Starting this season, Adelaide University has guernsey rights for the mighty Adelaide Crows FC – a year before the new U starts! Merger-partners Uni Adelaide and Uni SA are Crows partners. The third, soon to be only other, SA public university, Flinders is a sponsor of Port Adelaide which claims it will “never stop, stop, stop, till we’re top, top, top.” Given the enormous resources of its’ imminent local opponent, this may take Flinders some time.
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The Senate committee inquiry into university governance is a big win for the National Tertiary Education Union, giving it is a chance to parade a cavalcade of hobby-horses, including VC income and staff not being paid the agreed rate for the job. And the comrades want to make the most of it. There is a social media campaign urging people to make submissions to the committee and including an NTEU template to use. University managements should take this seriously indeed – last weekend, Education Minister Jason Clare was spruiking the new National Student Ombudsman, created in response to a Senate committee inquiry that found universities let students down on sexual harassment. The September 2023 report was a disaster for the university system’s standing, “the committee cannot over-emphasise how troubled it is by these outcomes, nor over-state how disappointed it is in the university sector’s overall response,” it concluded. University leaderships cannot afford a similar report on the way they treat staff.
In the Reps Thursday, Mr Clare introduced two bills to establish the National Code on dealing with gender-based violence in universities, which the Ombudsman will oversee – it was a milestones on the government’s long march towards turning universities into public service agencies. The Code undoubtedly erodes university autonomy (scroll down) but they brought it on themselves.
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Sydney based registered training organisation BSI Learning is teaching the Australian Diploma of Hospitality in Delhi. Optimists applaud it for having a go where few Aus vet providers dare. Cynics suggest it will not stop Indians who use education visas to study cooking here as a cover for migration but what can you expect from cynics?
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China’s research imperium is not absolute just yet – except, perhaps, where it matters most. Gordon Rogers sorted research papers cited in patents by university and ranks them as a measure of innovation, in a new paper for data analytics provider, Clarivate.
It’s the Yanks, then daylight for universities producing research that businesses use, with US universities making up 27 of the world top 50. The UK and France follow with four each. Tsinghua U is China’s only entry.
The global top ten are Harvard U, Stamford U, MIT, Uni Cal Berkeley, Uni Paris Cite, Uni Cambridge, Uni Washington, Seattle, U Cal San Diego, Uni Michigan and Uni Toronto.
The top three organisations that build patents on academic research are US big pharma Johnson and Johnson, France’s National Centre for Scientific Research and Swiss pharma, Roche.
But there is one field where what Clarivate calls Mainland China outproduced the US on content and came close on research influence, as measured by citation impact – AI and advanced analytics.
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Jason Clare announces a new micro-credential for teachers, created by the Uni Adelaide and funded by the Feds. “Teaching Phonics” will show “how to teach synthetic phonics in a systematic and explicit way using contemporary, evidence-based practices.” It is the third in a Commonwealth-Uni A series, joining, “Explicit Teaching” and “Classroom Management.”
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The Commonwealth Human Rights Commission is conducting qual and quantitative research “on all forms of racism” at Australian universities, with a report to the Feds due mid-June. Good-o, but why bother? The National Student Ombudsman is up and running with broad powers to investigate universities handling of complaints. Racism is not specified in the Ombudsman Act but surely students complaining that their university has not protected them from such is covered, given the agency’s powers are less broad than vast. Excluding employment and academic judgement, the Ombudsman can investigate complaints about anything and can launch its own inquiries without waiting for complaints. Plus it can give HE providers “advice and training,” presumably in how best to avoid further investigations.
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Shanghai based Fudan University will establish a campus teaching medicine in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. Fudan U is recognised by the Malaysian Medical Council. It has long been only a matter of time before China became an elite education exporter and now it is up.
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Jason Clare announces ten new regional university study hubs bringing the national total to 53 (ex the ten suburban ones, all to be up by mid-year.” “Ahah!” you say, “a pre-campaign election announcement!” Does not look like it to FC.
The centres (and who holds the Federal seats they are in) are at *Clermont and Moranbah Qld (LNP) *Hamilton VIC (Wannon, new boundaries, likely Liberal) *Hay NSW (Farrer, held by deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley) *Kangaroo Island SA (Rebekha Sharkie, Centre Alliance) *Kununurra WA (Liberal) * Moranbah Qld (Labor) * Northam WA (new seat of Bullwinkel, likely Labor) * St Peters TAS (Labor)* Tumut NSW (Labor marginal) * Norfolk Island (Labor).
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National Tertiary Education Union members at ANU can vote their confidence or otherwise in Chancellor Julie Bishop and VC Genevieve Bell. The ballot is organised by the union in response to a range of issues, mostly about staff and savings cuts now underway. Management dismisses the vote, suggesting the union’s membership does not get to decide who runs the university and in any case, there are not many of them – which rather misses the point. The NTEU does not comment on branch memberships and FC would be surprised if the comrades command the allegianceof a quarter of ANU staff – but other workers listen to the union on pay and conditions. The local NTEU campaigned hard in November against a management proposal to cancel a long-scheduled 2.5% pay rise as a crisis-savings. Some 88% of staff voting in an all-employee ballot knocked it back. For rank-and-file union members to vote no-confidence in the Chancellor and VC would be difficult for the university’s governing council to ignore.
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The ever-imaginative Science and Technology Australia proposes a new use for public money in its budget submission, a national network of facilities to “support pre-market development, testing and scale-up.” According to STA, this would fill the “missing middle” in R&D by creating prototypes. It’s a natural for Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic, who appears to believe that public investment can make Australian manufacturing great again.
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After being kapowed by academic staff cuts the Uni Wollongong community is about to be kaboomed by professional services cost cutting. (Still) Interim VC John Dewar says how the government processes student visa applications is part of the university’s cash problem but adds, “there is a clear ongoing need to reduce costs and improve the effectiveness of our central services and operations more broadly.” The target is $30m recurrent, following the $21m already saved on teaching and learning. Professor Dewar nominates “central services and operations more broadly,” as targets. They, at least them in management, like a restructure at UoW – there was a comprehensive one in 2023 under the university’s last VC Patricia Davidson.
