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One fundamental aspect of organizational transformation in higher education is the change to the profile of universities’ non-academic workforce. Key staffing trends identified in recent studies conducted in a variety of national settings include an increase in the proportion of non-academic staff at universities and a shift toward more highly qualified and remunerated non-academic roles. This paper examines the extent to which these trends have played out at Australian universities over the period 1997 to 2017. Drawing on unpublished sets of staffing data, the analyses show that while the proportion of non-academic positions at Australian universities has remained largely stable, there has been a striking and uniform growth in management-rank positions, concurrent with a substantial decline in lower-level and less expensive support roles. This has some significant implications, in particular the growth in more complex “corporate” structures, the relatively fewer staff to support academic work, and the increase in the relative costs associated with maintaining the non-academic workforce at Australian universities.

Public universities worldwide have incorporated neoliberal behaviours and norms across their activities, moulding organizational practices, processes and cultures. In particular, these changes have been expressed through forms of academic capitalism and increasing 'marketization' of public university activities. A little explored perspective on these changes is that of senior leadership within higher education. This paper addresses this topic by examining how 116 higher education leaders view 32 key issues for the future of Australian higher education in the next 10 to 20 years. Half the participants in this study were university vice-chancellors or presidents or those who were part of their senior leadership team, and the other half were leaders outside universities including government leaders responsible for budgets or policy or those in national academic organizations. Generally, both the university and the non-university leaders of the Australian higher education system perceived nearly all of the issues for its future as at least moderately important. Many traditional academic goals of knowledge generation, dissemination and application were seen as high priorities. Rated among the top ten issues were student learning outcomes and ensuring student accessibility to higher education, as well as addressing the needs of society and research on grand challenges facing humanity, such as climate change and food security. At the same time, higher education leaders viewed most of the issues related to both marketization and academic capitalism as important, including issues of internationalization, the balance between tenured and contract academics, and the role of university-industry joint research. Traditional academic goals appear to be tightly bound to components of marketization and academic capitalism. The leaders' perceptions of the importance, meaning and trajectory of Australian universities suggest core goals of higher education will likely need to continue to be balanced with the emerging neoliberal agendas (HRK / Abstract übernommen).

Previous research has highlighted the occurrence of isomorphic tendencies— convergences in terms of formal organizational structure—in higher education systems in times of uncertainty and under external pressure to change. It has been repeatedly claimed that the Australian university system largely followed a logic of isomorphic change in the aftermath of radical national policy reform of the late 1980s. Yet to date, there is a lack of comprehensive empirical studies testing this thesis. Addressing this lacuna, and drawing on a range of university and government data, this paper tracks and analyses: (a) changes in the formal academic organizational structures existing at all public Australian universities and (b) changes in the numbers of academic staff and students in different academic organizational groupings over the period of 1987–1991. Despite some limitations in the available data, our system-level analysis finds that there was clear and significant convergence in terms of formal organizational structures and student and staff numbers in the majority of academic fields that were taught and researched at Australian universities at that time. We also draw attention to some conceptual limitations of existing accounts of isomorphic change in Australia and outline trajectories for future research supplementing the system-level analysis presented here.

Doctoral training continues to grow in scale and scope in Australia, but has been subjected to far less design and improvement compared with other facets of higher education. Governments and universities engage in ongoing change which helps respond to opportunities and challenges but also leads to a proliferation of options and approaches. The current research study was seeded and shaped by the ambitious view that despite such refinement the doctorate remains in need of much bolder and deeper design, and particularly design with an education focus. This paper reports outcomes from a four-year national project which sought to articulate a doctoral design architecture. The paper discusses framing contexts and concepts, design and characteristics of the doctoral architecture, then implications for sectoral, institutional and individual practice. It concludes that this kind of architecture can provide a useful guide for growth.

To inform future research and enhance intercultural learning in higher education, this article presents findings from a scoping review of international evidence on students' attitudes about the importance of diverse people and beliefs in higher education settings. A final sample of 56 studies were analysed for patterns in their methodological approaches, contexts, aims, and results. Findings suggest that students' conceptualisations of diversity are wider than a focus only on culture, race, or ethnicity, and that students across multiple contexts believe that diversity is an inherent, beneficial part of the learning experience. However, there were inconsistent results related to students' beliefs about the efficacy of diversity practices.

A revolution swept through universities three decades ago, transforming them from elite institutions into a mass system of higher education.Teaching was aligned with occupational outcomes, research was directed to practical results.Campuses grew and universities became more entrepreneurial.

The reconstruction of higher education in Australia through the creation of the Unified National System of Higher Education at the end of the 1980s by John Dawkins is commonly seen as a watershed. It brought new ways of funding, directing and organising universities, expanding their size, reorienting their activities and setting in train a far-reaching transformation of the academic enterprise.This volume traces its impact on the balance between the University of Melbourne's academic miss on and external expectations, and how it adjusted to neutralise the impact of the change and restore the balance. At Melbourne, the Dawkins revolution changed little in the way it understood itself and conducted its affairs, but changed everything.

The theory of institutional isomorphism has been criticized for overemphasizing organizational convergence and neglecting organizational divergence. Drawing on a range of empirical data, this paper shows that multi-dimensional accounts of isomorphic change are not necessarily incompatible with accounts emphasizing divergence as a typical form of organizational response to environmental uncertainties. The specific case investigated is the proliferation of academic organizational units teaching law at Australian universities over a ten-year period (1987-1996) that saw far-reaching structural transformations of the Australian university system. The key heuristic strategy employed in this paper is to scrutinize (a) when isomorphic responses appear to occur, and (b) which specific organizational form they take. In the empirical case examined, scrutiny of each of these dimensions strongly suggests that at least some isomorphic responses of universities were driven by a dual agenda of manifesting not only similarity but also distinction. (HRK / Abstract übernommen).

IT ISN'T YOU OR ME. Neither of us is responsible for the current health of Australian democracy. Granted, there are serious issues with its health. Many groups are marginalised, there is policy deadlock on key issues such as the environment and asylum seekers, and the political culture is toxic year-round. But this does not mean you or I are the cause. Nor does it mean the public, media or professional politicians are the cause, even though each is a frequent target for complaints about the failure of Australian democracy to deliver. The fault for the many problems of Australian democratic life lies elsewhere.

To inform future research and enhance intercultural learning in higher education, this article presents findings from a scoping review of international evidence on students' attitudes about the importance of diverse people and beliefs in higher education settings. A final sample of 56 studies were analysed for patterns in their methodological approaches, contexts, aims, and results. Findings suggest that students' conceptualisations of diversity are wider than a focus only on culture, race, or ethnicity, and that students across multiple contexts believe that diversity is an inherent, beneficial part of the learning experience. However, there were inconsistent results related to students' beliefs about the efficacy of diversity practices.