A Senate committee will consider the private members bills from Liberal senator, Sarah Henderson and MP Julian Leeser for a judicial inquiry into antisemitism on university campuses. Won’t the witness list be interesting!
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Monash U announces staff have and students will get, access to Microsoft Copilot, “your everyday AI companion.” It’s a standard statement that communicates no enthusiasm for what is to come – perhaps because a disclosure adds Copilot was used in the writing with output, “modified to better represent the Monash tone of voice.” Imagine the prompt; “you are an official who does not want a memo to encourage wonder and joy for the university’s future.”
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A need for caps on international student numbers as explained by Agriculture Minister Murray Watt, (representing Jason Clare) Senate Question Time, Tuesday). “We have seen a massive growth in international education over the last couple of years in Australia, and that is putting unsustainable pressure on the amount of migration that we are receiving in this country at a time when people are experiencing cost-of-living pressures and very real housing pressures.” Senator Watt continued at length on how the Government would do an even better job on housing if it was not for the Greens.
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At Monash U a staff member went to the Fair Work Commission claiming a breach of the university enterprise agreement in the way the university managed a research plagiarism allegation against her. Monash responded with a Federal Court action claiming the FWC did not have jurisdiction – the court decided the commission did (Future Campus, July 2). This is said to have so alarmed the Australian Higher Education Industrial Association that it is briefing members that they will need to manage research misconduct inquiries so that they can convince the commission. For DVC Rs, who now only have to deal with external oversight by the far-from-powerful Australian Research Integrity Committee this will not be welcome. Not least because it could mean the FWC making decisions in evidence fabrication matters – requiring way more scientific knowledge than identifying plagiarism. Of course. Monash U could successfully appeal but observers warn against wagering the last petri dish on it, that Justice Wheelan’s Federal Court judgement is closely argued indeed.
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Uni Tasmania is copping a double whammy in state parliament. Whammy One is the bill requiring parliament’s approval for the university to sell off most of the Sandy Bay campus to fund the in-progress move to Hobart CBD. Whammy Two is the re-establishment of the Legislative Council select committee inquiry into the “provisions” of the university’s governing act of parliament. The committee had to be re-established because parliament was prorogued for the lower house election, in March. The new chair is Independent MLC Meg Webb.
Both bill and committee report could be body-slams for university management. Apart from an intrusion into the university’s autonomy, blocking the Sandy Bay sale will make funding the complete city move as originally planned somewhere between unlikely and impossible. And a critical Legislative Council committee report could well be a read by opponents of university management as an expression of no-confidence in VC Rufus Black.
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Solidarity isn’t forever in work for the merger of Uni Adelaide and Uni SA, to become Adelaide U, for the union isn’t strong on all the details. National Tertiary Education Union state secretary Andrew Miller writes to Premier Peter Malinauskas pointing to commitments to “co-creation” of the new university, including “staff, students and stakeholders.”
“ That means activating and including the wisdom and expertise of its people, not just its managers and external consultants, he says.
In particular, Dr Miller and colleagues are upset by the merger team deciding Adelaide U will have a trimester teaching year, which staff of the two existing unis oppose by large majorities and state were not consulted about.
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The Menzies Institute of Medical Research demonstrates how to make a case for funding. An unassuming announcement Monday set out what it did with $10m from the Medical Research Future Fund for work on MS. It included; a genetic study of families with a “high incidence” of MS, establishing an MS biobank for research and screening potential drugs, clinical trials and a “simulation model” to measure cost and outcomes for medical and public health programmes. Plus there is a foundation MOOC (50,000 global participants) and four spin-offs and a couple of Apps to help people with MS manage. No breathless breakthroughs just a clear, concise statement of what taxpayers’ money was spent on, with no explanation needed of why it matters.
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Universities are still exempt from last year’s legislation requiring employers to offer people a permanent position after two consecutive fixed-term contracts. The first six-month exemption was to give managements’ Higher Education Industrial Association and the National Tertiary Education Union time to work on how to apply the law in universities. They are still working on ways to do it, the problem is aligning the law with the HE industrial award and university enterprise agreements and now there is a second extension to New Year’s Day, 2025.
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Nearly 60 La Trobe U (mainly) staff and students want its name to change, “due to the role played by the Institution’s namesake, Charles La Trobe in the colonisation of Victoria.”
They make their case in a substantial submission to the Victorian Government’s Yoorrook Justice Commission, which is a “formal truth-telling process into historical and ongoing injustices experienced by First Peoples in Victoria.”
There have also been calls for Deakin U to change its name, what with Prime Minister Alfred Deakin being an architect of the White Australia policy.
As for Melbourne U it is named for the second Viscount Melbourne, British PM in the 1830s. He does not appear to have given Australia a thought but was previously a minister for another colony, Ireland, where he upset tenant farmers.
Even so, FC’s bet is that the first change will be the University of Naarm – Melbourne.
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There is admirable optimism in university proposals that the government delays capping international enrolments until the Australian Tertiary Education Commission is in place to negotiate compacts with individual universities. “Managed growth in international education must be seen as an integrated part of long-term planning and strategy, agreed between universities and the new ATEC,” as the Innovative Research Universities group put it in their submission to the Senate inquiry on the bill that includes the cap power. This assumes ATEC will understand university circumstances and consider management wish lists as important proposals from valued partners. Undoubtedly the first will occur. As to the second, it is not completely inconceivable.
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The National Tertiary Education Union closed nominations for elected positions this week which was later than planned due to a shortage of candidates at 31 universities. Notable absences of enthusiasm were no nominations for branch president at Deakin U, Edith Cowan U, UWA and Uni Wollongong. There were candidates for nearly all positions at Uni Melbourne and Uni Sydney – where activist branches excel at making management lives a misery.
