Research by a Nobel Prize for Economics winner shows the impact of education funding on the future success of students is greater than previously believed. (more…)
Category: Education
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Teaching ‘both sides’ of the Holocaust in Texas schools
In Texas, the ‘Critical Race Theory Bill’ will edit important stories from American history and produce schools that dare not take a position on the Holocaust.
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Wealthy schools pocket millions in JobKeeper funds despite profits
Blessed are the rich! The payments to elite schools despite their healthy bottom lines and vast assets highlight the pressing need for education funding reform. (more…)
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The further hollowing out of ethics and education in Australia’s universities
Employment issues have now joined many other pathologies and are plaguing the higher education sector — according to recent accounts, 40,000 jobs in the university sector have been lost in a year.
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The overseas student and immigration nexus: Where to now?
As the government faces pressure to bring overseas students back into the country, if it wants a high-quality education sector it should be wary of those only interested in maximising student numbers and short-term profits.
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A fearful university in Adelaide abandons academic freedom in attempts to better understand China
It wasn’t foreign interference and influence legislation that got in the way of a recent university event, but the universities themselves, fearful of standing up for academic freedom.
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Ziggy Switkowski: the corporatisation of Australian universities and Crown Casino
After a stellar career at the pinnacle of several large corporate entities, Ziggy Switkowski seems to have fallen to Earth after resigning as chancellor of RMIT university.
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Don’t forget the plight of Afghans in Australia
Further to Stuart Rees’ eloquent exposure of the Prime Minister’s cruelty toward those Afghans already in Australia on temporary visas, below is my letter to the Prime Minister arguing for a more humane and pragmatic asylum seeker policy. Pragmatic because times have changed – the boats are no longer coming – and because among those temporary protection visa holders are talented, resilient and determined young people.
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ASPI’s proposal to further militarise and securitise the University. Part 2
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s recent proposal to enrol the science, technology, engineering and mathematics areas of the research universities as part of a national security establishment along the lines overseen by the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency is a regrettable initiative. (more…)
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ASPI’s proposal to further militarise and securitise the university – Part 1
It is now unambiguously clear that certain influential centres of government advice and government policy hold the university-as-institution in contempt. (more…)
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Our universities are in crisis.They are no longer fit for purpose?
The urgency of transforming university education, and indeed all forms of education, lies in the need to render them relevant to the deep global crises we now face. These crises are reshaping every society on Earth. (more…)
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Is equity on the Federal Government’s training agenda?
Is equity on the Federal Government’s training agenda? As the Government continues to make changes to vocational education and training resulting from economic issues highlighted by the current pandemic, the question arises as to whether educational opportunities and funding are being equitably applied.
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Private schools brawl to get their snouts deeper in the funding trough
A coalition of Independent schools complained (on the ABC 7.30 Report) that they are disadvantaged by the Morrison Government’s new funding model because their funding increase is not as big as others. They want yet another special deal from the Morrison Government as do many other Independent schools.
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The authoritarian academy: corporate governance of Australia’s universities exploits staff and students and degrades academic standards. Part 3
The corporatization of Australia’s public universities has been driven by government funding cuts and regressive changes to how universities are governed. The rationale for corporatization was that it would encourage universities to become more entrepreneurial by turning vice-chancellors into CEOs and governing bodies into corporate boards. The resulting hybrid has been very successful at promoting university ‘brands’ to international students but has utterly failed to maintain a supportive and collegial work environment for staff and students on university campuses. (more…)
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Coalition policies and corporatization of universities are premised on shifting costs to students and staff. Part 2
Australia’s tertiary education system is large, complex, and poorly regulated. Its government funding sources, governance structures and annual reporting requirements lack transparency and are inconsistent between and within jurisdictions. Distorted government priorities and discredited ideological fixations have created a dysfunctional system that devalues the work of academics and professional staff while imposing ever higher burdens on students to pay more for less. (more…)
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COVID cuts highlight intellectual bankruptcy of Coalition higher education policies. Part 1
Australian universities are in crisis, a crisis that has been a long time in the making, but is becoming increasingly obvious as the country’s borders remain closed to international students and the rivers of gold that had flowed from them rapidly evaporate. (more…)
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Why the ‘Teflon’ University is coming unstuck
It’s often referred to as the Teflon phenomenon – the capacity to withstand any amount of criticism and proceed as if nothing has changed. Accusations, damning evidence and reports of wrongdoing simply don’t stick. Countless US presidents have been coated with this substance, as have entire Australian administrations, including the current Morrison government.
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Education department refuses to hold private schools accountable for taxpayer funding
Yet another damning report by the Auditor-General shows that the Commonwealth Department of Education continues to fail to fully hold private school systems accountable for how they distribute taxpayer funding. It also criticises the Minister for Education and the Department for failing to meet their parliamentary reporting obligations.
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Early childhood education, access and equity: lessons from China
As the much-touted childcare funding in the federal budget appears increasingly as an announcement, rather than a commitment, perhaps we should be looking to China to start developing long-term strategies to reform Australia’s early childhood education and care (ECEC) system.
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Australian engagement with the PRC: universities need more, not less
The current global political environment in the Anglophone world is becoming increasingly suspicious of involvement of any kind with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). For students and staff in Australian universities the likely resultant disengagement is not simply wrong in principle, it is dangerously misleading. (more…)
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Is the end nigh for the Australian public university?
The Morrison government has declared war on Australia’s public universities. They are accused of being hotbeds of post-modern rabble rousing and an unbearable burden on taxpayers. Government ministers and employers complain that graduates are not “work-ready”. The remarkable thing is the supine response to date from the universities themselves to these baseless and gratuitous insults.
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More transparency needed around Uni’s audit into ‘foreign interference’
The University’s approach to ‘foreign interference’ puts its Chinese staff at risk. There’s a tension in the idea of the modern university, between the essentially borderless nature of knowledge production, and the rival claim that universities should serve the “national interest”. (more…)
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Tudge fudges school results and funding
The Minister for Education, Alan Tudge, was fudging figures to denigrate Australia’s school performance at the The Age education summit last week. He claimed the UK as the new benchmark for education performance, but ignored serious flaws in the reporting of its results. He also fudged data on school funding and student results in Australia. (more…)
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Our Christian heritage and the culture wars
The culture war drum-beats are sounding again – pounded out by the usual suspects in the Murdoch media and among shock jocks and the Morrison Government. (more…)
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Childcare and the federal budget: what about the childcare workforce?
Changes to childcare in its role as a workforce support are expected to be made in the next federal budget. Childcare is more than workforce support and without reforming the present market-driven system it is unlikely recommended changes will deliver anything except minimal short-term relief to an ailing system.
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Can you teach people to be more empathetic? Yes and no
Empathy training is trendy in the corporate world. In light of the events in Parliament House in the recent past, empathy training has arrived there too. Rather than demanding that the Liberal National MP Andrew Laming resigns for his alleged misconduct, the Prime Minister has requested that he undertakes empathy training. (more…)
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Do we have an oversupply of degrees?
A recent edition of ‘The Conversation’ carried an article, by Small, Shaw and McPhail, titled ‘1 in 4 unemployed Australians has a degree. How did we get to this point.’
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Investment in early childhood education provides greatest benefit
In Part 1 – Policy and Progress, I pointed out the problem of focusing on schooling and the myths of its contribution to economic growth. In Part 2, I emphasise the importance of teacher-led assessment and the fundamental importance of early childhood. (more…)
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Education shouldn’t be about contribution to the economy
The Coalition’s education policy deals only with schools, ignores the critical early years of life and the nature of learning and wrongly asserts a link between student education achievement and economic growth. Funding has produced gross inequity and no educational gain.
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Group of Eight universities concede to ASIO, restrict vital research engagement with China
China is provoking every country in its region. But that is no reason to cut off all contact, including scientific engagement, especially if we want to avoid war. Brian Toohey investigates another sphere in which academic freedom is being restricted by government. (more…)