Guest editors’ letter

It has been a tumultuous period since the publication of the last Master of Tertiary Education (Management) (MTEM) special issue of student practitioner papers, not least of which is the advent of the global pandemic. Many have viewed the pandemic through the prism of ‘disruption’, as a force that has set asunder many of the old verities and has placed a higher education sector so often characterised as ‘dynamic and changing’ on a wholly new course, facing new sets of problems and opportunities.

The full impact of the pandemic is yet to be known, but the works in this special issue, which were produced during the days of the pandemic and lockdowns, suggest that the challenges that have long plagued the higher education sector continue to do so. If anything, the publications in this special issue, produced by authors with both academic and professional backgrounds, located across Australia and abroad, suggest that while COVID-19 has presented new challenges and opportunities, many perennial issues remain unchanged. From academic integrity to the role of higher education in regional development; from the importance of leadership to student engagement: underlying each is an ancient and ongoing set of realities.

The pace is set by Hannah Bornsztejn, who explores the effectiveness of academic integrity programs on the operation of foundation programs, which provide alternative entry to higher education with academic support to students who have not met the usual direct entry requirements. The paper provides an outline of current, dominant approaches to academic integrity in such programs, which mostly operate along a ‘punitive’ vs ‘educative’ bifurcation. The paper then provides an analysis of selected universities in the Australian state of Victoria that offer foundation programs, finding a preference for a punitive approach towards integrity. But as the author notes, an increasing prevalence of academic integrity breaches suggests a shift in approach might be warranted, one that replaces the punitive approach with one that is educative and supports students to better understand and navigate issues of academic integrity.

Scholarship programs are and continue to be a feature common to universities across the globe, being present across all types and forms of universities and other institutes of higher education. But how should these programs be structured to meet an oft-purported aim: namely, as a recruitment tool for academically gifted students. Nathan Crowne considers this question through the example of an overseas campus of a large American public university, which has a scholarship program to attract the ‘best and brightest’ to its academic confines. The case study explores the effectiveness of this individual program, and in doing so, provides a guide by which other universities might judge the merits of their own efforts.

The impact of COVID-19 on student engagement is explored in a paper that looks to the strategies of universities with transition and articulation students. The pandemic necessitated a shift in the way universities engage with and support these cohorts, from traditional, face-to-face forms towards online variants. The paper by Emilie Pascale explores the effectiveness of these online variants through the case of an Australian university. The chosen university adopted WeChat, an online tool popular in Chinese-speaking areas, to replace traditional supports for its overseas-based Chinese articulation students. The author adopts the widely used framework/checklist developed by Lizzio (2006) to consider the effectiveness of this tool as an engagement mechanism. She then outlines how this case represents an opportunity for further exploration of online platforms as a means of engagement beyond the pandemic.

International education is a sector that is vital to Australia’s long-term economic prosperity, having long been among the nation’s top three or four export industries. In 2019, the Australian government introduced changes to its post-study work rights policy in an effort to make Australia a more attractive destination for international students. A feature of the new policy was to boost regional economic activity by encouraging international students to study and work in regional Australia. Katrina Reid considers the impact of this policy through an analysis of post-study work rights data in three Australian regional areas. The paper considers the effectiveness of applying this ‘homogenous’ policy setting upon regions that display complexity and diversity. The author finds that adopting this government policy without taking regional complexities into account could result in less than optimal outcomes. The paper goes on to identify leadership as pivotal to the policy’s success, with planning and support from university leaders a way to both address and recognise regional complexity and realise the policy’s aims.

Leadership is a theme tackled by Stacey Vogel, who focuses on the composition of leadership teams and the effect this has on school performance. This is particularly so with respect to the shape and makeup of leadership teams in Australian higher education settings, in particular, the teams at the head of most academic units. The paper explores the composition of such teams using five years of performance data from 10 schools in an Australian university. The author finds that team effectiveness, in terms of its ability to respond to changing institutional realities and priorities, is impacted by its composition and the presence of a distributed leadership structure.

The exploration of regional Australian universities continues in the work from Belinda Reimers, who considers the use of student advising models to improve student retention and completions in regional universities. The work is inspired by a wider policy aim, namely, to raise higher education participation and attainment by Australian regional communities, which have traditionally had lower levels of participation than their metropolitan cousins. The paper considers how an existing workforce could be co-opted to provide the resources necessary for the required advising support services. The author outlines the competencies and skills required for such a function and provides a ‘roadmap’ for the recruitment of existing professional services staff.

The works from Reimers and Reid point to concerted efforts from the Australian government to draft the higher education sector to address regional participation and economic development. But as Julie Shinners notes, these efforts are, on the whole, performed in the absence of a clear definition of ‘regionality’. A definition is, in the author’s view, required in order for regional universities to operate successfully and more effectively contribute to social and economic outcomes. After exploring notions of regionality both in Australia and abroad as well as how regionality is treated in other industry settings, the paper provides a definition to enable universities to create a regional identity and allow the Australian government to achieve its social and economic objectives more effectively.

The papers in this special issue demonstrate that the higher education sector in Australia and elsewhere has the capacity to tackle some longstanding issues despite the disruption caused by the pandemic.