Year: 2025

Abstract As artificial intelligence transforms industries worldwide, a critical consequence has emerged that affects millions of households: dramatically rising electricity bills driven by AI data centre energy consumption. United States residents are experiencing unprecedented increases in power costs, with some regions seeing bills rise over 36% annually as utilities pass grid upgrade expenses to consumers. […]

Abstract OpenAI’s recent release of GPT-5 marks a pivotal moment for Australia’s education and training sector. While falling short of promised artificial general intelligence, GPT-5’s enhanced capabilities in healthcare diagnostics, enterprise integration, and personalised learning present both unprecedented opportunities and critical challenges for education providers across all sectors. This analysis examines GPT-5’s technical advances, explores […]

Why rigid credit rules, inflexible delivery and thin support are stranding students, and what to do about it now Australian higher education has a growing cohort of students who are close to finishing but stuck. Their stories share a familiar pattern: a degree that only runs core units on campus during business hours, a full-time […]

THE INVISIBLE EPIDEMIC Across Australia’s lecture halls, online classrooms, and university corridors, a silent crisis is reshaping the foundations of academic integrity. Contract cheating, the act of students outsourcing their assignments, essays, or even entire theses to third parties, has evolved into one of the most sophisticated and damaging forms of academic misconduct in higher […]

Australian Catholic University has done it again, and then some. In the 2026 Times Higher Education World University Rankings, ACU has been named number one in Australia for research quality for the third consecutive year and climbed to number 17 globally on the same metric, up from 24th last year. In a field of more […]

Artificial intelligence has advanced more rapidly than many critics predicted, transforming from narrow rule-based systems into powerful engines of reasoning, language, perception, and generation, yet despite these gains it continues to face deep challenges in generality, sustainability, and emotional or moral understanding; as the higher education sector adapts, collaboration between humans and AI will be […]

Executive Briefing: Confidence, Capability, and Constraints Academic leaders across Australia are converging on a common agenda: restore public trust, maintain world-class research performance, and guarantee graduate employability in an environment marked by softer domestic demand, tighter operating margins, rising compliance obligations, and demographic headwinds. This agenda is not rhetorical. It is anchored in measurable signals […]

THE CASE FOR TRANSFORMATION: WHY THE CLOUD IS NOW NON-NEGOTIABLE Higher education institutions globally are under intensifying pressure to modernise legacy systems, offer more agile student services, and integrate data-driven decision-making. The traditional on-premises infrastructure model, characterised by monolithic student information systems (SIS), ageing data centres, isolated LMS instances, and fragmented administrative silos, is increasingly […]

Public perception of higher education in Australia has deteriorated on three intertwined fronts: value for money, employment outcomes, and the relevance of traditional models. The data now show a pattern that predates pandemic disruptions and cannot be explained away by temporary shocks. Beginning with the price students pay and the debt they carry, continuing with […]

The higher education sector in Australia is entering a critical inflection point, as rising competition from vocational, trade, and purely online providers forces universities and traditional higher education institutions to more clearly articulate and defend what makes them distinct, sustainable, and valuable in a rapidly shifting landscape. Vocational education and training (VET) enrols around 4.5 […]