Research Facilities

Ensuring a quality research training experience

ACU National strives to ensure that research students enjoy a high-quality research training experience.

The University has a continued high demand for research places, an increase in the number of staff with doctoral and other research degrees, an increased number of staff qualified to supervise, and an increasing number of doctoral graduates.

Research Services conducts regular reviews of the infrastructure provided for postgraduate research students in order to maintain appropriate standards of provision.

All Faculties have plans incorporating research and research training activities, and are concerned to strengthen outcomes against best practice as a means of ensuring that disciplines maintain their position as areas of research training strength.

New areas seeking to be recognised as areas of research strength must identify criteria against which they wish to be benchmarked and identify institutions which have achieved the level to which they aspire.

The University's Research and Research Training Management Committee receives a report on student progress annually. A second report is an option that may be exercised by any stakeholder in the process. The majority of research higher degree students at the University are mature-age, with an average age above 40 years. Most (74 per cent) are in mid-career and, therefore, enrolled on a part-time basis. As a result, they are off-campus students who typically maintain contact with their supervisor via telephone and Email.

About half (48 per cent) of students are female. The University is proud of the outcomes achieved in relation to female postgraduate students and to its encouragement of lifelong learning in its research ethos.

The University has been pleased to participate in the Graduate Careers Council Survey of employment destinations and salaries of its graduates. As the number of research degree graduates increases over the coming decade, the University will monitor closely their career paths and employment choices.

In the meantime, the University has introduced a research degree satisfaction exit survey, to monitor graduate outcomes against the annual survey results and to assess graduates' overall satisfaction with research training and its relevance to career aspirations. This will be especially valuable in relation to the skills development of students undertaking professional Doctorates and professional Master's research programs.