HEDx

Episode 5 of The AI Inflection Point — the third of four conversations on coalitions.
Dan Greenstein has 35 years of data from the UK and the US. His conclusion is direct: scale is the primary hedge against financial unpredictability. In Australia, more than 40% of institutions have spent most of the last five years in deficit. Organic growth is too slow. And the policy window won't stay open indefinitely.
Noah Pickus joins to push on the tension that every leader in the room was thinking: does scale come at the cost of identity? Dan's answer might surprise you.

Nothing about us, without us: Beyond the student panel.
At this year’s HEDx Conference at UTS, students weren’t just attendees- they were embedded across the program, contributing to the hosting, and delivery of sessions. So what shifts when the student voice moves beyond the traditional panel format?
In this episode, Student Voice Australasia speaks live with delegates on the ground- from vice chancellors to nursing students attending their very first conference- capturing a diverse range of perspectives on what it means to genuinely include students in spaces where decisions are made.

Together, they explore the value students brought to the conversations and what changes when the student voice is not just heard, but meaningfully integrated into the discussions that matter most.
Hosted by: Belinda Brear (Student Voice Australasia Coordinator) and Jennifer Lowe (Swinburne University Student and Co-Convenor of the Students with Disability Leadership Collective)

Featuring:
Gemma Lucy Smart, Lived Experience PhD Scholar at The University of Sydney

Gazzal Duggal, Nursing Student at University of Southern Queensland

Prof Aleksander Subic, Vice-Chancellor and President, Torrens University Australia

Neeve Nagel, UTS Students’ Association President, University of Technology Sydney

Maria Ishkova, Business School Lecturer, The University of Sydney

Martin Betts, CEO and Founder of HEDx

Episode 4 of The AI Inflection Point — and the second of four conversations on coalitions.
Australian universities have been building global partnerships for decades. But have those partnerships actually changed anything — for students, for institutions, for the sector?
This conversation asks the harder question: not whether to collaborate globally, but whether the partnerships being built are genuinely transformational — or mostly transactional. And the honest answer, it turns out, is complicated.
Joe Chicharo puts it plainly: as a nation, Australian universities have been like lone wolves — each going out, making mistakes, figuring it out — but never building a shared science of learning from those experiences.
Helen Bartlett, Vice-Chancellor of UniSC, chairs a panel with Joe Chicharo from the University of Wollongong, Paul Mazerolle, Vice-Chancellor of UniSQ, Shân Wareing, Vice-Chancellor of Middlesex University, and Weihong Liang, President of the International Students Representative Council of Australia.
What emerges from this conversation is not a blueprint for better partnerships. It's a more honest reckoning with what it actually takes to build one worth keeping.

Episode 3 of The AI Inflection Point — and the first of four conversations on coalitions.
Can universities lead the AI transformation that higher education needs — alone? The answer is no. But what "together" actually looks like when your institution is under real financial pressure is a much harder conversation.
This panel brings together four leaders with very different starting points. Rose Luckin, CEO of Educate Ventures Research, has built one of the most active AI coalitions in UK schools. Noah Pickus, Head of Global Strategy and Partnerships at Duke, has just launched the Future Universities Alliance — 49 institutions from 23 countries. Theo Farrell, Vice-Chancellor of La Trobe, is two years into a serious AI transformation. And Shan Wareing, Vice-Chancellor of Middlesex University, inherited a 12% deficit on day one.
What emerges from this conversation is not a simple case for collaboration — but a more honest question about what we're actually trying to protect, and whether we can do that alone.

Episode 2 of The AI Inflection Point — six conversations recorded at the HEDx 2026 conference in Sydney. The diagnosis is set. Now: what does it actually take to respond?
Lucy Marshall from the University of Sydney names what most leaders know but rarely say out loud — universities don't have an innovation problem. They have a culture problem. Fear is the barrier. Not budget, not technology. Fear.
Then Aleks Subic, who built an innovation precinct in the heart of Birmingham, and Grant Robertson, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Otago, answer the same question from the outside in — by changing where the university stands in the world, and who it stands for.
If the barrier isn't technology but culture — what does it actually take to change a university from the inside?