ANU teaches a multi-discipline UG course, Beyond Chaos. “By moving beyond the chaos of issues, we learn to appreciate multiple perspectives, competing interests, historical factors and the dynamics of the given top,” is the pitch. Perhaps, a reader remarks, management and the orchestrators of the opposition to proposed savings should take it.
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Education Minister Jason Clare announces $93m in Australian Economic Accelerator Ignite Grants for 39 projects, to prove they are ready to go to market. The soon-not-to-be-a-standalone Uni Adelaide leads with six (JV partner Uni SA has one).
The stage gated AEA is the previous government’s big applied research programme which Labor waived through when in Opposition.
Some grants sound like they could come from CRCs, (RMIT’s “intelligent charging and fleet management for electric vehicles”), others from ARC Linkage Grants, (“2000 (HTJ2K) hardware encoder and decoder with code-block caching support”) and one surely would have been a natural for the meat and livestock Rural R&D Corporation, “developing Australian meat into the world’s best product with an artificial intelligence-enabled meat scanner.”
Just an idea, but perhaps the Government could spend more money on research by cutting the costs of running different but certainly similar programmes
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The Academy of Science announces “Australian scientists are on the verge of answering humanity's biggest questions about our cosmic origins.” To get there, though, they need access to the kit that comes with full membership of the European Southern Observatory. The Academy does not mention what that would cost but Australia’s ten-year strategic partnership (at $129m) ends in ’27.
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Frank Larkins (Uni Melbourne) looks at the books of the Big Five to find their 2024 financials were good, but maybe as good as they will get. He reports the universities of Melbourne, Sydney, Queensland New South Wales and Monash U all had record earning and surpluses, Uni Sydney leading with $550m, with all resuming their pre-COVID profitable paths.
Commonwealth funding increased for all over 2021-24, but not as much as other income streams. Government gifted revenue dropped at UNSW from 48% to 21%. Overall, the five received $700m more in fees and charges in 2024 than from the state. In 2024 over 40 % of Uni Sydney income came from international student fees and they accounted for 48% at UNSW.
So, have the good times rolled? Professor Larkins suggests so, “in a government supportive overseas student recruitment environment there would be optimism that a healthy financial growth trajectory would continue; however, this seems not to be the case.
“Loss of overseas student revenue will have serious consequences for university research and research training programs with flow-on effects for national innovation initiatives.”
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The next big thing is so yesterday. Monash U reports algorithms alone won’t take great tech forward. As well as quantum computing, breakthroughs will require quantum device technology, “small enough to hold in your hand, but powerful enough to change the world.” Apparently, what we need for it to happen is a national institute for quantum device engineering.
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The response of most university managements to their Voice staff surveys is to tell everybody to shut the fudge up. Not Scott Bowman, he used to release results to the hackery when VC of CQU, good, bad and indifferent. And now he does it at Charles Darwin U, where this year staff think the university underperforms the sector on processes but overall they are ok enough with the way it works for CDU to score the survey organisation’s Change Champion award for the second time.
Professor Bowman wasn’t universally loved when he took over at CQU but he hauled it out of a financial hole. He upset people at CDU when he arrived, but it is looking way more viable than it once did – a med school in the offing will help do that.
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There were 1.265m people employed in education and training in May, a hefty hike from the 1.075m in 5/2020. There were 650,000 in schools, 257,000 in tertiary education and 230,000 in adult-community ed – who knew there were so many dance teachers, gym instructors and “interpersonal skill trainers” out there?
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The Victorian Government is good at leveraging max praise from core constituents for amounts of money. During the pandemic the State’s public universities all had slices of its $350m HE Investment Fund pie. Now there is $28m for international education initiatives, including $9m for the Yes to International Students Fund, (“to deliver more offshore education.”)
Specific amounts are not announced, but FC does wonder why the sorely-pressed Victorian taxpayer is stumping up so Monash U can develop a “co-designed dual degree partnership model in the Indo-Pacific.” The 2024 annual report states the Monash U Group’s income from fees and charges was $1.55bn.
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Southern Cross U copped a hiding Monday night when ABC TV reported allegations about the quality of its grad dip in early childhood education and that it is used by international students as a track to permanent residency. So on Tuesday, SCU VC Tyrone Carlin did what he had to do – issued a statement backing the course and its students, “I look forward to seeing the important contribution that this diverse, committed group of future educators makes to children, families and communities in real need of their skills.”
He did not engage with scathing specifics, perhaps in the hope that the story will go quiet. But even if nothing more is alleged against SCU’s course, the industry-wide story will run and run. Last Friday, Education Minister Jason Clare responded to the arrest of an alleged paedophile who worked in multiple centres. “Not enough has been done and not fast enough.” he said. And you can bet the Minister will have plenty to say about industry standards. This has nothing to do with SCU, but the risk is, people will remember its name whenever the quality of courses comes up.
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The Media Centre for Education Research Australia is closing, “financial realities mean we cannot continue,” writes chair, Anna Sullivan (Uni SA). Its annual report states $190,000 in income, all but a couple of bob from subscriptions, for a net result of $18,000. The positive result after a 2023 loss was due to $50,000 saving on staff and contractors. MCERA existed to, “ensure accurate and informed reporting of educational issues through the media.”
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The Australian Research Council announces awards for yet another of its applied programs, the $24.7m Early Career Industry Fellowships. It is for academic researchers to work for three years on projects in industry, and the other way around. Success rate is 50 of 180 (but half of the initial bids were rejected before serious assessment started). The Big Five underperformed on their standard 60% of all grants, only winning 20; seven of them going to Uni Queensland.
The early careers were followed by Mid-Career Industry Fellowships, $28.5m for 25 people, for “increased two-way mobility and skill-building in research collaboration, translation and commercialisation.” Some 16 universities share awards with Uni Queensland way in front, with seven.
Plus Future Fellowships are out, four years of salary plus $60,000 pa in project support for basis or applied research. The discipline mix was pretty much the norm, with two-thirds of the 100 awards going to STEM projects. People at the five, UoQ, UNSW, U Sydney, Monash and Melbourne scored half.
And after lunch yesterday the ARC announced the industry version of the Laureate Fellows programme, for senior researchers from universities or industry who will, “create step-change across a variety of industry settings.” The eight Fellows will share $30m over five years. They are, * Nicholas Ashbolt (QUT) “safe-guard drinking-water distribution systems) * Sarah Bekessy (RMIT) – biodiversity sensitive urban design * Yongsheng Gao (Griffith U) – automated farming * Ewa Goldys (UNSW) – gene testing for water-born pathogens * Yonghui Li (Uni Sydney) – “holographic WiFi for digital mining” * Jie Lu (UTS) – personalised machine learning for women’s health * Karen McNamara (Uni Queensland climate-driven loss and damage for Pacific Island communities * John Zhu (Uni Queensland) – renewable energy to produce hydrogen