Long-form papers on the institutions that shape public life.
Every paper the CoreBridge advisory team has published, in one place. They are also available in the interactive reader.
Your degree was given a price tag in Canberra.
A fisheries student is charged about $14,000 for a degree. An arts student is charged $52,000. Same campus, same HELP loan, one debt nearly four times the other. You do not set that price, and neither does your university. Canberra does.
Reimagining strategy in a world universities didn’t plan for.
The 2030 plans were written for a world that no longer exists. A practitioner’s account of the questions Australian universities are quietly returning to, and a way of thinking about them that sits with complexity rather than flattening it.
The state of the Victorian university sector.
Victoria’s eight public universities have just tabled their 2025 annual reports. Read with the three years before them, they tell a sector story that does not fit a single narrative frame. Six of eight are now in surplus. Two are not. The gap is the widest in the four-year window.
Clarity is not the same as simplifying.
Higher education has always been complex; what changed is that the complexity became constant. The temptation under pressure is to simplify. I think that is the wrong move. Clarity is not the same as making it simple.
Reclaiming Australian universities as public institutions.
Australian universities are publicly founded institutions. Their first duty is to serve the communities that built them, and the pressures of this moment make that duty more pressing, not less.
Aligning strategy with a business case that actually works.
I've reviewed, and written, hundreds of business cases. The challenge isn't just the framework; it's how you implement it, drive culture change, and ensure transparency and accountability.
Do universities have an ethical responsibility to translate research?
Recently, when I travelled across the USA and Canada, speaking with some of the highest-impact research universities and innovation precincts in North America, one thing stood out: the idea that universities have a social and ethical responsibility to translate research into real-world impact.
The shifting LGBTQI+ funding landscape: challenges and opportunities.
The social fabric is more connected than ever. This interconnection has been powerful, driving forward positive change like the expansion of same-sex marriage rights globally. But, as we know, progress and pushback go hand in hand.