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This report provides an overview of higher education policy and trends. It is the sixth edition of a series previously published by the Grattan Institute. Since the last edition in 2018, all chapters have been updated and new or expanded sections added on work-integrated learning, student finances, student mental health and international student migration.

The contents are as follows: Chapter 1 explains how higher education is defined in Australia, the different types of higher education provider, the various types of qualification, and what makes universities distinctive among higher education providers; Chapter 2 reports on student trends, including enrolment numbers, courses chosen, and the social background of students. It also discusses how students enter the higher education system; Chapter 3 examines the student experience, including subject pass rates, attrition, satisfaction with teaching, working while studying and mental health; Chapter 4 looks at the university workforce, including why people become academics and their employment arrangements; Chapter 5 looks at research in Australian universities, including what topics are researched and research outputs; Chapter 6 provides information on how higher education is funded, including total revenue, the [Higher Education Loan Program] HELP student loan scheme, government grants for teaching and research, and international student fees; Chapter 7 outlines how per student funding levels are determined, and how student places are distributed among higher education providers; Chapter 8 describes how the Australian Government came to dominate higher education policy, the key government departments and the higher education interest groups; Chapter 9 examines higher education's benefits to the public and employers, including whether higher education graduates meet skills needs, the quality of university research, and public satisfaction with Australian universities; and Chapter 10 reports on higher education's private benefits including graduate employment and income and, for international students, migration to Australia.

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Two years into the pandemic, economic activity has recovered faster than expected. However, the labour market recovery is still uneven across sectors and is threatened by the economic fallout from Russia's aggression against Ukraine, which has generated the fastest growing humanitarian crisis in Europe since World War II, sending shockwaves throughout the world economy. The 2022 edition of the OECD Employment Outlook reviews the key labour market and social challenges for a more inclusive post-COVID-19 [Coronavirus Disease 2019] recovery. It also examines the policies to address these challenges and the outlook ahead. Particular attention is given to frontline workers and groups lagging behind in this recovery (young people, workers with less education, and racial/ethnic minorities). The Outlook also addresses a number of long-standing structural issues that have a key relevance for labour market inclusiveness, such as employer market power and its labour market consequences, the role of firms in wage inequality, and the effect of working time policies on well-being and economic outcomes.

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With many regular workplaces shut down to 'flatten the curve' of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), millions of Australians are now shifting their work to home. Home work has great potential to cushion the economic blow of the pandemic: allowing many to keep working and earning an income, and many firms and industries to continue at least partial production. But there are also many challenges and risks associated with this major shift in work patterns. Much of the increase in home work will likely become permanent, even after the immediate health emergency passes. That makes it crucial to 'get home work right': providing home workers with appropriate support and protections, and preventing abuse and exploitation as home work becomes more common. This briefing paper surveys the scope of home work, considers its impacts on economic and gender inequality, and proposes several policy recommendations to make home work safer and fairer.

Main findings include: (1) About 30 per cent of Australian jobs could conceivably be performed from home - but it will take time for workplaces to make necessary organisational and technological adjustments to reach that potential; (2) Occupations which can work from home were already paid about 25 per cent more than occupations which cannot be shifted to remote locations. The shift to home work could therefore exacerbate income inequality; this reinforces the need for comprehensive income protections for those who cannot work from home; (3) The expansion of work-from-home arrangements raises several concerns regarding the conditions of home work, and protecting those who perform it. These include fair compensation for extra expenses associated with home work; applying normal rules regarding working hours and pay; ensuring a safe home work environment (including its social and familial context, with challenges like domestic violence); and protecting the privacy of home workers from undue monitoring and surveillance by employers. The paper concludes by urging researchers, unions, regulators and policy-makers to pay top-priority attention to ensuring the safety and fairness of home work - because this shift is clearly here to stay.

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Refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) often struggle to integrate the labor market. Even where they have the unrestricted right to work their labor market outcomes lack behind those of other groups, at least in the short- to medium-term. This literature review brings together two strands of research to inform the design of successful job interventions in this context: the evidence on how forced displacement impacts those forcibly displaced in their economic lives and the existing knowledge on jobs interventions for refugees and IDPs. The specific challenges that those forcibly displaced face on the labor market are linked to the loss of assets and separation from family members; the lack of skills required on the host labor market; the impacts of forced displacement on their physical and mental health and their economic behavior (in terms of prospects and aspirations, risk-aversion and time horizon); their legal situation; a lack of social networks and discrimination as well as a high likelihood of excess supply on the labor market at destination. Rigorous quasi-experimental or experimental evidence on jobs interventions for this target group is scarce and mainly focused on high-income countries. A review of the existing literature points to the importance of conducting thorough assessments of the demand and supply side of the labor market, including the legal situation of those forcibly displaced and their perceptions and aspirations, before designing intervention.

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Demographic ageing poses the challenge of how to keep people in employment for longer without negatively affecting their health and well-being. The solutions are particularly critical for workers engaged in arduous work. This report examines how mid-career reviews can play a key role by clarifying workers' options for remaining in work until a later retirement age. Following an exploration of career trajectories and transitions, the report focuses on arduous jobs: their incidence across Europe and the implications of such work for career and work sustainability. It examines various tools and strategies used by public authorities and social partners to keep workers in arduous jobs in employment longer. Finally, three case studies - from Belgium, France and the UK - of mid-career reviews undertaken either as pilot projects or as a legislative reform are presented.

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The paper examines the link between workplace disability (WD) and job satisfaction (JS) in Britain using linked data from [Workplace Employment Relations Study] WESR2011. The results obtained indicate workplaces with respondents with disabilities report lower JS vis-a-vis workplaces without such respondents in the private sector. Within private sector workplaces with mixed respondents, the JS of respondents without disabilities declines with the percentage of respondents with disabilities. Also, workplace disability policies and practices are positively (negatively) associated with the JS of respondents with (without) disabilities in the sector. The sector may have to re-examine its dealings with issues of workplace disability.

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Direct care workers provide much of the hands-on, long-term care received by older adults and people with disabilities in the U.S. Despite being a lifeline for the people they serve and their families, direct care workers are among the lowest paid workers in the country. They often work with minimal benefits, little access to training, and few opportunities for advancement. Improving the job quality for the professionals in this field should be a goal of all policymakers seeking to strengthen economic opportunities for the working poor. State governments are uniquely positioned to tackle this issue and promote such policies. This new report examines opportunities and levers for states to enhance the wages, benefits, and other conditions affecting jobs in the direct care workforce. These policies can benefit direct care workers and their families, as well as enhance the quality of care provided older adults and people with disabilities across the country.

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The purpose of this paper is to argue the case for a re-examination of a range of public policy issues to do with innovation (broadly defined), productivity, employee wellbeing, skills, and progression in work through the framing device of the workplace. The paper will suggest that despite a recent history of relative neglect of the workplace, public policy across the UK has strong and legitimate reasons for being concerned with what happens within the 'black box' of the organisation and employment relationship, and that at least some of the answers to a range of pressing public policy problems reside therein. As a result, a renewed public policy focus on the workplace could and should be an important area for policy development over the next few years.

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While the effects of the outbreak of the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic in the most advanced nations are receiving much attention, the least developed countries (LDCs) are at risk of suffering the most severe economic and social damages. Plummeting exports and drops in tourism and remittances, coupled with even a few weeks of lockdown, are profoundly affecting labour markets in LDCs, not least because most people work informally, have little cash reserves, no paid sick leave, no access to teleworking and nothing to fall back on. At the same time, governments have limited fiscal space available to provide relief to individuals and enterprises. This paper provides an overview of the evolution of the health and labour market crises in the LDCs, drawing on a large set of available data and sources. It highlights how the outbreak is affecting jobs and incomes via multiple channels of transmission. It looks at policy responses so far and provides some suggestions for national employment and economic policies, as well as international support to help LDCs on their path to a job-rich recovery and future resilience.

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This report examines four scenarios of social partner cooperation in the hairdressing sector, aimed at improving the quality of work and employment. The scenarios are based on trends that reveal high impact and high uncertainty qualities, such as the re-evaluation of the sector as a craft sector, technological change, the effects of climate change, and the polarisation of the sector due to the dominance of shopping malls. These scenarios, which were developed on the basis of desk research, interviews with national social partners and focus groups of the sectoral social partners, are then mapped onto the four main quality of work indicators, as defined by [European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions] Eurofound (career and employment security, skills development, reconciliation of working and non-working life, and health and well-being), in order to formulate policy pointers for how the social partners could develop strategies to improve the quality of work and employment in the future.

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