The Australian Research Council reports (via LinkedIn) that “to mark NAIDOC week, the ARC was privileged this week to join an open and honest conversation.” As distinct from other convos it participates in?
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The (nearly all) universities industrial lobby says there is a go-slow in enterprise bargaining because the National Tertiary Education Union, “does not have enough competent people,” on some campuses and sometimes has to fly in negotiators. According to the Australian Higher Education Industrial Association, of 16 universities that have begun bargaining in the current round, only one has had a deal done and ratified by the Fair Work Commission.
The NTEU responds that “where we are trying to speed things up, management often drags the chain … The situation is not helped where uni managements get lawyers involved in the agreement drafting stage.”
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ANU management will mark the university’s 80th anniversary August 14-15 with the re-opening of University House (trashed in a 2020 storm). Plus there will be a Community Open Day. And for governance thrill-seekers, the next University Strategy will be launched. It would be just the occasion for the announcement of the new Chancellor. FC has no idea who it will be, but ANUites, with not uniform enthusiasm, say Christine Nixon’s name keeps coming up.
The former Victorian Police Commissioner certainly knows her way around the university – although this may not mean she wants the job. Last year she reviewed culture and practices in the disbanded College of Medicine and Health and its successor schools. “ANU has a remarkable tolerance for poor behaviour and bullying (which) does not lead to negative consequences,” she concluded.
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In news that will surprise as many as none, PM&C’s Office of Impact and Analysis backs Jason Clare’s proposed Managed Growth Funding System which includes uncapped equity places “allowing for participation to grow for low-SES, and regional/remote non-medical bachelor students.”
The Office states fiscal costs are offset by ending Job Ready Graduates campus-based growth funding and reducing funding-floor payments to under-enrolled universities from $253m this year to $8m in 2029. Overall regulatory costs are a snip at an annual average of $1.82m over a decade
So all will be well – as long as universities can fill 25,000 more student places than now in ’29 and 82,000 more by 2035. But just in case, there is a 2026-32 temporary funding floor, “to ensure financial sustainability.”
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The draft of ANU’s new strategy through to 2030 is a very Canberra document. “Partnership with Parliament, Government and the Public Service” is one the six proposed strategic initiatives. Another is “a revenue and cost base that minimises the University’s vulnerability to a single policy change or market shift.”
Tricky things, markets and ANU wants to keep clear of them. The revenue sources it will seek to grow are Commonwealth research partnerships, endowments, targeted philanthropy and the National Institutions Grant.
The now $253m per annum NIG has been gifted by government to ANU since its foundation. It was created to fund research in the national interest when other universities focused on teaching. Times have changed in research, but ANU’s need for the NIG has not. The strategy states that the university will “ring-fence NIG funding allocated to support national research infrastructure from general operating budget pressures.” And it does not do that now?
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The long-anticipated (FC October 19 ’25) governance principles developed last year for Jason Clare are now live in the HE Threshold Standards. HE providers will have to report compliance to TEQSA on an “if not, why not?” basis. Minster Clare’s announcement Sunday could not have been better timed – following the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption’s hearings at Uni Wollongong. While ICAC’s report is a month away, the university’s former Chancellor, John Still has resigned.
Mr Clare also announced an additional governance principle, with universities required to adopt definitions of racism towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, Antisemitism and Islamophobia. It was developed by his Department, with input from the States and advisers. The news came ahead of universities giving evidence to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. In May, Greg Craven (ex Australian Catholic U VC) reported no university had adopted an effective definition of antisemitism.
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Uni Melbourne has $35m from the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation for 150 scholarships over five years. They are for students doing existing Uni Melb liberal arts and humanities degrees. This is a variation on the foundation Ramsay model which funded its own custom-created degrees, and was bitterly opposed at universities around the country. ANU union leader Matthew King spoke for all the opposition in 2018, “it would appear the Ramsay Centre seeks to pursue a narrow, radically conservative program to demonstrate and promulgate the alleged superiority of western culture and civilisation.” In the end, the university did not take the money but Uni Queensland, Australian Catholic U and Uni Wollongong did.
By accepting funding for students in existing degrees, Uni Melbourne Interim VC Glyn Davis has avoided allegations that Ramsay only wants to fund teaching its own version of history. Michael Spence had a similar idea in 2019. The then-VC of Uni Sydney proposed Ramsay fund students in a western civ major with content coming from 130 subjects. The Centre did not buy it then – understandable given the vehemence of opposition on campus to any engagement. A statement from Uni Sydney staff the previous year condemned Ramsay as “European supremacism writ large: it signals that the study of the European cultural tradition warrants better educational circumstances than that of others.”
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HE and VET regulators TEQSA and ASQA jointly remind the regulated of the ban on paying commissions to education agents who transfer onshore students. They are silent on what this is about, but for years there have been cases of people being issued a visa at a legit university or college but switching to a lower-cost provider when they arrive, for cover while they work full-time.
At least they can tell the Minister they are on the case when the next story breaks about illegal immigrants pretending to be students.