“How can ancient Greece and Rome shape better public policy today?” asks the Australian Academy of the Humanities?” First by learning how to set Tardis coordinates is FC’s guess.
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Uni Sydney proposes cutting eight curatorial, engagement and collections .jobs at its Chau Chak Wing Museum, which the Australian Historical Association warns will “jeopardise … its fundamental mission.” The Association calls for all essential staff to stay and has an idea for savings, “reconfigure the museum’s top-heavy management structure and channel savings from this back to front line services.” FC wonders if having services that are back to front helps.
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ATEC released its Mission Based Compacts report for ’27 last night.
While it is inconceivable the Commission will ever bargain with universities, there is a sense in the document of robust discussions over their allocated CSP’s.
But the report is also especially important for what it demonstrates about the Commission’s strategic priorities, that will completely kick-in next year for ‘28 application.
And does not. Two of the system-shaping issues on ATEC’s agenda are not covered.
One is a new efficient pricing model for Commonwealth Supported Places. In a speech last night Chief Commissioner Barney Glover mentioned his colleague Stephen Duckett’s paper on this transformative plan on the way teaching could, probably will, be funded. But how ATEC intends to respond is not listed among “emerging priorities.”
Neither is the change to the research system floated in another ATEC discussion paper, now circulating. Certainly the condition of HDR research and the general state of the system get a mention but “enabling greater research focus, scale and university differentiation,” does not.
Maybe ATEC decided there is enough to be going on with the “emerging priorities,” that it does specify, including:
- A “joined-up” tertiary system: reforms to ensure learners can continue to upskill or reskill as workforce and skills demands change. Work to support this “is reflected in each institution’s compact”
- Teaching quality: “commissioners encouraged providers to adopt internal measures that reflect their mission, teaching capability, and professional development priorities, while more clearly demonstrating the impact of their actions”
- Infrastructure: ensure that provider decisions to expand their physical footprint are likely to lead to increases in higher education access, particularly in skills shortage areas and for under-represented cohorts
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Monash U reports it has sent a delegation of 20 academics and students to COP31. So has ANU. Great practise if they ever decide to apply for UN membership. In contrast, CSIRO has three delegates.
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Domestic student starts for Bachelor degrees were slowly rising, last year. New stats from DoE record 242,000 commencers, still down on pre-Covid 2019, when there were 252,000.
Health (just under 100,000) and education (close to 50,000) stay strong. Of the JRG afflicted, bized is down nearly 10% on the pre-pandemic peak but at 61,000 is stable across the top-fee years. However “Society and Culture” (HASS plus law) starts last year were 99,000, compared to 120,000 in 2020, the year before JRG. Over the decade, total numbers fell from 283,000 in 2016 to 266,000 last year.
After peaking in the pandemic, attrition among all commencing domestic Bachelor course students is now at a decade low, 10% down from 15%, in 2015.
And as Frank Larkins has long warned, locals are losing interest in PG research. Commencers peaked at 10,000 in 2014, but there were just under 8,000 last year. There were 9,500 Internationals.
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The ACT establishment welcomes the Australian National University back into the club, with Chief Minister Amdrew Barr LinkedInning a meet with Chancellor Gordon de Brouwer. “Its contribution to our city, our economy and our global reputation cannot be overstated.” Mr Barr said. But he tried, “I look forward to working closely with Gordon and the broader ANU community as we continue creating opportunities for the next generation of students, researchers and innovators.” ANUites are waiting to compare this praise with Mr Barr’s next welcome for Uni NSW’s imminent Canberra campus or Uni Canberra’s proposed merger with Canberra Institute of Technology.
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The shape of brawls to come on how skills and qualifications are integrated on CVs and assessed by employers and consumers is on display, in a blue among psychologists. The regulator wants to cut a year off the training for general registration, to five and to embed placements in the degree rather than in PG internships, Overall this will mean reducing the qualification from AQF Nine (masters) to AQF Eight (Hons).
Plenty in the profession are not happy, but David Ensor from the Australian Psychology Accreditation Council responds on LinkedIn that, “academic qualification levels are not professional competencies.”
“The quality of a profession should ultimately be judged by what its practitioners are demonstrably competent to do.”
He acknowledges “concerns about research capability, clinical preparation, public safety and professional recognition … but they need to be examined against the actual proposed competencies, educational requirements and evidence of graduate capability – not inferred from qualification titles alone.”
“Competencies” is a word not loved in HE courses for professional training. Back in the ‘90s the medical establishment in universities was horrified that competency-based training could be included in medical degrees. There will be more of the same soon.
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The proposal to expand TEQSA’s powers (FC HERE) is looking like a policy-orphan. Universities Australia slammed it first, warning, it “would shift TEQSA towards an investigative model more akin to an integrity commission than a quality assurance regulator … This approach must be reconsidered as a matter of principle.” Followed by the Group of Eight “Universities should be accountable for outcomes. The regulator should not unnecessarily become the decision-maker about how those outcomes are achieved.” By the start of the week, the most Minister Clare’s office was offering was that the Government had been consulting for a year and “the Department values the feedback that it received last week and throughout the consultation process.”
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The learned Academy of Health and Medical Sciences is aware of increasing need to build community trust in, well, health and medical sciences – particularly amongst cohorts excluded from or poorly served in the past. Fortunately, they know what needs be done, “robust research practices, transparent and effective communication, institutional accountability, meaningful relationships, meeting people where they are, and delivering tangible benefits that reflect community values.” So that’s everything sorted.
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The Department of Education and Workplace Relations’ annual report includes hard numbers about Free TAFE. Since it started, there have been 814,000 enrolments and 258,000 completions. For all the arguments that recent commencers are still in the system and VET states are immensely complex, that nearly 70% don’t complete is way worse than the 50% rate for 2020 trades starters. There is more to come though, with $1.6bn in Commonwealth funding for Free TAFE places from next year through to 2034-35.
DEWR is also understatedly enthusiastic about creating “a joined-up” tertiary system. The Department reports it “continued working” with ATEC and others but there is no word on what it actually did.
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While there is talk on socials around Uni Melbourne that around 200, mainly professional staff, positions are set to go there is no official announcement of redundancies. Still, FC would not be surprised if salary savings proposals turn up – say, abolishing vacant positions. The university reported a $22m headline surplus last year on $3.037bn revenue but an underlying loss of $124m – the fourth in a row. The 2025 annual report attributed this to “structural changes in its funding and workforce models.”
As to workforce changes, management and the National Tertiary Education Union have settled on in-principle terms for a new enterprise agreement, including an 18.2% pay rise over four years. As Whitlam Government Treasurer, Frank Crean is famously supposed to have said “one (person’s) larger pay packet can mean another (person’s) job.”