The Budget was a nothing-burger for universities – and the side of research fries got smaller.
Cross-portfolio estimates for “general research expenses” are buried in the Budget papers which report they are expected to “remain broadly stable” across the forward estimates, with changes reflecting programme allocations. “Research capacity” (FC thinks this means NCRIS) is getting more money this year than in the following four. As to “broadly stable,” it means a $300bn dollar cut. Total outlays aere$4.775bn this financial year, declining to $4.330b in 2027-28, before recovering a bit to $4.4235bn in –’28-’29.
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There is advice for historians on “engaging with the media,” from a panel of historians. AHA president Michelle Arrow will chair. By “media” the Association appears to mean the ABC. Professor Arrow modestly does not mention her work 20 years ago on an ABC TV history program she previously reported, HERE.
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Regulator TEQSA presented an ambit claim for more authority in its submission to the Senate committee inquiry on university governance. The Agency asked for broader enforcement and monitoring powers. They would involve an admirable productivity improvement. TEQSA’s budget is cut from $26m this financial year to $23m in 2028-29. According to the Budget the agency will do more with less by, “developing enterprise and workforce planning.” Good-o but the Agency’s existing enterprise agreement runs to March ’27 so until then more work will need to be done under existing rules.
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Uni Wollongong management’s promised process to cut service costs is underway with a public proposal to save $26m, mainly by abolishing 185 FTE positions. The university proposes reducing faculties from four to three and schools from 18 to 11. Plus it will implement shared corporate services across the university and “reconfigure” academic, student and research services as a hub and spokes model. There is no word how this sits with the comprehensive administration restructure designed by former VC Patricia Davidson and team in 2023. The final model of slimmed services is due in July.
The proposed changes follow the $21m in academic staff savings announced in January, made in part by ending cultural studies, Japanese, Mandarin and reducing courses in earth sciences, French, Spanish and a discipline area called Science and Technology Studies.
Last week former UoW academic Fiona Probyn-Rapsey gave evidence on restructures there, to the Senate committee inquiry into university governance.
“They are destructive; they impact on student satisfaction; they disrupt research; and, perhaps most egregiously, their frequency is often justified by management as necessary to undo the disasters of the previous restructure. We are always either centralising or decentralising—centralising and decentralising over and over again,” she said.
Professor Probyn-Rapsey’s position was abolished in the recent academic cuts.
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RMIT reports that Queensland is short of nuclear medicine workers and so it is stepping up to help with its Bachelor of Medical Radiation available in-state. The degree is delivered via “remote learning” and “hands-on clinical training” in Brisbane and six regional centres. Standby for St Lucia to retaliate with something, anything, it teaches and RMIT does not offer, in Melbourne.
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SA Premier Peter Malinauskas is finishing a visit to India, spruiking the state’s three, soon to be two, universities. Given the merger of the universities of Adelaide and South Australia started as his idea it is probably the least he can do. Mr Malinauskas has had a bad case of anticipatory post hoc, ergo propter hoc. He started the merger push on the assumption that a super-sized CBD university would have the research heft to rise up the international rankings, which more international students would notice and then enrol.
The existing triumvirate went with him, Peter Høj (Uni Adelaide), David Lloyd (Uni SA) and Colin Stirling (Flinders U). Professor Stirling will be the only one around next year. Høj and Lloyd have ruled themselves out for the now-recruiting Adelaide U job.
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The bits of the 2024 Independent Intelligence Review the government does not mind us reading are out.
Apparently training is improving and the 2022 created National Intelligence Academy should stay, with “appropriate funding.” It offers self-paced e-learning modules and courses, many provided with partners such as ANU’s National Security College and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Yes, that ASPI, the independent outfit that the Varghese Review of national security research recommended should lose funding for its Washington office. As George Bernard Shaw meant to write, those who spy, spy those who can’t teach.
The review also floated a “due-diligence centre to support better integration between the NIC and the university sector.”
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The Victorian branch of the Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes wants the state government to increase its 15% contribution to indirect research costs, now way behind Queensland (24% ). “Research cannot be put down and picked up at a politically convenient time. Lethal diseases do not wait for us to catch up,” is the message. No harm is asking, even when State net debt is expected to be $160bn next financial year, up from $20bn in 2015-16.
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Uni Queensland student Drew Pavlou is an outspoken opponent of authoritarian regimes, notably in Beijing and so he is pleased indeed to report that there is no longer a Confucius Institute office on campus. In fact, there has not been for months. The University tells CMM it closed when the contract with Tianjin U expired at the end of last year.
Times change. Five years back, Mr Pavlou was campaigning against UoQ’s links to the PRC regime and management spent $287,000 on legal advice to prove his protests constituted serious misconduct. The university Senate downgraded the charge and in the end everything calmed down, but not before management attracted some truly terrible publicity – on Sixty Minutes no less!
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William Angliss Institute (food, tourism, events and hospitality education and training) gets a big tick from TEQSA. The Victorian TAFE can now self-accredit masters, in business and management, tourism, human society, food/hospitality and “other society and culture.” This is “the same status as universities” WAI announces.
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The implications for ASQA of the new Vocational Degree, (FC this week) on the Australian Qualification Framework are not front of agency mind. FC asked the Australian Skills Quality Authority whether it would use the TEQSA teaching threshold (one qualification higher than the course being taught, or equivalent experience) to approve institutions it oversights. ASQA responded that it was a question for the Department of Education – trouble is DoE states the degree is one for ASQA. At which point ASQA said it would pass the question to the Department of Workplace Relations.
ASQA states it regulates VET to ensure courses, “meet nationally approved standards, based on industry, enterprise, education, legislative and community needs.” But maybe not new ones.
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The research establishment is demanding the government do something for Australian based researchers who lose funding for work on US Government supported projects that fail the Trump Administration’s ideological loyalty test. It won’t happen, not least because of the imminent election. That and whoever is the next prime minister having bigger pleas to put to the president. But where, inquiring readers ask, is brand new chief scientist Tony Haymet? Surely it is a great opportunity for him offer aid and comfort to his tribe. FC asked Professor Haymet’s office if he had any advice but alas he is not commenting.
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Education Minister Jason Clare announced $80m Wednesday for a Y10-12 “health sciences academy” in Rockhampton. It is to encourage future health and med students to pick up the basics at home, and then stay to study for their degree. The State Minister and local MPs think it is a splendid idea. So does Nick Klomp, VC of CQU, which teaches a bunch of health courses, including a pathway degree to Uni Queensland medicine, taught in town. Yes, there is an election imminent but it is hard to see Rockhampton swinging. It is in Capricornia, held by Michelle Landry in the Coalition interest since 2013. She had a 12% margin in 2022.
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Universities have always been collateral damage in government cuts to international student numbers. Community suspicions that migrants masquerade as students are better directed at the VET sector, demonstrated by ASQA investigations. The Australian Skills Quality Authority reports that as of the end of 2024, it was “managing” 174 “serious matters” – 75% involving international providers and two-thirds relating to fraud allegations, “including bogus qualifications, cash for qualifications, fabrication of assessments and evidence, ghost colleges, funding fraud and visa/migration risks.”
