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This article surveys available evidence of disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic to Australian university-based research and to the research training pipeline, considering both the long-term implications of this disruption, as well as the disproportionate impacts on higher degree research candidates, early-career researchers and women academics with carer responsibilities. Drawing on existing global and local research studies, media reports, internal institutional documents, policy and advisory documents, data from the Department of Education, Skills and Employment, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Research Council, the article argues that specific targeted management interventions and federal policy changes will be needed for the equitable and sustainable restoration of research capacity in the challenging funding environment beyond 2022.

Suspension centres are a government initiative to help address disruptive student beahviour in NSW government schools. The centres are for students on long suspension from school and have not been formally evaluated. Stakeholders were asked their opinions regarding: what are the best things happening with suspension centres or what should be maintained with suspension centres?; what needs to be improved with suspension centres?; and what evidence is there that suspension centres are meeting the Purpose and Goals as outlined in the Guidelines? Responses revealed that the best things happening or things that should be maintained included that: students were learning skills related to academic activities and behaviour and that suspension centre staff were using appropriate approaches and had good skills in managing students with disruptive behaviour. Things that needed to be improved included: communication and use of suspension centres and that students' schools needed to provide ongoing support for students who were referred to the centres.

The capabilities students need for success during and beyond higher education extend far beyond specific discipline skills to include the development of productive mindsets, the management of life circumstances and the way they relate to others and identify with their profession. The provision of support for these capabilities at university can be both diverse in scope and diffuse in delivery. Consequently, the development of streamlined and integrated evaluation strategies to measure the extent to which these capabilities are being successfully delivered can be challenging. This paper describes how one Australian university used a collaborative process to design an evaluation framework for student learning services. The framework, a first for this university, represents the breadth of student support, including a typology of support for learning: connectedness, mindsets, self-management, professional identity and academic capabilities. These terms, coined as dimensions, form the scaffold of university-wide delivery of support for learning initiatives.