Deakin U is recruiting a new VC. There is no mention of KPIs covering not alarming Council members or upsetting staff with proposed restructures, but applicants would be wise to have answers ready. After days of uproar in June, Chancellor Claire Higgins cancelled a proposed restructure following the sudden departure of Vice-Chancellor Iain Martin.
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The training times are a changing as JSA pushes for a skills model outside qualifications. TAFE Directors Australia’s Jenny Dodd gets it; “the highly compliance-driven national training system is showing tension over who has the most say about VET qualifications,” she writes. “Yes, it is an industry led system and that is supported (but) some new innovative changes have been slow, such as qualification reform. Additionally, more holistic capability building for occupations and transferrable skills have not occurred.”
However, she also notes Carolyn Evans UA speech last week where she “reminded everyone that universities develop deep skills that are transferrable as workplaces change over time. This is a true statement and is to be applauded.” Especially if it gives the TAFE competition a chance to adapt to a new skills model first.
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Applicants who expected the Australian Research Council to announce 2027 Future Fellowships between October 26 and November 9 now discover the announcement date is “TBC”. Does that mean the ARC has not decided when there will be an announcement, or whether there will be an announcement at all?
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The Australian Academy of the Humanities establishes its Languages and Culture Committee, to “help address … the long-term decline of languages education.” “When a language programme closes or a specialist retires without a successor, Australia does not simply lose a university subject. We lose knowledge and expertise that can take decades to rebuild,” Academy President Stephen Garton (Uni Sydney) says.
Initial priorities are, a “community of practice on the use of generative AI in language education and research, bringing together expertise to understand where emerging technologies can strengthen teaching and research (and) where their limitations lie.”
So that’s fixed the likely imminent end of our neighbours’ languages (notably Indonesian), in schools, to be followed by universities.
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RMIT partners with student digs provider Scape on a 55-level tower to be built above the in-construction Metro train station, under the State Library in Melbourne. The university will use nine floors with the rest being accommodation. As Damian Cahill* famously put it, there are times that VCs look like property developers with side-hustles in education.
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Some of the comrades went out at Uni Sydney on Wednesday, with National Tertiary Education Union members striking as a routine part of enterprise bargaining, (the CPSU stayed on the job). The problème de l'heure was AI in teaching with the NTEU having a log of claims to regulate it, including “retain human-in-the-loop, and accountability for autonomous systems.”
Outgoing NTEU national secretary (and Uni Sydney veteran) *Damian Cahill warned of “the challenge that AI poses to universities and to workers, providing every element of the teaching process, undermines the central value proposition of universities. … These are the battle lines of the future,” he said.
Management responded, “we agree using AI ethically requires a human-centred approach” but “the use of AI is best governed through policies and frameworks that can be updated as needed to respond to this rapidly changing technology rather than set for the three-year term of the enterprise agreement.”
What’s the betting the union and management will end up agreeing to cover it in both – thus creating the risk of a Fair Work Commission dispute where the parties do not agree on the meaning of what they signed.
Meanwhile a UniSydney Reddit subscriber worries they were “a pretty strong” student in high school but they are struggling to keep-up. “Should I go through all the lectures one by one and handwrite notes as I go, or would it be better to upload the lecture slides to Claude and have it teach me the content?” they ask. Go to class and put your hand-up when stuck is a common-ish response.
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Comrade Industry Minister Tim Ayres reports the National Science and Technology Council has met for the last time. It was replaced in the Budget by the National Science and Resilience Council, to “better coordinate and align public innovation investments with Australia’s economic objectives.” This will be the way more powerful body, recommended in the plan formerly known as the Strategic Examination of Research and Development. More development, less research.
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The Senate Committee considering the last of the ATEC legislation has spoken, with its report released yesterday – members mostly did not say what will happen next.
The Bill establishes managed growth and capped places for public universities and Government committee members back it. The Greens complained that tertiary education costs students too much, argued universities need more funding and explained the Minister has too much power over allocations of CSPs and international enrolments, but did not reject it outright. ACT Independent senator David Pocock offered qualified support, while proposing dozens of well-presented and mostly constructive amendments including for less ministerial power, (a point close readers of the government senators’ report will note they took). Senator Pocock’s was the work of a policy-focused opposition – a role not filled by Coalition senators, whose report made solid criticisms of the Bill but was silent on whether it should pass or not.
The Government is short nine votes, which the Greens can deliver.
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Jason Clare might have thought that having publicly promised new powers for TEQSA, they did not need to be loudly announced. The first FC knew about them was when they turned up on the Federal Register of Legislation as an Instrument made by him.
TEQSA kindly explains what the revised Threshold Standards add to institution’s obligations, including;
- “continuous improvement of student grievances and complaints processes”
- inclusive staffing policies that support diversity
- governing bodies to have cultures of “fairness, respect and constructive discussion”
- and for public universities; “publish the decisions and outcomes of governing body meetings, details of consultancy spending and any external roles held by vice-chancellor and senior management, including the management of any perceived or real conflicts of interest.”
TEQSA adds, “further information about the impact of the new standards on existing assessments will be shared in the near future.”
In the meantime, perhaps Their Eminences the Chancellors could help member institutions. Alas, their Council has been silent since February, but the new TEQSA power might come up at the October meeting.