Luke Sheehy from Universities Australia reports making the case for the feds funding joining the EU’s Horizon funding scheme to Industry and Science Minister Tim Ayres. Apparently the Minister understands the benefits and asked for UA’s help, “convincing his colleagues.” Thus ensuring UA will not blame Mr Ayres if Treasury decides the EU’s (unreleased) ask is a fund too far.
***
Deakin U announces its very own AI, with VC Iain Martin telling staff while it is based on Anthropic’s Claude it will be home-grown with data held in Australia. It’s called GEM and updates are already in the works to meet requirements of funding agencies and the like. Staff get first crack with a launch before Christmas – students next. Deakin follows Uni New England which has “Madgwick,” a platform for staff and students, which includes people creating their own AI assistants.
***
Monash U announced last week the end of its six-year $43m partnership with energy producer Woodside. Vice-Chancellor Sharon Pickering told a Senate committee hearing that research must align with the university’s Environmental Sustainability Statement and Goals. “We are a university that is deeply committed to academic freedom but also working in alignment with the values of our university and community,” she said. A reader remembers Uni Wollongong making the same sort of choice in 2020, when it cancelled a coal industry conference. “While this conference provides a valuable forum for sharing best practice and innovation in safety and environmental performance for the mining sector, the university has considered the immediate needs of its communities at this time and adjusted its priorities accordingly,” was the spokeweasel statement then.
***
There were deploreagrams all over the media Wednesday following CSIRO’s announced 350 jobs to go. Including from Australian Academy of Science chair, Chennupati Jagadish (ANU), who sympathised with staff and made his regular point about Australia not spending enough on R&D. But he was almost alone in acknowledging a case for cuts, “I understand that CSIRO have gone through a major review and identified their new direction of research to be to be able to meet our national needs,” he said.
***
Queens College (Uni Melbourne) announces Nicholas Spinks will become Dean and Deputy Head in February, moving from St Johns College at Uni Queensland. His appointment “follows an extensive and collaborative process involving staff, students, wyverns, and council.”
Wyverns? It is the collective name for alumni, who survived at least six months living-in. They are named for the heraldic dragon of that ilk on the College crest and the head of their association is the “Arch Wyvern.” FC used to suggest that Uni Melbourne had a bad case of the Bridesheads. No longer, future scoffing will reference Hogwarts.
***
Now the Libs have sort-of sorted out their version of climate change policy, immigration is the next issue they want to argue about – maybe this time with the government. Perhaps they will have another go at politicising international enrolments, which they tried at the last election.
That could be harder now, unless it isn’t.
For example, Home Affairs reports a 34% fall (to 12,000) in international students moving to a permanent migration place between the ’23-’24 financial year and ’24-’25. Except, the learned Andrew Norton points out, this may be due to the end of fewer student commencements during COVID, or aspiring immigrants picking a better category, he cites a 9% hike in permanent migration from people on skilled employment visas and a 440% hike, to 24,000 from “other employment” (mostly people on COVID emergency visas issued by the Morrison Government). “While the government has had some success in reducing the flow of new students from offshore, getting those already here to leave is proving much harder,” Norton suggests.
When it comes to international ed and immigration there is always enough data to find stats to suit the slogan.
***
In a regrettably under-reported speech the other week, Japanese Ambassador Suzuki Kazuhiro told the National Press Club what a splendid bunch Australian universities are and how there should be more cooperation between them and those in Japan. He was sure “many more bright young Japanese students would be attracted to study here,” if there was a scholarship scheme, like the one Japan has offered Australians since 1958. Now, there’s an idea for Foreign Minister Penny Wong, if she is looking for a way to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Australia-Japan NARA Treaty, in June.
***
Having brought down one Vice-Chancellor this year, the National Tertiary Education Union is going for a second, inviting staff at UTS to vote no confidence in VC Andrew Parfitt, in a ballot yesterday. The vote was not announced by deadline but FC anticipates a majority again of Pyongyang proportions. It is another front in the union at UTS’s campaign to stop staff cuts and course cancellations. The NTEU is using a smarter version of the strategy their comrades used to force Genevieve Bell out of ANU. There have been staff and student protests at UTS, coverage in friendly media plus cases in the courts. Pointing to a reason for the NSW workplace safety regulator to get involved was brilliant. The difference from ANU so far, is that Professor Parfitt has the numbers where he needs them.
***
The last next big thing in research and development was Australia’s Economic Accelerator, created by the former Coalition government with a nod from Labor, then in Opposition, “to bridge the gap between basic research and commercialisation.” There is funding for university projects, at “proof of concept” and “proof of scale stages,” with government appointed priority managers working, to “foster connections and secure formal collaboration arrangements with industry partners.” It took a couple of goes to get the managers appointment process right, with the Department of Education pulling its first tender in January. Now the AEA Board spells out how the managers need to work; asking industry what they want from universities , brokering relationships and helping researchers, “build their confidence and ability. Some, it seems, need to, the Board proposes “a weighting scheme … to boost applications from female entrepreneurs, First Nations entrepreneurs, and regionally headquartered universities.”
Perhaps a point for the about-to-file Strategic Examination of Research and Development to consider given their focus to date is very big picture rather than how academics go when it comes to talking to people from (shudder) “industry.”