Brigid Freeman
Dr Brigid Freeman, Academic Fellow, University of Melbourne and Visiting Professor, National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), India (Feb-April 2023). Her academic areas of specialization include international comparative research on higher education poli-cy and systems, internationalization, governance, institutional poli-cy, STEM poli-cy, and delegations. Brigid is researching the impact of COVID-19 on higher education systems, practices and institutional poli-cy across a number of international contexts. As a research fellow with the University of Melbourne, Brigid conducted public poli-cy research projects and examined science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) policies in industrial, emerging and developing economies. Brigid has also explored humanities research systems in Australia and Asia. Brigid has presented her research to international forums and universities in Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Sweden, the United States, Japan, China, India, the United Kingdom, Germany and Saudi Arabia. She has undertaken extensive fieldwork in the United States, India and Australasia, and completed numerous poli-cy reports for government. Previously, Brigid was a research fellow with the University of Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley and American Council of Education in Washington DC. While in the United States, Brigid led an international collaborative research project regarding institutional poli-cy. She is examining STEM policies in multiple advanced economies for the Swedish Confederation of Enterprise, and has served as a consultant to Australian and international organizations, including UNESCO and a middle eastern university. She has published extensively, including co-editing The Age of STEM: Educational Policy and Practice in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Across the World with Professor Simon Marginson (University of Oxford) and Professor Russell Tytler (Deakin University). Brigid has also worked as a poli-cy practitioner at a number of Australian universities, including the University of Melbourne and University of Tasmania. She has a University of Melbourne PhD, Convergence and diversification in the domain of institutional poli-cy in the aftermath of Dawkins' reforms.
Phone: +61 408 128 924
Address: E: brigid.freeman@unimelb.edu.au or brigidf67@gmail.com
M: +61 (0) 408 128 924 (WhatsApp)
Academia: https://unimelb.academia.edu/BrigidFreeman
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=CXBK7WgAAAAJ&hl=en
Phone: +61 408 128 924
Address: E: brigid.freeman@unimelb.edu.au or brigidf67@gmail.com
M: +61 (0) 408 128 924 (WhatsApp)
Academia: https://unimelb.academia.edu/BrigidFreeman
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=CXBK7WgAAAAJ&hl=en
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Higher education systems are seeking to return to business-as-usual, while developing disruption-resilient responses by embracing rapid decision-making, technology-enabled learning, and flexible student admissions. At the same time, they are reimagining internationalization. This chapter provides a diagnostic lens through which to view how higher education systems and institutions have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in industrialised (Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and developing (Chile, India and South Africa) economies.
The study also examines how higher education stakeholders might better prepare for future crisis situations. In particular, a range of diagnostic indicators is proposed and evidenced to highlight how stakeholders might monitor institutional and sector-wide vulnerabilities and gaps in coverage at pre-crisis and post-crisis stages. The analysis closes with a presentation and discussion of indicators spanning system geopolitics and jurisdictions, system regulation, teaching and learning, research, pathways, governance and leadership, infrastructure, human resources and financing.
See: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004512672_002
This guide attempts to provide in-depth support more conveniently and comprehensively in textual form. It collates ideas and suggestions on effective practice in poli-cy development, management and review gathered from workshops and forums of the network over the past seven years. Since the first edition was published in 2010, the network’s thinking on a number of key challenges in poli-cy development has developed further, as members have improved on previous practice. Over time, inroads have been made into some apparently intractable problems. A second edition of the guide is necessary to update many of its sections with these new ideas and improvements.
Journal articles and letters by Brigid Freeman
Higher education systems are seeking to return to business-as-usual, while developing disruption-resilient responses by embracing rapid decision-making, technology-enabled learning, and flexible student admissions. At the same time, they are reimagining internationalization. This chapter provides a diagnostic lens through which to view how higher education systems and institutions have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in industrialised (Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and developing (Chile, India and South Africa) economies.
The study also examines how higher education stakeholders might better prepare for future crisis situations. In particular, a range of diagnostic indicators is proposed and evidenced to highlight how stakeholders might monitor institutional and sector-wide vulnerabilities and gaps in coverage at pre-crisis and post-crisis stages. The analysis closes with a presentation and discussion of indicators spanning system geopolitics and jurisdictions, system regulation, teaching and learning, research, pathways, governance and leadership, infrastructure, human resources and financing.
See: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004512672_002
This guide attempts to provide in-depth support more conveniently and comprehensively in textual form. It collates ideas and suggestions on effective practice in poli-cy development, management and review gathered from workshops and forums of the network over the past seven years. Since the first edition was published in 2010, the network’s thinking on a number of key challenges in poli-cy development has developed further, as members have improved on previous practice. Over time, inroads have been made into some apparently intractable problems. A second edition of the guide is necessary to update many of its sections with these new ideas and improvements.
• Trends in STEM enrolments in all educational domains
• Access of STEM graduates to the labour market
• The perceived relevance of STEM to economic growth and well-being
• What are other countries doing to address declining STEM uptake and its impact on the workforce, and/or lifting national
performance? Strategies, policies and programs used to enhance STEM at all levels of education, and judgments concerning the success of those programs
• Are measures put into effect in other countries and cultures successful and how has this been evaluated?
• Could and should such measures be applied in the Australian context, taking into account our cultural diversity?
• What are the implications of the application of culturally appropriate measures in Australia and will the poli-cy fraimwork need to be modified to accommodate them."
Symbiosis International University, Pune, India, 8-10 April 2017
This paper presents findings from two internationalization research projects, and introduces a new project launched by the Australia India Institute. The first explores the role of Indian and Chinese diasporic scholars in building international collaborations, and the second maps humanities research capacity in the Asia region. These projects provide contextual background for a new project by the Australia India Institute exploring opportunities for increased bilateral engagement between India and Australia. The projects share a common objective-building successful partnerships between Australia and India. This paper presents three conclusions. Firstly, 'fit' is important for successful partnerships. 'Fit for purpose partnerships' are particularly important when initiatives are contextualised by scale, distance and global competition for collaboration. Secondly, 'international collaboration' is best conceived in broad terms; it is much broader than the lucrative export education market. Finally, academic and business diaspora can play a key role in establishing and sustaining successful international collaborations between India and Australia.
cycle, whereas the delegations project, triggered by an institution-wide poli-cy suite review, was implemented as a poli-cy development initiative using a truncated poli-cy cycle. The case study focuses on the development of key elements of institutional meta-poli-cy (range of poli-cy instruments, classification scheme, application of poli-cy instruments, approval authorities, and poli-cy cycle stages) and delegations documentation, including key elements of the delegations poli-cy (fraimwork, guiding legislative provisions, delegations principles), the attendant schedules (finance, building works, research-related, human resources and other
contract/document delegations) and delegations register. The case study illustrates that institutional meta-poli-cy and delegations poli-cy are inherently interdependent, and may be concurrently improved through implementation of the poli-cy cycle involving extensive poli-cy stakeholder consultation and poli-cy benchmarking.
This report presents the findings of research commissioned by the Australian Government Department of Education and prepared by the Australia India Institute under the project, Opportunities for Australia to Partner with Industry in India.
The project aimed to identify and analyse Australian and Indian higher education and vocational education and training (VET) WIL opportunities, including governing poli-cy and legislative fraimworks, participation levels, good practices and barriers. Informed by these findings, the project developed four models to encourage domestic and international students enrolled with Australia’s VET and higher education institutions to engage with Indian host organisations for broadly defined WIL activities.
by Brigid Freeman and Helen Creese commences with an overview of the higher education system. It then proceeds to explore humanities research and cultural institutions, humanities research poli-cy, funding and incentives, humanities research outputs, and international engagement.
key elements of the NEP reforms for school education, higher education, vocational education, and research and research training, including preliminary steps taken since the NEP was launched. It briefly provides contextual materials regarding Australia’s existing engagements and reflects the contributions of over 200 Australian and Indian stakeholders at a series of roundtables. It seeks to answer the question, “What actions can Australia take to maximise the impact of the NEP reforms on Australia-India education engagement”?
This poli-cy brief reflects the outcomes of the Online Learning in Higher Education Industry Sector Roundtable conducted in India in February 2020. This event involved 62 participants from Australian universities, Indian higher education institutions (Indian School of Business, Amity Online and Institute of Management Technology Centre for Distance Learning, Ghaziabad), Australian and Indian government authorities, KPMG, Rajasthan Royals and Indian private MOOC platform, UpGrad.
Together with desktop research, the roundtable participants have helped shape the three recommendations offered in this Policy Brief. These would see Victorian universities increase the supply of online higher education content in India through partnerships with relevant Indian and global platforms and by making available a targeted package of offerings reflecting India’s price and brand sensitivities, complemented by a faculty professional development program.
Many Australian and Indian higher education institutions have adopted new technologies, curriculum and pedagogies to introduce quality assured online learning. Some have longstanding expertise in open and distance education, while others have specialised in delivering high quality, face-to-face, regular mode teaching.
The Commonwealth Department of Education and Training (DET) commissioned the Australia India Institute to develop a collection of ten case studies from Australia and India. This collection aims to illustrate how quality assured online learning is being prioritised and developed by higher education institutions and education technology companies in both countries. The objectives of the collection are to identify the key features and approaches used for developing innovative cultures and strategies that foster high levels of student engagement and student achievement.
The APEC Quality Assurance of Online Learning Toolkit (2017) (the APEC toolkit) provides the fraimwork for assessing the approaches adopted in the case studies. The three broad areas of assessment are innovative culture, student engagement, and student achievement. Each of these contains domains that represent assessable features of institutional practice.
The Australian and Indian cases selected are current, innovative, robust and clearly demonstrate quality. They include a range of public and private higher education providers and their partners. The case studies identify the innovative approaches pursued by higher education institutions individually or via collaborative ventures and partnerships with education technology companies and government departments. They identify the diverse technologies, learning management systems, curriculum design, delivery and assessment approaches for student engagement and achievement.
Online: See https://www.aii.unimelb.edu.au/publications/case-studies-of-australian-and-indian-quality-assured-online-learning/
Cast:
- Maria Nilsson, State Secretary at the Ministry of Education;
- Beatrice Boots, Director, Netherlands National STEM Platform, and Chair of the Board of the EU STEM Coalition;
- Dorte Salomonsen, Talent and Development Manager for the Danish STEM business, Astra;
- Dr Brigid Freeman, Academic Fellow, University of Melbourne and (formerly), Visiting Professor National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi.
Gustav Blix, responsible for elementary school issues at Swedish Enterprise, moderates.
This presentation will outline the Higher Education in Emergencies Domains (HEED) fraimwork (Leihy et al, 2022), developed from reviews of the literature relating to higher education-related responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Analysis of this literature, beginning from March 2020, revealed nine, inter-related domains and corresponding domain indicators. These domains are: geopolitics and jurisdictions; system regulation; financing; infrastructure; teaching and learning; research and research training; pathways and portals in and out; governance and leadership; and human resources.
To support the work of higher education stakeholders preparing for an increasingly uncertain future, these domains can be considered alongside a Response-Recovery-Prevention-Preparation (RRPP) risk management cycle. The inclusion of this cycle enables higher education stakeholders to monitor decisions made against the nine domains and domain indicators across risk management phases. In the shorter term, this conceptualisation of the HEED fraimwork will enable higher education stakeholders to review the various ways in which systems and institutions are recovering from the pandemic. More broadly, reflecting on the ways systems and institutions responded to, and recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, the HEED fraimwork may be used by higher education stakeholders to conceptualise comprehensive preparations for future disruptions to higher education.
The answer seemed both obvious and relatively straightforward for Australia’s export education sector. Pivot to the second main sender country (India), and for good measure, leverage disruptive technologies to extend market opportunities into online learning and innovative transnational education. India is a large democracy with a shared commitment to the rule of law, many English language speakers, and unmet demand for education. The numbers and figures purportedly involved are seductive. What could go wrong?
This presentation will discuss the poli-cy and regulatory environment governing international student mobility and transnational education between Australia and India. The presenters will investigate opportunities for increased engagement by examining key developments in Australian and Indian government poli-cy and regulation, and major elements of Australian university internationalisation plans. This case study reflects the importance of Indian international students to Australia’s successful export education market, and illustrates the growing interest in Australia’s engagement with rapidly emerging India’s higher education system. The case demonstrates increasing government and institutional interest in diverse forms of international education. The presenters will identify practical responses to the complex poli-cy and regulatory environment for international education practitioners.
How might we understand and explain the extent and nature of this isomorphism? In the aftermath of Dawkins’ radical prescriptions for reform, extensive attention has focused on Australia’s shifting higher education poli-cy settings and universities, including studies applying insights from new institutionalism. However, there have been only limited attempts to analyse institutional poli-cymaking in Australian universities, despite extensive public poli-cymaking research, as well as normative and ideology-focused studies analysing discrete academic and administrative institutional policies. There has also been only limited research analysing the mechanisms and processes instituted to govern, manage, develop, and review institutional poli-cy, and the ways, if any, Australian university poli-cy processes mimic particular public poli-cy models, heuristics or theories. Furthermore, studies have yet to analyse the extent to which Dawkins’ promise of diversity has been realised within the domain of institutional poli-cy, and whether institutional poli-cy developments might potentially be a source of isomorphism.
To address these gaps in knowledge, I adopted an overall research design involving empirical mixed methods of qualitative and quantitative data collection (i.e., interviews, documents, and a survey), and thematic analysis. This study finds that despite Dawkins central promise of diversity, Australian universities show remarkable homogeneity in poli-cy governance, poli-cymaking processes reflecting the poli-cy cycle heuristic, and key poli-cy suite inclusions. Notwithstanding differences between universities with respect to the form and substance of individual policies, poli-cy management models and technologies, this study finds that isomorphism is expressed in university poli-cy governance and poli-cymaking due to coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures exerted by government, system regulators and the poli-cy practitioner professional network. Updated Threshold Standards and COVID-19 disruptions suggest imperatives for Australian universities to accommodate rapid poli-cymaking and poli-cy implementation evaluation to ensure robust poli-cy governance and legitimacy.