HEDx

This episode gives voice to 34 students from 8 different HEDx member universities and partners in UQ, Adelaide, Swinburne, OES, OUA, Torrens, UniSC, and Canberra. We asked each 9 questions about what they thought of higher education, what they would change, and how they felt about AI and the future of work. Their answers might surprise you. Professors Suzanne Le Mire and Kelly Matthews of UQ helped me design them and make sense of their answers. Ignore these messages at your peril. My great thanks to Suzanne and Kelly and the colleagues at the 8 places and all of their wonderful students. We hear you and see you.

Danny Liu and Adam Bridgeman at the University of Sydney have pioneered the development of AI and a two-lane strategy for its use and assessment. In this episode they convene a diverse panel of their staff and student colleagues to discuss how the strategy works and can be implemented. As an exemplar of staff and students working as partners it illustrates an excellent approach to working through how to use the technology while assuring learning. The episode is set in the context of global best practice in students as partners shared by Professor Kelly Matthews of UQ after her keynote at the UA conference on the student voice and governance.

Professor Suzanne Le Mire as PVC of Education and the Student Experience at The University of Queensland brings a student panel to the podcast. The panel is from the recent summit of The Queensland Commitment at UQ and saw 4 diverse UQ students comment on what they loved about their experience, what they thought could be better, and what they would do if they were Vice-Chancellor for a day. A great opportunity to give student's a voice about what is important to them ahead of a series of student focussed episodes to come and the HEDx conference on our commitments to students in the age of AI.

Professor Amanda Broderick is Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of East London. UEL in 2018 was heavily in debt and rated the UK university most likely to fail. After 7 years of adverse policy settings it has the UK's fastest and most diversified income growth, no debt and is implementing a 300m pound investment programme. It has doubled in size by focusing on a mantra of creating new value in partnership with business and industry and innovating, in the most competitive university city in the world. In an episode co-hosted with Kevin Bell of AWS, Amanda outlines how partnerships must involve all having skin in the game, be led from the top, and have a shared exchange of complementary skills of real business value. A great global example of thriving under adverse market and policy conditions and intense competition by being different.

Alex Elibank-Murray and Rania Shibl of the University of the Sunshine Coast share experiences of industry partnerships to give work experience to students in fast changing fields. Partnerships with industry partners that include Microsoft, are used to co-design learning experiences that combine certificated and non-certificated university courses with practical skill achievements. In an episode co-hosted by Yasminka Nemet the Future Skills Lead at Microsoft, we explore how tertiary education is changing to achieve harmonisation between further and higher education and co-designed learning and experience opportunities for a new world of work.

Professor Kylie Readman as DVC Education and Students at University of Technology Sydney outlines a new venture in global online education. Launching new Mandarin-language online postgraduate education courses to global student markets as a trans-national education strategy is a bold and unique step for an Australian university. In a partnership with Cinlearn, this is distinct and differentiated from the multiple bricks and mortar TNE ventures by Australian and other universities in various Asian and other global countries. It is an example of a university working on adjacencies that go beyond core operations to seek breakthroughs.

HEDx launched its first podcast on September 9 2020. Since then over 183 episodes, more than 200 global leaders have shared thoughts on the future higher education landscape and how it can achieve equity goals though strategy, leadership, culture, technology and partnerships. This episode looks back over 5 years with Sue Kokonis of foundation and continuing lead sponsor at OES helping us consider how Debbie Haski-Levanthal, Pascale Quester, Michael Crow, Paul LeBlanc, Mary O'Kane, Ann Kirschner, Theo Farrell and Simon Biggs among others have seen the need for change in the sector. This episode has 5 years of highlights to reflect on where we have come from and speculate on what the next 5 years will hold with agentic AI transforming the student experience.

John Dewar and Dionne Higgins are experienced leaders of Australian universities now leading a higher education consulting practice at Korda Mentha. They have recently published an annual report showing Australian universities under significant financial pressure to be able to invest in the digital transformation they desperately need. They see it as a time for courageous leadership to cut through the red tape and bureaucracy increasingly stifling the sector. And they see great value in leaders taking inspiration from international pioneers and thinkers like Sir Chris Husbands who they, and others, are helping HEDx bring to Australia later this year.

Professor Kristian Widen is Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Cooperation and Innovation at Sweden's industry-engaged Halmstad University, after a distinguished career at its leading research university in Lund. In describing the diverse landscape of a well-funded and stable Swedish university system, he observes that many if its staff and students are happy and calm, including regulators. With little loss of social license they are under little pressure to disrupt. But in his role he is mindful of how this pervaded in Swedish retail and entertainment sectors before Ikea and Spotify emerged. Where will the most likely disruption of global higher education come from, by incumbents or new entrants, and where in the world offers greatest promise to nurture it?

Simon Biggs as Vice-Chancellor of James Cook University sees great opportunity in AI enhancing personalisation in tertiary learning and becoming a disruptor of global universities. He sees positive impacts in fulfilling his vision and mission to serve remote communities in opening access to education to more learners. And he is clear that AI will free people up from jobs they no longer need to do, to have space to think and enhance student experiences. He believes it is critical for us to apply AI to help young people with companionship and overcome increased loneliness. Nabeela Furtado of Unisuper joins me as co-host to focus on human wellbeing at a time when the sector has the greatest challenges with how staff and students navigate change.