Not especially obvious in the UNSW Annual Report is an auditor’s comment on a $78m provision for current employees that includes “underpayments of casual and permanent employees.” Perhaps this refers to the long underway matter between the university and the Fair Work Ombudsman.
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Monash U announces it will stump up $60m, “to build and operate an advanced AI supercomputer.” It will accomplish a bunch of staff but the overall intent, is “improving the human condition”. To which neighbouring La Trobe U reports, it has “officially switched on …. the supercomputer behind Australia’s first artificial intelligence-powered medical innovation centre.”
Monash gets bragging rights for announcing it will build its own, while La Trobe is running an NVIDIA DGX H200, (which probably means something to everybody other than FC). But La Trobe is firstest with, at least for now, the mostest.
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The Business Council of Australia proposes “accelerating Australia’s AI agenda.” Its new policy paper includes not-bad ideas for education including,
- “More specialist AU degrees”
- AI modules embedded across all disciplines
- Re-training and up-skilling options, including short courses, unaccredited and otherwise
- A national research hub, where business and universities, “pursue foundational. pre-competitive research” to drive productivity
- A commercialisation accelerator. “to bridge the gap between research and deployment in priority sectors”
But how to make it happen? FC has an idea – a dedicated Cooperative Research Centre round for AI (assuming there are enough academics and entrepreneurs with ready-to-go ideas).
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Big Vice-Chancellor is watching you according to a survey of Victorian members of the National Tertiary Education Union. The comrades undertook it last year, for their submission to a State Parliamentary inquiry into workplace surveillance. Over half of responders said there was surveillance at work (cameras and computers, with 5% mentioning their emails) and a third said it was happening while they worked from home. The union called for State Government legislation to regulate surveillance, presumably including Victoria’s eight public universities.
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Last week ANU management told the university community it was halfway to meeting the $100m staff saving required for a break-even budget in ’26. A big part of what is achieved came from 177 voluntary redundancies that will save $25m from next year. Now the harder part starts with change proposals announced that would cut 37 positions (the university statement refers to “some job losses”) from IT, Planning and Information Security. Jobs to go range from 9% to 14% of paper strength across the units (some are vacant).
Still to come are proposals for retrenchments in the Academic and Research portfolios and the Colleges of Science-Medicine and Arts-Social Science.
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Other than endless demands for money, Australia does not have a medical research strategy but Rosemary Huxtable is methodically working on it. She was commissioned by the feds in May last year and has consulted with sundry lobbies – there were even consumer focus groups (FC May 23). And now the pace is picking up with a discussion paper due this month, with a strategy in December.
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Six months back, barrister Bruce Hodgkinson recommended changes to Uni Sydney free speech policies following Gaza protests on campus. Now management has new policies, mainly matters of lining ducks up in a regulatory row. But one stands out, enacting Mr Hodgkinson’s recommendation to make it a discipline matter if students address a class at the start (the end is ok, people can leave).
The new policy on public announcements states, “only course related announcements are permitted before or during a lecture, seminar or tutorial. Other announcements can only be made at the end, and attendance must be voluntary. This restriction applies to announcements made in, or just outside, the room. “There is no provision for staff to grant exceptions.” Last year there were cases of classes being harangued.
One of Mr Hodgkinson’s other recommendations was for a “civility rule” making speakers “responsible for ensuring that the meaning of the words and phrases used by them was clear to the audience being addressed.” Sounds innocuous, if amorphous but critics say it restricts protest. So how is implementing it going? It isn’t, the university states, “this proposal is being considered through a new initiative … to develop the university as a centre for rigorous debate and productive disagreement. We will continue consulting and collaborating with our community throughout.”
At the Uni of Melbourne newish VC Emma Johnston is not mucking around. Last month the university stopped a new Gaza protest camp on campus. And now two students are expelled over their occupation of an academic’s office last October.
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Student placement service IDP warns “policy uncertainty” is affecting the global market and it expects its volume to be down 28–30% this calendar year. IDP points to uncertainty and expected further restrictions on student immigration in the UK, “restrictive polices” post Australian and Canadian elections and an “increasingly negative US environment.” IDP states its “digital and AI enabled product development … will underpin long-term volume and revenue growth.”
The market responded Tuesday by cutting more than 50% off the share price.
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They may not like a restructure at Macquarie U but it can appear as if they undertake them not so much occasionally as almost constantly in recent years. The new one just announced covers continuing academic staff in arts and science/engineering. Target is a net reduction of 50-60 “academic roles” with casuals (and professional staff) specifically excluded. Management will do it by “resting courses” with low enrolments or integrating content into others. The long process last year to drop languages that few students want to learn may be a model of what is to come.
All up, management is looking for $15m in staff savings, for now. But there may be more to come. Back in March a paper mentioned a “greater focus” on the 40% time allocation for research.
The announcement adds, “no further workplace change proposals are anticipated for the academic workforce for 2025,” which looks like the medicine-health and bized faculties are off the hook.
The National Tertiary Education Union was quick to fire back at the university’s announcement, claiming job losses will be higher, 42 in arts, 33 in science and engineering and specific people will be targeted. “We are real people whose lives are being turned upside down for the sake of thin arguments about budgets and prioritisation. Macquarie just released their annual report and the budget is more or less balanced,” union branch president Nicholas Harrigan said.
He is right in some respects – the 2024 Annual Report shows the university broke even with a $3.7m operating profit on $1.3bn revenue – but it is not a margin to bank on.
And so the Enterprise Agreement workplace change process begins, again.
In the last five years there has been the breakup of the former faculty of human services, voluntary redundancies in all faculties, the professional staff transformation program, an IT reorganisation and last year’s course cuts in arts.
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The Fair Work Commission announces another round of award reviews to “eliminate gender-based undervaluation,” covering classifications where a degree is required. HE awards included are Level A teaching and research, Level A research and HEW levels five -ten. There can’t be many people not paid the award, but even so a big enough hike might bump-up enterprise agreement rates.
