Search

The paper examines 2 recent Australian government issues papers on higher education and research policy, indicating areas both of concern and opportunity for Australian higher education providers in theology and their research efforts. The paper then offers suggestions as to how providers of theological education might position themselves as research institutions in the emerging higher education environment in Australia, and how educational policymakers might regard research in the theological sector of Australian higher education. This paper is directed, within the new research environment in Australia, to 2 groups of readers: those concerned with the administration of theological institutions, and those whose responsibility it is to draft policy with regard to research funding. To the theological institutions I want to say: (1) become more familiar with the emerging higher education culture, especially as it affects research, and pay attention to ensuring your institution's own quality assurance controls; (2) avoid being sidelined in the new environment, seek strategic partnerships with other institutions with a similar vision and mission to your own; and (3) attempt to state clearly the role and value of your own discipline in the Australia of the 21st Century. To the policymakers I say: recognise the value of research done, often in small private but not‐for‐profit institutions, in the theological and biblical disciplines. Recognise it as genuine research. Listen to the particular needs of these institutions, which may be quite different from larger institutions with more attention‐grabbing research profiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis into the global phenomenon known as credential/qualification fraud, a $US 1 billion dollar ‘cottage’ industry which has tainted higher education in Australia, and does not appear to be abating. The study is developed through a conceptual framework of credentialism, degree creep and screening theory, which the author theorises spawns the demand for degree qualifications, both legitimate and ‘less‐than‐wonderful’ along continuums of legitimacy and acceptability. The paper suggests several key resources and tools that can be used by administrators of universities, non‐self accrediting higher education providers and industry human resource managers. The paper concludes by reviewing key‐global practices currently employed as proactive measures to minimise credential fraud, moving towards a best practice framework for Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of internationalisation on academic work within a department of management in a large Australian university. It has been argued elsewhere that internationalisation strategies have transformed the nature and demands of academic work through the massification and commodification of educational curricula. Drawing on one of our university's projects to develop and deliver internationalised common curricula to students in Asia, South Africa and Australia we contend that internationalisation strategies have contributed to what we identify as the "Taylorisation" of teaching and learning. Frederick Taylor's principles of scientific management, exemplified by the growing trend towards standardisation of delivery and curricula, are readily identified in the pedagogical processes and expected academic practice in higher education. This paper draws on the work of others who highlight the complexity of internationalisation issues in the development and delivery of curricula and suggests a comprehensive programme of internationalisation that more effectively addresses the economic and social demands of the current global competitive environment. We argue for a programme of internationalisation that is counter-hegemonic, ongoing, comprehensive, multifaceted and integrated and we offer some practical suggestions to redefine the principles and practices of internationalisation within an Australian university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The changed dynamic between tertiary students and universities has resulted in much discussion about consumer rights and obligations. Whilst some consider the change from students to clients to be simply an accurate reflection of changing times, others believe the trend to be a covert blueprint for radical change imposed by forces external to the academy. In either case, the discussion is more concerned with rights, responsibilities and obligations rather than pedagogic issues. With the shift in focus comes the possibility of consumer-based litigation based upon contractual obligations. To some extent, the success of such litigation will be based upon legalistic interpretations of the marketing rhetoric universities use to describe their product. As public statements, such rhetoric is part of the contract into which students enter with universities. This paper considers one of the ways in which universities have responded to the potential of being sued by unsatisfied customers: a tempering of hyperbole in their advertising. But how does the implication of such a strategy impact upon the perceived or actual standards of teaching? The paper begins with a brief overview of how universities have responded to students recasting themselves as customers, with the concomitant demands for satisfaction. It follows with a consideration of how these trends have become manifest in Australia. The focus narrows to consider how one university has responded to the changing environment, and then uses the example of one faculty within that university to exemplify the change in strategy. Finally, the paper considers the potential future relevance of that response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports issues arising from a longitudinal study of 1991 to 2002 Australian higher education equity data. The national equity framework uses an empirical performance indicator system to monitor access, participation, success and retention of six designated equity groups. The paper examines three possible approaches for defining new groups. It finds no support for an exploratory empirical approach, or for an approach based on definitions of multiple disadvantage, but supports an approach which takes account of secondary school attendance. A case is made for a more sophisticated and contextualised approach to national reporting, to increase the responsiveness and productivity of the policy framework. While the benefits of a national equity policy framework are acknowledged, the paper proposes possibilities for new approaches to monitoring and measuring disadvantage in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Major restructuring to the Australian higher education sector was initiated in 1988 with the dismantling of the previous binary system and the introduction of the unified national system. Since this time the sector has been the subject of continuous review by government and the policy and funding framework for higher education research in particular has undergone a number of changes. After providing contextual information regarding Australia and its R&D effort, this paper examines a number of major reviews that have impacted on the higher education sector. Particular attention is directed to identifying changes in both policy and funding environment. It is argued that the crisis facing Australian universities is the result of not only inadequate funding but also an over-reliance by government on the market steering of the sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores leadership styles and gender in higher education (HE) by examining representation of female professors in Australian and Turkish universities and identifying barriers to achieving seniority. The paper explores factors, including leadership styles, which explain the higher representation of female professors in Turkey, despite legislative frameworks and strategies in Australia to improve representation of senior women. It then explores barriers to women's career advancement, including the difficult management culture, low morale, informal processes in appointment and promotion, and lack of training for management roles in Australia, and conflict between career and family roles in Turkey. Finally, the paper identifies the impact of strategic choices on leadership styles and women's career advancement. This research questions the impact of equal employment opportunity and affirmative action frameworks on women's representation as professors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the examination procedures and protocols for the DBA degree through a survey of universities offering the degree in Australia. The findings indicate general consistency among institutions in understanding the differences between a DBA and PhD, and a relatively uniform acceptance of key criteria for assessment of the DBA. However, in some instances the information provided to examiners of DBA theses was either unavailable or limited, or did not articulate clearly the differences between a DBA and PhD and how these differences are to be addressed when examining a DBA thesis. A framework is provided for assisting potential examiners of DBA theses and graduate schools or business faculties in their drafting of DBA examination guidelines in order to obtain a level of consistency in DBA examination procedures and protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The higher education sector operates in an increasingly complex global environment that is placing it under considerable stress and resulting in widespread change to the operating context and leadership of higher education institutions. The outcome has been the increased likelihood of conflict between academics and senior leaders, presaging the need for more engaged and broader approach to leadership. Based on empirical research into the Australian university sector, this paper contends that a distributed leadership (DL) approach is appropriate for the higher education sector and offers value for supporting effective change. In acknowledging the paradigm change needed to implement a DL approach successfully, the authors present a process model to underpin the shift from a leader-centric to a DL approach. The Sustainable Enabling and Evaluating Reflective DL change process model presents a synthesis of how a systemic change to DL in higher education can occur. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper identifies common timetabling issues and options as experienced in Australian universities, and develops a rationale to inform management decisions on a suitable system and the associated policies, procedures, management structure and resources at the University of Newcastle, to enable more effective timetabling in line with the needs of its students and staff, and the organisation. To strive for effective management and production of timetabling there are key elements to consider. These are policy and process; technology; people including culture; and communication. The change has to be managed and led, and each stage considered and evaluated. The literature and responses to the survey that was sent to a number of universities to complete, provided an overview of what is effective at a number of institutions in terms of a timetabling system, policy, procedures, structure and resources. It also identified key issues and how they were resolved, worked around or are still being tackled at various universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been widely acknowledged that an important indicator of a successful sojourn for international students is social integration into the host community. Despite seemingly regular opportunities to integrate, many international students report that their interactions with local residents remain superficial. The Community Connections programme at The University of Newcastle in Australia has aimed to address this issue over the past 13 years by engaging a broad range of volunteers from the host community to welcome, befriend, and support international students. In 2009, the opportunity arose to conduct a small pilot project within Community Connections, the aim of which was to focus specifically on facilitating relationships between international and domestic students. Thirty domestic students and a similar number of international students volunteered to participate in this pilot project. This paper describes the steps involved to develop this project, outlines the evaluation process, and discusses the impact of participation in the programme on student experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A university's key resource is its staff, both academic and general. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the work of general staff. Yet general staff comprise more than half the workforce in Australian universities and a more rigorous understanding of the contribution of general staff towards the strategic goals of their institutions has the potential to enhance their institutions' organisational sustainability. Universities have multiple and diverse stakeholders, but students are the key stakeholders in universities' core business of learning and teaching. Consequently, the interaction of general staff with students has potential to have an impact on the sustainability of an institution. This paper describes a preliminary study into how general staff contribute to student outcomes. A meta-study by Prebble et al. derived 13 propositions for support of student outcomes that focused on the contribution by academic staff and Middleton subsequently surmised that general staff are also central to those outcomes. This study uses the Delphi method to test Middleton's assertion by engaging general staff in ranking the propositions in terms of their contribution to student outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper clusters and ranks the research performance of 36 Australian universities according to their research performance over the period of 1998–2002. Research performance is measured according to audited numbers of Ph.D. completions and publications, and research grants income (in accordance with rules established by the Department of Education, Science and Training), and analysed in both total and per academic staff terms. Hierarchical cluster analysis supports a binary division between 15 higher‐performing and 22 lower‐performing universities, with the specification in per academic staff terms identifying the self‐designated research intensive Group of Seven universities, plus several others in the better‐performing group. The higher‐performing group includes the 7 research‐intensive Group of Eight universities examined. Factor analysis indicates that the top three research performers in terms of total research performance are the Universities of Melbourne, Sydney, and Queensland, while the top 3 in terms of per capita academic staff are the Universities of Melbourne, Adelaide, and Western Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines a recent book about the University of Melbourne. It uses this as a case study to explore traditional conceptions of the university in the Western tradition, and aspects of the Australian debate about government policies and institutional strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian universities, like their counterparts in most Western countries, have suffered a dramatic reduction in the level of public funding in recent years. One issue on the horizon that is of relevance to students and universities is the latter's exposure to National Competition Policy and, more specifically, the Trade Practices Act. Recent changes to universities, the student experience and the law present new legal options for student redress and new liabilities for universities and individual staff. In this paper, I ask whether appealing to the Trade Practices Act is an appropriate strategy for responding to "deregulation" of universities, funding cuts and the associated decline in the capacity of universities to deliver quality education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional and rural students in Australia face unique challenges when aspiring to higher education. These challenges reflect systematic disadvantage experienced by rural and regional populations as a whole. In an effort to redress these inequities, and aided by the Australian Government’s Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program (HEPPP), the University of Canberra’s flagshipAspire UCSchools Outreach Program involves multiple in-school sessions for students in years 7–10. This article presents findings from the delivery of this program to nearly 3000 students in 2012. Increased considerations of post-school study and work options were seen across all year levels and across all options, with greatest increases evident for university aspirations, and by Year 10 students. Moreover, girls exhibited greater positive changes in post-program aspirations than did boys. The program’s success is attributed to its depth and intensity and the concomitant recognition of the distinctive nature of rural and regional communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the range of financial reporting models available for use in the Australian higher education sector, the possible application of activity-based costing (ABC) in faculties and the eventual rejection of ABC in favour of a more qualitative model designed specifically for use in one institution, in a particular Faculty. The decision not to implement ABC in the Faculty is examined, looking to the overall purpose and outcomes of Faculty activities. The broader question will be asked, what kinds of obstacles are likely to sound the death knell for ABC use in universities? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The research interrogates the connections between information and communication technologies' (ICTs') use and change processes in Australian higher education. The empirical investigation focuses simultaneously on three domains of practice: the educational, the technological and the organizational, with a particular interest in their overlaps and intersections. There were 15 case studies, covering three discipline clusters (Medicine/Health Sciences, Economics and Business, English/Cultural Studies/Communications) in each of five different types of Australian university. The main research technique was semi-structured interviews with academic, executive and administrative staff, supplemented by focus groups with students and the study of curriculum and strategy documents. The main findings of the study were that the most effective use of ICTs in universities occurs when educational and organizational objectives are in harmony; when ICTs innovations are dominated by corporatist objectives at the expense of pedagogical objectives, benefits are limited and tensions evident; and pedagogical initiatives by discipline-based ICTs 'champions' require central support if they are to add value on a sustained basis. The optimal conditions for ICTs innovations in teaching and learning are disciplinary independence and capacity, conditions present in only one of the 15 case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been much recent debate, both in the media and in academic journals, as to the meaning of the term university. This article explores the legal meaning of the term, and the historical contingencies which have surrounded various understandings of the term. It compares the structure of the Eleemosynary Corporation—the individual colleges in Oxford and Cambridge in the United Kingdom, from which many of our conceptions of a “real” university arise—with the realities of the statutory university in the United Kingdom and Australia. It concludes that the term, although with a loaded legal and institutional meaning, is bereft of any inherent meaning conveying function, and that a debate on the role and independence of the university must be policy‐oriented but not reliant on the historical meaning of the word. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines student perspectives on their deferral and withdrawal from arts courses at Monash University during 2000. The research highlights a commonly unacknowledged difference between students in first semester and in second semester: it suggests that temporary and even permanent withdrawal in the early part of the academic year is most often a positive and hopeful strategy on the part of students who regard their problems as largely financial and external, rather than institutional, while students who stay into second semester, and attempt to battle on in the midst of significant distractions, often become more disillusioned with the course, the institution, and university study. The results have potentially significant implications for academic and administrative staff at universities, especially in terms of the need to support students' exit decisions and the importance of focusing on those problems--often related to student poverty and overcommitment to part-time work--that pull students away from their courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In building capacity in research commercialisation and science-based entrepreneurship, Australia has adopted neither the Swedish top-down approach depending on government initiative, nor the American bottom-up approach depending on incentive systems related to university ownership of intellectual property and a highly competitive and entrepreneurial university environment. Instead, Australia has used a combination of government and university initiatives and support mechanisms. While significant progress has been made, there is some measure of disagreement about how Australia's performance compares with that of other industrialised countries, and certainly in many cases income generation for commercialisation to date is less than anticipated. While both Commonwealth and state governments have well-funded programmes to support innovation and commercialisation, there is reason for concern about the multiplicity of programmes and departments involved, about overall policy coherence, and whether business firms rather than universities are the main beneficiaries. University efforts generally have been assisted by their ownership of intellectual property and pressures towards increased entrepreneurial activities. But, with declining Commonwealth operating grants, many universities find difficulty in funding strong research commercialisation capacity without substantial cash flow from licensing or spinout companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian government radically altered its methodology for funding research training, starting from the 2002 academic year. Despite the altruistic objectives of the new Research Training Scheme, analysis reveals that a major component of the scheme is flawed, and can produce unintended results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]