Hamish Coates conducts research and development in the field of higher education. He
is Foundation Director of Higher Education Research at the Australian Council for
Educational Research (ACER), and a Program Director with the LH Martin Institute for
Higher Education Leadership and Management, based at the University of Melbourne.
Hamish collaborates widely, and has worked with learners, senior researchers and
administrators in many countries. He is leading a consortium of international agencies to
run OECD’s Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes Feasibility Study (AHELO).
Over more than a decade he has led influential assignments that have shaped research,
policy and practice.
Associate Professor Coates’ research and publications focus on the measurement and
evaluation of tertiary education inputs, processes, contexts and outcomes. Active
interests include large-scale evaluation, tertiary education policy and reform,
institutional strategy, outcomes assessment, learner engagement, academic work and
leadership, quality assurance, tertiary admissions, and assessment methodology.
Hamish teaches research methods at all levels, trains and works with tertiary executives,
manages research teams, supervises graduate students, has contributed to numerous
advisory groups, runs workshops and conferences, has worked with all Australasian
universities and hundreds of training organisations, serves on a number of editorial
committees, consults for the World Bank and OECD, and has held visiting fellowships at
the University of Michigan and at UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational
Planning (IIEP).
Associate Professor Coates completed his PhD in 2004 at the Centre for the Study of
Higher Education, University of Melbourne. He holds a Master of Education (Assessment and
Evaluation), Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from the University of
Melbourne.
