“ANU looks to the future with realignment,” is the headline on management news of a “need for savings,” and a grim one it is too (scroll down).
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Undergrad starts in “society and culture” courses were off pandemic highs and under 100,000 in 2023, the lowest starts since 2013. In contrast, IT enrolments have doubled since then and were up nearly 9% last year on ’22. Cue (evil or appropriate, depending on your point of view). Cue laughter from the architects of Job Ready Graduates, arguing arts students are responding to study cost, for next year $8 under $17,000 pa. That’s less a price signal than an all-points bulletin. It’s certainly a better explanation for HASS lobbies than the alternative, that whatever humanities courses are selling, young people aren’t buying.
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ANU announces a restructure to save $250m in recurring costs and admits “some job losses will be unavoidable.” Not least because $100m in savings are marked to come from staff costs.
So far, the focus is on where academic operating units will sit – all 42 will stay, but eight will move. The only org chart exit is the existing College of Health and Medicine, which will disappear into the new College of Science and Medicine. There are changes to come for other Colleges, with four continuing Colleges to be “reshaped.”
It all may be harder than now sounds, at least if 2021 restructure proposals are an indication. Back then a proposed restructure of Health and Medicine generated a big blue, “wide-spread concern” is the way management put it, and in the end academic structures stayed much the same, with only 42 positions going over six months, out of 550.
This isn’t where ANU expected to be after cutting 320 FTE staff in 2021-22. In ’22 a break-even outcome for ’24 was predicted. But it has not happened and it won’t without savings.
“It is not going to be possible to grow our way out of persistent operating deficits by enrolling more students. We need to adapt to a changing policy landscape and broader economic forces by reshaping the way we do things,” Vice Chancellor Genevieve Bell says.
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Just before caretaker kicked-in for the Queensland election the Miles Government pitched to the very small, in every sense, quantum computing vote, with $53m more for development. Half of it is for commercialisation infrastructure, which is admirably optimistic, what with their being no quantum computer to commercialise as yet.
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A Senate Committee has knocked back the Liberal Party Bill for an inquiry into antisemitism on campus. It was never going to happen; back in July the prime minister said, ” you don’t need an inquiry to know that there’s been a rise of antisemitism at some of the universities.”
That’s the good news for Vice-Chancellors who hate being called to account for anything.
The bad news is the Committee recommends TEQSA and the government’s Envoy on Antisemitism collaborate with universities to review complaints processes. And, perhaps to ensure they do it, the Committee recommends the Attorney General refers antisemitism in universities to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights.
The way worse news for VCs is that for the second time in a year a Senate Committee has slammed universities in general for the way they don’t look after staff and students.
“It is clear to the Committee that university responses to incidents of antisemitism, and the fears of Jewish students and staff, have been woefully inadequate. The committee considers that the universities’ responses to this issue are remarkably similar to their historically poor responses to sexual assault and harassment. Staff and student safety is paramount; the committee is disappointed that universities have not implemented more of their learnings in relation to sexual assault and harassment on campuses and applied them in this context. It is a sad indictment on Australian universities that it is only once in crisis that they feel compelled to address serious safety issues on campus, and even then, reluctantly. “
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Curtin U announces it has worked out how badly it stuffed up 4,500 casual and professional staffers pay, 2015-2023. In total they missed out on $3.5m due to “inadvertent payment errors.” There may be more to come – management states it is working on “issues” affecting casual academics.
This looks like a bog-standard stuff-up with payroll staff and systems, not correctly applying overtime and allowances in the university enterprise agreement. Curtin U follows universities across the country in making such mistakes and there is no denying that the National Tertiary Education Union is very big on the detail when it negotiates pay rates; but having signed agreements the least managements can do is deliver.
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The estimable National Centre for Vocational Educational Research presents a not entirely happy snap of how 23 year olds are doing, based on LSAY data.
- 61% are working and 24 per cent are working and studying
- 4% are studying full-time
- VET is the highest post-school qualification for 28%. HE 34%. 38% have no qual
- 60 per cent of people with a bachelor degrees are working full-time, 80 per cent for apprentice/trainee completers
- 37% describe themselves as in financial stress
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The Group of Eight goes to great lengths to express support for the National Student Ombudsman Bill, now with a Senate committee, (“an important initiative that will further enhance the safety of students).
But the Eight does wonder how it will work, calling for clarity on what it will do that TEQSA, “and other regulatory bodies” do not. And the Eight suggests the NSO rules could be clearer on distinguishing academic and other elements in complaints. And it wants information on when a student can go straight to the NSO, without completing their university’s procedures. There’s more but you get the idea. And understandably so given the government looks like it intends for the ombudsman to investigate pretty much what it likes being empowered to initiate its own investigations into HE providers.
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Jason Clare announces a second round of funding to encourage “our best and brightest” to take up primary school teaching, with a focus on career changers, like those who come to classrooms via Teach for Australia.. The High Achieving Teacher programme started last year with 105 funded places at La Trobe U. Now there is money for 1500 more, particularly at, TforA (475), Australian Catholic U (275) La Trobe U (231). Charles Sturt U (100) and Western Sydney U (100). The announcement made no mention of what a splendid job the generality of teacher ed courses are doing. But the Australian Education Union makes it clear that it prefers them to Teach for Australia. “We want a properly qualified, well-supported profession and that starts with high quality initial teacher education,” says federal president Correna Haythorpe.
