The problem we are grappling with is that of the Tower of Babel Wherever I go, the minute people’s work cannot be put in a disciplinary pigeonhole they seem to have trouble explaining the basis for it. Increasingly the terms ...

Data, when it is used wisely, can frame good questions. When it is used poorly, it can rush to judgment, writes Dr John De Courcy. Educators are awash in a sea of data, and it is sometimes hard to pick ...

TAFE staff are relocating to industry workplaces, John Mitchell finds. At the start of 2010, a report by Skills Australia called for VET providers to support the development of industry workforces around Australia. The year ends with the release of ...

The tertiary sector isn’t so much split as serrated, writes John Ross. The only thing the Judean People’s Front hated more than the Romans, according to Monty Python, was the People’s Front of Judea. Immigration Minister Chris Bowen reportedly quoted ...

At tertiary level the completion of post-secondary qualifications is the only acceptable measure. A New Zealand Treasury official once said to me in a somewhat exasperated tone “But no-one is responsible for educational failure!” And he had a point. Accountability ...

What justifies educational technology asks John Mitchell. The major flexible learning program in Australian VET, the Australian Flexible Learning Program, is being evaluated externally. Perhaps this is the ideal time to develop a new rationale for the use of technology ...

Current remoteness rating not working writes Mex Butler. Youth Allowance eligibility for regional students is causing much debate, but the discussion seems to be missing one important fact – that there is considerable scope for obtaining a more equitable result ...

We are living in the decade of accountability writes Stuart Middleton Education seems to need a word or two, a slogan, each decade to rally around. The 1990’s gave us “competitive advantage” – that simply made clear to us that ...

While it may seem the rankers are battling to outrank one another, QS’s Nunzio Quacquarelli writes that it very much depends what users are looking for. In the past three months, a number of researchers of global university rankings have ...

Are reasons for non-completions worth examining, asks John Mitchell. The discussion paper recently released by Skills Australia, Creating a future direction for Australian VET, raised some immediate controversies, (Campus Review Vol 20, No 21) but one particular section of the ...