We Are Pleased to Present (At Long Last!) the New Issue of the Journal. We Have Found It

Introduction

We are pleased to present (at long last!) the new issue of the Journal. We have found it a daunting task to attract, edit, have refereed, and assemble material for this issue, but we are pleased to report that we also now have a 'critical mass' of material for 1999's numbers.

Since the last issue, our Editorial Advisory Board has been expanded and strengthened by the addition of Dr Seppo Höltta from the Helsinki University of Technology, Professor Mantz Yorke from Liverpool John Moores University, and Ms Celia Whitchurch from the Guy's, King's and St Thomas' School of Medicine. Our Editorial Advisory Board is now truly international, and we hope that we will be able to further expand our readership coverage to include Asia, Europe, South Africa and North America. We will continue to provide a mixture of scholarly, analytical and practitioner material.

This issue contains a wide range of material, covering student performance, access and equity, internationalisation and the role of managers and 'administration' in higher education.

Patrick Leman and Chris Mann investigate gender differences in academic performance at Cambridge University. Their paper describes the aims and methods of a substantial project on 'Indicators of Academic Performance' at Cambridge. Some of their results were also presented at an international 'Gender Equality' conference hosted by the University of Helsinki in August 1998.

Graham Pratt and David Poole examine the development of strategies for institutional internationalisation and the influence 'market forces' have had in this process. They look to the corporate sector for possible strategies to enhance the future competitiveness of local institutions.

Maree Conway examines competition and collaboration between academic and general staff in Australian universities, and looks at the academic-administrative interface. In the context of this issue of JIRA, Maree is also the token general staff member!

The Merran Evans and Alan Farley paper provides a very detailed analysis of the performance of first year undergraduates in the Faculty of Business & Economics at Monash University. They encountered academic performance differences between students according to school background, the Monash campus they were attending, and subject discipline areas.

Professor Graeme Hugo's article is a considerably shortened version of the material he presented at the 8th AAIR Forum in Adelaide in 1997. The paper describes how Geographical Information Systems (GIS) can be utilised to identify groups who are disadvantaged in their access to tertiary education. He argues that GIS can assist in targeting programs designed to ameliorate disadvantage.

We believe that the material included in this issue will provide you, the reader, with a great deal to stimulate the mind. We are aiming to attract a wide range of material from all over the world, and invite you to submit articles for consideration for publication. Electronic and hard copy contact addresses appear elsewhere in this issue.

Angel J Calderon
Ian R Dobson
Co-Editors

September 1998 (Who are we trying to kid?)