There’s a new Five Eyes agreement. The UK Government reports that its chief scientist, Angela McLean, has met with her Australian (that’s Cathy Foley), Canadian, New Zealand and US counterparts. They committed to “leveraging science and technology to meet the greatest challenges of our time: climate change, health, security, and economic opportunity,” which is good but probably more optimistic than what the Five Eves Intel chiefs discuss.
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Jason Clare’s Bill to cap international student enrolments got very bad reviews from witnesses at the Senate committee considering it Tuesday. So bad that as far as FC could see, the always-available Minister was not all over old-media Wednesday, where he regularly spins the stories of the day. (Very) learned observers suggest that he will keep he head down while officials take some of the power-grab bits out of the Bill, ahead of an amended version starting again in the Reps.
FC is not an accredited augur but does wonder if the Bill has already achieved its political objective, demonstrating the Government is tough on immigration and so could be toned down. Then again, Mr Clare could stick to its existing opportunism, which would put the Opposition in a tight spot. Joining the Greens and some crossbenchers to vote the Bill down in the Senate would give the Government the chance to call the conservatives soft on immigration and not prepared to rein in dodgy VET providers.
There is certainly time for things to calm down for the Government. The Committee was originally due to report next week, but this is now extended to August 26, which will make for a big day. There’s a new announcement from the Committee that it will take evidence that day in Sydney.
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Flinders U goes big in a subject dear to every South Australian heart – water security. And does it in a way dear to everybody at Flinders U, by dropping a bucket on Uni Adelaide. Sarah Wheeler brings her entire team of water economists from UoA’s Waite campus. They will “shape policies that influence the allocation of water resources in the Murray-Darling Basin.” Flinders rubs it in by not even announcing the coup sur l’eau is against the auld enemy – but everybody in the world of water research will want to know that she is accompanied by Ying Xu, John Kandulu, Neville Crossman (also working wth the One Basin Cooperative Research Centre), David Tang, Alec Zuo, Constantin Seidl and Daniel Gregg. (FC could not identify two additional PhD researchers by deadline.)
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Most lobbies scrabble to make a case for more research funding, but not the medicos. “Cure for cancer” is a hope that keeps the funds flowing. In a bare decade, the Medical Research Future Fund has acquired a $23bn capital base to support research from interest earned. Community support for medical research also ensures priorities are firmly focused on the research community – which makes interesting a paper by Leanne Coombe (Uni Queensland) and colleagues, They report on MRFF support for public health and prevention research. They suggest “fostering” public health research for the good it does, but warn this, “might be a challenge in the future due to the growing emphasis on research commercialisation.” Good luck convincing the medical research establishment, which is not used to being told what to do by anybody.
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“Would you like to shape the future of accounting education and empower students to become tomorrow’s Chartered Accountants in NSW,” the Australian Association of Graduate Employers promotes a job. Quick, lest you are killed in the rush.
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The final winners of seed grants for the Australia’s Economic Accelerator are announced. Seed is, now was, a pilot for the AEA proof of scale Ignite grants. The pilot obviously flew – Ignite funding was public in July. The last $11M Seed money goes to 36 defence, transport and “enabling” projects. UNSW has 11 of them.
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Peak training body, the Manufacturing Skills Alliance wants to extend apprenticeships to diplomas and degrees.
“The development of digital technologies and associated changes to the organisation of work, challenges the distinctions that exist between vocational and higher education in terms of regulation, funding and instructional design,” is the pitch.
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UNSW and the across the road National Institute of Dramatic Art used to be BFFs, at least until the 2020-23 MOU expired. Now not so much, with NIDA unhappy indeed about a university plan for an adjacent student accommodation complex – the very thing the university will need if the Commonwealth legislation tying international student numbers to building more beds goes ahead. NIDA chief Lisa Hughes says the Institute “is not opposed to the entire development and we recognise the need for student housing, however it can’t be at the expense of NIDA’s ability to operate.” Residents are upset, because, they say, the project is too big (for 900 students), because it is out of character and sundry other because. Back in May, the University described it as “a vibrant mixed-use precinct.” The application is with a State Government planning approval panel but whatever is decided, it will not be the end of the issue.
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Voced was demoted in last month’s ministry reshuffle with skills and training transferred to junior Minister Andrew Giles. Jenny Dodd (TAFE Directors Australia) urges Mr Giles to “maintain the momentum to a harmonised tertiary education system,” set out in the Universities Accord. But getting anything substantial done will depend on portfolio minister Murray Watt (Employment and Workplace Relations) having a word with Education Minister Jason Clare when Cabinet breaks for coffee. So why isn’t Mr Giles reporting to Mr Clare? Perhaps, because having higher education and VET in the same portfolio would have made life harder for Jason, what with TAFEs keen on being self-accrediting (a pilot is soon to start). University lobbies would prefer to keep that a monopoly for members.
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In the Wall Street Journal Deepa Seetharaman and Matt Barman report OpenAI has a program ready to go that just short of always identifies artificial text by embedding watermarks in ready-to-reproduce ChatGPT generated copy.
Problem (probably not) solved. For a start it is OpenAI only – so will it identify text from it, or any other AI, that is copied into a common or garden word processing programme and then pasted? And will it identify false positives triggered by text not in standard English? FC has no idea but suspects we are about to find out.
Then again, academics could also outsmart cheating students with human ingenuity. Seetharaman and Barman report a University of Utah academic included a requirement to reference Batman, (presumably not the one who founded Melbourne) in an assignment, just in text so small no human would see it. But AI did and so students who pasted the instructions into AI and submitted the resulting papers were sprung.
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Five or less author papers are now more likely to list the junior author first. According to Kyriakos Drivas (University of Piraeus) and colleagues, it’s a “growing trend of small author teams becoming fairer.” In part its due to digitising records which makes easier citing all authors. But it’s not happening for articles with more authors, which is slowly but steadily increasing.
Perhaps alpha order is the answer. It works for Georges Aad from the Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille. He was first of 5100 authors on a 2015 paper and one in 2022 with 8778.
