Re-positioning as a response to government higher education policy development – an Australian case study

Abstract

Australian Catholic University (ACU) has had a long-standing commitment to social justice and to engaging with the rest of the community, arising from its Catholic intellectual tradition and its creation from Catholic teaching institutions. As a university created in 1991 as part of a radical re-structure of Australian higher education, ACU has also been very responsive to government policy higher education policy. Recently, in the environment of a new Commonwealth government with a social inclusion agenda and an education policy described as the Education Revolution, ACU began a process of disentangling the strands of community service, outreach activities, engagement and third stream activities that have been labelled in recent years as ‘community engagement’. This article draws on the findings of a research project aimed at mapping third stream activities at ACU to analyse the ACU response to higher education policy development. It also suggests future directions for the development of third stream activities at ACU.