'Silly, soft and otherwise suspect': Doctoral education as risky business

This paper investigates how certain doctoral practices come to count as scandalous and with what effects on universities. To do so, it engages with a number of recent media allegations that relate to doctoral practice in Australia and elsewhere. The analysis of these allegations is developed in terms of three broad categories, namely allegations of silliness in relation to thesis content, allegations of softness in relation to entry, rigour and assessment, and allegations of suspect conduct and/or credentials. The impact of such allegations on university governance is then addressed

Revisiting the similar process to engineer the contemporary systems

This paper addresses the present-day context of Systems Engineering, revisiting and setting up an updated framework for the SIMILAR process in order to use it to engineer the contemporary systems. The contemporary world is crowded of large interdisciplinary complex systems made of other systems, personnel, hardware, software, information, processes, and facilities. An integrated holistic approach is crucial to develop these systems and take proper account of their multifaceted nature and numerous interrelationships. As the system's complexity and extent grow, the number of parties involved (stakeholders and shareholders) usually also raises, bringing to the interaction a considerable amount of points of view, skills, responsibilities, and interests. The Systems Engineering approach aims to tackle the complex and interdisciplinary whole of those socio-technical systems, providing the means to enable their successful realization. Its exploitation in our modern world is assuming an increasing relevance noticeable by emergent standards, academic papers, international conferences, and post-graduate programmes in the field. This work aims to provide "the picture" of modern Systems Engineering, and to update the context of the SIMILAR process model in order to use this renewed framework to engineer the challenging contemporary systems. The emerging trends in the field are also pointed-out with particular reference to the Model-Based Systems Engineering approach