Podcast

Sarah Bendall of the National Student Ombudsman office, George Williams VC of WSU, Shamit Saggar of ACSES, Paul Harpur of UQ and Hashini Panditharatne of the Australian Human Rights Commission join Cate Gilpin and I in a satellite panel event at the Universities Australia solutions summit. They dissect how we can reframe equity issues and responses to make higher education providers sustainable and thriving. It requires us accepting we are the problem, listening to students, and bringing about culture change as a basis for redesigned processes enabled by technology. Let’s do it.

Simon Biggs of JCU, Kris Ryan and Suzanne Le Mire of UQ and Alphia Possamai-Inesedy of WSU reflect on what they heard in Canberra this week and what it means. Sue Cunningham of CASE and Joe Avison in a personal capacity put it into global context. And tech leaders Nicola Cresp of OES, Katie Ford of Microsoft, Joel di Trapani of Vygo, Charlsey Pearce of MortarCAPS and Mark Sampson of Cenote Solutions see opportunities for tech to deliver the equity all sides of politics are calling for. Time for action now the talking is over.

Professor Damon Salesa is Vice-Chancellor of Auckland University of Technology. He is the first and only Indigenous VC of any university in Australia or New Zealand. A strong sense of commitment to community makes AUT the most likely of places to lead in this way. Damon sets out views of place-based innovation entirely appropriate to a context in South Auckland, at AUT, with a strong sense of its place in NZ and a Pacific Ocean forming a third of the planet. I analyse an interview with him with Veronica Pritchard, Program Director of The Queensland Commitment at UQ after work at NZ TEC. Multiple lessons from international perspectives to drive equity changes we have to make.

Dr Abul Rizvi is former Deputy Secretary of the departments of Immigration and Communtcation. He has a PhD in Immigration Policy from Melbourne and came to Australia as part of a migrant academic family. More than anyone, he sees the link between migration and international education from lived experience, professional expertise and scholarship. He argues, in an episode recorded with Cate Gilpin and I, for Australia to set targets for migration based on long term planning in an era of forthcoming population decline of young people from falling birth rates. And to build migration and higher education policies around that bigger need. He argues the current situation of leaving migrants and students in visa ‘no-mans-land’ is unjust.

Sarah Bendall as the new First Assistant Ombudsman in the Office of the National Student Ombudsman has a passion for resolving complaints. Six days into this new role she outlines the background to the office and role, and how she plans to provide a route for students to ensure they have a safe, fair and secure experience, and hold universities to account. In a conversation with Cate Gilpin of Welcoming Universities she outlines the short term priorities and long term vision for a key plank of the Universities Accord and the most significant step in caring for students the sector has seen.

Dan Greenstein, Chancellor Emeritus of the Pennsylvania State University system came to the role from time at Oxford, the University of California system, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Boston Consulting. In this episode with Keith Hawkes of Ellucian technologies, he describes the burning recruitment and completion platform that created the need to merge 14 universities into 10 and create shared back and front office systems using technology that transformed student experience and institutional sustainability.

Professor Genevieve Bell joins the podcast as Vice-Chancellor and President of the ANU. She reflects on her journey as a scientist, engineer and humanist, in the US and Australia, in Silicon Valley and leading Australia’s national university. She reflects on short term challenges and the long term trajectory of higher education, the role technology plays in change and goals of providing opportunity for all. An episode at the heart of the HEDx agenda with commentary with Katie Ford of Microsoft.

Ann Kirschner, Former President of Hunter College at CUNY and Aleks Subic, VC at Aston set a scene of innovating toward ominichannel higher Ed. This is before Suzanne Steel of Adobe, Arlene Stewart of OES, Andrew Proctor of AWS and Osama Khan of Aston describe how multi tech-company partnerships can help AI make this real. All described by Andrea Burrows of OES and I following a recent Aston-hosted conference in the UK.

Jared Pearlman is Chief Strategy Officer of VitalSource a global digital content provider for higher education. He and they are very focussed on the challenges students face and the need to find affordable student experiences and business models for providers in partnership with technology companies that make these experiences sustainable. Hear a great summary of the global strategic issues with equitable edtech enabled access to learning dissected in partnership with Dr Christine Levinson of HEDx sponsor and partner Construct Education from the OES group.

Sabih Bin Wasi is the Founder & CEO of Stellic. He brings his lived experience as a recent graduate in design thinking and AI at Carnegie Mellon University to his design of student systems that imnprove student engagement and experience. He does so through STellic named after one of his professor’s as an integrated EdTech platform that brings together academic planning, advising, scheduling, and data analytics. The platform was designed to empower students and improve their
experience when navigating their journey towards graduation. Some investors are quoted as saying “There’s no way these kids can work out the complexity of HE”. Josh Nester of SEEK Investment has another view he shares on this episode.