Temporary Transnationals: Southeast Asian Students in Australia

Despite rapidly increasing global flows of international students, research to date has paid little heed to how students abroad identify and mobilise. Focusing on the experience of Indonesians, Malaysians and Singaporeans in Australia – a primary hub for international education – we explore the ways in which our informants understand their place and potential as students. We find international students to comprise a distinct sort of diaspora. With their liminal status, these – for the most part – only temporary transnationals do internalise new norms and agency in a personal sense. However, they tend to identify increasingly as national citizens and to be disinclined to mobilise politically, at least during the course of their studies. These findings add to our understanding both of collective identity and action among students, and of the broader implications of globalisation and internationalisation for social and political activism.     

Keeping College Options Open: A Field Experiment to Help all High School Seniors Through the College Application Process

Recent research suggests that the college application process itself prevents access. This paper reports results from a school‐based experiment in which application assistance is incorporated into the high school curriculum for all graduating seniors at low‐transition schools. Over three workshops, students were guided to pick programs of interest that they were eligible for, apply for real, and complete the financial aid application. The goal was to create a real college option for exiting students to make the transition easier and more salient. Among all graduating seniors, the program increased application rates by 15 percentage points, and college going rates by 5 percentage points. Among those not taking advanced‐level courses, college enrollment increased by 9 percentage points. The program generated significant effects for a wide range of heterogeneous groups, including both males and females, those from urban and rural schools, and those with above and below average grades. While more intensive than other tested approaches, in‐class application assistance may provide a more effective approach for bridging the gap towards higher education.     

Evaluating the Potential of a Web-based Portal to Support the Leverage of Professional Expertise across Local Authority Boundaries

The national strategy for local e-government identifies joining up services and the sharing of information as key components in improving the quality and efficiency of public services. A project to design and evaluate a web-based portal to support leverage of professional health and safety enforcement expertise across local authority (LA) boundaries was undertaken. The project clearly demonstrated that there was support by operational officers for the concept of knowledge sharing but there was limited uptake of the portal, particularly those functions that were designed to facilitate collaborative working. The research identified the significance of management commitment to knowledge sharing and the importance of users understanding the rationale for, and benefits of, engagement with IT systems which are not developed in-house. It also indicated that whilst web-based systems can provide a means by which profession knowledge can be levered across LAs, the complexity of linking over 400 LAs with their pluralistic structures and cultures should not be under-estimated.