Former cabinet minister Bill Shorten is a veteran negotiator with premiers, senators and national interest groups, but now he is disputing in the first division as Uni Canberra VC. The campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union threatens “escalation” in enterprise bargaining if management does not pick up the pace on pay talks.
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The Australian Academy of Humanities warns closing HASS courses “is eroding Australia’s capacity to train the next generation” and it wants ATEC to advise Parliament on “teaching capacity, research strength, workforce pipelines and emerging fields.”
“This function fills a critical evidence gap not addressed by existing datasets or institutional reporting, and is essential for proactive national planning rather than reactive crisis management,” is the pitch. The Academy wants the Budget to include $20m over four years to make it happen. And so the mission-creep begins.
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Adrian Barnett (QUT) turns to ancient Athenian elections and British Bingo for options to run random selections of pre-qualified research funding applications. He does this for the British Academy’s Small Research Grants (as in very small £2000) Scheme. “The reasoning for using a lottery is that the standard system of peer review cannot reliably rank applicants from the most to least deserving,” he writes. Just now, this might appeal to researchers who survived the expression of interest cull for 2027 Discovery Grants, announced last week and who now have to wait for the Australian Research Council to assess applications again, which could take until April 2027.
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UNSW assumes the future is on campus classes, announcing a 12-floor building to “support contemporary teaching and learning” at its Kensington campus, in eastern Sydney. It is part of the 2024-2049 campus development plan, including a $600m Health Translation Hub, refurbed 700 bed student accommodation and not deep-green parking for 1400 cars and 130 bicycles.
Uni Queensland is also announcing loud and clear that the future for classes is in person. It has wired 65 lecture theatres, (more to come) so a microphone can broadcast to unlimited headphones and hearing aids. “Everyone can access the same audio stream, and everyone can optimise it for themselves,” is the pitch. Good for the hearing impaired, as well as international students who want to hear lectures loud and clear.
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There is a Senate committee inquiry on codifying a right to work from home. The university management industrial lobby argues it is not needed. Certainly not, the Australian Higher Education Industrial Association points out, for its members where working from home is codified in enterprise agreements.
It looked like for a while that it could be an issue in the last round of enterprise bargaining for professional staff, as academics pretty much manage their own schedules. But nothing happened then and it seems nothing will, in negotiations now underway – the National Tertiary Education Union has not even made a submission to the Senate. So what alarms AHEIA? Ambit claims if a statutory right to work from home is established and managements have to prove turning-up was an inherent requirement of a job. “In the absence of clear definition, employers and employees may contest whether particular duties constitute inherent requirements of a role,” AHEIA warns. And opportunities will arise – if the Victorian working from home plan gets up somebody, somehow, somewhere will find a case to run that covers HE.
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Jacqui Lambie’s bill to cap VC pay dates from the previous Parliament and was lost in all the ATEC debate. There is still a Senate committee inquiry, which will report at the end of the month, but submissions are sparse and no hearing scheduled. It rather seems the pantechnicon of protest moved on when the Government created the Expert Council on University Governance, which is to report to the Education Ministers Council on VC remuneration sometime this year.
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Expectations of the Government’s response to the still-to-be-released Strategic Examination of Research and Development include a casket of cash and a bucket of bureaucracy, probably both. But whatever Industry Minister Tim Ayres announces in a few weeks, it will be coming off a low base. Data-master Frank Larkins (Uni Melbourne) reports that in CPI adjusted dollars total national spending 2015-2024 was up 10 %, but that was down to higher education (46 %) and private not-for-profits (74 %). Business matched the CPI (30 %) but government did not (20 %).
Over 2014-2024, total national expenditure as a share of GDP declined from 2.09 % to 1.69 %. Private not for profit outlays increased, a bit, to 0.062 % but otherwise it was down, down, outlays were down, in government, HE and especially business, from 1.18 % to 0.81 %.
This outcome has “significant consequences for the nation’s innovation efforts and international competitiveness, he warns.
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The annual (NSW) Universities Admission Centre survey of 2026 starters shows they are still chugging the HE kool-aid. The big benefit of a degree (76 %) is “better job and career opportunities” followed by a “a qualification that gives me options.” But the HASS lobby need not despair; 82 % said the most important reason for choosing a course “was interest or passion.” And they are AI ambivalent; over half report using it less than once a week or never. They certainly aren’t asking Gen AI for advice – Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok is where they look for options.