Podcast

Could undergraduate research help strengthen Australia’s innovation pipeline?
In this Student Experience episode, Dr Sharon Saunders and Ben Roden-Cohen are joined by ACUR leaders Dr Lilia Mantai and Claudia Ghosn to explore how early research experiences build student confidence, capability and career pathways.
They discuss the value of undergraduate research, the barriers limiting participation, and why creating more opportunities for students to engage in authentic research matters for Australia’s future workforce.

Episode 8 of The AI Inflection Point – the second of two conversations on the student experience.
Brandman University went from 65% to 90% graduation rates in five years. Not by adding more services. Just by asking a simple question: what\’s actually getting in the way for students? The answer wasn\’t money or motivation. It was time.
Roger Lee brings together four people sitting with that same question every day. Tania Broadley from Australian Catholic University on moving from reactive to proactive student support. Sam Jacob from Coll Arts on why students once asked for a laundry before any academic resource. Alphia Possamai-Inesedy from Western Sydney University on why adding services to an old system isn\’t enough – the architecture itself needs to change. And Jennifer Lowe, student and co-chair of the National Students with Disabilities Leadership Collective, on why the real problem isn\’t equity students. It\’s institutions that were never designed to include everyone.

Episode 7 of The AI Inflection Point — the first of two conversations on connecting the dots between VET and higher education.
David Turvey, Executive Director of the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, brings together four leaders who aren\’t talking about what could happen — they\’re already doing it.
Pascale Quester, Vice-Chancellor of Swinburne University, on what it actually takes to run a dual sector institution — and why for some students it\’s still easier to go somewhere else. Michelle Lincoln, DVC of the University of Canberra, on five concrete areas of integration with CIT that are already underway. Margot McNeill, CEO of the Canberra Institute of Technology, on why rigid qualification design is still getting in the way. And Taryn Jones, Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Macquarie, on why parity of esteem — not policy — might be the real barrier.

At the HEDx Conference at UTS, Ben Roden-Cohen and Madison Piper talk with Pascale Quester, Rachel Wilson, Rachel Fitzgerald, Danny Liu, Tim Fawns and Katie Ford to ask what the future of higher education should look like — and who gets a say in shaping it.The conversation goes beyond technology to explore the value of student voice, the importance of diverse perspectives in decision-making, and why innovation in teaching needs both time and investment. The guests discuss critical thinking, human connection, the joy of learning and the need to rethink how graduate success is defined and measured.Ultimately, it raises a bigger question for the sector: what does it cost to create the kind of higher education experience we want — and what is the cost of not doing it?

Nothing about us, without us: Beyond the student panel.At this year’s HEDx Conference at UTS, students weren’t just attendees- they were embedded across the program, contributing to the hosting, and delivery of sessions. So what shifts when the student voice moves beyond the traditional panel format?In this episode, ⁠Student Voice Australasia⁠ speaks live with delegates on the ground- from vice chancellors to nursing students attending their very first conference- capturing a diverse range of perspectives on what it means to genuinely include students in spaces where decisions are made.Together, they explore the value students brought to the conversations and what changes when the student voice is not just heard, but meaningfully integrated into the discussions that matter most.

Episode 6 of The AI Inflection Point — and the last of four conversations on coalitions.
The previous three episodes asked why collaborate, whether partnerships can be transformational, and whether scale is the answer. This one asks something simpler: what does it actually look like when you do it?
Lou Conway built the Country University Centre network — 28 federated centres across regional Australia, where students can study with any provider that makes sense for them. No merger required. Bruce Lines led the integration office that created Adelaide University out of two institutions, and is honest about what worked and what didn’t. Belinda Tynan is navigating a region where coal mines are closing and the university has to respond. And Heather Margrison graduated from Adelaide Uni through the merger — and was part of the student panel that helped design it.
What comes out of this conversation isn’t a blueprint. It’s something more useful — a set of hard lessons from people who actually did it.

Episode 5 of The AI Inflection Point — the third of four conversations on coalitions.
Dan Greenstein has 35 years of data from the UK and the US. His conclusion is direct: scale is the primary hedge against financial unpredictability. In Australia, more than 40% of institutions have spent most of the last five years in deficit. Organic growth is too slow. And the policy window won\’t stay open indefinitely.
Noah Pickus joins to push on the tension that every leader in the room was thinking: does scale come at the cost of identity? Dan\’s answer might surprise you.

Episode 4 of The AI Inflection Point — and the second of four conversations on coalitions.Australian universities have been building global partnerships for decades. But have those partnerships actually changed anything — for students, for institutions, for the sector?

Episode 3 of The AI Inflection Point — and the first of four conversations on coalitions.Can universities lead the AI transformation that higher education needs — alone? The answer is no. But what “together” actually looks like when your institution is under real financial pressure is a much harder conversation.This panel brings together four leaders with very different starting points. Rose Luckin, CEO of Educate Ventures Research, has built one of the most active AI coalitions in UK schools. Noah Pickus, Head of Global Strategy and Partnerships at Duke, has just launched the Future Universities Alliance — 49 institutions from 23 countries. Theo Farrell, Vice-Chancellor of La Trobe, is two years into a serious AI transformation. And Shan Wareing, Vice-Chancellor of Middlesex University, inherited a 12% deficit on day one.What emerges from this conversation is not a simple case for collaboration — but a more honest question about what we’re actually trying to protect, and whether we can do that alone.

Episode 2 of The AI Inflection Point — six conversations recorded at the HEDx 2026 conference in Sydney. The diagnosis is set. Now: what does it actually take to respond?
Lucy Marshall from the University of Sydney names what most leaders know but rarely say out loud — universities don’t have an innovation problem. They have a culture problem. Fear is the barrier. Not budget, not technology. Fear.
Then Aleks Subic, who built an innovation precinct in the heart of Birmingham, and Grant Robertson, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Otago, answer the same question from the outside in — by changing where the university stands in the world, and who it stands for.
If the barrier isn’t technology but culture — what does it actually take to change a university from the inside?