Maani Truu
Maani Truu covers education for The Australian Financial Review, with a distinct focus on how national policy, funding decisions and university governance shape the higher education system. Her reporting concentrates on universities, student debt and federal reforms, using detailed financial and policy data to explain consequences for students, institutions and politics. She brings experience from national politics and public-interest feature reporting to produce clear, impact-driven stories rather than routine campus coverage.
Higher education policy and funding reform
Much of Truu’s recent work examines federal policy settings and their impact on universities and students, particularly in the context of changing skill needs. She has reported on calls to scrap the Job Ready Graduate scheme after a Sydney vice-chancellor warned that fee hikes for some arts degrees to more than AU$50,000 were misaligned with Australia’s skills requirements in an AI-driven economy. In this coverage she foregrounds the tension between government funding models, degree affordability and the workforce needs policymakers say they are trying to meet. Her writing in this area positions higher education policy as a core economic and social issue rather than a narrow sectoral concern.
University governance, pay and ministerial scrutiny
Truu devotes significant attention to university governance and executive remuneration, particularly where these intersect with political oversight. In a recent report on the defunct University of South Australia, she detailed how the outgoing vice-chancellor’s total pay packet reached $3.112 million in 2025, including a $1.128 million “merger-related termination benefit” as part of a $1.1 million golden handshake. The story highlighted Education Minister Jason Clare’s description of the payout as “gobsmacking” and his demand that the former council explain the decision, framing the case as a test of accountability in a sector reliant on public funding.
Her work in this vein often combines remuneration figures, contractual details and ministerial response, drawing a line between internal university decisions and broader public expectations of transparency.
Student debt, campus climate and political consequences
Another strand of her coverage focuses on how student experiences and financial burdens reverberate beyond campuses into electoral politics. In analysis of “HECS suburbs”, she showed that some of the country’s wealthiest areas also carry some of the steepest student debts, with average HECS balances above $38,000 in parts of Sydney’s affluent east and in suburbs near major university campuses, and linked these concentrations to Labor’s election performance.
Her reporting on survey data from the University of Melbourne has explored students’ fears about expressing their views on campus, presenting findings that domestic students there are most likely to feel unable to speak freely and amplifying calls for government investigation into why students perceive their freedom of expression as curtailed. Commentary on her questions about the state of international education further underlines an interest in how recruitment practices, competitive pressures and student welfare interact in the global market for degrees.
Across these stories she treats debt levels, speech on campus and international enrolment as interconnected issues that influence both policy debate and voter sentiment.
From federal politics to education coverage
Truu’s current education beat builds on a background in federal political reporting and digital features for major Australian newsrooms. She has covered refugee and immigration issues, including a story on the United Nations urging Australia to halt the deportation of a man to Nauru while a complaint was being investigated, demonstrating comfort with complex human rights and international processes.
Her work on federal elections has included an explainer on how pollsters capture voter moods, unpacking the machinery of political polling for a general audience. Professional bios describe her as an audience-driven journalist with experience as a reporter and digital producer at national and metropolitan outlets, specialising in long-form public-interest features that distil complex topics and elevate local stories to a national stage.
That combination of political literacy, data-heavy explanatory reporting and feature-writing craft now underpins her education coverage, distinguishing it from more transactional reporting on institutional announcements or campus events.
Sector engagement and vantage point
Truu’s role extends beyond daily reporting into direct engagement with the higher education sector at events and summits. She has appeared as Education Correspondent at The Australian Financial Review’s Higher Education Summit, including in sessions featuring the federal education minister and senior university leaders, and on panels examining who funds research and who controls it. These appearances reflect a vantage point that combines policy detail with ongoing dialogue with vice-chancellors, commissioners and policymakers, and reinforce a focus on the strategic direction of universities rather than solely operational issues. Overall, her work is distinguished by sustained attention to how federal decisions, funding structures and governance practices shape the lived reality of students and the long-term capacity of the tertiary sector.
4 more education journalists.
Bridie Short
Bridie Short reports on how learning environments shape young people’s experiences and their engagement with wider issues. She writes about education for Lynn News, a local news publication with a focus on community stories. Her coverage centres on classrooms and other learning settings, with attention to the people and events that define daily life there. She has written about drama students paying homage to the climate emergency with a performance, framing their creative response as part of their educational experience and blending arts coverage with an education lens. Her education reporting sits within a broader community news agenda, linking school and college stories to general news. Her pieces are grounded in concrete events and activities, showing what students and staff are doing rather than focusing on abstract policy.
Catherine Strohfeldt
Catherine Strohfeldt reports how education policy, money and behaviour collide in Queensland classrooms and childcare services, focusing on what government decisions mean for students, families and teachers day to day. She is an education reporter at Brisbane Times covering schools, universities and early learning alongside related state policy. She often starts with a single school, subject or provider to explain shifts in funding, discipline and workforce conditions, treating suspension statistics, surveys and on-the-ground accounts as complementary evidence. Her work links school fees, capital funding and teacher pay deals to who can access which schools and on what terms. Her beat extends into childcare chains in crisis and university leadership and governance. She also covers Queensland government, planning and environmental issues, showing how housing, health and coastal decisions reshape the communities in her education reporting.
Charles Bliss
Charles Bliss is a features-led reporter at the Eastern Daily Press whose distinct focus is education told through human stories about schools, pupils and the adults who work with them. He writes about what it feels like to be in a classroom or school community, using specific events, characters and concrete activity to show how reading, creativity and wellbeing are encouraged in young people. His education coverage centres children and teachers rather than policy, turning visits, campaigns and workshops into narrative pieces with practical detail. He gives particular weight to wellbeing, mental health and sensory learning, linking health, psychology and horticulture through tangible examples. Alongside education he covers health, environment, behaviour, everyday guidance and local innovation, using plain explanation, step-by-step advice and narrative structure to show how people learn, adapt and look after each other in their communities.
Conor Duffy
Conor Duffy stands out for linking education policy to the daily lives of students, parents and teachers, treating the classroom as part of a wider social system. He is the ABC’s national education and parenting reporter. His beat spans schools, universities and family life. He covers education policy, test scores, rankings, funding, teacher workload, behaviour, school refusal, student wellbeing and parenting stress. He reports on NAPLAN, university rankings, the Job Ready Graduates legislation and the cost of humanities degrees. He also covers privacy and school data. His reporting combines hard data, policy detail and personal stories. He has also done foreign, environment and investigative work for the ABC, including as North America correspondent, and has worked across Lateline, 7.30 and AM.