This article examines the extent to which university administrative staff perceive academics and students as customers. These perceptions have an effect on the provision of quality customer service. The role of administrative staff in the educational experience for students has been generally ignored in academic research. A discussion of quality service provision in higher education can be enhanced by a consideration of the perceptions held by administrative staff of academics and students as customers. Administrative staff perceptions were analysed by surveying staff from Curtin University's Academic Registrar's Of ce (ARO). Findings of this survey indicate that administrative staff have ambivalent feelings towards academics as customers and highlight interpersonal skills between the two groups as a major challenge in facilitating quality customer service. In dealing with students, administrative staff move beyond the processes of mere service-providers and incorporate a mentor role into their processes. Administrative staff tend to relate closely to students, perceiving them as internal customers.

The question of whether or not disadvantaged students are realizing the same benefits from higher education as their peers is of fundamental importance to equity practitioners and policymakers. Despite this, equity policy has focused on access to higher education and little attention has been paid to graduate outcomes. The Australian study reported here used national data to investigate relationships between disadvantage and graduate outcomes. The study provides critical insights into how access to higher education does, or does not, lead to improvements in post-graduation equity. The study reveals that outcomes are not equal for all students and that higher education disadvantage persists for many students after they have completed their studies. Whilst the specific findings relate to the Australian university sector the broader discussion of the paper is relevant to higher education policy more generally, especially in terms of how governments align institutional processes to measure and scrutinize achievement towards public policy objectives.

Despite the expansion and professionalisation of university administration over the past 20 years there has been no scholarly study on the extent to which universities, which promote the value of generic skills from research degrees to prospective research students and their employers, capitalize on the research and transferable skills of PhD graduates later employed in the university sector as professional staff. Findings from this study of research-trained professional staff at one research-intensive Australian university suggests that these professionals are using their research and generic skills in management roles, to the benefit of the university. In the context of the knowledge based economy, this study suggests that universities could benefit from actively targeting the products of their own system for professional roles.

The concept of lifelong learning implies a cycle where the learner contributes prior learning into a new learning environment and sees that learning upgraded. In recent years, a range of internal and external pressures have encouraged Australian universities to identify the meta or generic skills embedded in tertiary study. Using a content analysis of relevant university policy documents, this study assesses how the Australian higher education sector has presented this discussion through the notion of 'graduate attributes' and then analyses the implications of this conceptual transition. This article argues that the shift from a notion of generic skills to graduate attributes both reinforces and encourages universities to concentrate their participation in lifelong learning at one particular end of the cycle. This study suggests that, whilst informal experience is increasingly incorporated into university admission processes and even into credit for courses, progression towards a more equitable and accessible higher education sector remains patchy at best.

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