Vlogging is a learning thing in schools but a “missed opportunity” in universities, lament Seb Dianti (Charles Darwin U), with Franciele Spinelli and Alicia Gazmuri Sanhueza (Uni Queensland). “Students can respond to topics by recording 15-second to 10-minute video or audio,” is the idea. They set out comprehensive whys and hows of using vlogging in teaching here – yes in a journal article.
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There is serious cash in research translation, in any language, demonstrated by Industry association, Knowledge Commercialisation Australasia in its annual sector review. It reports Australian members had $290m in commercialisation revenue last year (albeit down from $308m in ’22). The sector also held research contracts with for-profit companies valued at $A1bn, marginally up on the prior year.
Across ANZ the top five income earners were CSIRO, ANSTO, Uni Auckland, Plant and Food NZ and Uni Queensland.
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TEQSA announces it is consulting with HE providers on its fees and charges. That’s consult as in “tell.” The previous government decided that regulator would move to full cost-recovery and the phase-in is over as of next year.
And the Agency makes it plain than any sympathetic ear will be electronic. The answer to an FAQ about speaking to a TEQSA representative is “in the first instance please refer to our website … If the information you are seeking is not currently addressed on our website please email your inquiry.”
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How many jobs are going to go at ANU to find the $250m reduction in “reoccurring operating costs” University Council requires by January 2026? The university is not saying, so the National Tertiary Education Union is having a go, estimating a cut of 638 FTE positions to make management’s nominated $100m reduction in headcount costs. There’s an armoury of assumptions in the union’s estimate, but when people fear for their families, hard numbers are the ones remembered, however woolly.
Management is not helping, with implausible suggestions of ways to save $150m in admin costs – “organisational inefficiencies and duplication,” a centralised review of recruitment and an Expenditure Task Force focused, at first, on IT, procurement, facilities and travel.
And then there is foregoing the 2.5% pay rise due in December, which it asked for on Wednesday.
The present enterprise agreement includes an 18.5% increase in seven instalments across February 2023-June 2026 with 10% still to come.
Something similar has happened before, just. In 2020, staff who turned out to vote approved a delay on pay rises by 0.5%, as a pandemic emergency saving. The campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union opposed that one and is opposing this one. “There is a clear difference between a financial crisis because of a global pandemic, and a financial crisis because of Senior Executive financial mismanagement and complete failures of university governance,” the comrades Xed on Wednesday.
University leadership did not help the cause when Chancellor Julie Bishop and Pro-Chancellor Alison Kitchen described Vice Chancellor Genevieve Bell’s decision to cut her own $1.1m pay packet by 10 per cent as a “personal sacrifice.” Having to struggle along on $900,000 or so may not strike casuals earning a tenth of that, as particularly sacrificial.
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Post-secondary providers are about to get the bad news about the 2024 tuition protection levies they are up for. Just the thing private providers copping enrolments cuts for next year will want to read.
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There was a particularly positive piece about the imminent Adelaide University the other day in the excellent INDAILY, generally a good-guide to what is going on along the terraces. The news story quoted merger architects Peter Høj (Uni Adelaide as is) and David Lloyd (Uni SA) on good things to come. “Adelaide University is spearheading a game-changing era in Australia’s university sector, with students, research and the state set to benefit,” is the led. But who was the hack whose considered judgement that was, you ask? Some reptile of the press named “Sponsored.”
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A major new analysis of government data confirms the popular suspicions that sometime students game education visas to stay in Australia. Silvia Griselda and Harshit Shah analysed immigration and tax statistics to find international student “visa hoppers,” who extended their stay by applying for new visas on-shore, increased from 2.5% of recipients in 2009 to 25% in 2018. The Government curbed visa hopping last year, by stopping applicants in Australia applying for a new student visa after their previous one expired, in the hope of an increased chance of securing permanent residency,
Their comprehensive analysis is in a paper from the e61 Institute (“non-partisan economic research”).
Among a mass of detail there is a message here that will appeal to Jason Clare as he sells enrolment caps as a means to stop the immigration system being gamed.
“Visa hoppers tend to be migrants with weaker labour market performance and skills
trying to stay in Australia. Restricting access to student visas after the expiration of the graduate visa could encourage low-earning migrants, often employed in low-status jobs, to return home. This could, in turn, raise the average quality of the pool of prospective migrants. In the long run, these higher-quality migrants could have a significant fiscal impact in Australia and help achieve the goals of the country’s permanent migration system.”
This has much more to do with the training system than higher education but voters worried about immigration won’t care.
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Additions to the Victorian Honour Roll of Women include, Julie Andrews (La Trobe U), Melanie Bahlo (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute), Ada Cheung (Uni Melbourne), Jane Gunn (Uni Melbourne), Kudzai Kanhutu (Royal Australasian College of Physicians), Catriona McLean (Alfred Health), Manjula O’Connor (Uni Melbourne) Jun Yang (Hudson Institute, Monash U). Belle Lim, (MindTribes and Future Forte Australia) who has achieved an astonishing amount as an international student, advocate and leader over the past decade was also a much-celebrated addition to the Roll.
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The ever-energetic Adrian Barnett (QUT) needs funding fast – it’s to pay a super-smart postgrad to keep working on using AI to detect research fraud. “We have detected lots of signs in the research literature and the problem is growing, thanks to the business model that papers mills have created.” Got a bucket of readies that is getting in the way? a.barnett@qut.edu.au can usefully take them off your hands.
