Torrens U takes the biscuit, announcing a collaboration with Ice Hockey Australia “to make education more accessible for players.”
***
The oft-announced 4000 university places in submarine related STEM subjects is announced again, including the 1000 guaranteed for SA universities. 700 of them are for the now Uni Adelaide and 300 for Flinders U. (Scroll down for the national spread.)
The problem might be finding people who want to study for careers in submarine construction, because indications are AUKUS will not be the only jobs growth game in town. A new report from the SA Centre for Economic Studies, at the University of Adelaide, suggests aged and disability care will soak up skilled workers – in 2010-202 job growth in the sectors accounted for 64 per cent of the state total.
***
There’s more in the Accord! Jason Clare announces a new brief for Mary O’Kane and colleagues – to come up with a standard national approach to early offers of UG places. Apparently, state education ministers want such and so Professor O’Kane got the job. “Some people love them. Some people hate them. Some teachers say it causes students to take their foot off the pedal. Some universities tell me they are worried about other universities poaching their best and brightest,” are issues the Education Minister mentioned in commissioning the stakhanovite O’Kane.
“Poaching,” huh! Apart from the usual ATAR is everything, or isn’t at all, arguments this might, or might not, relate to a States’ rights issue as old. In 2016 ANU raised WA and SA universities admissions centres with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, arguing they were not making it easy for their states’ students to apply to the national u (Campus Morning Mail April 13 2016).
***
Australasian universities “total IT investment” was $3.32bn in 2022, 12 per cent up on ’21, according to the Council of Australasian University Directors of IT. CAUDIT reports non staff outlays were 64 per cent (up 2 per cent). Spending per student EFT was up $ 2,800 (16 per cent), although the number per staff member was marginally down to $131.
***
Australian Catholic U and UTS are the first local universities to be awarded a Carnegie Community Engagement Classification, based on their local service. There was a local pilot 2018-20 led by Charles Sturt U and UTS, with 11 universities signing on for accreditation in July 22. “The classification is the gold standard for the assessment and recognition of community engagement in higher education, “ Verity Firth (then UTS), chair of Carnegie’s local advisory committee said last year.
***
Legislation is before the Parliament enacting the government’s response to Margaret Sheil and colleagues’ review of the ARC Act. Education Minister Jason Clare says the Government agrees to all ten of their recommendations and the Bill covers the six that require legislation. The Sheil review went down well with the research community, which bitterly resented Coalition minister’s vetoing of research grants and Mr Clare says the bill delivers on his promise to “end the days of ministers using the ARC as a political plaything.” He points to the creation of an agency board, “which re-establishes peer review as the driving principle in grant approvals.”
And while the Minister will set rules on funding, they can be overturned by the Parliament. While Mr Clare makes no mention of how this might happen – it is not impossible to imagine Greens Senators making cause with an Opposition, in a mood for mischief.
However the legislation also allows the Minister to fund “nationally significant investments,” not individual grants but “projects which can drive research, infrastructure, training and collaboration.”
This sounds innocuous enough but “nationally significant” may alarm discovery scientists, acute to anything indicating the government values research that has foreseeable benefits more than work which may, or may not lead to anything that isn’t theoretical.
The bill also allows the minister to veto a grant or terminate funding awarded, on national scrutiny grounds. There was never any chance the government would surrender this power. The father of Australian research policy, former Labor minister Kim Carr explained why in a Senate committee considering a Greens Bill to stop Ministers blocking research grants. He invited a hearing to consider, “the theoretical possibility that ministers, being responsible to Parliament, under our system of government be obliged to act on information that is not known to the agency, despite the best intentions of the expert panel and the peer review processes or even the administration of the Australian Research Council … there might be grounds on security or criminal intelligence that requires the minister to intervene,” (Campus Morning Mail, March 10 2022).
This Bill is as good a protection of ARC funding independence as the agency and its constituents are going to get. In producing a report that ministers will wear, while reducing opportunities for them to stick their bibs into ARC decisions Margaret Sheil and colleagues did the research community a service.
***
Oh good, another ranking. Times Higher announces a new one for next year, which “will benchmark the successes and challenges of on-line learning.” It will be based on data supplied by institutions and a survey of their students, who will be “asked their assessment of various teaching and engagement measures.” Rankings will be based on four criteria, resources for learning, student experience, outcomes (interaction with teachers and other students, usability/convenience and environment (tech support, mix of students and staff).
***
Jason Clare thanked the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, for its work – at the agency’s conference last week. But he also spoke at length about new ways to protect students. In particular, Mr Clare detailed how the proposed Student Ombudsman would assist students dealing with gendered violence at their university, (Future Campus November 23). While he thanked TEQSA “who have backed the idea,” Mr Clare politely did not mention there is no apparent intent for the agency to assist the Ombudsman.
***
Just as uni managements and unions were getting their heads around the new enterprise bargaining rules, change is afoot, notably in cases where the sides are at an impasse and the Fair Work Commission can intervene to broker a deal.
The Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023, which seems set for the Senate, includes a requirement that changes to an enterprise agreement cannot be “less favourable” to employees and “bargaining representatives” than what now exists.
This would be more supportive or stringent, depending on the side one takes, than the old “better off overall” approach.
The Australian Industry Group goes with stringent, “this unbalanced proposal offends fairness and common sense. Companies are often faced with changed circumstances (and) the enterprise bargaining process is intended to enable these issues to be worked through between employers and employees and, where necessary, with the assistance of the Fair Work Commission.
But the National Tertiary Education Union thinks it is a splendid idea. “Excellent proposals by the Government and Greens to amend intractable bargaining laws so that they cannot leave workers’ conditions ‘less favourable’ than their existing conditions. We have seen rogue university employers try to game these provisions to cut wages and conditions,” NTEU General Secretary Damien Cahill Xd (as in what was Twitter) yesterday.
What happens next appears to be up to cross-bench senators Lambie, Pocock and Tyrrell.
***
The Australian Signals Directorate’s new cyber threat report warns that ever obliging AI provides what it is asked. Apparently unnamed researchers last year trained an AI using machine learning to catalogue molecules for therapeutic use. To see if there were risks of misuse they also asked for a catalogue of toxic ones. The AI used open source data to find 40,000 potentially lethal ones in six hours.
***
The Commonwealth launches its $392m Industry Growth Program for start-ups and small business to use research and development to expand. Eligible projects will be in priority areas of the National Reconstruction Fund. Science and Technology Australia, (“bringing together scientists, scientific societies, governments, industry and the broader community”) welcomes the funding, “designed to help more of our country’s remarkable innovative small businesses to become medium-sized businesses,”
The program might address concerns of Industry Innovation and Science Australia (“an independent statutory board of entrepreneurs, investors, researchers and educators”) which warns that small businesses that want to commercialise don’t always benefit from the conventional research funding model that is universities based. (There’s a story on IISA’s scathing assessment of the research system in this week’s issue).
***
The Accord discussion paper floated the brave idea of a levy on international student income to be used by the government to do good in HE. That’s brave in the Sir Humphrey sense, with sector responses largely based on what universities would have to win or lose. Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia has weighed in against the idea, “there is of course the ever-present risk that without clear and defined outcomes, funds could be used on a discretionary basis to fund political priorities of the day.”
While ITECA does not state it, the council would be forgiven for suspecting that private providers might not be on Labor’s list.
***
The University of Sydney has published a statement setting out its “commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion,” endorsed by Senate and the Academic Board HERE
***
Universities have been talking up the cyber security courses they teach for years. But alas, they may not be delivering the skills industry needs. “Employers are facing a shortage of cyber professionals and a mismatch between job requirements and employee skills. A lack of sufficient job-ready experience is a key challenge for industry, with graduates and workforce entrants often requiring further on-the-job training to become proficient,” Home Affairs new national cyber security strategy reports.
Which may make today opportune for the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering to announce the second (of seven) annual award of Elevate Scholarships, for “women and diverse people” who want to study STEM.
For a ranking of the universities government rates on super-tech engineering the distribution of places to study building a nuclear submarine has to be a red-hot guide. The 4000 places 2024-27 go to;
Uni Adelaide: 700
RMIT: 426
Uni Wollongong: 425
UNSW: 340
Flinders U: 330
Curtin U: 320
Uni Queensland: 315
Uni Melbourne: 300
Macquarie U: 190
Uni Newcastle: 140
Western Sydney U: 120
Charles Darwin U: 110
ANU: 108
Charles Sturt U: 71
UWA: 56
Murdoch U: 50
