Despite 20 years of focus on improving university retention rates, we are still losing one in five of our first-year students. And the release of a new report by TEQSA again reminds us of the challenges of retention. The report highlights that, on average, universities have a 20% attrition rate. This builds on an article by The [...]
I have now been an academic for just over 10 years. It is a job I love, and I have been lucky enough to experience some success. I work with some amazing people, get to sit in a classroom with amazing students, have great colleagues, and for some reason I am yet to fathom, [...]
It is amazing to think that, as The Guardian reported earlier this year, vinyl albums sales now outstrip those of CDs - sales hit a 25 year high. It was not that long ago that people were predicted the death of vinyl - it was seen as 'old technology' that would not survive changing technologies. This has not happened [...]
This week I had the pleasure of launching an exhibition of the work of Lee Hong. Lee is an Australian-Chinese artists who studied at the Central Academy of Art in Beijing. I find Lee’s art incredibly insightful. Below is the catalogue essay I wrote. -- According to Existential philosophers such as Soren Kierkegaard, we as [...]
Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the re-emergence of One Nation, refusal to accept human induced climate change and the failure of other evidence based policy initiatives such as needs-based school funding and health care. As we see this occurring, Prof. Andrew J. Hoffman from the University of Michigan wars that educators are losing relevance [...]
It has been over 18 months since I was appointed the Dean of Western Sydney University’s Graduate Research School. It is a job that I really do love. But is also a job that can be heartbreaking, as I have seen good students drop out – both within my university and from other institutions. [...]
As the Dean of Graduate Studies at Western Sydney University, there are two areas that tend to occupy my mind: The first is the well-being of the PhD candidates that are part of my university and I feel responsible for; and, the second is the completion rates of these candidates knowing that most of [...]
So here goes – something that I have not written about before but has been on my mind… I just finished listening to a podcast and reading a book titled Stop Fixing Women in which an important point is made very clear: when women do not succeed or do not reach their full potential, [...]
