Former federal minister John Dawkins' reforms to higher education are “out of date”, as he freely admitted last year in a letter to the Group of Eight universities. However, as associate professor Julia Horne, university historian at the University of ...

The Council of Private Higher Education has lobbied Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to cut the 25 per cent loan fee imposed on students who enrol in these institutions, painting the issue as a matter of equity. In his letter, COPHE ...

Federal Labor has flagged further reforms to increase flexibility in the demand-driven system of university funding if it comes to power at the next election. Addressing the Universities Australia conference in Canberra on Thursday 2 March 2017, shadow education minister ...

The decision handed down by the Fair Work Commission (FWC) to reduce Sunday and public holiday penalty rates is likely to hurt the hip pocket of students, many of whom work in the industries affected. On Thursday 23 February 2017, ...

Restoring the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program and including sub-degree loans in the demand-driven system are two of the priorities for the Innovative Research Universities (IRU) group’s new chair, professor Colin Stirling. This puts the IRU – a network ...

The $3.7 billion cut to the Education Investment Fund (EIF), announced in December last year, is unlikely to go ahead as it must pass through a hurdle unanticipated by the Coalition – the Senate. The $3.7 billion was meant to ...

The incoming chair of Group of Eight has indicated he would like to see the funding distortions affecting disciplines like veterinary science, medicine, agriculture and dentistry to be corrected. Professor Peter Høj, who is also vice-chancellor of the University of ...

Introducing a 15 per cent fee for HELP loans is preferable to the federal government choosing to cripple the demand-driven system, the Grattan Institute has said. Andrew Norton, Grattan's higher-education program director, recently completed a report that argues for a ...

Deciding on a collective noun for a group of chancellors was one of the pressing issues discussed at the recent Australian Financial Review Higher Education Summit. Eventually, Monash University chancellor Simon McKeon, University of Queensland chancellor Peter Varghese, La Trobe ...

With the University of Sydney strengthening its ties with China, as demonstrated by the opening of its first Chinese address at the beginning of November, USYD’s vice-chancellor has sought to play down concerns that Chinese soft power could be influencing ...