Brace for impact. Jason Clare announces the “interim version” of the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, led by Mary O’Kane starts Tuesday. The permanent version will follow legislation. Parliament sits for a fortnight in three weeks, but there is no word if ATEC is on the agenda. The Government really needs to get going on this – there are only so many childcare announcements Mr Clare can make. Whenever it comes on, ATEC will whiz through the Reps. As for the Senate, before the election the Coalition was opposed to ATEC, but nothing is assumed on their position now. Which may mean it is up the Greens.
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Independent ACT senator David Pocock wrote to Jason Clare last week, setting out sundry complaints with ANU management. Senator Pocock has been especially unhappy for weeks with university officers’ answers at a Senate committee about consulting spends. The Education Minister referred his letter to the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency (TEQSA). In response to all of which, Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell played a dead bat, the deadest. The university was “requesting clarity” and asking for information from Senator Pocock, telling Mr Clare that it is doing so and “will continue to also work with our regulator, TEQSA, on addressing concerns around compliance that may be put before it.” Given the bitter opposition to her proposed job cuts, Professor Bell must be getting used to facing short policy balls.
ANU also expanded on where “consultancy” spending went in 2023 (the 2024 annual report has to be tabled in Federal Parliament, which has not happened yet). The National Tertiary Education Union is making an issue of who gets how much for doing what at universities. The 2023 ANU annual report states the university spent $53.9m on consultancies, which the university now breaks down as, $17.3m for “contracted and professional services,” $22.3m for research (“e.g. consumables, training materials”) and $14.3m for commissions, presumably being to education agents. ANU adds that the university spend for 2024 will be down $2m.
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Uni NSW VC Attila Brungs reports casual academics are now on the myTimesheet platform. This, he says, “is a major milestone for the university in our journey towards sustainable pay confidence and ensuring that every hour worked is captured accurately and paid correctly.” Professor Brungs did not mention the court case over underpaying staff brought against the university by the Fair Work Ombudsman. What is colloquially called “plea bargaining” is said to have been in-train for months.
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The Australian Research Council is running late on grant applications because it is updating due diligence process to meet new national security requirements. It’s the complex machinery of government stuff, which takes time to sort out. Quite a bit of time; the ARC Act was amended to deal with the changes last July. What it all means will be easily understood by experts on the legislation, and for everybody else there is the contrarily titled Explanatory Memorandum for the amended Act.
But handing out buckets of money goes on, with $46m in new Linkage Grants announced. It is business as usual, with the Group of Eight winning half. Uni NSW led with nine and Uni Sydney followed with eight while Uni Melbourne had to settle for bronze with just seven. In more good news on the research output of the imminent Adelaide U, its founding institutions, Uni Adelaide and Uni SA had seven Linkages between them. Last week, Adelaide U to-be confounded critics by a notional score well in the global QS top 100.
Yesterday, the ARC also announced the 2025 Laureate Fellows, who all have millions of dollars for multi-year research projects. Of the 17, 13 are from Go8 universities.
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In breaking news, students who might drop out of study don’t all respond to the same sort of support. A Curtin U trial finds “personalised early interventions” helped students make choices that are better for them, withdrawing early to avoid fees for example. But the interventions don’t do much for those “who are most disengaged.” Baby steps indeed, but better than no steps at all.
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The estimable National Centre for Vocational Education Research asks trainers to promote the 2025 student outcomes survey (for qualification, course and subject completers). And quite right too – the best way to address skills shortages is to reduce VET attrition and the more information about student experience the better.
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With the Australian Tertiary Education Commission imminent, the Government is changing focus to schools and training. But the chefs du doctrine may want to nuance the message, explaining there is trades training (good) and other (not so much).
According to the NCVER, trade training numbers were down 3% in the year to end December ’24 while non-trades fell 19%.
There is worse to come: trade starts fell 13%, others 18%. In bad news for the next Minister who wants to announce a housing plan, construction trade starts were down 16%.
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Western Sydney U has told its 13,700 followers on X that is closing down there and opening on BlueSky, where it has 103 subscribers. “Follow us over there for all the latest updates and campus life content. Same great content, just a new home,” WSU announced, in its exit on X. And a more select audience.
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ANU is responding to the Nixon Review, which focused on culture and practice in the Medicine college, but also made scathing comments about the university as a whole over many years. “ANU has a remarkable tolerance for poor behaviour and bullying … at ANU, poor behaviour doesn’t lead to negative consequences,” Ms Nixon concluded.
Provost Rebekha Brown now invites “expressions of interest” from staff to join working groups to advise on specific issues Ms Nixon raised. But advising is not fixing. Their work will go to the Implementation Steering Group. This may take some time.
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Education Minister Jason Clare is pleased indeed that “Aussie uni commencements bounce back big time.” “Preliminary data” for 2024 shows UG and PG starts are up 3.7% on 2023. Good-oh, but after a decade of little or no growth (ex a 2020 pandemic-spike) this is not a ten on the Gene Kelly Scale of dancing in the streets. Critics suggest the rise might be due to the “Costello baby boom” – then treasurer Peter Costello created a tax-free payment per baby in 2004, meaning the school-leaver, or thereabouts, population is up. There were 254,000 – 270,000 births in 2004-2006 in response to Treasurer Costello’s invitation to have “one for Mum, one for Dad and one for the country.”
The really interesting numbers are not available yet – commencements for humanities, law and bized course that are slugged with a $20,000 a year HELP fee are not yet available.
