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Copyright

Richard F. Heller; Stephen Leeder;

Published On

2025-07-02

Page Range

pp. 17–26

Language

  • English

Print Length

10 pages

1. Inverting the distribution of Higher Education

From top-down to student-led

Chapter of: Stories of Hope: Reimagining Education(pp. 17–26)
This chapter envisions a university education system that aligns with students’ evolving needs, fostering a hopeful and responsive learning environment. Currently, traditional learning structures often fail to reflect the self-directed, technology-enhanced ways in which both students and educators acquire knowledge. The chapter advocates for peer-reviewed open-access course repositories that for staff would confer academic recognition and for students would offer the opportunity of gaining microcredits from affiliated institutions. This model aims to enhance accessibility, reducing inequities tied to geographic location and course availability.

Contributors

Richard F. Heller

(author)
Emeritus Professor of Medicine at University of Newcastle Australia
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3161-5967

Richard Heller, Emeritus Professor of Medicine, University of Newcastle, Australia and of Public Health, University of Manchester, UK, has a medical degree and doctorate from the University of London, United Kingdom. He was Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Community Medicine at the University of Newcastle, Australia and Professor of Public Health at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. Richard was also the founder and coordinator of the People’s Open Access Education Initiative (Peoples-uni, https://www.peoples-uni.org/), which aimed to provide Public Health capacity building in developing countries at low cost, through e-learning using open-access resources on the Internet and leading to an MPH degree. He is author of The Distributed University for Sustainable Higher Education (2022, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-16-6506-6).

Stephen Leeder

(author)

Stephen Leeder is a retired academic public health physician. He has had a career-long interest in the application of epidemiological knowledge and methods to clinical practice, health policy, and public health. He has served on multiple state and federal health-related committees and commissions. His research interests include system-wide efforts to achieve prevention and assure equity in the provision of health services for patients with serious and continuing illness, especially due to respiratory problems. He has had a deep interest in medical education and was a member of the foundation faculty in the new medical school in Newcastle, and served as Dean of the Sydney medical school when it introduced its new curriculum. He had an association with Westmead Hospital from its planning in 1972 until 2011, was Chair of Western Sydney Local Heath District Board 2010–2015 and chaired its human research ethics committee for twenty years. He is married to Kathy Esson, and they live in Sydney and Wentworth Falls. In 2024, Halstead (Black Mountain) published his book of poems, Pilgrim Soul.