The Victorian Government delivers on its October promise for a Parliamentary Inquiry into university governance, referring it Friday to the House Economy and Infrastructure Committee. Terms of Reference include, “elevated community, staff and student voice at the highest governance level,” and checking how each university will implement recommendations by Jason Clare’s Expert Council on University Governance. This may be to ensure the Chancellors of the states’ public universities do not file them under ‘I’ (for ‘interfering impertinence) – they are governed by state, not Commonwealth, legislation.
Won’t university submissions to the inquiry (reporting May) be entertaining!
Meanwhile, the NSW Legislative Council inquiry along the same lines rolls on with a hearing before Christmas and three more in the new year. If it recommends State regulation along the same lines as Vic is appearing to favour, that will be half the nation’s universities more rigorously regulated.
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Vice-Chancellor without portfolio David Llloyd farewelled Uni SA staff Wednesday, as they move to becoming Adelaide U people, and he moves to whatever is next. It was standard Lloyd, alive with allusions to best popped culture (Joey Tempest?) and true to the spirit and style of the man who helped his people get their half of the merger, sorry co-creation, done. He has surely led them through worse. In April 2020 as Australia faced Covid-19 Lloyd wrote to staff, “In my Zoom meetings, I have a backdrop snapshot of the giant boulder rolling down the ramp towards Indiana Jones, a still image grabbed from Raiders. It sits over my shoulder rolling towards the camera’s perspective. I call it the COVID-19 boulder. Spoiler alert. It’s outrun. We’ve got this.” And they did.
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La Trobe U is off the blocks in the AI arms race, announcing it will deploy 5,000 Chat GPT Edu licences next year, increasing to 40,000 in 2027. Provider OpenAI will participate in an AI MBA and integrating coding and add development tools into engineering and business.
LT U’s new five-year plan promises AI “ “will be integrated in all courses.” This is an excellent start.
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And the Bleeding Obvious Award of the Year goes to the Department of Resources, Industry and Science for proclaiming that, “the skills and education sectors all have a vital role in equipping students and the workforce to seize the opportunities AI presents.”
It is in Tuesday’s National AI Plan, which has the substance of a pavlova of palaver – a document to demonstrate the feds are doing something, when what they plan to do is nothing, except spend public money.
Universities Australia was being impeccably polite when it responded ,“we look forward to continuing our work with government, industry and the community to ensure AI is used safely, responsibly and for the benefit of all Australians.” On the evidence so far, they will need over-the-policy-horizon-radar to identify any activity.
One useful initiative is a dedicated AI Cooperative Research Centre funding round, but when it will be, and whether it is for your actual CRCs or the briefer P programme is not stated. One plan that does not look promising at all is the National AI Safety Institute (there is imminent money in MYEFO). According to the Plan, the AISI will “support ministers, portfolio agencies and regulators to maintain safety measures, laws and regulatory frameworks (and) to ensure AI companies are compliant with Australian law and uphold legal standards around fairness and transparency.” How long before it forms a Coalition of the Controlling with TEQSA?
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The heads of four councils of discipline deans present a united front, calling for more and better maths teaching, including
- Increasing Y11-12 enrolments
- Sub-bachelor programmes as access to STEM degrees
- Requiring intermediate high-school maths for “key university courses”
“Although the move by some universities to drop or reduce mathematics prerequisites for key undergraduate courses (for example, science and engineering) may seem like a reasonable response to current challenges in high school mathematics, it risks reducing the incentive to study mathematics in secondary school, they warn. Councils are, Science, Engineering, Environment and ICT. Among the absent is the Council of Deans of Education, which seems strange given its members train maths teachers.
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In early November Monash U management announced a new admin apparatus to pay people, “our current systems involve a number of manual processes and limited integration. Improving integration and automating processes across our current systems will enhance data consistency and support accurate and timely payments, Vice Chancellor Sharon Pickering said, adding, “Monash remains steadfast in our commitment to paying our staff correctly.”
So, could the system have saved Monash casual academic staff anguish of years in the courts over an underpayment case? Probably not. That was not caused by system faults, the dispute was whether the university underpaid what people were owed under enterprise agreements. Last week the university agreed to a $450 000 contrition payment to the National Tertiary Education Union. The union had won in the Federal Court in a case on behalf of academic casuals who it successfully argued the university had not paid the correct rate for some student contact hours. The NTEU says the hundreds, ”if not thousands” of staff owed money will share $10m.
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Now will all who lobbied for a higher education regulator finally listen to Luke Sheehy? Ever since the draft Accord appeared, the Universities Australia chief has warned anything that even looked like an ATEC must be separated from the DoE by a bottomless pit, only deeper. He is still warning, describing the Australian Tertiary Education Commission Bills as a “starting point” and arguing ATEC must “be genuinely independent” of the Department.
The Senate committee inquiry on the ATEC Bills also wants to hear about, “the adequacy of the powers available.” Perhaps Senators should re-read the explanatory memorandum that explains what the Commission will be allowed to do, which is plenty.
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Open access library agreements are extended with giant for-profit journal publishers Springer Nature and Wiley, meaning more research by authors at Australian and New Zealand universities will be free for all to read, without institutions paying for papers to be published. The deals extend previous agreements negotiated by the Council of Australasian University Librarians, increasing the quota by 4,000 articles. CAUL does no mention cost but the increase access will be funded by university subscription fees. The new agreements follow terms being reached last month with Taylor and Francis, meaning three of the big-five publishers increased open access. The existing arrangement with Sage does not end until next year and price talks with Elsevier, the colossuses of academic publishing, have failed for now, CAUL says they are “paused.” Elsevier has long hung-tough in Euro and US negotiations, to protect its business model that depends on pay to read or pay to publish. The STM Division of RelX Corporation, which includes Elsevier, had a first half 2025 operating profit of A$1bn.