This overview article reflects on trends in higher education in 2024 and comments on Budget 2025’s implications for the sector. Progress has certainly been achieved, with commitment from government to digital transformation, research excellence, partnership with enterprise, and internationalisation. For the trajectory to continue, Irish universities must play an ongoing role in addressing social mobility, national competitiveness, and the global challenges of the 21st century.

The Designing Futures project at University of Galway is designed to support the development of students’ graduate attributes and skills required by industry and society, and for living and thriving in a complex and challenging world. Alongside transforming the student educational experience, Designing Futures is also enhancing faculty collaboration and innovation in teaching and assessment. This articles describes how it works

Further education and training (FET) students continue to report a range of obstacles to pursuing higher education. This article tackles the myth of linear progression and argues that tertiary degrees can provide a more holistic approach to progression from FET to higher education, through paying particular attention to the student experience and post-graduation destination.

The further and higher education sector is familiar with the importance of experiential learning, particularly in professional and STEM disciplines. This article explores the emergence of an umbrella term, work-integrated learning, that frames these pedagogical strategies for the purpose of enhancing the acquisition of graduate attributes.

This article explores academic integrity in relation to online assessment. It describes a UCD-based study that explored students’ experiences of online assessment and their perspectives on various forms of academic misconduct. It reports the study findings and suggests ways to best safeguard academic integrity in future online assessment.

Irish higher education faces increasing financial constraints and must adopt transformative strategies to thrive. While learning technologies have often raised costs, they can be harnessed strategically to improve efficiency, access, and quality, as this article shows. By embracing large-scale digital transformation, Irish universities can remain competitive in a global education market.

The psychology of education has long been shaped by ethnocentrism, its theories and practices developed from a narrow, male, Western perspective, leaving gaps in how psychology accounts for the diverse experiences of people worldwide. This article considers the impact of colonialism on higher education and describes a project at Trinity College Dublin to address and undo these systemic biases by decolonising the Psychology of Education programme’s reading lists and curricula.

This article presents an overview of TOBAR, a shared project between Marino Institute of Education and Trinity College Dublin that supports Irish Travellers to and through initial teacher education (ITE) programmes. TOBAR was a response to the Higher Education Authority’s PATH 1 initiative, aiming to begin to address the lack of Irish Traveller representation in ITE and the teaching profession.

The 1916 Bursary is a financial award to encourage the participation and success of students from sections of society that are underrepresented in higher education, including the most socio-economically disadvantaged. It gives up to 400 students annually a €5,000 award for each year of their course. This article describes the bursary’s structure and scope.

This article opens up a discussion on the quality of professional placement for early childhood education students. It recognises the role of mentoring in enhancing students’ quality of experience. It challenges the traditional observation assessment method and argues for considering online professional dialogue as an alternative form of student assessment. The study draws from research and evaluation conducted over five years of one higher education institution’s experience implementing progressive and innovative change to enhance students’ professional practice experience in the early years.

Blending learning has particular benefits for mature students because of the unique or exacerbated challenges they experience. This article looks at the complex ecosystem of factors that must be considered in order to attract and support mature learners in a blended environment. It integrates wider research with Hibernia College’s model, which has evolved with technological and social developments.