This paper reports on research conducted with staff employed in the Australian higher education sector during the COVID-19 pandemic. The sector has been significantly impacted, particularly those institutions heavily reliant on revenue from international student enrolments. Universities moved swiftly to introduce cost-savings measures such as,…

A reflexive thematic analysis was used to identify factors that enhance and inhibit employee engagement amongst professional staff working in shared services teams in an Australian regional university. With efficient and effective client service delivery expected of people working in a shared services structure, employee buy-in and the need for…

Indigenous student completion rates remain very low relative to non-Indigenous students. Some universities have higher Indigenous student completion rates than the national average but research-based evidence of these universities as 'success models' is limited. Drawing on findings from interviews with Indigenous university graduates and staff as…

Contract cheating is, potentially, a serious threat to the quality of higher education around the world. Prior research has focused on student perspectives and the companies themselves, but the staff view is poorly understood, despite staff being a major stakeholder with considerable influence over strategies designed to address contract cheating.…

While no major change in relation to student attrition and retention data has been recorded over the past 20 years, the increasingly neoliberal agenda imposed on Australian higher education institutions has led to increased scrutiny around such data. In this case study, we explore discourses of attrition and retention to understand better the…

Universities are both a source of employable graduates and careers. This paper examines universities as developers and employers of their own graduates from the perspective of employees and recruited positions. Research questions were: what do learning and teaching careers look like at universities, and what are the occupational patterns,…

Internationally, schools have recognised the need for supporting and improving the resilience of students, particularly those facing a multiplicity of challenges. However, social and emotional learning programmes, including those aimed at enhancing resilience, are often not evaluated thoroughly nor detail process and economic evaluations. This…

In meeting the social and emotional learning (SEL) needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, the capacities of school staff are critical. There is very limited evidence for relevant capacity development initiatives. This evaluation reports a multicomponent SEL training intervention delivered to staff of an Australian education…

We analyse data from the largest survey of university staff in Australia to determine whether bullying and harassment are more common in regional than metropolitan and Go8 universities, and to what extent any differences could be attributed to other factors. While professional staff showed no difference in harassment rates between regional and…

As a policy initiative to improve student achievement, a number of jurisdictions have introduced compulsory literacy and numeracy standards for senior secondary students, the meeting of which forms a hurdle requirement for the award of the senior secondary exit certificate. While such a requirement is sometimes justified by policymakers as a…