Chaos or complex systems? Identifying factors influencing the success of international and NESB graduate research students in engineering and information technology fields

The paper details the results of the first phase of a larger ALTC project into the sociocultural factors that influence the supervision of higher degrees research (HDR) engineering students at the University of Western Australia, Curtain University, and Queensland University of Technology (QUT). A quantitative analysis was performed on the results from an online survey that was administered to 179 QUT engineering students. Research and innovation are central to the development of Australia’s competitiveness in a global economy. An analysis of the Higher Degrees Research (HDR) data from Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and the University of Western Australia (UWA) as part of the pilot project indicates that this is a growing problem in all disciplines, and is especially significant in Engineering and Information Technology disciplines. As the number of international students entering HDR study in Australia continues to grow, the issue of the identification of factors influencing HDR success should be seen to be of critical importance.