Ernst and Young (EY) Oceania education leader Alison Cairns told Campus Review their student surveys have shown digital transformation – using new technology to improve learning and teaching experiences – needs to be led by vice-chancellors and boards. (You can read a summary of EY's survey results here.)

"It is absolutely about leadership. The difference between transformations that are successful and transformations that fail is around leadership and bringing people on that journey," she said.

"The ones that don't do so well are the ones that are purely technology transformations, and then they follow up with change management and it's a little bit challenging."

"[Then staff] say, 'Well actually I'm not sure I signed up for this'. Or 'I don't like the way this works'. Or, 'this doesn't really suit my faculty, doesn't really suit how I want to do it,'" she said.

EY recommends university leaders put humans at the centre of any tech or digital learning upgrade, instead of placing new online resources to 'tick a box'. Their approach is to ask different questions of the different humans who will be benefiting from the tech transformation.

Ms Cairns said universities that have used this style of digital learning innovation have seen an uptick in student enrolments and engagement, along with higher staff and researcher satisfaction.

She explained one of the most important aspects of university study for students is quality of teaching. If students can pick which format best suits them, they are likely to think the quality of teaching is much higher.

Students also care about career outcomes – what is going to get me the qualification I need, for the least amount of money, in the shortest amount of time?

What are the tech innovation limitations?

Layers of leadership in bigger universities might be a reason for slow change, some education thought leaders say, but EY says it hasn't found a difference in the ability to adapt between small and large unis.

"I think our universities are very positive about change. They're very positive about what the education sector does for our country," she said.

"Some of these businesses and universities have been around for 500 years, so they do something right."

She said universities have already shown what they're capable of, through the rapid switch to online learning in 2020.

"Universities did a fantastic job of moving from classroom teaching to emergency response teaching [during the Covid-19 pandemic]," she said.

"I just want to be really clear, that's not digital learning. It was emergency response teaching. And they did that so swiftly with just the resources that they had just so that students could keep learning.

"But that took leadership from the top, right? Obviously there was technology involved in that, but we had staff leaning in, we had academics leaning in, we had research leaning in and the students had to lean in as well."

For example, posting recorded lectures and tutorial slides fits into 'emergency response' online learning, but doesn't represent learning operations that reflect digital competency.

Asynchronous education, where students access course material on their own time, is the required next step.

"I might be an under-served learner, you might be a particularly bright student. I might need my learning slightly different," she said.

"So I might be someone who does well in case studies, gamification or video as opposed to text. And you might be someone who actually prefers text.

"[Asynchronous education] means that we can have all of that information and we can actually consume it as students in a manner that suits us best."

This approach is a real asset to universities, Ms Cairns said, because it promotes lifelong learning and attracts different cohorts, something all education sectors are looking to achieve.

"[Students] need to have the option of being able to consume in the manner that maximises their learning because a lot of them have either got care responsibilities or they have to work," she said.

"Or if you look at people who are career changes or job upgraders or lifelong learners, they might have family commitments.

"They cannot commit to being onsite on campus all of the time, even if that's their preferred method.

"If you think to the Universities Accord report and the under-served learner, and making sure there are plenty of opportunities for everyone to go through higher education, this is actually having a significant change."

How can universities put people at the centre?

The ones who are doing it well "are consulting, bringing people in from the faculties, bringing people in from executive, bringing people in from their council and actually saying, what is our 10-year vision? Where are we going to focus first?" she said.

"We've actually seen great acceleration in learning, and we've been able to see the fantastic content that the universities have being able to be shared to a much wider audience."

However, some university staff say they don't want to teach to half empty classrooms, and if students choose a more digital learning method where they don't have to show up to class, that might become the reality.

But, Ms Cairns said, a drop in class numbers could actually result in more engaged students, and called on universities to track that engagement.

"If you are replacing [face-to-face classes] with engaging learning and personalised learning and things that you like to learn in a manner that you like to consume, you're actually going to get increased engagement," she explained.

"It's not one or the other, right? It is not classroom or online, it is now hybrid," she said.

"Some things will still be in classroom, some things will be online, some will be asynchronous, some will be deep engagement.

"And if you think in Australia [there's] remote and rural; it's not practical, particularly with cost of living for some students to have to come to the city or come to a big regional campus in order to learn.

"They need that flexibility."

Even if universities are large and established institutions, the education leader said, they should be looking to set themselves apart through tech learning.

"We don't want any university to be homogenous. We actually want them to have their uniqueness and differentiation," she said.

"We're at the end of the industrial revolution, which was about mechanising labour. We're at the beginning of the information revolution. Where does information live? It lives in universities.

"How do we take the best of that into transformation and use the best and brightest minds to take education forward into the next century?"

Achieving synergy between education and technology has become a central goal for contemporary university leadership, reflecting the evolving expectations of students, universities and global policy. Education technology offers both immense potential and a profound challenge for a new generation of leaders navigating an increasingly complex landscape.

This complexity is amplified by growing turbulence, exemplified  by events like the Optus network failure in Australia this month and the years-long global disruption caused by COVID-19. Universities face the unique challenge of evolving to meet the needs of learners and industry while maintaining quality tertiary education and achieving this all at scale.

We have witnessed a convergence of interests between traditional universities and EdTech companies, challenging leadership to  bridge the cultural gaps between these two environments.  The driving force is the desire to provide affordable, high-quality learning experiences on a large scale. Organisations like Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation highlight the entrepreneurial and innovative culture of corporate environments in education, normalising quick decision-making and a willingness to learn rapidly from failures.

Universities, on the other hand, often adhere to inflexible consensus-based decision-making processes. While these processes can lead to sound decisions, they may not be well-suited to the rapid changes of the present era. Universities also contend with multiple layers of governance and a diverse set of stakeholders, which can slow down decision-making and hinder innovation.

Open University (OU) has embraced a more flexible consensus-driven leadership model to realise their innovative aspirations and evolve their learning platform FutureLearn. RMIT has expanded its onshore and offshore campuses, serving as a significant undergraduate educator of the professions. These institutions exemplify the provision of access to quality learning experiences at scale.

Both OU and RMIT have demonstrated impressive technical and innovative capabilities, which proved invaluable during the Covid-19 pandemic and ongoing disruptions. With the chaos of the pandemic now dissipating, we must assess whether we are fully capitalising on opportunities for advancement generated by such turbulence. This question is at the core of the book "Toolkit for Turbulence" co-authored Graham Winter and this week’s podcast guest Martin Bean.

The book's underlying premise is that leaders must adapt and recalibrate to effectively navigate turbulence, beginning with a mindset that allows them to "hold their shape in the squirm." University leadership must cultivate a culture where they can re-evaluate their investments in technology, striking a balance between digital and physical solutions. University leaders must also articulate a clear mission and destination for their institution's technological endeavours, with a focus on providing access to quality education.

Despite the remarkable response during the COVID-19 crisis, tertiary leaders must avoid reverting to old patterns. The underlying business model of higher education is broken and requires radical shifts and innovative solutions.

Leaders should reconsider the overemphasis on the 18-24 age group in favour of a broader focus on individuals aged 16-75, recognising the diverse learning needs of a wider demographic. New leadership playbooks and toolkits for change can help to facilitate this transformation. Leaders who adopt a coaching approach can more effectively align personal and organisational values, fostering openness, collaboration, learning and decision-making amid ambiguity.

These principles must be applied to long-term change, and vulnerability should be celebrated as a strength rather than a weakness. Modern leaders must embody new competencies including resilience and the ability to navigate complexity through turbulence. In turn, they require self-care and support to enable them to support others effectively.

The opportunity for leaders is in their capacity to leverage technology and innovation, a realm now accelerated by generative AI. In doing so, they can avoid the mistakes that loom in the wake of inaction and uncertainty and work toward achieving accessible and quality learning a scale.

The dynamic relationship between education and technology has become a defining feature of modern university leadership, setting the stage for innovation and change. The turbulence that accompanies this transformation demands leaders who can adapt, innovate and embrace technological solutions. The future of higher education depends on these visionary leaders who can navigate change and steer their institutions toward a brighter future.

This week’s podcast guest Professor Martin Bean is the CEO of the Bean Centre. The Bean Centre works in partnership with education experts and technology companies to create better learning experiences.

Each university has responded with varying levels of commitment to these new opportunities. Some institutions have embraced it with by introducing learning innovation units, bringing new products and services to market, and exploring the impact generative AI has on their staff, students and business practices.

Australian universities, in particular, face the challenge of deepening their use and knowledge of digital technology, which is coupled with the need to scale learning to more diverse learners. Finding best-practice in service delivery will require searching outside the sector and around the globe.

The way the financial services sector digitally transformed to service its customer base more effectively, replacing cash and bricks-and-mortar infrastructure with electronic payment and web-based banking platforms, is a great example of this.

Not so long ago, FinTech was seen as a sector branch but it has almost become a redundant term in financial services as digital delivery is now firmly embedded in the sector.

In the same way in our sector, EdTech is still considered a specialist service as higher education still primarily has physical and in-place delivery of services to learners.

However, as technology and digital service delivery become more mainstream in education, we might stop calling it EdTech altogether! In the future, education might well be primarily a digitally delivered services to learners.

When digital transformation started to take hold in the financial services sector, leaders of long-standing prestigious institutions were challenged, with some finding the it shift difficult to accept.

The businesses that thrived were those that embraced the inevitability of change made by technology and it became a part of their strategy, leadership, business and innovation.

If we are to see anything like the same in education, the sector’s leaders must change to a digital mindset, making technology core to how they see, plan for, develop and innovate for the future.

A digital mindset requires institutions to experiment, explore, partner, invest, and scale their current activities.

It requires a re-direction of resources, investments, executive attention, and strategies across the board.

One vision of future education is as a technology-enabled service focused on lifelong learning, which targets learners globally and online. 

This vision presents challenges to those operating with infrastructure, processes and staff profiles designed for the old model of higher education.

A digital mindset in education presents opportunities for those with change mindsets to be bold and innovative.

For Australian universities to make radical change, leadership and the academic community must come along.

It will take courage to opt out of rankings and the existing business model, to build closer business connections, and to learn from others who have already made the leap.

Torrens University Australia has already shown us how rapidly a new entrant can grow off the back of significant private investment and with a focus on technology.

Australia is a place where the next steps might start.

Which of the current universities will lead EdTech into ‘education 4.0’?

We discuss many of these issues in a future episode of the HEDx podcast.

"What the WHO was doing was spreading misinformation," Professor Morawska told Campus Review.

"I said to myself, something has to be done because after all these years of studies, I knew it was airborne, but no one was interested in seeing this."

In the early stages of Covid, the world's top health agency believed the virus was transmitted via droplets from the nose and mouth.

At the time, Professor Morawska had worked as a WHO advisory since 1998 and had decades of experience studying air quality.

She had previously worked on the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) which struck Hong Kong in 2003 and led to 298 deaths.

"When SARS happened, little was known about how the particles from human respiratory activities are generated and what happens to them in the air," Professor Morawska said.

"That's when I decided to expand my research field and investigate particles from respiratory activities."

In efforts to alert the general public about the nature of Covid transmission Professor Morawska then led a team of 240 international experts who proved scientifically the disease was airborne.

Alongside 33 other academics she wrote a paper titled "It Is Time to Address Airborne Transmission of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)".

The paper, which took three months to write, would go on to change how the government and the global health community viewed the pandemic.

"It was so difficult just to get this key information out," she said.

"I wasn't thinking about my career then; all I wanted was changing this mindset of the national authorities, bring awareness to people and help lower the risk of infection transmission."

It was not until mid-2021 that WHO acknowledged Covid-19 could be spread via air and changed its recommendations.

According to Professor Morawska, by then several countries had already set wrong guidelines and missed vital opportunities to save people's lives.

For her work raising awareness around COVID-19's airborne spread, Professor Morawska was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2021.

More recently she won the Matthew Flinders Medal and Lecture, Australia's Academy of Science's highest distinction, for her contributions to the field throughout her career. 

"When there is recognition for my work, it's never just mine; it's always an achievement working with colleagues because this is an interdisciplinary area," Professor Morawska said.

"I wouldn't have been able to do even a fraction of this work by myself.

"But each time we are recognised, it motivates me to work harder and fulfil more dreams regarding what we can do in the future."

Professor Morawska said her passion for science began at a young age.

"What was the reason for this initial decision? I don't remember exactly," she said.

"My parents were educated; my mum was a chemist, and my father an electrical engineer. They would always provide reading materials, and we had a lot of discussions about science."

"That certainly helped me develop my interest."

Growing up in the small city of Przemyśl in southeastern Poland, Professor Morawska followed a traditional schooling path.

In 1982 she became a physicist after completing her doctorate in radon at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.

From 1987 to 1991, she moved to Canada to become a postdoctoral research fellow at the International Atomic Energy Agency, where she developed her interest in studying air quality.

At the time, the now Professor was researching radon progeny and had an opportunity to use rare instruments to measure the size distribution and concentration of particles in the air.

One day, she had the idea to use the instruments in the streets of downtown Toronto and found surprising results which changed her entire career trajectory.

"I found out the concentration of these particles was extreme. There were hundreds of thousands of these particles, and this was mind-blowing; where are they coming from?," she said.

"I thought that relation must have been from the cars on the street, but there was absolutely nothing about this in the literature because the instrument was generally used only in laboratory studies."

Professor Morawska said this was the moment she knew she would pursue atmospheric sciences and work to fill a widening research gap.

In 1991, she flew to Australia for the first time and was appointed as senior lecturer at Queensland University of Technology before being promoted to Professor in 2003.

Over the past two decades, she has established the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health Center at QUT in collaboration with the World Health Organisation.

Professor Morawska continues to research indoor air quality standards and wishes to continue mentoring her PhD student.

"I enjoy seeing my students develop, they sometimes arrive without knowledge in the area and little background research experience, and seeing them blossom and come up with amazing things," she said.

"In the end, we share ideas and it's that close relationship of on working together which eventually come to fruition in terms of completion of the paper or discovering something some new.

"If there were no students or staff, by myself, there is only that much I could do in this very broad field."

A new book, The New Leadership Agenda: Pandemic Perspectives from Global Universities, interviewed more than 50 university leaders about the unique obstacles they faced during the pandemic.

Book author, HEDx co-founder Emeritus Professor Martin Betts, said some universities “thrived and flourished" during the online move, while others buckled under pressure.

"The priority for next year is to change our collective attitude and find how we can work together to demonstrate the benefit of the sector," he said.

Professor Betts joined Campus Review to discuss what he learnt from some of higher education's most significant leaders.

The practice is essentially doomed and is most certainly fraught with potentially dangerous outcomes.

The COVID-19 pandemic – spoiler alert – is not over.

In fact, there are more cases of COVID-19 (and its various strains) now than ever before. The potential for infection – particularly enhanced by large groupings in small spaces - is ever-present.

New paradigms do not suit all

There is little doubt that the new paradigm of online learning forced upon the sector is not suited to all students and all institutions.

My own institution, however, has 93 per cent of students wishing to stay on line - so clearly that is a pronounced preference.

At one of our campuses the statistic is actually 100 per cent.

Grade distributions, Student Feedback on Units (SFUs), and QILT outcomes – all the measurable elements - have remained high and consistent despite the years of the pandemic and the shift away from on campus, face to face teaching.

This is not the case for many – our universities are some of the worst performing providers presumably largely due to their inability get their heads around teaching in the online space, lack of investment in teaching technology and their preference for research.

This has been highlighted in the most recent QILT outcomes. With that said, the logical approach would be a voluntary return to campus – not an imposed one.

The hybrid option – students deciding on either online or face to face – seems to be the most logical mode in the new reality.

There are ample examples of quality providers being able to operate effectively in this mode – this should be allowed – or rather encouraged rather than dismissed across the board.

Inherent threat and danger

There is an inherent threat and danger in forcing students back on campus and into classrooms.

Both the New South Wales and Victorian health authorities have warned against the practice heading into the 2023 winter - new strains will run rampant.

Crowds need to be discouraged – especially in face to face longer sessions (2-3 hours) and the wearing of masks should be mandated if this practice cannot be avoided.

The practice has disaster written all over it. Clearly this suggestion of getting back on campus for all is poorly thought through – arguably irresponsible. Options are required.

Quite recently a cruise ship pulled into harbour with hundreds of infected passengers on board. High rise CBD campuses (not unlike my own institution) have significant similarities. Windows that cannot be opened; classrooms that are contained; and limited lift access – all breeding grounds for infection and spread.

The new reality suggests that students should have the choice.

Recent surveys at my institution stress safety and flexibility as being the basis for the preference to stay online. Forcing students to ‘come aboard’ is irresponsible and inappropriate – giving them a genuine option is a better mindset.

Hybrid best suits the new reality

On reflection – with the new reality – hybrid appears to be the logical progression certainly in 2023/24.

Give students the opportunity to return to face to face should they choose to do so – but at the same time give students the opportunity to remain online should they choose to do that.

This seems to be a more logical and thought through alternative to a potentially disastrous mandate.

The very notion of mandating a return to campus is flawed and should be discouraged. A sensible, balanced approach putting the true well-being of the forefront of the discussion (in place of real estate and retail issues) is by far a better solution. A mandated return to campus is not a good option in the new reality.

Emeritus Professor Greg Whateley is Deputy Vice Chancellor and Vice President (Academic) at Group Colleges Australia

Throwing away the baby with the bathwater

The temptation for governments, education authorities and even major universities to put blanket bans on entire market segments of online providers or to question the authenticity or surety of all online offerings is an overreaction. To simply do so follows that old crooked logic thinking of: A dog has four legs, fur and a tail. So, everything with four legs, fur and a tail is a dog? Clearly, that logic is questionable. 

We maintain that online provision and fully accredited private providers aren’t the problem – it is how we choose to assess and engage with students that makes the difference. And the recent QILT 2022 responses unambiguously indicate that a number of Australian private providers (those not embedded in research, but highly teaching focussed) have, again, topped the charts nationally in respect to engaging with and supporting students during their studies.

The QILT results help show that some of our smaller, private providers pride themselves on knowing their students and their capacities and in helping them avoid the temptation to resort to assignment fraud.

Separating teaching and assessment

Certainly, back in the days of yore (which wasn’t all that long ago in our opinion) essays during a term were frequently (certainly in many European universities) just indicators of a student’s progress (formative) rather than pivotal elements of their summative assessment. In the UK, end of year and end of term exams and tests customarily determined whether a student continued or departed. And even then, student essays and exam papers were submitted anonymously and often marked collegially at a peer institution – thus overcoming the risk of bias or nepotism. But most interestingly, the teaching term (or semester) was not bulked-up with continuous pauses for internal assessment processes or reviewing of assignment group work in the way that many academic courses are now delivered. Teaching and assessment were, essentially, more separated and teaching was the more dominant activity with assessment occurring only at the end of an intensive teaching period.

We believe, this is a resolvable scenario. Again, much of the answer lies in how we choose to assess students’ work and the Sector’s willingness to move away from some of its current assessment practices. 

A Return to the Examination Hall or viva voce

Returning to face-to-face examinations is a possible answer to elements of the student fraud scenario. Though the examination hall could either be a physical space or an electronically mediated and timed virtual space. Essays written in timed online examinations are also frequently utilised by some institutions. 

By far the greatest potential to determine that students are individually progressing, up-to-speed and academically equipped is to return to the viva voce. Again, this may be laborious and time consuming, but it is recognised as highly effective – and can be conducted live via Zoom or other electronic interfaces. A student questioned in real time has to either know their subject or be left wanting. Emphatically, it is the student who gets to demonstrate their learning – and not an external actor on a contract cheating website. Some universities do this already in a variety of disciplines. Doing it routinely and across the board would be a means of authoritatively gauging true student achievement.

Non contract arrangements

Less on the radar, perhaps, is the potential for non-contract and familial augmentation of assignments and online assessments by others. Or in the old currency: parental involvement. In just the last month we have (coincidentally) also come across a small number of parents who state that they take their children’s tertiary education so seriously that they have been checking, editing, re-writing and ‘adding value to’ every online assignment and test their sons and daughters have been given- including the academic dissertation of one young man studying at master’ level.

Dealing with cheating

TEQSA’s task of closing access to contract cheating websites and imposing large fines on offenders is one strategy. Talk of changing student culture within universities in respect to cheating is another. The latter is an unlikely project as cultural perceptions as to what cheating is and how it is construed vary greatly around the globe. In some cultures, ‘getting caught’ is shameful but ‘getting away with it’ isn’t. Academic cheating will escalate as they are clearly lucrative opportunities for those involved.

To do nothing significant or to leave it to each university/provider to decide how to act will surely weaken Australia’s entire higher education reputation significantly.

Emeritus Professor Jim Mienczakowski is currently a Higher Education Consultant.

Emeritus Professor Greg Whateley is currently Deputy Vice Chancellor at Group Colleges Australia.

Last Thursday, a six-month independent review into Australia’s Covid-19 response led by Western Sydney University chancellor professor Peter Shergold was released to the public.

The report, funded by three of the country’s major philanthropic trusts, said the government “failed to get the balance right between protecting health and imposing long-term costs on education, mental health, the economy and workforce outcomes.”

"It was sensible to close schools where there was an outbreak and when little was known about how the virus spread," it said.

"But it was wrong to close entire school systems, particularly once new information indicated that schools were not high-transmission environments."

The report pointed to Sweden, which made the decision to keep primary schools schools open during 2020. 

It cited a controversial study which found that despite schools remaining open, incidence of severe disease and deaths among Swedish children and teachers remained low.

The paper has been critiqued for only covering a four month period and has faced allegations that its authors omitted key data to support its findings.

Zoë Hyde, an epidemiologist and biostatistician from the University of Western Australia, said looking to the “Swedish strategy” could lead to serious consequences.

“Children have been left with disabling long Covid as a result of the Swedish strategy, and it's not something we’d ever want to emulate in Australia,” Hyde told Campus Review. 

"What we actually know that is that by the end of 2020, Sweden had about 10 times the number of cases of the serious multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children than neighbouring Norway and Finland combined.

Hyde said the evidence was "very clear" that schools have been an important driver of the pandemic, both here and overseas.

“Schools and universities are high transmission environments, if mitigation measures like better ventilation and air purifiers aren’t in place," she said.

“Our focus now should be on making schools resistant to the spread of airborne respiratory diseases by investing in ventilation and air cleaning technology. This should prevent the need to close them in future pandemics.”

William Kelton, from the University of Waikato in New Zealand, has been involved in the ETH Zurich research, aimed at preparing for future coronavirus variants using AI.

Dr Kelton’s concept was to take proteins from the coronavirus surface and create multiple artificial mutations, screening them to discover which ones allowed binding to cells.

Sai Reddy and his team at ETH then expanded on the concept by adding antibodies to mimic the selection pressures a virus might undergo in a human.

Information was then used to train machine-learning models to predict how well a new variant might bind to cells and escape antibody binding from tens of billions of possibilities.

Dr Kelton said the model was very accurate at predicting potential pathways by which new variants might evolve.

He said it might also provide a path to fighting future variants.

“If we can get ahead of Covid, we can make drugs and antibodies before these variants emerge and design solutions to combat them,” he said.

“We can also test to see how existing drugs work against panels of potential variants.”

It comes as Victorian chief health officer Brett Sutton warned this week Australia was in a Covid-19 “trough”.

“It’s clear we’re in the ‘trough’ part of Covid-19 activity now, with fewer cases and hospitalisations than we’ve seen for months,” he tweeted.

“That’s very welcome, of course. It may also be that the coming wave is lower and slower than the waves we’ve seen in 2022, for different reasons.

“Most previous waves have been driven predominantly by new variants of concern.

“The coming ‘wave’ – if that’s the term – may be driven more by the waning hybrid immunity (recent infection plus vaccination) than by any particular variant. Make no mistake, the variants will come.”

Professor Sutton said there could be a peak closer to the end of the year.

“We never know what’s around the corner, however, and BA2.75.2 is causing concern in immunological circles, for good reason – immune evasion,” he wrote.

“So peaks and troughs will continue and we therefore have to focus on the key protections that can mitigate their impact.

“There’s a legitimate debate about what potential impact protections have and what’s reasonable to take up or prioritise.

“What shouldn’t be in dispute is that 50 Covid deaths in Australia a day is huge as a cause, and that long Covid is emerging as a very significant, ongoing burden of illness for thousands and thousands of people.”

In a letter sent to colleagues on Monday, UniSA Vice Chancellor David Lloyd said the move was in light of new recommendations from the state’s chief health officer.

“Recommendations additionally include mask wearing in shared spaces and moving to online meetings and teaching activities wherever possible,” Lloyd wrote.

“These measures will be in place and under review until such time as SA case numbers significantly subside.

“It’s regrettable that we find ourselves having to re-adopt these precautions, but they are our best lines of defence to reduce the impact of the current variants.”

South Australia reported 2,848 new Covid-19 cases, 352 hospitalisations and three deaths in the 24 hours up to Tuesday.

NSW recorded 10,702 new cases and 47 deaths.

In most states and territories, face masks continue to be mandatory in healthcare settings such as hospitals and residential care facilities, as well as on public transport.

A spokesperson from the University of Sydney told Campus Review the university will "continually assess and adjust our approach in light of changing circumstances and health advice".

"Face masks aren’t currently mandatory on campus, but we encourage our community to wear them where appropriate," a statement read.

UNSW said it would also continue to review face mask wearing recommendations in accordance with state health guidelines.

"All staff and students are strongly encouraged to wear masks in indoor settings on campus, including in offices, classrooms, labs, communal spaces and especially where physical distancing cannot be maintained," a spokesperson said.

In June, the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee called on employers to “consider the feasibility of some employees working from home”.

University of Queensland Vice-Chancellor Professor Deborah Terry wrote to staff last week requesting they wear a mask when at work, and to keep up to date with vaccinations.

Queensland recorded 4303 new cases on Monday, with 782 people receiving treatment in hospital.

July was Australia’s deadliest month since the Covid-19 pandemic began, with 1772 deaths reported nationwide.