The CHE announces the publication of a draft qualification standard statement for the Diploma in Emergency Care for public comment. The CHE mandate includes the development of standards for qualifications in higher education. A qualification standard is a generic statement of the learning domains, the level of achievement and the graduate attributes required for the award of the qualification. They set out expectations about standards of qualifications in a range of fields of study, describing what gives a discipline its distinctiveness.

Given that a draft National Plan for the PSET sector for the next decade is currently in consultation phase, in this issue of BrieflySpeaking we reflect on the targets that were set in the National Plan for Higher Education of 2001. Using data from VitalStats 2016, which was published in March 2018, we consider the extent to which these targets have been reached and point to some interesting developing trends.