The Senate committee inquiring into the ATEC legislation holds its only scheduled hearing this morning.
It looks like the Ayes already have it.
The Innovative Research Universities lobby has another opportunity to repeat its Wednesday statement, in which it backed the Bill but proposed a couple of concessions the Government might, maybe, consider, giving ATEC the power to commission its own research and report on student fees.
The Group of Eight’s Vicki Thomson will likely stick to her script that “ATEC risks becoming another layer of bureaucracy” and Luke Sheehey from Universities Australia will play his implacably straight bat on the importance of autonomy – not easy when some members of his team are bowling the bouncers.
The Department of Education has a squad of seven officials (including three from the Interim ATEC) to explain Secretary Tony Cooke’s December explanation that staff working for the Commission would be simultaneously inside but outside DoE.
They may not be asked, at least by the Opposition. The Liberal Party leadership spill is also on.
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TEQSA issued a system-wide alert yesterday that it is “aware of accounts” of commercial academic cheating services on campuses offering students incentives to sign-up and coercing previous clients. If so, it could be because the baddies are getting desperate, what with AI eating their nefarious lunch.
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Last November, the Fair Work Ombudsman slammed QUT with an Enforceable Undertaking to pay back all the people it could have underpaid. The university identified a problem in their pay system and confessed to the FWO in ’21. In November QUT reported it individually owed at least 433 people anything tom $10 to $78,000 but it was going to check for more and the FWI is seeing it does. KPMG is hired to check 18,000 people’s pay records over six years so underpayments can be rectified. The FWO will provide “guidance” on the process. It will take two years, with QUT also fixing the errant payroll systems. Would have been simpler just to have paid people what they were owed in the first place.
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The WA Government sums up the case for training with the pitch, “good jobs and good money. Whatever you want, you can make it at TAFE.” But how much money depends who you ask. The Productivity Commission reports that an indicator of incomes after VET is “under development for reporting in the future.” But the estimable Centre for Vocational Education Research reports that employed men earned a median $75,000 before completing and $78,300 after, (the comparable stat for women isn’t in the report.)
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U Tasmania finally opens The Forest, its new Hobart CBD home for 300 staff and “up to” 3000 students in HASS, BusEco, Social Work and a bunch of other teaching and research resources for 300 staff and “up to” 3000 students.
For years the refurbed former Forestry Commission building was the epi-centre of anger from opponents of the university plan to sell almost all the Sandy Bay campus and move the university into town. This was a big local and state political issue until the State Government created a case for compromise, with the University sticking to city sites it could not give up, but also staying at Sandy Bay. At one stage, there was talk a flash Federally-funded STEM teaching centre at SB, but it was never clear where the Commonwealth cash would come from. The long and bitter dispute is a lesson for entrepreneurs with big ideas for Hobart. Forget them.
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Murdoch U signs the Technicians Commitment, a UK initiative “designed to ensure visibility, recognition, career development, and sustainability” for research infrastructure specialists and technical staff. It joins Uni Sydney, Monash U and the Children’s Cancer Institute. The Feds floated establishing an Australian version a year back, in the National Research Infrastructure Survey for the 2026 Roadmap.
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Western Sydney U announces its 2026-2030 Indigenous Strategy, and commits to making success or otherwise apparent with hard numbers, including;
- Total Indigenous enrolment, including HDR 3.6 per cent,
- Retention rate up 12 per cent to 78 per cent
- Increase Indigenous academics from 27 to 45, with Indigenous staff being 3.8 per cent of the on-going and fixed-term workforce
- Five internal/external research applications annually
- Establish an Indigenous Business Hub
- Associate Dean, Indigenous in each faculty
- A register, “to record and respond to acts of racism against Indigenous people within the University.”
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QUT will publish Meanjin, the literary journal spiked by Melbourne University Publishing in September. There was praise around the book-ish traps for QUT bringing it back to Brisbane, where it was founded in 1940. It is a smart move by VC Margaret Sheil, who is always keen to build her Queensland credentials. When she took over in 2018, she pulled out of the Australian Technology Network, saying QUT would focus its advocacy effort in Queensland.
Supporters will embrace QUT’s commitment to “respecting the journal's founding vision and literary legacy.” Although they may wonder whether her reference to “a viable future,” means breaking-even.
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The ARC-funded and NTEU-supported census on university staff wellbeing is in – people are not happy. Not anywhere; 76% of the 11,000-survey sample reported high and very high-risk psycho-social climate levels, meaning they are “more likely to face high job demand, bullying, low control poor support and organisational injustice.” That level is “more than double the proportion in the general workforce.” All universities were rated high or very high-risk. The three relatively low-risk universities were Charles Darwin U, Uni Queensland and UNSW. Those at code-red for stress all had recent restructures.