HEDx

In this episode for Student Experience, UQ students Madison Piper and Ben Roden-Cohen sit down with Professor Kris Ryan, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), for a conversation about uncertainty, AI, cost of living pressures, mental health, learning, and what universities are actually for.

Scott Pulsipher, President of Western Governors University, and Sasha Thackaberry-Voinovich, President of New State University, opened HEDx at UTS with an uncomfortable truth: institutions that waited for the right moment to transform had already fallen behind. Scott reflected on 25 years of building WGU outside the boundaries of traditional higher education — and warned that even that model is already legacy. Sasha reinforced it from her own experience: she left a career in traditional higher education to co-found a university from the ground up in under a year, because existing structures could not move at the pace that change demands. Her challenge to the room: how did you operate differently this week than you did last week?

HEDx's largest and most ambitious event opened at University of Technology Sydney, welcoming more than 600 leaders, students and partners to two days built around one question: are we actually going to change anything, or just feel good about wanting to? Vice Chancellor Andrew Parfitt, Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic and Vice President Kylie Readman and student leader Chloe Ferreira open with a shared provocation: universities must disrupt themselves, and students can't wait for them to build a better future.

Aaron Driver and Neil Durant of the University of New England argue that universities should not wait to be disrupted by AI - they should lead the disruption themselves. In this episode, we explore UNE’s vision for the future of learning, from personalised education and “earned learning” to Studio, a next-generation learning experience engine designed to make higher education more human, engaging and relevant in the age of AI. And we launch the HEDx AI agent navigating a curated resource of 5 years of connections on disruption with global leaders of innovation in higher education.

Students with disabilities are the fastest growing equity cohort in Australian tertiary education yet they continue to experience lower satisfaction, access, success, attainment, completion and employment outcomes than their higher education peers.
In this episode of the HEDx Student Experience Podcast, Student Leader Jennifer Lowe and Student Voice Australasia’s Belinda Brear sit down with Professor Sally Kift to explore one of the sector’s quiet success stories: the Australian Disability Clearinghouse on Education and Training (ADCET).
 Together, they unpack why national, quality assured, co-designed resources are essential as the demand for and complexity of disability, belonging and inclusion grow; why universal design is fast becoming a regulatory expectation, not a “nice to have”; and why cross-institutional collaboration is critical if we’re serious about equity, accessibility and student success.
A hopeful, practical conversation about doing accessibility, affirmation, accommodation and inclusion better for students, staff and the sector.