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?

Episode 1 of The AI Inflection Point — our six-part series recorded at the HEDx 2026 conference in Sydney. This first episode sets the diagnosis: universities were designed for a student who no longer exists. Professor KC Chua, President of Singapore Institute of Technology, and Pierpaolo Limone, Rector of Pegaso University in Rome, answer the same question from opposite sides of the world: for what kind of student was the university actually built — and is that still the student in front of us today? AI didn't create the problem. It just made it impossible to ignore

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.

Alex Elibank-Murray of UniSC hosts a panel of colleague Leah Barclay, industry partner Tracey Whitelaw and student Callum Phillips to argue that the future of higher education may not be a classroom at all. In this episode, we explore immersive learning, XR technologies and the rise of virtual campuses — revealing how universities are already being transformed by AI, storytelling and real-world industry collaboration.