This is the third special edition of the Journal featuring work from graduates of the LH Martin Institute’s Master of Tertiary Education Management programme. Once again, there is a strong practitioner focus to the wide spectrum of work presented here, with a focus on making sense of the operating context, identifying a problem, and proposing or testing a possible solution. Most authors work as professional staff, and the articles grew from the projects they had worked on as master’s students during 2013 and 2014. In some cases, the resulting paper has been co-authored with project collaborators from their own institutions.
In the first article, Karen Barker examines how difficult it is to ensure strategic support for ‘engagement’, the third priority of higher education along with teaching and research, at both the policy and institutional levels. This is due to problems of definition, the difficulty of devising common reporting frameworks, and spending priorities focused on teaching and research. In her article, Chrissa Favoloro analyses the rise of domestic marketing expenditure by Australian universities in recent years, as the sector has grown and competition for students has intensified. Her focus here is on return on investment. Is this money well spent? Michael Robertson and colleague John Germov present a model for managing the traditionally vexed question of academic workload allocation at the University of Newcastle. How best to make this equitable, while also relating it to budget and resource planning?
Continuing the theme of making good use of scarce resources, Alan Dent examines one university’s approach to developing IT strategy to align with its wider business strategy. Can a focus on alignment inform better strategy? Tina Crawford and colleague John Germov present as a case study a project at the University of Newcastle designed to improve engagement with casual and sessional staff. How best to support this essential but often neglected group? Stephen Gray explores the ambivalent relations between academic and professional staff in an Australian university context. How best to make these relationships work to fulfil the full range of their respective responsibilities? On a darker note, Timothy Skinner and his several colleagues analyse data from the largest survey ever undertaken of Australian university staff to map perceptions of harassment and bullying in different types of institution. They link high rates of incidence to factors such as local labour market conditions and resource pressures.
Writing from a New Zealand context, Martin Boswell examines the observations of successive quality audits of one university, and the degree to which improvements followed. What is the cumulative institutional impact of QA reports? Reporting on a project at the University of New South Wales, Patrick Stoddart presents the results of a model used to promote improvements in teaching and learning using educational technology. Can technology be used to introduce changes to educational practices? Continuing the theme of using technology in teaching and learning, Geoff Sharrock assesses the claims and counterclaims of the recent and ongoing debate about the implications of massive open online courses (MOOCs). How much will higher education institutions have to change, and how quickly?
I hope that readers will enjoy this collection of mainly practice-based papers. As always, your comments would be welcomed.