LATEST ARTICLES

Great progress, but gaps remain

Great progress, but gaps remain

Professor Margaret Gardner has been watching women’s progress in academia for many decades. These days, as vice-chancellor of Monash University and chair of Universities Australia, she can push hard for gender parity in her own institution and influence the whole of Australia’s tertiary education sector.

China pressures Australia through higher education sector

China pressures Australia through higher education sector

Escalating signs that China is using its $9 billion annual spend by international students as leverage in its increasingly tense relations with Australia has prompted rapid action in Canberra to try to limit the damage in one of the ­nation’s most lucrative export markets.

Fine line between relief and craving in opioid war

Fine line between relief and craving in opioid war

Natalie Elliott is fed up with being treated like a drug addict. From Werribee in Melbourne, the 35-year-old has endured a range of serious medical conditions for most of her life, including the incurable Complex Regional Pain Syndrome and severe degeneration in her cervical spine (in her neck) requiring a spinal fusion, as well as …read more

Exit strategy: planning can make death less painful

Exit strategy: planning can make death less painful

Aged 79 and frighteningly thin, Judy had end-stage lung disease and pneumonia. Even before she caught pneumonia, Judy had difficulty breathing and she could only walk a few steps. If her pneumonia was treated, it would likely take her a long time to recover and her breathing would almost certainly be even further impaired.

Medicinal cannabis can’t come quickly enough for some

Medicinal cannabis can’t come quickly enough for some

Nicole Cowles has been dosing her daughter with cannabis for years. Before she began, Alice, now nearly 12, often had dozens of seizures a day. The so-called “hippie drug” has made all the difference for one little girl.

Confessions of a frequent crier

Confessions of a frequent crier

She is the red-nosed, wet-cheeked sodden mess blubbering over there in the dark corner. I have spent decades doing my best to ignore her, scorning her weakness, driven to distraction by her spinelessness, by her weak and easy emotion and her baby tears.

A life sentence

A life sentence

Murders, bashings, rapes, floggings, and routine humiliation: the massive bluestone walls of Melbourne’s Pentridge prison enclosed an isolated and often barbaric world. Men were set to break rocks as punishment. Others were kept in isolation, and reacted by spreading their faeces over the prison walls – a protest known as a ‘bronze-up’. Women, imprisoned in …read more

No Front Line: Australia’s Special Forces in Afghanistan; Seventh Circle

No Front Line: Australia’s Special Forces in Afghanistan; Seventh Circle

Landlocked and mountainous, with an extreme climate veering between the numbing cold of snow and ice and blistering desert heat, the insular nation of Afghanistan has never been successfully occupied. The British were routed, twice; the Russians were given the push after years of bloody insurrection. And now the post-September 11 alliance, dominated by the …read more

Get credit for your experience

Get credit for your experience

Deakin University is pushing into international markets with a masters degree program that gives substantial credit for experience and skills learned on the job. Launched two years ago, the program now encompasses four master’s degrees of professional practice: information technology, digital learning, financial planning, and leadership.

Graduation a first for Sydney

Graduation a first for Sydney

By educating students to become well-rounded, multilingual global citizens with a grasp of international business culture, a sophisticated master’s degree course at the University of Sydney’s business school is proving extremely popular with both students and employers.