We must monitor outcomes in seeking to grow our crop of numbers of equity graduates, and them providing the skills we need for future work. That needs us to see them in the first place and recognise their lived experiences and show them that they matter. We need to care about them more than we care about ourselves and our places in rankings. And this needs significant shifts in our culture, governanceand leadership.
Alessandro di Lullo as Co-founder of global EdTech investor Supercharger Ventures joins Dr Nora Koslowski of MBS on the podcast. They outline the mindset changes needed by higher education leaders to embrace technology such that it becomes mainstream in future education offerings.
An alternative vision of future education is as technology enabled services, focused on lifelong learning, targeting learners predominantly global and online. This vision presents challenges to those operating with infrastructure, processes and staff and leadership profiles, and offering learning products, meant for the old model of higher education. It presents opportunities for those with changed mindsets to be bold and innovative.
The Accord presents an exciting, energising and unique opportunity for equity and inclusion to be on the front page and in the lead position in change in our sector. It is unleashing long awaited energy and enthusiasm from those that have shown dedication to its cause and case for lifetimes, most fully by those with lived experiences.
Professor Paul Harpur of UQ, leader of Universities Enable and member of the Accord Ministerial Reference Group, joins HEDx. He makes the case for role models with lived experience to lead the debate about achieving real inclusion in higher education. In common with this week’s referendum on a Voice to Parliament, the importance of listening to those with lived experience who have a real stake in policy changes, as we seek to undo disadvantage, are the changes to governance we need if a higher education system is to become truly equitable.
It is easy to think we are alone in going through a once in a generation review of higher education and that all the answers we need should come from within. Before jumping to that conclusion, one of several reality and sense checks can come from contrasting our experience and thoughts towards solutions, with lessons others learned trying the same.
Roger Smyth shares his experiences from the New Zealand Ministry of Education in joining an episode of the HEDx podcast with Professor Giselle Byrnes, Provost of Massey University as co-host. As our Australian Universities Accord final report responds to debate among our providers over what form of Tertiary Education Commission to recommend, what can we learn from experience and lessons across the ditch about how such a commission should be set up and operate?
We might all need to accept a different funding and regulatory environment in the future. We might all need to accept that more than there being winners or losers as our system evolves to meet the needs of our learners and cities, that there is strength in collectively supporting diversity of providers with differences in mission.
Professor Clare Pollock as Provost and Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor at Western Sydney University (WSU) outlines how a university at the centre of Australia’s growth is pursuing a mission based on local partnerships. Her story and the WSU story are at the heart of the accord process and it’s issues. They provide a great example of a university in serving a local community can make a world-leading contribution on a global stage.
Given the links between technology use and equitable engagement, technology should have a central role in lifting equity in higher education. Technology should also play a more central role in the Universities Accord process and what it leads to, potentially in conjunction with the Australian and global EdTech sector and industry. A fuller embracing of technology in teaching and learning will improve both quality and equity of the university system. At a time when we’re looking to increase student numbers and include more diverse Australians in university than ever before, the power of technology to achieve policy aims can’t be overlooked.
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