Ian R. Dobson

'Them and Us' - General and Non-General Staff in Higher Education

This paper examines aspects of the binary divide in Australian higher education staffing, looking at the role of general staff in tertiary education administration and management in the 1990s, and the antipathy many members of academic community appear to have toward general staff. There are brief comparisons with the situation in three other countries, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland which provide a point of comparison with the Australian situation. This report was prepared as an outcome both of research into the Australian situation and an overseas visit funded by an ATEM International Travel Grant in 1998.

Student Progress: A Study of the Experience in Victorian Tertiary Institutions.

The release of Professor Linkes report on performance indicators in Australia refocussed the attention of institutional researchers on an analysis of student inputs/outputs in tertiary institutions. Data files routinely despatched to the Department of Employment, Education and Training by all institutions were used in this study. The study examines the student progress unit (SPU), defined as the ratio of load successfully completed by the student to the total assessed student load by the student. The study examines the determinants of student progress units for bachelor courses in Victorian higher education institutions in 1990, as reported in 1991. Variables examined include discipline group, sex, age, tertiary entrance score, attendance type and other social indicators. It explores the implications of findings of the study to student admission policies and identifies possible areas of future research. The results of this study were first reported at the 3rd Australasian Association for Institutional Re...

How Has Massification Changed the Shape of Australian Universities

Access to university has improvedfollowing the massification of the Australianhigher education sector which started in 1989,with the expansion being funded by a wideningof the funding base. In the ten years from1989, Australian universities enrolled anadditional 231,000 students, including an extra189,000 in undergraduate bachelor degrees. Specific equity policies have further attemptedto increase opportunities for studentspreviously excluded from higher education. This paper looks at changes in the compositionof the student body, and in the patterns ofuniversity funding. Using aggregated nationalstudent data sets, some of the changes whichhave arisen from massification are identified,with particular consideration of designatedequity groups.

Single-Sex Schooling: Is it Simply a "Class Act"?.

The current debate about boys education risks taking us back decades in terms of understanding the significance of gender in relation to education. Of particular concern here is the tendency within such debates to rely on dichotomous understandings of gender which reinscribe essentialist understandings of both ‘girls’ and ‘boys’. In this way, the so‐called gender wars construct a climate whereby difference between the categories obfuscates difference within each. Here this issue is explored most specifically in relation to access to higher education and the possible impact of single‐sex schooling. Current debates surrounding boys experience of schooling have refreshed interest in the possible benefits of single‐sex education, particularly for boys. Schools are establishing single‐sex classes for boys and in some cases parallel education (the provision of single‐sex facilities for girls and boys at the same campus) is being promoted as a way forward. In this paper we examine data from Australias largest and most diverse university in order to explore the relationship between single‐sex schooling and access to higher education in ways which account for difference based primarily on school sector and socio‐economic status. In these terms, if single‐sex schooling is beneficial for boys we need to consider which boys are benefiting and at whose expense.

The flawed nature of Australia's research training scheme

The Australian government radically altered its methodology for funding research training, starting from the 2002 academic year. Despite the altruistic objectives of the new Research Training Scheme, analysis reveals that a major component of the scheme is flawed, and can produce unintended results.

In and Out of the Laboratory: Herzberg, Job Satisfaction and the Attitudes of Finnish University Academics

Based on analysis of data from the Changing Academic Profession (CAP) survey, this chapter compares and contrasts the characteristics and attitudes of Finnish university academics according to their presence in laboratory or non-laboratory disciplines, including a ‘case study’ of Finnish academic engineers. This discipline-based division is an important one in Finland, because the laboratory-based disciplines have been the beneficiary of a range of government-sponsored programmes. The aim is to see whether this financial emphasis has paid off in terms of enhanced job satisfaction for academics in the laboratory disciplines. In fact, this does not seem to be the case. At the aggregated level, results indicate that about two-thirds of Finnish academic staff in laboratory disciplines were very satisfied or satisfied, compared with about 70 % of academics in non-laboratory disciplines The chapter examines job satisfaction broadly according to Herzberg’s two-factor concept of job satisfaction.