According to Charlie Hales, director at cyber security company Waterstons, CISOs in education environments experience high levels of stress due to institutional resistance to change, coupled with dealing with keeping the huge amounts of data universities store safe.
Australian universities are the fourth most targeted education sector in the world due to the amount of valuable research data they each hold.
Ms Hales said even though CISOs jobs are already high pressure, a lack of cyber culture in some universities are accelerating those pressures and preventing them doing their jobs.
Cybersecurity practices are relatively new in Australia, particularly in the tertiary education sector.
They include introducing new standards and protocols, such as DMARC, or Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance.
DMARC is software that helps prevent spam or phishing content appearing in email inboxes.
Google recently upped its email authentication standards for all gmail users, especially domain owners who send emails to 5000 or more recipients.
Bulk email senders need to have particularly robust protocols, including an up-to-date DMARC policy and a one-click unsubscribe function.
Yahoo and Apple recently rolled out similar requirements, and other companies with email services recommend strong DMARC policies to users.
Proofpoint, a cybersecurity and data consultant, recently found 83 per cent of universities don't have recommended strength DMARC policies, and 24 per cent don't have one at all.
Ms Hales said resistance to other new processes like two-factor authentication, where users have to enter another code from a different device to log in to their accounts, stems from a lack of understanding about data breach prevention processes.
"Other industries are a little bit quicker to build the cyber culture, which a lot of universities are doing at the moment, but still, academics and students are seeing it as not their problem," she explained.
"They're seeing it as an IT problem. So [universities are] having to address that as well as all the cybersecurity worries that they've got at the moment."
When it comes to explaining the value of CISO's work to universities, Ms Hales said it's important that universities remember any change to processes benefits them and their work.
"Imagine if you did all this great research, developed this great product, and someone stole it," she said.
"We're recognising you have amazing work that you've got here, years worth of data in some instances, and you really want to make sure that's protected."
Having dedicated CISOs is a relatively recent change in universities, and many haven't worked in universities before.
"Historically they didn't even have them, but now they've then tried to do them in-house, some universities, but others have recruited experts externally that have got a lot of the cybersecurity experience, but they don't have the experience of working in higher education or universities in particular.
"To get everything across all the business units in a higher education institution is quite hard.
"[CISOs] need to get the business unit leaders to drive this for them. Because if it comes from them, there's less resistance from the other areas in the university."
]]>How can university leaders promote innovation and growth in a complex multicultural settings while addressing social change with evolving forms of cultural, social and emotional intelligence?
Professor Ghassan Aouad is a Muslim leader and chancellor of Abu Dhabi University in the United Arab Emirates. Abu Dhabi University is one of the UAE's leading universities, with over 7000 students of 100 different nationalities.
He talks to HEDx's Martin Betts and Professor Christy Collis of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) about his leadership style.
Prior to taking up his role at Abu Dhabi University, Professor Ghassan Aouad worked at universities across the UK and was president of the University of Wollongong's Dubai campus.
Professor Christy Collis is a counselling researcher and higher education specialist. She is the Queensland treasurer of HERDSA, Australasia's peak professional association for higher education research, and Provost at the Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors.
]]>In this podcast chief executive of Year13 Will Stubley joins Melbourne Business School chief learning innovation officer Dr Nora Koslowski and Martin Betts in the HEDx studio to discuss alternative options to the traditional Year 12 to university pipeline.
With the skills the Australian economy needs changing, how can universities keep up to deliver education that is relevant to those changes?
For instance, assuming all bright young students want to study at university might be outdated, and could be one of the reasons why domestic enrolments are declining.
TAFE and vocational education are being mentioned more often in strategies that aim to improve the skills crisis, and their role will likely be discussed in the Universities Accord Final Report.
The vice-chancellor of Western Sydney University, Barney Glover, will begin his new role as the Commissioner of Jobs and Skills Australia in April (whilst remaining VC of WSU).
His appointment has been criticised by some who question how relevant universities are to the future skills agenda.
The extent of the skills growth needed can't be delivered by universities alone, we discuss how the traditional 'Year 13' expectation might be changing for good.
Will Stubley is the chief executive and co-founder of Year13, a wellbeing and career advice website for young adults. The ed-tech company, that aims to improve the school-to-work transition, was founded after one of Mr Stubley's friends committed suicide due to pressures of finishing school. This tragic event motivated him and his co-founders to grow a business that now helps millions of young Australians plan their careers in a way that best suits them.
Dr Nora Koslowski is the chief learning innovation officer at Melbourne Business School. She is in charge of working with ed-tech startups and industry to power online programs and learning innovations at the school.
]]>The idea was to steer students into courses that would lead to “the jobs of the future” by making some fields (such as history and journalism) more expensive and others (such as nursing, teaching, computer programming and engineering) less expensive.
Fees rose by as much as 117% for some fields and dropped by as much as 59% for others. The government believed this would affect student choices.
Education experts were very critical of scheme. They argue it is not only unfair, it would not work. But to date there have been few studies looking at the evidence.
Our research, with our former student Maxwell Yong, shows the impact of the Job-ready Graduates scheme was modest at best.
Our study looked at student’s preferences when applying for degrees and final enrolments ie what they ended up studying.
We used data from the Universities Admissions Centre, which handles applications for degrees in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.
We looked at more than 725,000 undergraduates applying between 2014 and 2022. This means we had seven years of data before the Job-ready Graduates scheme was introduced, and two years afterwards.
Using various statistical models, we analysed whether students increased their preferences for fields that became cheaper and reduced preferences for fields that became more expensive.
Overall we found the Job-ready Graduates scheme only had a minor impact on course choices.
Just 1.52% of university applicants in our study chose fields they would have not chosen had it not been for the scheme, moving from humanities, arts, law and business to STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) and teaching.
Maths and statistics had the largest drop of student fees (59%) of any field. But only one out of every 2,000 students responded by changing their preference to maths.
Communications, journalism and media studies had the largest increase in fees (117%). But only one out of every 350 students chose not to preference these fields in response.
This is perhaps not surprising. Under HECS-HELP, students do not have to pay university fees up-front. Many students also choose courses based on their passions and interests rather than the amount of the deferred fees.
While we found only modest responses to these large fee changes, this does not mean students are not affected. Because of the reforms, many will accumulate much larger HECS-HELP debts.
For a three-year bachelors degree in journalism, the debt grows from around $20,000 to $43,500. For a mathematics degree, the debt falls from around $28,600 to $11,850. The new difference in debts ($31,650) is more than triple the old difference ($8,600).
Higher debts mean more years of making repayments. Longer repayment times may mean delayed home purchases and starting families.
These reforms overturned 25 years of university fees reflecting the earning prospects of graduates. Those likely to earn more post-graduation (lawyers, doctors, financiers) paid a bit more. Those likely to earn less (arts, nursing, teaching) paid a bit less.
The Albanese government is in the middle of a broad review of the higher education system, including university fees. The Universities Accord review panel is due to hand in a final report in December.
An interim report was highly critical of the Job-ready Graduates scheme, saying it risks “causing long-term and entrenched damage to Australian higher education”.
As a new model is considered, it is important policymakers understand increasing HECS-HELP debts for some and reducing them for others is not going to prompt students into areas the government deems a “priority”.
Jan Kabatek is a research fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne and Michael Coelli is an associate professor at The University of Melbourne
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
]]>A tax, or levy, looks very likely to be a recommendation of the final report of the government’s Universities Accord review due to be released in February, which would lead to it being enacted in next year’s federal budget.
There have been a series of nods, winks, things that those in the know have said, and things they have refused to say, which leads to the conclusion that such a tax is on its way.
And don’t overlook the convenience factor.
Viewed from a strictly electoral point of view, a tax on international students sits at the level of political nirvana. It’s like a cake that gets bigger the more you eat of it.
It would indeed be the government’s magic pudding, pulling in revenue with absolutely no political backlash.
In fact, at this time of rising house prices and high rents and growing fear about high migration levels, taxing international students is a political positive for the Albanese government. It helps fend off opposition attacks on high levels of temporary migration, of which students are a major source, which Liberal leader Peter Dutton is trying to turn into an issue to win the 2025 election.
I was first to report that the international student tax was being considered by the Universities Accord panel before it released its interim report in July. The report recommended it be considered. Then the tax recently won a notable endorsement from Australian National University economist Bruce Chapman, who is the architect of Australia’s much admired HECS student loan system.
Chapman strongly backs the tax saying that it is unlikely to discourage international students – he believes its price elasticity of demand is low – and that the older universities that have enrolled the most international students have benefited enormously from public support for a long time, back to their founding over a century ago.
Chapman also has the ear of Clare, who has declared several times that he is consulting the economist about his higher education changes.
For Clare, a decision to back a tax would be easy. He wants to expand the university system to take in more of the students who currently miss out – those from low socio economic backgrounds, Indigenous communities, and rural and regional areas. He also wants to undo the Morrison government’s university fee system which puts high $16,000 annual fees on some courses – law, humanities, business and social sciences – while others are a quarter as much. He can’t do it without raising more revenue.
International student fees are worth about $10bn a year so the maths shows that a 10 per cent levy would bring in $1bn.
To try to assuage universities and other education providers who enrol international students, the government is likely to promise to spend it in the sector.
Inevitably some universities will lose. Key losers are the big five, which enrol the lion’s share of high-fee-paying Chinese students – Sydney, UNSW, Melbourne, Monash and Queensland. Although if Chapman is right about price elasticity, they might not lose too much.
In fact it’s more likely to be students from poorer countries such as India who will be more sensitive to a tax-induced price rise. This could badly hurt bottom to mid tier universities that have a lower price point and are attractive to students from India and other less wealthy countries.
If independent education providers are also subject to the tax they will be hit hard. It’s less likely that they will see any of the benefits that could come from increased government spending to encourage disadvantaged students to go to university.
One of their industry groups, the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia, is campaigning hard against the tax. It could make Australian education less affordable and damage the country’s reputation, it says.
One thing certain is that such a tax, if introduced, will never go away. And, once there, it can easily be diverted to general revenue and its initial purpose, of funding worthwhile programs in higher education, could be lost.
]]>The ongoing battle of skills shortages and the war for talent has created an environment requiring greater workforce intelligence. It is an environment where workforce strategy and AI converge to meet a need for workforce management optimisation.
This development in human resource management calls for greater alignment of workforce skills development and the skills needs of employers. It has profound implications for governments in managing economies and societies, employers adjusting work practices, and the current and future workforce. Its impact and opportunities for universities and organisations are significant.
For many years, stakeholders in the skills and learning sector have grappled with the “future of work” concept. The term “future of work” is a symbolic expression of the idea that traditional models of work and study will change. The argument has been that Australian tertiary courses, learning environments and partnerships would have to change to meet these evolving models.
There will always be changes to the nature of work and the skills required to participate in it. Employers increasingly need employees with skills, capability, flexibility, and agility… and they’re needed now. We live in a world of lifelong learning, where a university degree doesn’t necessarily equate to a lifelong career. Universities are beginning to offer education to upskill and reskill graduates, but not fast enough to keep up with a constantly evolving workforce.
Employers are no longer just seeking skilled graduates; they’re constantly looking for ways to upskill and reskill their current workforce. The traditional cycle of hiring and firing staff for jobs is a wasteful use of resources that creates wasted potential and infiltrates workplace culture.
This is all happening amid existential challenges to the traditional higher education system. These challenges arise from dips in student demand, sector sentiment, and growing drop-out rates, leaving students with high debt and no degree. The gap between graduate skills and workforce requirements has never been greater. We must prevent the waste of talent and potential by ensuring meaningful work with a mission and purpose that aligns with societal needs.
Reejig is an award-winning workforce intelligence platform that uses AI to align employer skills requirements with the capabilities of an agile workforce. Reejig uses AI to make mobilising, skilling, career pathing, planning and finding talent easier for organisations. This also presents opportunities for Australian universities.
The traditional model of selecting skilled employees based on a single point-in-time degree qualification has passed its expiry date. We now have a workforce that must continuously accumulate skills that can be credentialed and profiled.
What do universities have to do to keep relevant in this environment? A radical response would go far beyond offering micro-credentials and digital badges. There is a broad and fast-growing market for education products and services that serve diverse learners – including those looking to upskill or reskill.
All Australian universities are under pressure, and 75 per cent are in deficit. Universities can gain a competitive advantage by capitalising on opportunities to fill skills gaps. With domestic demand possibly in terminal decline, we could take advantage of the opportunity by not making this change. There are many leadership opportunities to embrace this type of education.
Professor Martin Betts is the founder of HEDx
Dr Nora Koslowski is Learning Innovation Officer at Melbourne Business School
Siobhan Savage is Co-founder and CEO of Reejig
Any First Nation student completing a science, technology, engineering or maths degree (STEM) in an Australian university could apply to be in the first NISA cohort earlier this year.
The successful applicants, selected on academic merit, are:
Due to a timetable clash, Ms Wootton is completing the internship in the near future. The remaining five flew out in August after completing a space bootcamp, training in aerodynamics, robotics, astrophysics and planetary science.
They are currently being mentored by a NASA scientist or engineer at the JPL site, and are participating in space missions, rovers, robotics for unexplored ocean worlds, robot perception control, AI and path planning projects.
WSU engineering student Ted Vanderfeen said his favourite part of the internship so far has been choosing what Aussie music NASA plays as an alarm clock on Mars.
"A tradition here at the [JPL] is to play a wake up song in the operations centre from which the Perseverance Rover [on Mars] is controlled,' he said.
"The rover operates on Martian days (known as Sols), so it will ‘sleep’ during the night, and drive and run experiments during the daytime.
"I got to meet an Australian-born engineer that works within the operations centre, and he asked me to recommend Australian artists to ‘wake up’ the Perseverance Rover and the NASA Engineers in the operations centre."
Mr Vanderfeen said he is keen to bring his knowledge back to Australia to continue a career in the space sector, and learn how to better the lives of people on Earth using technological advancements developed for space.
UoM student Tully Mahr said she applied to the internship because she has always been interested in space exploration, especially at NASA.
"During this internship, I've had the privilege of interacting with many inspiring individuals who are not only experts in their respective fields, but also some of the brightest minds on the planet," Ms Mahr said.
"Engaging in conversations and receiving mentorship from these remarkable people has undoubtedly been the highlight of my experience."
Head of NISA, Wadjak/Ballardong Noongar man and Monash professor Christopher Lawrence said the pioneering cohort is making Australia proud, representing our STEM learning overseas.
"These amazing young Indigenous STEM students will be working on ongoing NASA projects, including ocean exploration vehicles and characterising the microorganisms within the International Space Station," Professor Lawrence said at the NISA announcement.
"It is incredible that we are able to empower our Indigenous youth to learn from the best in the world so we can nurture Australian capabilities in space research, and ultimately it would be great to see NISA produce the world’s first Aboriginal astronaut."
The Australian Space Agency supports the program, hoping to expand Australia's knowledge of First Nations people and build an Indigenous STEM workforce through the program.
"These students are going to be exposed to cutting-edge space missions and will develop knowledge and skills they can bring home to our space and tech community," Mr Palermo said.
"As we continue to grow our space sector here at home, we have an opportunity to do that in a uniquely Australian way by embracing thousands of years of First Nations knowledge in making sense of the land, by looking to the sky."
]]>The 2021 National Student Safety Survey (NSSS) commissioned by peak body Universities Australia (UA) found that since starting their studies, one in 20 students had been sexually assaulted and one in six students had been sexually harassed in a university context.
Until this week, Australian governments had been largely content to leave the issue to the self-regulating university sector to manage.
But last Wednesday the Commonwealth Department of Education released a draft action plan addressing gender-based violence in higher education.
Following a meeting of education ministers from around the country Tuesday, the plan has been released for further consultation and detailed design work.
The draft action plan has been developed in coordination with victim-survivor advocates, student leaders, staff representatives, subject matter experts and university and student accommodation provider representatives.
If implemented as a full package of measures as intended, the action plan will be game-changing for Australia’s university sector, dramatically increasing support for student survivors and demanding greater institutional accountability and transparency.
Student safety advocates have welcomed the draft action plan, saying it “has the potential to be transformative”.
The plan proposes several promising accountability and transparency measures.
Firstly, as has been recently flagged in the media, a new National Student Ombudsman aimed at ensuring students have access to an effective, trauma-informed complaints mechanism.
This new complaints pathway responds to the strident criticism of the national higher education regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), which last month admitted that it had not investigated any of the 39 complaints against university handling of sexual violence matters that it had received since 2017.
A new National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence – detailing requirements around a range of issues including critical incident management, provision of support to students and whole-of-institution data collection and transparent reporting – will provide a consistent framework for universities and residential colleges.
The establishment of a new expert unit in the Department of Education, to lead implementation of the new National Code and undertake targeted compliance activities, would strengthen provider accountability and effectively remove these responsibilities from TEQSA, which has been criticised for its inadequate regulatory efforts in this area.
If adopted, the introduction of robust requirements around increased data transparency and scrutiny, together with annual reporting by higher education providers (through the Commonwealth Minister of Education to the federal Parliament) will be critical.
To date it has been extremely difficult to identify and assess performance across the sector, with research undertaken earlier this year revealing that three-quarters of Australia’s universities were not reporting sexual violence on campus despite their promises to be transparent.
The draft action plan also includes a pledge to “enhance the oversight, standards and accountability of student accommodation providers” regarding their gender-based violence prevention and response efforts, noting that consultation needs to be undertaken with the sector on this point.
The need for greater work here reflects the complex legislative and governance arrangements underpinning Australia’s student accommodation providers.
The more than 220 residential colleges associated with Australian universities include university-owned or administered colleges, university-affiliated institutions, and private entities including both non-profit organisations and commercial businesses, such as UniLodge and Urbanest.
These providers operate under a bewildering array of governance and operational arrangements and are currently subject to substantially less regulatory oversight than comparable accommodation settings, such as boarding houses and aged care facilities.
Many also operate independently of the authority of the universities with which they are associated.
Residential colleges have been identified as a particular site of concern for sexual violence in two national student safety surveys and have been the subject of regular media attention.
Many maintain enduring connections with their alumni communities, some of whom have been vocal in suppressing earlier attempts to tackle college culture, so it is commendable that governments have flagged their intention to finally tackle this difficult but neglected area of regulation.
Consultation on the draft action plan is open until the end of January. For now, it provides an important signal that Australian governments have serious expectations around universities and residential colleges strengthening their responses to gender-based violence.
That government attention is long-overdue.
Dr Allison Henry is a Research Fellow and Associate with the Australian Human Rights Institute at UNSW. She completed her PhD on 'Regulatory responses to sexual assault and sexual harassment in Australian university settings’ in May 2023. Dr Henry was a member of the Commonwealth Department of Education's Gender-based Violence Stakeholder Reference Group.
]]>Universities worldwide are standing at the crossroads of tradition and innovation. Australian and British institutions, many of which are pillars of academic excellence with unique heritage, are having to navigate through the choppy waters of contemporary government policies.
As Australia embarks on a journey towards broadening participation and fostering equity through the Universities Accord, the UK finds itself at a policy impasse; grappling with the sustainability of its tuition-fee system amid contentious debates over student numbers and levelling-up reality.
Yet, regardless of these distinct policy climates, there is a shared push towards embracing the digital age – a transformation that demands not just technological adoption but a reshaping of partnerships and skills agenda. Amid these diverse environments, there is a notable divergence in how leaders are embracing digital strategies and partnerships. This inconsistency persists even as the broader societal and economic forces steer us inexorably towards a far more interconnected, digital future.
Home-grown success
Operating within both the Australian and UK contexts are numerous global tech firms and a plethora of home-grown EdTech providers, among which Online Education Services (OES) stands out for its specialisation in advancing digital delivery through university collaborations.
OES itself is the progeny of a joint initiative between Swinburne University of Technology and SEEK. Swinburne serves as a paradigm of the technical university archetype; it’s known for its robust commitment to digital innovation and alliances with the corporate world. Institutions that fit this paradigm typically sprout from industrially rich regions with working-class roots, carrying a torch for inclusivity and access to education for all.
British innovator
Aston University in Birmingham in UK has a similar pedigree to Swinburne, having started its life as a technical school and evolving into the UK’s first college of advanced technology. It was a pioneer of the concept of the integrated placement year, which is part of why it is now such an entrepreneurial institution.
The Aston University Strategy 2030 was born out of extensive consultations and stakeholder engagement, and focusses on future-readiness that is anchored on technology partnerships. It embraces inclusivity, entrepreneurship and socio-economic transformation as guiding institutional principles for its communities and partnerships. Now unfolding where the first Industrial Revolution began, it reorients the institution towards Industry 4.0, centring on digital technologies and innovation.
The strategy is robustly supported by alliances with major tech corporations like Amazon, Microsoft, Capgemini, and Adobe, with each partnership reflecting the university's strategic focus encapsulated by those three words: inclusive, entrepreneurial and transformational.
Tech collabs
An exemplar of these international tech collaborations is Aston University's Adobe Creative Campus for Midlands initiative. With its Adobe Chair in Digital Literacy, student-led digital innovation hub, and engagement with the new Digital Futures Institute, the initiative seeks to promote digital literacy among all students and support digital innovation in wider university activity.
One of the strongest features of the partnerships with global tech companies arises from access to their own wider networks of corporate partners. Using tech company partnerships as a route to wider inclusion in this way is also how some of the three different elements of the strategy intersect and augment institutional outcomes.
This strategy takes physical shape in the form of the Birmingham innovation precinct adjacent to Aston's campuses, where chance encounters among students, staff, and partners are cultivated on a foundation of tech innovation and strategic partnerships, effectively blurring the boundaries between organisational, digital, strategic, and physical spaces.
Aston has also adopted a university-wide AI platform. This, coupled with the AI-driven creative campus infrastructure, is a testament to the university's commitment to digital innovation. Aston is not merely adapting to the advent of AI and technology but is proactively applying these tools to achieve targeted social impact, embedding this pursuit at the heart of its institutional identity. This integration exemplifies how universities can fully leverage technology and partnerships to foster inclusivity and drive transformation.
Recognizing such a purpose, international cooperation, particularly with entities in the US, Asia and beyond, emerges as a vital channel for mutual learning. The goal is to establish overseas innovation centres and hubs, a concept that resonates with the prospects for numerous Australian universities.
New ways to evaluate
Aston's strategic outcomes are gauged using innovative benchmarks beyond traditional rankings. This includes clear measures of socio-economic impact, such as the UK's Social Mobility Index, which assesses the extent of social advancement achieved by an institution's graduates, including their demographic shifts.
This index integrates metrics of access, progression, and graduate results across all study modes, and works well with the university's commitment to inclusivity and transformation.
Aston's approach has seen it secure second place in the 2023 national rankings. The execution and evaluation of the new strategy prioritise outcome-driven and purpose-oriented metrics over the conventional yardsticks of academic reputation, research performance, or subjective assessments by peers and collaborators.
The future
While the corporate world shifts uniformly towards digital models, universities vary in their adoption of Education 4.0. As a trailblazer in this area, Aston is aligning its objectives, operational processes, and external alliances with this digital-first approach.
As work dynamics evolve, it's crucial that students gain exposure to global industry practices in the most successful innovation economies as well as in emerging markets.
While the pathways to pursue such exposure are available, it requires leaders who not only align with the strategic ethos of the institution but also bring a commercial acuity to technology partnerships.
Such bold leadership must be accompanied by tangible metrics of socio-economic impact and transformation to truly realise the growth in skills through equity as advocated by the Australian Universities Accord.
Professor Martin Betts is the founder of HEDx.
Sue Kokonis is chief academic officer at Online Education Services.
Professor Aleks Subic is vice-chancellor and chief executive of Aston University, UK.
Deakin University’s Global Centre for Preventative Health and Nutrition (GLOBE) released its Uni-Food 2023 report yesterday, benchmarking the healthiness, equity and environmental sustainability of university food environments in Australia.
Globe Co-Director Professor Gary Sacks said he was disappointed by the results in the report and that universities need to do more to improve the campus food environments.
“University campuses have an important influence on the diets of students and staff,” Professor Sacks said.
“Historically, they have been some of the first organisations to support young people’s health. For example, by implementing policies such as ‘smoke-free campuses.’
“Universities are in a position to showcase a healthy and environmentally sustainable environment, and demonstrate the health, environmental and financial benefits of doing so.”
Nine universities across Victoria, Tasmania, Queensland and New South Wales opted into the assessment in 2021/2022 and were scored on the healthiness, equity and environmental sustainability of their campus food environments.
The average score of all nine Australian universities was just 46 out of 100 points, with Monash University topping the list with a score of 66 out of a possible 100 points.
“We found some strong examples of universities working to improve their food environments by reducing food packaging, ensuring vending machines only sell healthy food, offering nutrition counselling and creating community gardens, but none of these initiatives go far enough to score well on our scorecard,” Professor Sacks said.
“Most universities lack comprehensive policies and commitments to make the necessary improvements to their food environments.
"Universities pay a lot of attention to where they rank against each other on research and teaching. These scorecards provide further opportunities to show leadership,” Professor Sacks said.
Key recommendations for universities to improve their score include limiting the availability and marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages and ensuring on-campus food retail outlets provide affordable, healthy and environmentally sustainable foods.
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