HEDx

At the HEDx Conference at UTS, Ben Roden-Cohen and Madison Piper talk with Pascale Quester, Rachel Wilson, Rachel Fitzgerald, Danny Liu, Tim Fawns and Katie Ford to ask what the future of higher education should look like — and who gets a say in shaping it.
The conversation goes beyond technology to explore the value of student voice, the importance of diverse perspectives in decision-making, and why innovation in teaching needs both time and investment. The guests discuss critical thinking, human connection, the joy of learning and the need to rethink how graduate success is defined and measured.
Ultimately, it raises a bigger question for the sector: what does it cost to create the kind of higher education experience we want — and what is the cost of not doing it?

Episode 6 of The AI Inflection Point — and the last of four conversations on coalitions.
The previous three episodes asked why collaborate, whether partnerships can be transformational, and whether scale is the answer. This one asks something simpler: what does it actually look like when you do it?
Lou Conway built the Country University Centre network — 28 federated centres across regional Australia, where students can study with any provider that makes sense for them. No merger required. Bruce Lines led the integration office that created Adelaide University out of two institutions, and is honest about what worked and what didn't. Belinda Tynan is navigating a region where coal mines are closing and the university has to respond. And Heather Margrison graduated from Adelaide Uni through the merger — and was part of the student panel that helped design it.
What comes out of this conversation isn't a blueprint. It's something more useful — a set of hard lessons from people who actually did it.

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.