As the cost of accessing academic journals soars, the Australian National University has launched a new free online database that allows anyone with an internet connection to read the latest scholarly…
The phrase ‘publish or perish’ is familiar to all academics, who face enormous pressure to have their work featured in the top academic journals. Career progression, job security and pay rises can depend…
More than 18,000 journal articles have been posted on an illegal file-sharing website to protest the arrest of an online activist accused of stealing more than four million documents from a Massachusetts…
The time has come to abolish university examinations. Just because something has been around a long time there’s no reason to assume it’s outdated. But in the case of exams that assumption would be right…
Failure to reverse a downturn in international student enrolments could cost billions to Australia’s GDP and over 45,000 jobs by the end of the decade, a report has found. International student enrolments…
Imagine the following conversation between a finance academic and his or her supervisor during an annual performance review: Academic: So, do you think I am ready for a promotion? Supervisor: Well, I see…
The most feared exam in the world has been dropped. For over a century those hoping to study at All Souls College in Oxford opened an envelope with trepidation to discover just one word inside. They then…
The Australian government has dropped the contentious system of ranking academic journals and assessing academics based on their ability to publish in the top-ranked publications. Previously, journals…
“Australia’s universities, like its wine, are decent and dependable, but seldom excellent.” So said The Economist magazine, in a piece published online. We asked Australian tertiary education experts to…
Australia’s medical schools need a 50% increase in federal funding to boost the proportion of places available to domestic students and reduce their reliance on international fee-paying students, the peak…
In Australian universities at the moment research is everything. They obsess over the rankings in the new ERA system which measures research performance. For academics publishing in the top journals isn’t…
With its electoral support eroding, the federal government has been careful not to trigger frustration or disappointment in higher education and research. These have been largely Labor constituencies since…
If you’re in politics, population matters. Rival studies on what constitutes a sustainable Australian population project wildly different statistics. But behind the figures are real people whose lives…