Director of education for SEEK Investments Joshua Nester joins Martin Betts in conversation at the March HEDx conference in Melbourne. As an industry leader in ed-tech, Mr Nester gives a global overview of investments currently being made in private universities, ed-tech companies, management systems and content aggregators. He outlines how this is changing the competitive landscape of global higher education.

The conversation is followed by a panel led by Sue Kokonis, chief academic officer at SEEK's parent company, Online Education Services. She is joined by CEO of Edugrowth David Linke, pedagogical evangelist at Adobe Manuela Franceschini, deputy vice-chancellor (education) at RMIT Sherman Young, and dean of Macquarie Business School Eric Knight. Together, they answer the question: how will technology change higher education for good?

My mum was an academic and a hugely passionate one. Consequently, I spent most of my holidays, many evenings, and countless weekends perched beside her at her desk at the Queensland University of Technology Gardens Point campus.

Like any child of a shopkeeper or restauranteur, I spent holidays, weekends and evenings either helping in the family business or doing homework at the corner table. Our family business was academia.

My parents grew up in rural western Queensland, and are the first in their families to attend university. It was a slog for them to get there, and a slog for them to complete their degrees. But both did. They met each other during their years at the University of Queensland, and supported each other to complete their undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications, so they could each go on to build solid careers.

They’ve been divorced for 20 years, so it’s not an idyllic romantic tale. But, it is a love story about university. University was the making of both of their lives. It let them dream bigger and opened doors. For my dad, it was his ticket off the land. For my mum, it was her everything.

My mum’s profound appreciation for the transformative impact that university education had on her life led her into academia. This also meant that in her work as an academic, she was deeply committed to helping others have the kind of transformational university experience she’d had.

During my early years and into young adulthood, I would’ve met close to 100 students and colleagues my mum championed and for whom university unequivocally changed their lives. Higher education pulled them out of difficult circumstances and gave them social mobility, cultural capital, diverse connections, and opportunities that wouldn't have been available to them if they had not undertaken higher education.

This is why I thought universities were so magical. I saw first hand how life changing and truly transformative they could be.

I understood that accessing university was more challenging for some people. Still, I believed, for a long time, well into my university career, that once the barriers to access were removed, then the transformation could begin. I didn’t understand that for many people, opening the door to university is just the first barrier, and there are multiple other hurdles from there.

It won’t surprise you to learn that, to date, most of my career has been in universities. I worked for over 10 years in professional staff roles – positions focused on student support, international development, engagement, and events. I then into the academic space for several years as a casual research assistant and tutor.

Looking back now, I am deeply embarrassed at my naiveté and my blinkered, privileged perspective. I always existed in university culture, and tertiary study was just a given, natural next step in my life. I could live at home, work casually and study whatever I was interested in. For many of the early years of my career, even while working directly with students, I still knew very little about the complex, intersectional barriers people face in seeking the educational opportunities that were so readily available to me.

This doesn’t mean that studying at university was easy for me. It was just hard in the right way.

University is meant to be challenging. The content should stretch and provoke minds, expand knowledge, skills, and abilities. University often involves long hours, an annoying commute, and juggling study and work. But these are ‘normal’ challenges – the difficulty and complexity everyone faces when pursuing higher education.

This is not the inequity and systemic exclusion that equity groups - Indigenous Australians, people from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and people living with disabilities - face, that is intersectional inequity and systemic exclusion.

Universities are aware of inequity and exclusion. Most have substantial equity, diversity, and inclusion policies and committees. Many develop research on migration, social cohesion, economic participation, diversity, and inclusion. And most universities would argue that they exist for the public good.

However, students, staff, and communities from equity groups are not seeing changes from these policies, nor the beneficiaries of this research. They are still struggling to overcome barriers that go further than juggling a casual job and an annoying commute.

Paraphrasing Sally Patfield’s excellent article in The Conversation – access to higher education study is vital, the growing parity of equity groups numbers is ambitious, and developing policies and programs to connect with those equity groups is essential. Those connections might even open the door to a few more prospective students from underrepresented groups. Still, more policies and programs will have little to no impact on equity if the sector is not listening and responding to the needs of these cohorts. It's time to take appropriate action to remove barriers, address inequity, and change the university system.

I will further discuss this at HEDx's ‘Changing Higher Education for Good’ conference in Melbourne on Thursday, alongside my colleague, former University of Melbourne People of Colour Committee officer Mohamed Omer. We are appearing on a panel called ‘Accelerating in our pursuit of social justice and equity’ with several other excellent speakers, thinkers, and innovators who advocate for access and equity across different spaces.

Mohamed and I will speak on issues of systemic racism and exclusion that culturally diverse people (including international students) experience in university education; whether that be accessing uni, balancing studying or seeking post- study support and opportunities.

As universities and the broader higher education sector explore the recommendations of the inclusion-focused Australian Universities Accord, Welcoming Universities recommends that a culture of welcoming all students and cultivating a sense of belonging for disadvantaged cohorts is placed at the centre of all Accord reform efforts.

Welcoming opens the door, invites students in, and helps them overcome hurdles. Belonging is the next step. Belonging ensures that everyone “feels valued, connected and able to be their authentic self”¹.

Through extensive consultation with students and communities facing barriers to accessing, completing, and working in university education, the Welcoming Universities network offers actionable ideas, approaches, and measures of success that puts inclusion at the centre of universities.

My hope is that conversations like the one happening at HEDx next week, along with the work of Welcoming Universities, along with other equity work such as the disability-advocating Universities Enable initiative, will restore the magical possibility of universities I saw as a young person.

I truly believe that university and higher education can be even more transformative if people from all backgrounds and communities are welcomed and allowed to belong.

Cate Gilpin is the coordinator of Welcoming Universities, an organisation that advocates for an inclusive culture in tertiary education where every student is made to feel like they belong. Several universities, including Charles Darwin University, the University of Melbourne, UNSW, the University of Wollongong (UOW) and Western Sydney University have signed up to participate in Welcoming Universities initiatives.

Professor Burke was invited to give the keynote address at the Universities Australia Solutions Summit, where tertiary education sector leaders gathered in Canberra under a 'harnessing universities for national priorities’ theme.

Below is an edited version of her address. A recording of it in full and other information about Professor Jane Burke's work, and that of the UNESCO Chair in Equity, Social Justice and Higher Education, can be found here.

It’s a great honour to be invited as keynote speaker at this year’s Universities Australia Summit and I thank the organising committee for the privilege and opportunity to be part of ongoing conversations about the perplexing and challenging problem of creating equitable higher education – and perhaps even more importantly generating sustainable higher education for equity and social justice. I want to acknowledge the immense leadership and knowledge in the room and the collective work across the sector to build more equitable and inclusive educational institutions.

It is impossible to consider developing equitable higher education without acknowledging the colonial histories embedded in global educational systems and ensuring that we generate higher education equity that foregrounds, respects, embeds and recognises the knowledge, wisdom and values of First Nations peoples. Repositioning higher education as a force for equity and social justice can be at the heart of these important commitments.

Equity is not peripheral to higher education practice; it is a profound part of all that we do. The work of equity requires us to reflect deeply on the directions we are taking, and what values underpin these directions.

As a society, we are facing profound and urgent issues of which widening inequalities are a massive challenge, and so there is an imperative for us to reimagine higher education and its key role in the face of such confronting social issues.

Experiencing a global pandemic has helped uncover our human and more-than-human interdependency. It has forced us to pause and contemplate new approaches. And yet, we are all too quick to recover the TINA effect – the narrative that there is no alternative. In a rush to recovery, we forget to ask critical questions about what forms of higher education we want to enable, for whom and why.

So, let’s activate our collective imagination through critical questioning:

• What is the purpose of higher education?
• Who participates and on what terms?
• What has equity and social justice got to do with it?
• How might we reimagine higher education as a vehicle for equity and social justice?

The collective act of critical questioning challenges the status quo and activates our capacity to imagine new possibilities. Critical questioning enables visionary thinking. It helps us make rich, nuanced and textured connections – to better understand ourselves as continuously formed in relation to others including those who have been historically excluded from projects of higher education development.

The urgencies of our time are a matter for higher education. The multi-dimensional, multi-scalar social and ecological crises facing communities across the globe alert us to the crucial role of higher education in contributing to sustainable and equitable transformation of and beyond our institutions.

UNESCO (Parr et al, 2022) calls for “higher education institutions and their stakeholders to systematically rethink their role in society and their key missions, and reflect on how they can serve as catalysts for a rapid, urgently needed and fair transition towards sustainability. The complexity of the issues at stake means that solutions should be part of a radical agenda that calls for new alliances and new incentives”.

As Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations explains, “we must work for solutions rooted in justice, with renewed urgency and solidarity”.

Higher education is not outside of complex geopolitical dynamics. These dynamics impact all dimensions of higher education; equity is not a separate issue but is part of the social fabric in which we create the conditions for our collective sustainability, flourishing and well-being.

We have engaged in an extensive process of reviewing our higher education system through the Australian Accord process. As Chair of the Accord, Professor Mary O’Kane asked a fundamental question during this process “if we can’t reform our own system than what can we do?” The final Accord report asks us to refresh our thinking in relation to bold, systematic reform.

We urgently require securely and comprehensively funded systems with visionary thinking that expands the view of the purpose of higher education. While calling on governments, policymakers and civil servants to recognise their role in creating such possibilities, universities and their leaders have a key role to play – those with the power to influence change must do everything in their power to create the conditions for equity, and thus for our sustainable futures.

We must pay attention to who participates in transformative processes and on what terms. This requires critical consideration of the insidious inequalities that are regularly ignored, silenced, and rendered invisible through a preoccupation with measurement as holding all the answers.

A key example is the way we continuously invoke the metaphor of a barrier, an overused terminology in educational policy and practice. This metaphor ignites our social imagination that the problem of equity is relatively simple to fix as long as we figure out how to measure it.

Barriers are tangible, concrete things that are observable and thus easy to quantify and measure. The idea that we can fix the problem of equity through measurement is so seductive that we then ignore the insidious inequalities that are rooted in the very foundations of higher education even as we seek to build equity within it. We lose sight of the ethical dimensions of what we do in the name of equity and how we do it.

A powerful way that insidious inequalities are sustained is through deficit imaginaries. This refers to the idea that equity interventions must correct the perceived deficiencies of individuals constructed through the lens of disadvantage. The problem is located in the bodies of those targeted by equity policy and practice, thus reproducing hierarchies between those granted the power and influence to construct and implement policy and those for whom policy is projected.

Dominant temporal structures privilege quick fix approaches that over-simplify rather than develop long-term commitments in which equitable and participatory processes and relations can be developed and sustained.

Through deficit imaginaries, particular aspirations and identities are privileged and valued. There is sometimes a slippage into a quasi-medical discourse that sets out to provide ‘treatment’ to those with perceived impoverished aspirations and identities, while ignoring the implications of who is seen to ‘know’ and who is seen to ‘lack’.

This is reflected in evaluation methodologies that foreground random control trials to measure the impact of the ‘treatment’ provided or withheld. Or evaluation narrowly framed to measure ‘what works’ while ignoring the systems of inequality and injustice that produce the conditions for inter-generational disadvantage.

Deficit imaginaries have led to a legacy of educational policy and practice committed to raising aspirations through outreach programs. The idea that historically under-represented people and communities lack aspiration is unacceptable and pathologising.

Equity can too easily become reduced to a set of crude interventions, focused on changing individuals constructed through disadvantage, with minimal attention to the historical, intergenerational and deeply entrenched multidimensional inequalities in which aspirations and identities are formed, validated and enabled.

The effects can be detrimental, widening inequalities rather than creating the social and institutional conditions for parity of participation. Indeed, conceptions of parity are too often one-dimensional, strongly framed by a quantitative conception only.

This reinforces deficit imaginaries by counting numbers of people within one-dimensional policy categorisations – driven by questions such as “how many students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds enrolled in higher education in a particular year?”

We lose sight of the root problem:

• What are the social and economic structures that reproduce the conditions in which there
  are growing inequalities that affect educational access and participation?
• How do these social and economic inequalities affect how different people, knowledge and
  forms of learning are unequally recognised, represented and valued in society and in higher
  education?
• What are the effects of these multidimensional inequalities on human and more-than-
  human flourishing and well-being?

In short, we need a reframing of notions of parity of participation to challenge deficit imaginaries. A social justice reimagining of parity of participation substantially deepens engagement with equity by examining the implications of who participates and on what terms. Nancy Fraser explains that "parity is not a matter of numbers. Rather, it is a qualitative condition, the condition of being a peer, of being on a par with others, of interacting with [others] on an equal footing…"

So what is to be done? How do we move away from deficit imaginaries, couched in one-dimensional approaches to parity of participation? How do we challenge insidious inequalities that are reproduced through inequitable educational systems? How do we move forward in solidarity to create the conditions for higher education to be mobilised as a force for equity and our collective, sustainable futures?

I propose a multidimensional framework for equity that offers vital insights to challenge inequalities. These dimensions, when held together, shift our focus from individual remediation and assimilation to the social, economic, cultural and representational inequalities that damage our system, our communities and ourselves.

Redistribution seeks to redress social and economic inequalities – the intergenerational maldistribution of educational opportunities, life chances and key resources. Access to quality resources and opportunities is imperative to full and meaningful participation in higher education and lifelong learning.

Recognition challenges the inequitable cultural value order that leads to status subordination through deficit imaginaries. This requires moving beyond tokenistic celebrations of diversity to recognise the knowledge, experiences and identities that students bring, which both enrich and transform local, institutional and sector-wide tertiary education communities.

Representation develops programs collaboratively with students and communities as peers, rather than recipients. It demands rigorous and ethically-oriented co-design and co-development with those who have been denied a voice in the development of higher education and its social contribution.

Human and more-than-human flourishing and well-being demands a broader conception of higher education beyond economic-centred notions and towards its broader contribution to generating collective, equitable, sustainable futures for us all. It recognises the commitments of students who see higher education not only as a pathway for their future well-being but also for the future well-being of others. It recognises the responsibility and contribution of universities to the local, regional and global communities they serve. It recognises our interdependency and the different knowledges, capabilities and values that constitute an equitable and inclusive higher education system.

Methodological rigour avoids collapsing research, evaluation, and programmatic development into instrumentalised methods and considers the ethics of what we do and how we do it. It emphasises participatory practice with a deep commitment to ongoing, dialogic cycles of critical reflection and critical action. It values the time required to do equity carefully, collaboratively, sustainably, and ethically.

This multidimensional framework underpins the UNESCO Chair in Equity, Social Justice and Higher Education based in the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education at the University of Newcastle. A key project of the UNESCO Chair team focuses on multidimensional inequalities and its manifestation in gender injustice and gender-based violence; what the United Nations calls the shadow pandemic.

Globally one in three women will experience gender-based violence (GBV) in their lifetime. In Australia one in four women have experienced violence by an intimate partner since the age of 15, but this rate is higher for women from socioeconomically disadvantaged areas, women with disability, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, LGBTQI+ communities, and women living in rural and remote areas. GBV is estimated to cost Australia about $22 billion annually. These numbers are staggering and reveal that we have a long way to go to building equity.

Last year all levels of Australian government launched a national action plan to end gender-based violence. Just this past week Education Ministers published an action plan addressing gender-based violence in higher education.

These developments are immense in recognising the social epidemic that is devastating to our society. Now is the time to seize higher education’s crucial contribution in actively challenging injustice and its manifestation in GBV as part of its broader commitment to equity.

Although the profound, detrimental, and long-term effects of gender-based violence on all dimensions of personal and social health and well-being has been strongly articulated over recent years, the impact of experiences of GBV on higher education access and participation remains largely a silent issue.

To redress this, the UNESCO Chair team have conducted research with 430 student victim-survivors in the Newcastle region and have found that GBV profoundly undermines higher education equity. We found that:

• the majority of GBV experiences happened in students’ own or someone else’s private
  residence.
• on average students first experienced GBV at age 13.
• student victim-survivors aspire to use their university education to help other victim-
  survivors and to make a difference to their families, communities and society.

The students valued the opportunity to participate in higher education but this was countered by a profound sense of alienation, not belonging, unworthiness and isolation. Bertram and Crowley describe this as insidious trauma, which does harm to the soul and spirit. Insidious trauma is deepened by institutionalised misrecognition: this is the combined impact of stigmatisation with deficit imaginaries.

The silencing of gender-based violence as an issue of institutional significance reinforces a personal sense of not belonging articulated by many of our participants – here are some poignant examples.

“Why am I studying this degree? Like why? How could I be of any use to anyone?”
“You can’t get over this feeling of you’re not worthy, you don’t even deserve to be here.”
“The after-effects of abuse lowered my self confidence and esteem so that I felt I did not deserve
a better life.”
“My ex said I was too stupid and too dumb to go to uni. I believed him for a long time.”

(quotes from student participants)

Maldistribution was a major factor in undermining students’ capacity to flourish. Students suffered profound financial deprivation as well as restrictions on their freedom. Rigid policies such as compulsory attendance as well as the burden of large student debt exacerbated by severe disruption to their studies was a major theme emerging from the survey data. Students made important recommendations to the university on this basis, for example:

“After I experienced [domestic violence] I was homeless, living in my car and I did my first ever
final exams at university the day after sleeping in my car.”
“Access to consistent and quality psychological services would help.”
“Please excuse our attendance rates for compulsory tutorials. We are so often going through
wars at home that no-one knows about, attendance in the middle of one of those wars could
mean additional violence for us.”
“We carry such a heavy burden already, the ever-growing financial burden [of student debt] is
scary.”
“[Domestic violence] prevented me from being able to meet assessment deadlines. I was deeply
afraid that my partner would find the letters or emails and become violent. This resulted in a
huge [student] debt.”

(quotes from student participants)

The students’ insights teach us how redistribution, recognition and representation can be held together to guide transformation for equity. The students provided powerful recommendations to university leaders and policy-makers including:

• providing quality education for staff and students about GBV.
• building capacity and new forms of expertise to address and combat GBV.
• taking an explicit stance against all forms of injustice including GBV.
• ensuring costs of study are covered, safe accommodation is available and free healthcare
  (including trauma-informed counselling services) and legal services are available.
• creating flexible and responsive time structures and inclusive pedagogical, curricular
  assessment and support frameworks and practices.
• avoiding punishing students suffering coercive control and restrictions on their mobility.
• providing navigational support to ensure access to key support, services, resources,
  opportunities and pathways.
• exercising zero tolerance of stigmatisation.
• reforming policies that lead to excessive debt, withdrawal and poor educational profiles.

Through the collaboration taking place under the UNESCO Chair, which includes research, evaluation, new programs, student advocacy, relational navigation, and inter-agency collaboration, we are producing critical knowledge and action to mobilise HE in its capacity to contribute to gender justice, higher education equity and to challenge GBV. A key role is providing a platform for students to articulate their knowledge and insights to create collective action for social change, and to build capacity for new forms of expertise.

The UNESCO Chair team at the University of Newcastle is collaborating with student victim-survivors and community service agencies to build a gender justice hub, which aims to:

• produce new knowledge to understand the extent and nature of GBV among HE students.
• ensure the voices of victim-survivors inform an improved HE sector.
• produce an evidence-base with specialist community services to support increased resourcing that enables access to lifelong learning and higher education and capacity-building.
• develop models for partnership with HE students/future students, to support their
  educational journeys, life chances and to build collective capacity, knowledge and action.
• help improve HE policies, procedures and curriculum, preparing the next generation of
  professionals to understand the complexities of gender injustice and its manifestation in
  gender-based violence.
• challenge universities and other professional organisations to become change-drivers in the
  fight against GBV.
• recognise the knowledge, insight and capacity of students for societal and institutional
  transformation.

The gender-based violence project is one case study of many that illuminates how social, economic, cultural and representational injustices, when ignored, can sabotage our collective efforts to build equity.

Challenging ourselves to move from one-dimensional models to rigorous, multidimensional frameworks enables us to dismantle harmful and insidious deficit imaginaries. When insidious inequalities are ignored they unravel our institutional and personal efforts, investments and commitments to equity.

We need to urgently move towards solutions for higher education rooted in social and ecological justice by fostering a culture of solidarity and compassion. This means thinking differently about equity, carefully considering the key messages we communicate and holding ourselves accountable to communities navigating social, economic, cultural and representational inequalities.

The UNESCO Chair project I shared illuminates that students have high aspirations to contribute to society, including participating in meaningful paid work that benefits themselves and others.

Students and community partners are co-leaders with universities in processes of reframing the purpose of higher education, and of contributing valuable knowledge and wisdom from their experience and expertise.

We simply cannot contemplate a reformed system of higher education that puts equity at the centre without recognising the value of this body of knowledge.

The narrowing of higher education for job-ready, market-centric, commercialised purposes undermines our capacity to eradicate poverty, reduce inequalities, promote gender equality, and build peace, justice and strong institutions, key sustainable development goals that centre equity and social justice.

Hyper individualism, entrenched as it is in a culture of competitiveness rather than collaboration, compassion and solidarity, is toxic for us all. Overlooking multidimensional inequalities is ultimately damaging for sustainable higher education, while doing harm to our students and to ourselves. If we ignore these social imperatives, we ignore our long-term, collective well-being.

I would like to end by paying special and heartfelt tribute to the participants, team members and community sector partners in the UNESCO Chair project I shared. I want to acknowledge the wisdom and knowledge they bring to processes of higher education transformation. Importantly, the UNESCO Chair scheme is not conceived of as the work of a lone scholar. Rather, UNESCO understands that transformation can only come through collective action, through cooperation, collaboration and meaningful parity of participation in the project of change. It is only together that we can systematically transform higher education for equity and sustainability.

References

Burke, PJ, Coffey, J, Parker, J, Hardacre, S, Cocuzzoli, F, Shaw, J & Haro, A, 2023. ‘It’s a lot of shame’: understanding the impact of gender-based violence on higher education access and participation, Teaching in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2023.2243449.

Coffey, J, Burke, PJ, Hardacre, S, Parker, J, Cocuzzoli, F & Shaw, J, 2023. Students as victim-survivors: the enduring impacts of gender-based violence for students in higher education, Gender and Education, 35:6-7, 623-637, DOI: 10.1080/09540253.2023.2242879

Fraser, N. 2013. Fortunes of feminism: From state-managed capitalism to neoliberal crisis. London and New York: Verso Books.

Parr, A, Binagwaho, A, Stirling, A, Davies, A, Mbow, C, Hessen, DO, Nader, HB, Salmi, J, Burkins, MB, Ramakrishna, S, Serrano, S, Schmelkes, S, Shijun T and McCowan, T, 2022. Knowledge-driven actions: Transforming higher education for global sustainability. Paris: UNESCO.

Live from the foyer of the Universities Australia (UA) Solutions Summit in Canberra, this special episode shares the immediate reactions of tertiary education leaders to the Universities Accord final report.

Featured in this episode are vice-chancellors Deb Terry from the University of Queensland, Renee Leon from Charles Sturt University, Chris Moran from the University of New England, Clare Pollock from Western Sydney University, Simon Biggs from James Cook University, Theo Farrell from La Trobe University and Alex Zelinsky from the University of Newcastle.

Host Martin Betts from HEDx also interviews sector leaders including chief executive of UA Luke Sheehy (pictured), UA former chair John Dewar, higher education commentator Andrew Norton, and others.

The solutions summit ran over two days on February 27 and 28.

That's probably why I regularly watch documentaries on these world-changing events, which might appear slightly obsessive.

And now, with COVID-19 wreaking havoc across the world for an indefinite amount of time, I guess I’m being given such an opportunity, if it can be called that. The virus, which has brought the world to its knees and triggered a whole rethink of how society operates, will arguably go down as an extraordinary period of history if current trajectories are anything to go by.

It’s for this reason that the University of Sydney’s library is asking university staff and students to contribute something that encapsulates their experiences of living through the pandemic, through its ‘Collecting Covid-19’ project.

“We are creating a collection to preserve the daily individual reality of the pandemic’s impact on the university community,” Liz Litting, associate director of the university library said.

“It will hopefully create a cultural record and valuable historical resource for our own and future generations.”

People are encouraged to submit a range of different materials, including videos, personal diaries, artworks, photographs, newsletters, poetry and short reflections – anything that captures their responses, feelings and attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The university’s library will also collaborate with the State Library of New South Wales to gather and curate social media content on the pandemic, including specific hashtag content such as #usydonline.

The university library houses a large collection of cultural heritage materials and some can be viewed through the library’s Digital Collections repository.  

Research and metadata related to COVID-19 will also be available to access to researchers, public and the public.

For university historian Associate Professor Julia Horne, preserving records and cultural materials helps us gain a deeper appreciation or a window into the past.

“It is only through the preservation of records from the Spanish Flu pandemic that we know today the university was faced with the difficult decision of approving first-year medical students being used to support containment of the flu in the absence of other medical workers still stuck in Europe at the end of the First World War,” she said.

In what has been a difficult year for international students, Horne has encouraged them to contribute as well, including in their own languages, and for new undergraduates to provide their perception of living through this experience.

An honorary archivist for the university’s School of Medicine and Royal North Shore Hospital is also participating in the project. Associate Professor Catherine Storey is a retired neurologist who supervises research projects at the University of Sydney involving the history of medicine.

“We often miss what happens at ground level and don’t realise the importance of documenting the period we are living through which, with the emergence of social media, is more challenging than ever,” Storey said.

“What people might consider as ‘trivial’ is often the most revealing, such as lecturers’ notices to their classes.

“During the pandemic I’ve been keeping a diary but also collecting institutional notices, messages and fact sheets that have been issued and published online.”

Storey will work between the University of Sydney Library, the State Library of NSW and National Library in Canberra to contribute to their records, and the university’s library will seek permission to share materials housed in the other two libraries.

It is hoped that the University of Sydney’s cultural collection of the pandemic will complement other national and international records of the event. The ‘Collecting COVID-19’ collection is due for public release in 2021.

The elephant in the room

First and foremost, I figured today, ladies and gentlemen, we might as well deal with the elephant in the room: It would be nice if money was limitless, but it is a sad fact of life that it is not. It’s another sad fact that, 10 years after the global financial crisis, Australia’s federal budget remains in deficit – this year, projected to be a deficit of some $23 billion. Too many in the university sector seem to have underestimated the resolve of the Government to live within our means, to live within our budget. That was a mistake. Transparently, the decisions taken in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook late last year were not our preferred options. However, the Government has a budget to live within. As a portfolio minister, I and my department have a budget to live within and, consequentially, the entities within my portfolio have a budget that they need to live within, too.

Ever since the Gillard Government Budget of 2013, savings and efficiencies have been budgeted for and proposed to the Commonwealth Grants Scheme. Proposals for savings are not new and have come from both sides of politics. I think and hope that all would agree that I have been consistent – consistent since my appointment as minister, before and during the last election, and indeed since – about this reality. While funding has continued to grow, and grow quite strongly over the five years since that 2013 final Labor Budget, and indeed in that period of time, consultations, discussion papers and reviews have been near endless, the scale of the proposed savings has frequently and consistently diminished. Indeed, over the last year alone, the Turnbull Government has written off around $1.3 billion in proposed higher education savings.

But ultimately, the annual budget variations and delays in the higher education budget could go on no longer, the Senate uncertainty associated with the higher education budget could go on no longer, and hence the MYEFO decisions were made. However, just because we apply the budget, does not mean, and does not change, the reality that we genuinely value, respect, and admire our Australian universities. The Turnbull Government knows that you are drivers of economic growth, that you advance knowledge and social mobility, that you stand tall on the world stage, that you transform the lives of individuals, that you have much to be proud of – and we much to be thankful for.

Contrary to some reports, the sky isn’t falling and it isn’t about too. Let’s not forget that federal funding to universities stands at a record high at over $17 billion per annum. The overall university sector is in good shape, running an aggregate surplus of $1.6 billion in 2016. This is not a weakened and ailing sector on the brink of decline and fighting for its survival. While not every provider enjoys the same circumstances, as a sector you are strong, and deservedly so.

Education accreditation and outcomes

As well as the budget pressures that we face, and notwithstanding the overall excellence across our universities, we also need to be open and honest about continuing to work on quality issues, such as attrition rates, completion rates, and concerns from employers about the workforce preparation graduates. In 2015, the attrition rate reached almost 15 per cent, compared to the lowest point achieved in 2009 of around 12 per cent. Similarly, completion rates have declined, and recent research from my department shows that the full-time employment rate among recently-completed graduates has fallen from around 85 per cent in 2008, to about 72 per cent in 2017.

By seeking to link a degree of funding growth to performance outcomes from 2020, we want to incentivise universities to provide an even better student experience, and introduce new incentives to focus on student performance, retention, and employment outcomes. Now, I know, across the university sector, many are eager to know more about performance measures. And as we have said repeatedly since announcing a desire to develop a formal performance measure in last year’s Budget, the sector will be intimately involved in developing workable measures that have the confidence of the sector. That’s why we’ve timed it now to a start date in 2020, providing ample time for your input, engagement, and thoughts. This is your opportunity to build a framework that focuses on student outcomes and also raises and cements public confidence in the system.

Another area where improvements can be made to ensure our higher education students are receiving the best quality education is the interaction of professional accreditation arrangements with course requirements. Just last week, Professionals Australia held a National Professional Accreditation Best Practice Summit, which was a great opportunity for participants to discuss the relationship between our higher education system, professional associations, industries and employers, and students. This was an important and impressive initiative that demonstrates the commitment of the professional and university sectors to a collegiate approach regarding identification and adoption of good practice in professional accreditation.

As I said in my message to the Professional Accreditation Conference, the stamp of approval that external accreditation provides and the processes behind it helps to ensure that students choose the right course, and that graduates of accredited courses emerge from their studies with the up-to-date knowledge and skills that reflect the very best work practices in a range of professions. But I acknowledge that accreditation can place a regulatory and financial burden on higher education providers, and on those in the professions who are called upon to manage accreditation assessments. That’s why in early 2016 we asked the Higher Education Standards Panel to advise on how we might be able to alleviate some of these burdens. Students and parents have written to me, and my parliamentary colleagues have raised with me, concerns from students about finding work placements that are part of course and accreditation requirements, and therefore concerns from graduates who have found their qualification may at times not meet those accreditation requirements.

International students

Just as the government seeks an enhanced student experience for domestic students, we need to think about the experience we offer international students in new ways, too. I would like to acknowledge the great work done by universities and education providers to attract, retain, and support record numbers of international students to study in Australia. You all know how important international education and international partnerships are. The work you’re doing in this space makes a significant contribution economically, socially, and culturally. It’s why the Turnbull Government is championing programs like the New Colombo Plan, and developed the National Strategy for International Education. These initiatives are transformational, cultivating the next generation of leaders in Australia and in the region, with tens of thousands of participants in various programs to date.

Alongside the quality of our education institutions and the Australian lifestyle, international students come to study in Australia because of our safe campuses, communities, and our welcoming environment. It is, of course, critical – as has been noted in recent days – that we all continue to work together to ensure the safety of our campuses for domestic and international students alike. I’m pleased, though, that a 2016 survey of more than 65,000 international students studying here found that 93 per cent rated personal safety as a key reason for choosing Australia as a study destination. This endorsement is critical, and critical that we maintain that safe reputation that we rightly enjoy.

While we are a destination of choice and enjoying significant growth in the students choosing to study here, we cannot be complacent. International education is a highly competitive, globalised sector, which is expanding as income aspirations and participation in education in emerging economies continue to rise. The future of our position as a world leader in education depends on us continuing to deliver a high-quality education, a safe and welcoming environment, and in offering international students a strong foundation for their career aspirations.

There are obligations on all providers to meet the requirements of the quality standards for international education, the national code of practice for providers of education and training to overseas students, to ensure they have safe and secure learning environments and to equip students with the knowledge and skills needed for their future paths and careers. But I know that you all seek to go much further than those standards, and that you do. That’s why we need to continue to work together, and that we are committed to doing so, on a sustained focus on deepening the engagement of international students with domestic students, as well as with the broader community.

This is a strong message from the international students surveyed, that engagement is critical to our international students. That want, and should have, a positive cultural experience unlike any that they may have in their home country. It will be that experience that keeps them coming back. And, as with domestic students, we also need to keep our focus on equipping international students with the skills they’ll need to build a career and strengthen their employability through opportunities for work-integrated learning.

Conclusion

In conclusion, my invitation to you today is this: let’s look forwards instead of backwards. Let’s, as this conference suggests in its title, be focused on the fundamentals we need for the future. I think those of you who have worked with me and engaged with me know that I always remain open to new ideas, but the budget parameters, as I said at the outset, are the budget parameters and, like the rest of the community, we need to live within them. What we had a year ago though, and what we still have, is an opportunity to continue to work together in ongoing areas of policy improvements that strengthen our outstanding higher education and university sector; to keep making the gains, as we have done, in improvements in policies around admissions and accreditation, as I’ve spoken of today. All of that means continuing to come together and recognise the realities in which we all operate, but to do so to ensure the future fundamental settings are right.

For me, as indeed for everybody here, investment, action, and work in and on our university sector is critical to the future of our nation. We remain determined to work as cooperatively as we can to strengthen the quality of outcomes for students, the quality of outcomes for knowledge and research, the quality of outcomes for our future economic development that underpins the way of life and the social stability we have in Australia. I thank you and congratulate you on the continued work all of you do, on the discussions you’re having here as part of this conference about those future fundamentals, the transformation that is taking place across the world in areas of higher education and your work to be at the forefront of that, and look forward to continuing to work with you where we can in the development of all of those issues.

This question formed one of the major themes of the 2018 Higher Education Conference, and not just in speaker content – it was also reflected in the inaugural inclusion of a student panel.

For the first time in the history of this Universities Australia conference series, Wednesday's session: Employability and Curriculum Designed by the Future, featured a seminar run entirely by Gen Y representatives.

The four student leaders – National Union of Students president Mark Pace, Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations president Natasha Abrahams, Council of International Students Australia president Bjay Sapkota, and National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Postgraduate Association vice-president Sharlene Leroy-Dyer – posed as deputy vice-chancellors for the day and pitched the initiatives and policies of their fictional universities.

Each of the speakers opted to take on different titles and focuses, including public VC (Pace), personal VC (Abrahams), International VC (Sapkota) and Indigenous VC (Leroy-Dyer).

Their standout policies and suggestions to improve Australian universities were as follows:

Public VC, Mark Pace

• More focus on soft skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and community relationships
• Initiatives to encourage lifelong learning combined with timeless skills
• Students at the centre of decision-making
• More electives and chance for post-graduate specialisations
• Lower student debt, especially for those studying multiple degrees
• More one-on-one time with academics and longer contact hours

Personal VC, Natasha Abrahams

• Regular careers fairs, with potential for them to be segmented (eg hosting one specifically for international students)
• More focus on cadetship programs and learning within industry
• Opt-in tutorials for small group, face-to-face discussions on course content
• More direct engagement as to what students want to get involved in, or why they feel they can't get involved (eg no childcare centres on campus)
• Student-led initiatives

Natasha Abrahams (centre) and Mark Pace with seminar chair ANU deputy vice-chancellor Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington. Photo: Universities Australia

International VC, Bjay Sapkota

• Faculty specific advisors and career advisory
• Frequent visits by industry leaders
• Support for marginalised students to increase retention rate
• Smoother processes for international students, particularly in times of crisis
• Funded counselling and financial planning
• Leniency with special consideration
• Focus on the question: What is our responsibility to shape this world as a whole?

Indigenous VC, Sharlene Leroy-Dyer

• Clearer job pathways, including cadetships and entrepreneurial programs
• Grow proportion of Indigenous academics and support staff
• Build culturally appropriate student centres
• Programs delivered online and face to face in Aboriginal communities: don't come to us, we will come to you approach
• Programs taught by teams of Indigenous staff
• Interactive online settings with lessons adapted to community needs

Sharlene Leroy-Dyer (left) and Bjay Sapkota with seminar chair ANU deputy vice-chancellor Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington.

Nothing About Us Without Us: Students as Partners
A second session of the conference took on similar themes to the panel, and looked at the benefits of partnering with students to improve higher education, as well as successful examples of collaborative projects between staff and students.

The seminar was kicked off by University of Queensland PhD candidate Lucy Mercer-Mapstone.

"I believe deeply in the creativity that comes from university students and staff collaborating," she said.

"Emotional intelligence and good human skills both come from partnerships, and we need to have shared responsibility for the learning endeavor.

"We've mastered giving students a voice but we have a long way to go when it comes to student action. Too many students are still considered as passive consumers of knowledge."

Mercer-Mapstone defined student action as a progression from giving students a voice, which involves placing students in the role of co-creators, experts and agents of change.

Bringing international experience to the table, University of East Anglia vice-chancellor Professor David Richardson built on this concept, citing examples of student-led initiatives that achieved the otherwise unachievable.

Richardson's main example was the university's Never Ok Campaign. The project saw students charged with creating a project to tackle racism, discrimination and sexual assault on campus, and resulted in a series of graffiti style messages raising awareness across campus.

Richardson said such a campaign illustrated how students better communicated with their peers, and possessed a wealth of creative ideas that could improve campus life and education outcomes.

"I've seen universities develop in a positive way when we realise the potential of partnership – when we place students as co-producers and co-designers of education," he said.

"I don't think we should fall into the trap of just seeing students as consumers. It's a culture shift that can be uncomfortable for senior staff, but I feel it's my job to lead that change.

"If you work with students you get creative solutions which are far  more impactful than you would have come up with by yourself."

Other successful examples included a collaboration between the University of Queensland and its student union to create a sexual misconduct policy and mental health strategy.

University of Technology Sydney Professor Sally Varnham said knowing the benefits of collaboration, universities should aim to create their own genuine partnerships with students.

"It requires a mindset change from what we've had previously in Australian universities," she said.

"Partnership is an ethos not an activity. Students are the university and the university is the students but sometimes that gets forgotten.

"It's like a gym membership. You can't just sign up and then loiter around and expect to get fit – you have to do something about it."

The Bupa Health Foundation has this week listed six up-and-coming researchers as finalists for the Emerging Health Researcher Award, with winners to be announced in Sydney on March 16.

The group includes researchers from Bond University, The University of Newcastle and Macquarie University, who are now each in the running to win $5,000, as well as $20,000 to advance their research career.

Bupa Health Foundation executive leader Annette Schmiede said the awards had been running for six years and focused on how research translates to benefits for everyday Australians.

“‘Each of this year’s finalists are not only doing relevant health research but are also actively engaging in research translation, which is basically making sure it gets to the consumers of research – the public, policy makers and the health care sector," she said.

“More than 120 nominees were proposed by the research community, drawing attention to and celebrating the research achievements of early career scientists, academics and clinicians.

"Our 2017 Emerging Researcher Award finalists have already made significant impacts on improving healthcare for individuals and populations.

“Continuing to recognise and celebrate this important group of early career researchers is essential to ensuring a vibrant research sector.”

Emerging Health Researcher Award finalists:

• Dr Amanda McCullough, Centre for Research in Evidence-Based Practice, Bond University. Area of research: Reducing antibiotics prescribing in general practice
  Nominator: Dr Chris Del Mar, Professor of Public Health, Bond University
• Dr Bridianne O’Dea, Black Dog Institute. Area of research: Using technology and social media to identify, treat and prevent mental illness
  and promote wellbeing in youth
  Nominator: Professor Helen Christensen, Chief Scientist, Director, Black Dog Institute
• Dr Emma Beckett, The University of Newcastle, School of Medicine and Public Health. Area of research: Gene-nutrient-environment interactions
  Nominator: Associate Professor Mark Lucock, Associate Professor and Program Convenor
• Dr Jaquelyne Hughes, Menzies School of Health Research and Royal Darwin Hospital. Area of research: Reducing rates of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in Indigenous
  communities
  Nominator: Professor Alan Cass, Director of Menzies School of Health Research
• Dr Rae-Anne Hardie, Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University. Area of research: Enhancing quality of pathology testing in general practice
  Nominator: Professor Andrew Georgiou, Head of DiagnosticInformatics, Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University
• Dr Thushara Perera, Bionics Institute. Area of research: Precise instrumentation to measure hand tremor, balance, posture,
  rigidity, and gait in movement disorder patients
  Nominator: Professor Hugh McDermott, Neurobionics Research Program Leader, Chief Technology Officer, Bionics Institute

As part of the initiative, more than 100 girls from around the country are spending the week at the UNSW Sydney campus for the annual Women in Engineering Summer Camp, which encourages the pursuit of engineering.

Dean of engineering Mark Hoffman said demand for engineers continued to grow, but the profession was still male dominated.

“Demand from industry completely outstrips supply, and that demand is not slowing – in fact, it has doubled in the past decade,” he said.

“And the average starting salary for engineering graduates is higher for women than for men; name another profession where that’s the case.”

Hoffman said university efforts aimed to meet demand for engineers in Australia, but also increase diversity in the industry.

“In a knowledge-driven economy, the best innovation comes from diverse teams who bring together different perspectives,” he said.

“This isn’t just about plugging the chronic skills gap – it’s also a social good to bring diversity to our technical workforce, which will help stimulate more innovation. We can’t win at the innovation game if half of our potential engineers are not taking part in the race.”

As part of this week’s camp, the participating girls will visit major companies such as Transport for NSW, the Royal Australian Navy, IAG’s Firemark Labs and Toohey’s brewery as well as start-ups in the industry, to see engineers in action.

They will network with 80 female engineers employed in the industry, and collaborate on week-long design projects to see how they could apply their school maths, science and technology skills to the real world and a career in engineering.

UNSW Women in Engineering program manager Sarah Coull said in past years, more than 65 per cent of seniors who attended the camp went on to enroll in engineering at UNSW.

“There may be young women in high school right now who could become some of the best engineers ever born – but if they don’t know about the profession and what it offers, they’ll never realise that potential,” she said.

“If we succeed, it’s a win for them as individuals, it’s a win for us as a society and it’s a win for the engineering profession.”

Almost 20 per cent of engineering graduates come from UNSW in Sydney, which has the country’s biggest engineering faculty. Currently 22 per cent of UNSW students enrolled in engineering are female.

Engineering faculty education manager Kimberly Burdett said each year an average of 18,000 new engineering positions needed to be filled in Australia, but only 7,600 students graduate with bachelor-level engineering degrees from Australian universities.

“There are just not enough engineering graduates to meet domestic demand, and demand is high,” she said.

The proportion of Australian engineering graduates who are employed full-time within three years of completing their degrees is 91.6 per cent, according to the 2017 Graduate Outcomes Survey.

Facilitated by Austrade, Cahoot Learning International, DeakinCo and General Assembly, the Sydney event yesterday brought together education providers, edtech companies and industry associations to address the most pressing challenges in education.

MIT executive director of professional education Bhaskar Pant presented his findings as the first panellist, and focused on the need for collaboration, the rise of short courses or micro-qualifications and their increasing value in the workforce.

Of particular note, Pant mentioned a number of new specialised courses in modern topics from innovation, technology and artificial intelligence, to machine learning, system engineering, data science and leadership.

Accessible online, acting as a pathway to a master's degree, and already undertaken by staff across Australia, Pant believes such short courses could be essential in upskilling the nation's workforce, and may eventually replace the traditional university degree.

"We live in an international world which is truly a global village, and we're talking about credentials here that didn't previously exist," he said.

"No longer should you have to have a four-year degree to be qualified for something – you can get a micro-qualification which shows you have specific knowledge.

"It's not the value of university that's declined, it's the way we deliver education that's up for discussion.

"We've recognised there is a significant opportunity to crowdsource solutions, and we know there will be a rise in online communities and new opportunities for peer-to-peer instruction rather than traditional learning."

Pant also spoke of the importance of "breaking down the silos" and facilitating more collaboration between university faculties and disciplines to effectively adapt to the changing times.

"Next door someone is doing something complementary to what you are doing and you should know about it; don't wait until you go to a conference to meet them and have a discussion," he said.

"We should be looking at more communication with industry, and delivery of opportunities for continuous learning.

"We need to focus on education needs in the context of what's needed in the workforce of tomorrow, which is almost today."

Austrade chief executive Dr Stephanie Fahey also addressed industry leaders at the seminar.

"We're thinking about how to make education more accessible and continuous, and how we can upskill our citizens and share that strategy across the pacific," she said.

"There are many moving parts in the education sector, and we need to be agile, prepare and globally collaborative.

"Millennials are also wanting education anywhere anytime, and we know a lot of people are reluctant to go to campus.

"Students are starting to lead their own learning, so the higher education sector in Australia is being disrupted very quickly.

"How do Australian institutions compete with a brand like MIT that's globalising? We need to collaborate."

Fahey also touched on the evolution of international education.

"The educational institution has been commoditised; Australia is very capable of providing high quality education, but the fact that institutions are becoming increasingly reliant on international education is problematic.

"I think every model of learning is being disrupted – even the idea of a degree, the way people are accessing education is changing fundamentally, so it's no surprise that international education will also change.

"I don't think the tap from China will be turned off, because there are so many reasons to come to Australia.

"Likewise our own students are seeking out opportunities overseas and becoming global citizens.

"We've got time to think about alternate mechanisms that we can offer to make education more accessible."

The session is the second in what is hoped to be a series of collaborative seminars, and the first to be held in Sydney.