ANU has appeared just four times at Senate Estimates, ever! Three of them were in the last eight months, falling to Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell took over. It’s an experience that Professor Bell takes seriously, telling the university community that 80 staff worked on preparation for her appearance last week. No, FC did not accidentally add a zero.
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New Uni Melbourne VC Emma Johnston issues a Vice Chancellor’s Regulation on campus protests, including “individual forms of action.” They cannot be indoors, cannot obstruct access, cannot prejudice the university’s duty to safety of staff, students and visitors and they cannot “unreasonably disrupt activities or operations.” There is more, but that’s the general idea. And Professor Johnston is not mucking-around. Failure to comply by students, “may result” in “an inability to attend classes or examinations.” For staff, it may constitute misconduct or serious misconduct.
There were loud and long Gaza protests last year at Uni Melbourne’s Parkville’s campus.
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Universities regularly announce new logos, replete with marketing guff about their miraculous communication powers. Before any other uni does, perhaps they should consult Uni SA’s Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, which asks “does modernising logos work?” Whatever the marketing mavens’ report costs it will be cheaper than rolling out a new one.
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After being the first foreign university to open a campus of its own India, Deakin U leads the charge in Indonesia.
In partnership with UK Lancaster U it has launched at Bandung, near Jakarta, where bized and IT classes start in September. Navitas provides back-end support in teaching and learning, marketing and recruitment and student services. The dual-university degrees are delivered in English and are open to internationals as well as Indonesian. There is an option for a semester at each of the partners home campuses but the pitch is “the opportunity of receiving a globally recognised education, in the heart of Bandung.” Bized fees are A$14,000 a year and IT A$16,500.
Deakin U’s Gujurat campus opened in January 2024.
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Universities Australia adopts a statement on racism, including a “working definition” on antisemitism, which includes, “all peoples, including Jews, have the right to self-determination. For most, but not all Jewish Australians, Zionism is a core part of their Jewish identity. Substituting the word “Zionist’’ for ‘’Jew’’ does not eliminate the possibility of speech being antisemitic.”
“A uniform definition of antisemitism will help universities in their efforts to combat this scourge,” UA states. The peak body wants the dynamic regulatory duo, TEQSA and the Higher Education Standards Panel to “best determine” how the definition can fit in the Higher Education Standards Framework.
To which the Australian Historical Association’s executive committee responds, UA “moves beyond the matter of combatting hate speech and places new limits on scholarly scrutiny and criticism of Israel and Zionism by Australian academics … this new definition of antisemitism could restrict academic freedom, with negative impacts on teaching and research by historians in Australian universities.”
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Last week shadow education minister Sarah Henderson committed a Coalition government to cancelling the imminent (if Labor is returned) Australian Tertiary Education Commission – which just about all of the HE community ignored. Maybe they think the Coalition will lose. Maybe the lobbies are so invested in ATEC they can’t contemplate it not happening.
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The estimable National Centre for Vocational Education Research reports rocketing growth in government-funded public provider training numbers. While the NCVER was at recent pains (FC January 30) to point out it is not set up to account for Fee Free TAFE in its stats, it rather looks like that is where the increased numbers come from. In the nine months to September ’24 TAFE numbers increased 8%, while private providers were down 5%. Demonstrating the care economy boom, community service enrolments were up 10 per cent on 2023, to 240,000 – plus there were another 63,000 people in heath training packages. Construction and plumbing was a distant second at 103,000, just 3 per cent higher. Metal and engineering trades were up, but not by much, 3,000 to 40,000.
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TEQSA wants an expansion of its authority. In Senate Estimates, CEO Mary Russell mentioned the Agency is making a submission to the Upper House inquiry into university governance and “we are expressly addressing the question of our powers and areas where we feel they need to be strengthened.” Brace for impact.
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Torrens U has a campaign running on Sydney bus-sides featuring a young man and woman above the headline, “This is my campus.” Here’s hoping passers-by don’t think all Torrens classes fit on the one charabanc.
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TEQSA is investigating a university which it will not name over its handling of antisemitism. “We have posed a number of questions to senior staff and senate members that need further responses because we’re not satisfied with the actions of the university,” CEO Mary Russell told has Senate Estimates. She added, “if the university’s own work has not already addressed those gaps, we would expect to place conditions to ensure that that is done”. So a university faces having a condition placed on its registration – that is no small thing.
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The science and engineering learned academies have $6.3m from the Feds for a second round of the Global Science and Technology Diplomacy Fund. Partner countries are in Asia, plus New Zealand and Brazil. Approved research areas include quantum computing, MRNA and manufacturing.
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The divide between voced and HE is bridged again with the admission of the vocational degree to the Australian Qualifications Framework at level seven, where bachelor qualifications sit. The new degree is for “all modes of training delivery” – including apprenticeships.
This is a big win for VET, especially TAFEs which have the resources to develop degrees – and their lobby knows it. TAFE Directors Australia’s Jenny Dodd calls it, “a significant change” to tertiary education.
The approval pathways for vocational degrees are the Jobs and Skills Councils and Training Packages or ASQA and the Victorian and WA regulators. The AQF site reports TAFE Centres of Excellence and JSCs are already on to curriculum development.
