education is not so important for institutional variety as the form that it takes. More tentatively, the paper suggests that the more limited the range of institutions for which government funding is available the stronger government involvement is needed to have variety among the limited range of institutions for which government financial support is available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue expands the scope of a panel presentation at the Society for Research into Higher Education Annual Conference 2019 and makes two identified contributions to the field. First, drawing from existing literature, this introductory paper proposes three categorisations of employability as: outcomes approach, process approach and conceptual approaches. This moves beyond normative conceptualisation of employability from mostly the outcomes approach. The applicability of the categorisation is further enumerated by the diversity of contributions in this special issue that highlights (a) the complexity in the field and (b) the interrelatedness of the categories. Second, the special issue puts together a rarely combined collection of global perspectives on conceptualisations of employability, and insights from research on little studied groups in Western and non-Western contexts (the UK, Portugal, Australia, the Indo-Pacific Region, Germany, Kenya and Kazakhstan). The papers, therefore, illustrate the need to widen our scope of understanding employability beyond current dominant perspectives. The broadening that is required in employability discourses is further needed in view of unprecedented disruption brought on higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic. This suggests the need to rethink our conceptualisations of employability amidst uncertainty and potential disruption to the future of work.

This paper adds to earlier reviews by the author of the changing roles and identities of contemporary professional staff in UK higher education, and builds on a categorisation of professional staff identities as having bounded, cross-boundary and unbounded characteristics. Drawing on a study of 54 professional managers in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States, it describes a further category of blended professionals, who have mixed backgrounds and portfolios, comprising elements of both professional and academic activity. The paper goes on to introduce the concept of third space as an emergent territory between academic and professional domains, which is colonised primarily by less bounded forms of professional. The implications of these developments for institutions and for individuals are considered, and some international comparisons drawn. Finally, it is suggested that third space working may be indicative of future trends in professional identities, which may increasingly coalesce with those of academic colleagues who undertake project- and management-oriented roles, so that new forms of third space professional are likely to continue to emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the positioning of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) outreach programmes within universities' operations. Though universities in many respects form a rather homogenous international community, there is wide diversity in regard to the provision of STEM outreach by different institutions. To explain this diversity, a conceptual framework was developed by using the Theory of Legitimacy as an organising concept. The framework considers two opposing scenarios that form a continuum between them, namely: 'top-down' initiative by the university governance versus 'bottom-up' grass-roots initiative. Using the Theory of Legitimacy, internal and external outreach relationships are characterised and explained under the two scenarios. The framework was applied to two settings chosen due to their essential differences in outreach provision, namely, Australia and Israel. The differences that were found in internal and external legitimacy provide a useful lens for examining the low-performing, fragile system in Australia as compared with the high-performing, thriving system in Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The restructuring of the Australian labour market decreased demand for low-skilled workers and increased demand for highly skilled workers and professionals further strengthening the relationship between educational and occupational attainment. To satisfy the demand for highly educated workers, the government reorganised the higher education sector increasing the number of universities and trebling the number of places for domestic undergraduate students. Analysing data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, this paper examines the association between parents' education and the likelihood of graduating from university for six birth cohorts of Australians. Overall, the findings suggest that although the expansion of the higher education sector in Australia provided alternative pathways into university, differences in educational attainment, on both quantitative and qualitative dimensions, persist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some universities rely on their élitism as one mechanism to attract and retain talented faculty. This paper examines two groups of élite and non-élite universities and the mediating effect that work engagement has on affective commitment and intention to quit. Findings indicate partial support for the mediating effect of work engagement in the non-élite group but no support in the élite university group. The implications of these diverse results are posed for the management of academics in élite and non-élite universities, suggesting that a 'one size fits all approach' to performance outcomes does not always fit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to assess and conceptualise the effects of new managerialism-related organisational reforms in three Australian public universities on technical, administrative and clerical support staff job stressors and job satisfaction. Using a mixed method approach consisting of a quantitative core component and qualitative supplementary component it was found that six different types of stressors were evident: time, information; supervisory; work environment; staffing and pay; and career. Path analysis showed that these stressors were closely connected to reduced job satisfaction, which could be ameliorated by employee participation, improved communication and work-related social support. However, the qualitative analysis suggested that the prevailing climate of managerialism was not conducive to such improvements. It is concluded that while appropriate human-resource management strategies have the potential to prevent the worst consequences of change, there is some doubt about the ability of university managers, captured by new managerialism, to create and implement such an approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education in Germany and Australia is being subject to pressures of market forces, internationalisation and financial constraints. This had led to both systems experiencing significant crisis and change over the past 20 years. In this paper, frame analysis is used to compare the changing policies in each nation and examine the extent to which the landscapes of each system have been transformed. It is found that higher education policy in both nations underwent significant change in the late 1980s and again in the early 2000s, impacting on system structures and institutional forms. There is now evidence of further change occurring in both nations that may mark a transition to a ‘post-public era’ in higher education. This analysis reveals a degree of convergence in the neo-liberal policy trajectories of both nations but differences in the rate and nature of the transitions taking place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dual sector universities (or duals) are a growing international phenomenon that cut across the divide that typically exists in post-secondary education. Duals combine ‘further’ and ‘higher’ education within a single institution providing enhanced opportunities for student transition between post-secondary sectors. This paper reports the results of an international survey of duals in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK. The results indicate that duals operate divergent operational models in managing the structural challenges of cross-sector education characterised as unitary and binary. Many duals contend that state and provincial government regulation militates against the integration of structures, processes and human resources within a dual sector context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article undertakes a feminist critique of the restructuring of the modern university in Australia. It considers the interaction of the processes of globalisation, corporatisation (through the twin strategies of marketisation and managerialism) and the social relations of gender, and their implication for gender equity work in the academy. The paper locates the reform of Australian universities within their Western context, and considers the gendered effects of the new disciplinary technologies of quality assurance and online learning on the position of women academics. It concludes with some comments about the shift in language from equity to diversity which has accompanied corporatisation, and how this has effectively coopted women’s intellectual labour to do the work of the entrepreneurial university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Limited scholarly work has been conducted on obtaining equal opportunities to participate in employability-related programmes by international students while studying in Australia. Drawing on a qualitative study, 20 South Asian postgraduates were interviewed to explore their experiences in accessing employability-related programmes. Based on the findings, South Asian graduates have experienced unequal opportunities in accessing employability-related programmes as postgraduate international students in Australia. They are disadvantaged by generic career advice and resume assistance offered by their university career office, and companies invited to university career fairs offer internships, placements or graduate programme opportunities mostly to domestic students. As a result, South Asian graduates were unable to gain employment in their field of studies. South Asian graduates have also offered several useful recommendations to facilitate more equal chances of developing employability and thereby gaining successful employment in Australia. These include partnerships with companies in providing employment opportunities, diversification of university career office roles, and establishing connections with alumni. The paper also discusses implications for Australian higher education institutions and higher education policy and practice in Australia.

Higher education's rapid expansion is paired with growing social expectations of its benefits and concern on its teaching quality. In response to these, institutional/national surveys based on an array of theories are widely used in universities for quality assurance, enhancement, and benchmarking. This paper reviews three major types of instruments used for such purposes, including two distinct schools of theory that have guided the development of such assessment in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom and then spread to the other parts of the world. The theories shaping the development of the two instruments, the dimensions assessed, and the challenges and criticisms involved when using such instruments for quality assurance are each discussed. This review concludes with a call for comparisons of different lines of research in this area, discussions on student learning experience that include more diverse characterizations of student experience across different educational contexts, development of tools to enable distributed leadership among teachers, and encouragement of students as partners for quality enhancement in higher education.

Governments in the UK and many other countries have long sought to promote the diversity of their higher education institutions. However, diversity is hard to define, harder to measure and even more difficult to compare between countries. Most empirical analyses of the diversity of higher education systems use categorical variables, which shape the extent of diversity found. This study examines continuous variables of institutions' enrolment size and proportions of postgraduate, fulltime and international students to find the extent of variation amongst doctoral granting and all higher education institutions in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia. The study finds that there is less variety amongst all higher education institutions in the United Kingdom than in Australia, which in turn has much less variety than the United States. The paper argues that the extent of government involvement in higher education is not so important for institutional variety as the form that it takes. More tentatively, the paper suggests that the more limited the range of institutions for which government funding is available the stronger government involvement is needed to have variety among the limited range of institutions for which government financial support is available.

In an earlier paper, Slee and Keenan demonstrated that it was possible for tertiary education institutions to design culturally responsive assessment procedures that complied with standardised assessment policy. The authors' paper described "Growing Our Own," an initiative between Charles Darwin University and Northern Territory Catholic Education, which in 2009 began preparing "in situ" Indigenous teacher assistants for teacher qualification in very remote schools in the Northern Territory, Australia. The paper demonstrated that the university assessment policy accommodated Indigenous learning, reflecting students' culture, remote learning context, world experience, primary language, family and community values and entry-level competencies. This article is a systemic response to recommendations arising from a recent external evaluation of "Growing Our Own" and seeks to demonstrate how the project's approaches meet university assessment rules yet fit within a culturally valid framework.

This paper adds to earlier reviews by the author of the changing roles and identities of contemporary professional staff in UK higher education, and builds on a categorisation of professional staff identities as having "bounded", "cross-boundary" and "unbounded" characteristics. Drawing on a study of 54 professional managers in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States, it describes a further category of 'blended professionals", who have mixed backgrounds and portfolios, comprising elements of both professional and academic activity. The paper goes on to introduce the concept of "third space" as an emergent territory between academic and professional domains, which is colonised primarily by less "bounded" forms of professional. The implications of these developments for institutions and for individuals are considered, and some international comparisons drawn. Finally, it is suggested that "third space" working may be indicative of future trends in professional identities, which may increasingly coalesce with those of academic colleagues who undertake project- and management-oriented roles, so that new forms of "third space" professional are likely to continue to emerge.

Vocational education provides an educational but not a social ladder of opportunity to Australian higher education. The five dual-sector universities with significant enrolments in both vocational and higher education admit about twice the proportion of students transferring from vocational education as other universities. However, since the students in the upper levels of vocational education have a socio-economic composition similar to higher education students, vocational education does not provide a social ladder of opportunity by increasing access by students from a low socio-economic status background. Nevertheless, the article argues for the extension of dual-sector universities and other measures to articulate vocational and higher education and that more needs to be done to improve the representativeness of the upper levels of vocational education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes a metric, the research quality index (RQI), for assessing and tracking university research quality. The RQI is a composite index that encompasses the three main areas of research activity: publications, research grants and higher degree by research activity. The public availability of such an index will also facilitate benchmarking (internally, competitively and generically) by academic units in universities. This has become an important activity in Australia with the proposed introduction of the Research Quality Framework (RQF) as the future research funding mechanism for Australian universities. The RQF is a quality-based system that will replace the existing funding system that is focused on the volume of research output, not quality. Benchmarking, using the RQI, will allow academic units to track their progress towards their quality targets and facilitates internal and competitive benchmarking, allowing academic units to assess the efficacy of their research quality enhancement strategies and policies on an annual basis. The paper illustrates the compilation and operation of the RQI. The RQI is a short-term tracking methodology for use in between the cyclical major research quality assessments. With modifications, it is applicable in a wide range of countries.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the changes in Australian higher education policy over the past two decades. Using frame analysis, two shifts in higher education policy are identified. The first is in the late 1980s where the view of higher education as having a broad social, economic and cultural role was changed to one that emphasised expansion, marketisation and competition. The second is currently taking place in which universities are becoming seen as business competitors in a global higher education market, and as such, privatisation and deregulation are centrally important. This paper demonstrates the usefulness of frame analysis as a way of examining the systemic effects of policy decisions in a way that draws together and uncovers how the various and complex forces of government policies and broader social and economic events combine to create the difficult terrain through which universities must now plot a course.

For the past forty years, institutional mergers have been a major and controversial theme in Australian higher education. Three main phases of major mergers are reviewed with particular attention being paid to reasons for merger, success factors, and longer term results. While merger experiences have often been traumatic for participants and participating institutions, on balance the longer term results have been positive, producing a university system today comprising relatively large and comprehensive institutions, well suited to compete in the new internationally competitive environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1939 and 1999, when the Australian population increased from 7 to 19 million, university enrolments rose from 14,236 to 681,870. Until 1974 the most notable changes were the increases in the size of universities and of departments (which encouraged greater specialization), continued increases in research expenditures, in the percentage of postgraduate students, and a gradual decline in collegiality. In 1974 the Commonwealth Government assumed full responsibility for government grants to universities and abolished fees at just that time when growth rates in the economy fell sharply. Government influence on the universities increased, and there were some departures from the no-fees policy for international and postgraduate course-work masters and diploma students. Then in 1988 the Government decided to abolish the distinction between universities and colleges of advanced education, to create through amalgamations a smaller number of much larger universities and to set a specific mission for each university in the interest of economic growth. The Tertiary Education Commission was abolished and the universities dealt directly with the Minister and his Department. The Universities became distinctly more managerial, less collegial and the range of courses and degrees was greatly expanded. There are now legitimate doubts about the quality of some degrees. Student fees came back, but in a way that reduced the financial burden on the government without giving the universities greater freedom. The government sponsored collective bargaining for university staff but as universities were not given the capacity to earn much additional income, increases in salaries increased student/staff ratios and induced a decline in morale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a benefit of the doubt (BoD) approach to assess the research performance of 37 public Australian universities based on data from 2015. The primary activities of Higher Education institutions are teaching and research, but the prestige of a university depends mainly on the results of its research activities. The BoD method is rooted in the data envelopment analysis methodology, which enables the flexible and data-based assignment of weights to aggregated variables. Full weighting flexibility, however, allows zero weights, which can lead to unrealistic results. For this reason, the proposed model has been supplemented with additional weight restrictions. The assessment considers key performance factors: number of publications and citations; number of completed doctoral degrees; amount of research grants; and percentage of science graduates. Unlike earlier research on Australian universities, this study uses the number of publications and citations from the Web of Science database. The results provide a ranking of universities and recommendations for decision makers regarding the direction of future improvement actions for the worst-performing universities.

Australian universities have been actively engaged in transnational education since the 1990s. The challenges of assuring quality have seen a changing regulatory framework increasingly designed to ensure equivalence of standards wherever a course of study is offered and however it is delivered. Transnational Higher Education has grown significantly and the issues that flow from operating across jurisdictions, cultures and contexts have been addressed primarily by institutions themselves in complying with regulation. This article identifies how the Australian quality agency TEQSA (Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency) has revised its Standards Framework to support divergence appropriate to local culture and context, while assuring quality provision across the student life cycle. It concludes that the maturity of the quality agency may not yet reflect the provision of transnational education in practice. The article identifies a need for significant further research so that theory and practice can reflect opportunities to better serve students in a mature quality environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the idea of the university from the first-in-family enabling students' perspective. It provides an overview of the current crisis of meaning in scholarly commentary that points to a spectrum of meanings about the university. This spectrum ranges from the ancient imaginary of the monastic university as "ivory tower" to the instrumental idea of the entrepreneurial university. The analysis then reports on the idea of the university in over 40 interviews and surveys of first-in-family enabling students who attended two large regional Australian universities in 2014. Their metaphorical understandings of the university constitute a powerful imaginary about what a university is and can do for individuals and the wider society. For many, the resolution of the individualistic passion for knowledge of "ivory tower" studies and the commitment to the social and economic usefulness of the fully engaged entrepreneurial university can be found in the pursuit of the passionate career.

This paper addresses the positioning of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) outreach programmes within universities' operations. Though universities in many respects form a rather homogenous international community, there is wide diversity in regard to the provision of STEM outreach by different institutions. To explain this diversity, a conceptual framework was developed by using the Theory of Legitimacy as an organising concept. The framework considers two opposing scenarios that form a continuum between them, namely: "top-down" initiative by the university governance "versus" "bottom-up" grass-roots initiative. Using the Theory of Legitimacy, internal and external outreach relationships are characterised and explained under the two scenarios. The framework was applied to two settings chosen due to their essential differences in outreach provision, namely, Australia and Israel. The differences that were found in internal and external legitimacy provide a useful lens for examining the low-performing, fragile system in Australia as compared with the high-performing, thriving system in Israel.

The last 20 years have brought major workload changes for academics globally, with the feeling that an academic in today's global higher education industry has three full-time jobs (research, teaching and service). Following recent Government reforms, the Australian higher education sector has been forced to redefine itself in a more commercial context. The need to research workloads over time is recommended owing to changes as a result of growth, internationalisation and increasing competition. This longitudinal study comprises 5 years of observable teaching and research workloads capturing the teaching and research output of more than 85 individuals in two Australian university business faculties. Our results reinforce the axiom "publish or perish" as it is the number of research papers published which increases the chances of internal promotion. Other observed workload characteristics, number of courses taught, number of students, research income and the number of research grants awarded, did not increase the likelihood of internal promotion. Suggestions for policy reforms and further research are identified.

The restructuring of the Australian labour market decreased demand for low-skilled workers and increased demand for highly skilled workers and professionals further strengthening the relationship between educational and occupational attainment. To satisfy the demand for highly educated workers, the government reorganised the higher education sector increasing the number of universities and trebling the number of places for domestic undergraduate students. Analysing data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, this paper examines the association between parents' education and the likelihood of graduating from university for six birth cohorts of Australians. Overall, the findings suggest that although the expansion of the higher education sector in Australia provided alternative pathways into university, differences in educational attainment, on both quantitative and qualitative dimensions, persist.

The debate in the UK about the continued existence of the honours degree classification led to a survey of the assessment regulations in 35 varied higher education institutions. This revealed considerable variation in the way in which honours degree classifications are determined, and also in the handling of weak performances by students. Such variability, deriving from a system in which institutional autonomy is to the fore, raises a question about equitability in the treatment of students. A brief allusion is made to the variability in assessment regulations in the US and Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some universities rely on their élitism as one mechanism to attract and retain talented faculty. This paper examines two groups of élite and non-élite universities and the mediating effect that work engagement has on affective commitment and intention to quit. Findings indicate partial support for the mediating effect of work engagement in the non-élite group but no support in the élite university group. The implications of these diverse results are posed for the management of academics in élite and non-élite universities, suggesting that a "one size fits all approach" to performance outcomes does not always fit.

While the practice of university entrepreneurship has become an increasingly popular field of study across the globe (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997; Clark, 1998; Marginson & Considine, 2000), few substantive studies have considered international education from this perspective. Alongside other institutions of higher education in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, Australian universities have increasingly pursued ambitious strategies to participate in the booming international education sector. Undertaking a mixture of strategies from the traditional to the highly innovative, Australia's universities have aggressively and often creatively marketed their offerings in the international education market, and the sector now represents Australia's eighth largest export and third largest services export. In order to assist in the development of an understanding of how Australia's universities have moved from government dependence to entrepreneurialism, this study focuses in particular on the management of international education as a key dimension of this trend. While a general overview of the study's findings is presented elsewhere (Poole, forthcoming), this article seeks to contrast the management strategies, structures and systems of two universities in the study. A highly international metropolitan university recognized around the world as a leader in international education is compared with a smaller, regional institution in terms of the relative sophistication and professionalism of strategic management practices and processes. The implications of the differences arising between the institutions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to assess and conceptualise the effects of new managerialism-related organisational reforms in three Australian public universities on technical, administrative and clerical support staff job stressors and job satisfaction. Using a mixed method approach consisting of a quantitative core component and qualitative supplementary component it was found that six different types of stressors were evident: time, information; supervisory; work environment; staffing and pay; and career. Path analysis showed that these stressors were closely connected to reduced job satisfaction, which could be ameliorated by employee participation, improved communication and work-related social support. However, the qualitative analysis suggested that the prevailing climate of managerialism was not conducive to such improvements. It is concluded that while appropriate human-resource management strategies have the potential to prevent the worst consequences of change, there is some doubt about the ability of university managers, captured by new managerialism, to create and implement such an approach. (Contains 1 figure and 3 tables.)

Higher education in Germany and Australia is being subject to pressures of market forces, internationalisation and financial constraints. This had led to both systems experiencing significant crisis and change over the past 20 years. In this paper, frame analysis is used to compare the changing policies in each nation and examine the extent to which the landscapes of each system have been transformed. It is found that higher education policy in both nations underwent significant change in the late 1980s and again in the early 2000s, impacting on system structures and institutional forms. There is now evidence of further change occurring in both nations that may mark a transition to a "post-public era" in higher education. This analysis reveals a degree of convergence in the neo-liberal policy trajectories of both nations but differences in the rate and nature of the transitions taking place.

Dual sector universities (or duals) are a growing international phenomenon that cut across the divide that typically exists in post-secondary education. Duals combine "further" and "higher" education within a single institution providing enhanced opportunities for student transition between post-secondary sectors. This paper reports the results of an international survey of duals in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK. The results indicate that duals operate divergent operational models in managing the structural challenges of cross-sector education characterised as unitary and binary. Many duals contend that state and provincial government regulation militates against the integration of structures, processes and human resources within a dual sector context.