Uni Adelaide announces an achievement in telecoms research in a media statement yesterday.
“The team has developed the first ultra-wideband integrated terahertz polarisation (de)multiplexer implemented on a substrateless silicon base which they have successfully tested in the sub-terahertz J-band (220-330 GHz) for 6G communications and beyond.” As Buzz Lightyear nearly said “too incomprehensibility and beyond!”
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The National Tertiary Education Union is no friend to government, not, perhaps, until the comrade Greens take power. But the union leadership did not especially slam Education Jason Clare over international student quotas. Perhaps because they want the Government to guarantee the jobs they fear universities will use caps as an excuse to cut. Unless it is because they distrust vice-chancellors more than any Minister. As National President Alison Barnes put it, “it’s clear now that some of the numbers thrown around by university leaders in recent months were simply part of an unfair scare campaign with no regard for staff welfare.”
“The Federal Government must ensure university bosses don’t use these changes as an excuse to cut jobs from an already stretched workforce.”
In FC this morning, reax to caps.
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Western Sydney U announces a bunch of student services will be off-line for six days from October 10 but it is “an important step … to keep your information secure.” It would be an improvement on the situation announced in July this year when records, from bank accounts to tax file numbers of 7,500 staff and students were accessed by e-intruders.
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The Australian Research Council could not contain its excitement about Discovery Early Career Researcher Awards for 2025 and published details Friday – the official announcement appeared late morning Monday.
The success rate was 18 per cent and STEM projects collected 152 of the 200 awards.
The Group of Eight scored 114, in its standard range of 55-65 per cent of ARC awards. Monash U led with 20, Uni Sydney followed with 19 and ANU won 17. UWA was the least great of the eight with three.
As usual, project descriptions varied from the incomprehensible for hacks to the understated. However there is no faulting Benjamin McAllister (Swinburne U) for promising value for public money, “designing new experimental searches for dark matter and developing quantum technologies to improve existing experiments … The potential impacts of dark matter discovery are staggering, and difficult to overstate, and this DECRA will bring it closer to reality.”
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Victoria U Is “elevated” to “co-major partner of the Western Bulldogs Women’s team. There is no word on what “elevation” costs, but it buys the university logo on the front of player guernseys. They start the season tomorrow, playing Greater Western Sydney Giants, whose education partner is Western Sydney U.
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The University of Sydney invites everybody interested to make a submission to the external review of “policies and processes,” by barrister Bruce Hodgkinson, “to help ensure they are appropriate and accord with applicable standards going forward.” It’s a response to the controversy over management’s handling of campus protests against Israel.
And it will give university reps something to point to if, more likely when, senators questions them at the Senate committee hearing on a Liberal Party bill for a commission of inquiry into antisemitism on university campuses.
The university’s submission to the inquiry sets out the strategy, expresses sympathy, details everything done right and commits to doing even better. Which may not impress some senators. Mehreen Faruqi is listed to represent the Green and Liberal education shadow Sarah Henderson will surely be there. This would put any Uni Sydney witness (more than likely VC Mark Scott) in the challenging position of being asked critical questions from senators with diametrically opposite positions on the bill.
Regulator TEQSA also wants it known that it did everything it could during the protests. It submission states that that it has no authority to “make a legal determination” on HE providers adherence to anti-vilification laws. But TEQSA does detail what it can do, and did, during the protests. And it states that across HE as a whole, it knows of 122 student or staff misconduct processes completed or underway, Now there’s a question for senators on the committee – at which universities or colleges?
Monash U has a solid example of action to present if called by the committee – it has $1m, for two research programme on “the nature and experience of antisemitism, islamophobia and related prejudice and develop and test programmes and initiatives that support social cohesion on campus.” And it is not a reflexive response with the Senate in mind, Senator Henderson introduced the bill on June 25– Vice Chancellor Sharon Pickering announced the program in May.
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Nihon University of Japan is about to be in business with its own campus in Newcastle. It is in the refurbed colonial era courthouse, original photos of which are on the new Nihon site – hopefully not suggesting to prospective Japanese students that Newcastle is still in the 19th century. It’s been a while coming, Nihon U started work on the project in 2017.
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The Government announces the second round of its micro-credentials pilot. With $10.7m for 48 m-cs on-line and/or in-person at 25 providers. All up, there are now 76 courses. Providers of the new round are universities, a couple of private voced providers and TAFEs, wearing their HE hats. Subject areas are, education, health, psych, engineering and IT, pretty much all focused to meet a specific skill need, Griffith U offers an m-c on “surgical nursing, ” Uni Queensland is the go for those who need to know about the principles of waste water treatment. But where do completers include m-cs on their CVs? Most are billed as micro-credentials but some are “professional certificates” which sounds impressive, but FC can’t find it on the AQF.
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Yet more huzzahs for Lidia Morawska (QUT) – she is on the top 50 list of women achievers published by the Polish edition of business magazine Forbes. It adds to her entirely deserved accolades and research grants for her work to improve indoor air quality. When the science establishment was prescribing handwashing, and plenty of it, to reduce the spread of Covid 19 she pointed to her years of research showing that ventilation was a way better response. And over time her evidence prevailed.
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For-profit journal giant John Wiley promotes publishing in its open access journals, including more views and higher citations than in pay to read products. By OA they mean paying article processing charges, generally in $1000 to $5000 ranges. In this version of free to read publishing, authors get what they pay for.
