Opinions

Imagine a university taking advantage of this seismic disruption triggered by a global pandemic to not tweak, but completely transform, how it provides student experiences.

The current time is a curious mix of short-term, mid-pandemic adjustments that will be temporary, and long-term seismic shifts that will change the game forever. The million-dollar question is knowing which is which.

Micro-credentials bring an ability to deliver smaller collections of rapidly changing and emerging new knowledge to a growing learning community, whose commitment to formal qualifications, as a sole education goal, is in decline. 

The increase in tree and sea changes, the move to the regions, and the retro movement and growth of local communities, are all major drivers for universities right now. I hear an increasing number of vice chancellors talk about 2021 being a year of forging stronger links with their internal and external communities and giving greater credence to local context. 

The end of one annual university cycle typically sees numbers become clearer about what the next will bring. Grants are awarded, promotions decided, targets set in performance plans, after details are confirmed of outcomes in the year just ended. 

Sharpening works for some tools but not for others. The phrase that if “all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail” is often used to encourage us to recognise multiple tools are needed to get complex, diverse and unpredictable jobs done.  

The immediate reactions by many Australian universities to the events of 2020 have been just that, reactions. It could not have been anything but a reaction really, could it?

The Health Check is set of key questions, sector benchmark metrics to support university executive teams in assessing the strategic health of their strategy, culture, and internal and external engagement.

The 39 Australian universities operating through 2020 have had a year unlike any other, however long each of them has operated, and whatever their origins have been. Their students, staff, leaders, and partners have never encountered anything quite like this.

Professor Pascale Quester | The Australian: Much has been written this year regarding the havoc COVID-19 is wreaking on Australia’s higher education sector, as well as the plight brought on our universities by the travel bans and sudden disappearance of international cohorts who have sustained them for decades.