Just in at the lost cause desk, the Association of Australian University Professors complains about university managers “with little or no significant academic standing or expertise,” using the title Professor. Surely that happened when CAEs became universities.
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The Fair Work Commission is considering a working from home provision in the private sector clerks award, which “may serve as a model for incorporation,” in others. Perhaps including higher education. While academics have decades of practise and the occasional precedent to ensure that they can largely work where they like, professional staff depend on their university’s enterprise agreement
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QUT is readying to reveal the fate of performing arts courses. Acting, music, dance and drama, “have been experiencing fluctuating demand,” increased competition and national decline in interest is the explanation. The review has considered the usual stuff, “how well the curriculum aligns with current industry needs … and academic standards.” But what it will more than likely to come down to is, “the viability of the program(s) considering revenue generated per student, cost of delivery and margin.”
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After years of union and management failure to agree on how, the Fair Work Commission has sorted out applying the government’s casual conversion law to universities. Legislation passed in 2022 gives workers the right to continuing jobs after their second fixed-term contract. This upset university and medical research employers because it did not account for projects with fixed term funding. And it alarmed the National Tertiary Education Union, which worried how the requirement could be incorporated into individual university enterprise agreements. And so, there was an exemption while they sorted things out and another one when they didn’t. Followed by a third at which point the FWC got involved, proposing changes to wording of the Higher Education Award, so that the law will apply as of November.
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There was a song and dance in Adelaide last year over plans to pull down live music pub, The Crown and Anchor and build a student accommodation tower on the site. Premier Peter Malinauskas made the issues his own and now the pub will be “partially” demolished while the student digs are built. The Cranker will trade from the site of a now vacant pub until the tower is finished and will return then. All politics is local.
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The Australian Research Council invites nominations for its College of Experts, which among other tasks, assesses and ranks applications for National Competitive Grant Schemes. High priority disciplines include pure mathematics. This might be because people can’t be bothered, given how rarely maths researchers win grants. Quantum physicists are also needed – maybe they are too busy with funded research to bother.
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Parliament sits for the Budget, week after next, which might give the Government, Greens permitting, time to push the Fee Free TAFE bill through the Senate. The upper house committee considering the legislation gives it a tick, so all that stands in its way is the Coalition winning – it thinks private providers should have been included. “By prioritising one type of provider over another, the Albanese Labor government is signalling to prospective students that they should only consider pursuing careers linked to TAFE courses,” Coalition committee member’s state. That’s exactly what the government wants.
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Regulator TEQSA asks for feedback on interim advice for HE providers on how to deal with “external actors” on campus – “in 2024, multiple Australian universities experienced protests and encampments on campus related to conflict in the Middle East.” TEQSA suggests a bunch of things, including a statement at entrances that “outlines conditions associated with access to campus.”
It might be too late for ANU, Macquarie U, QUT and Uni Sydney, which the regulator is asking about how they handled antisemitism. If TEQSA is not happy with responses it could place conditions on their registration – the suggestion is certainly made. A couple of weeks back TEQSA CEO Mary Rusell told Senate Estimates it was investigating an unnamed university over its management of antisemitism on campus. “If the university’s own work has not already addressed those gaps, we would expect to place conditions to ensure that is done,” she said.
But what about Uni Melbourne, which all but lost control of its main campus during protests last year? New VC Emma Johnston has probably done enough for TEQSA to leave it alone (TWTW, March 7). Last week she issued new rules for protests on campus, which cannot be indoors, must not obstruct or “unreasonably disrupt activities or operations.” Sanctions against students who break them include a ban on sitting exams. It can be a serious misconduct matter for staff.
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The pace is picking up on Australia’s Economic Accelerator, the ten-year research commercialisation program created by the Coalition and continued by Labor, with the award of stage-two Ignite Grants. They are for stage-gated projects that reach Technology Level Three-Five – prototypes and testing. Some 155 projects share $59m. The awards are on-brand with this government’s National Reconstruction Fund priorities, including medical science (46), “enabling capabilities” (engineering, data science and related) (34) and renewables/low emissions (32). As with every other grant program, the Big Five did well, UNSW (24), Uni Melbourne (22) Sydney (12), Uni Queensland (12), Monash (seven). For those that make it, next is Level Six – a functioning prototype.
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There is no faulting the private HE lobby for frankness. Independent Higher Education Australia warns the creation of ATEC will, “add yet another later of costly bureaucracy to an already heavily regulated sector. Nor is IHEA enthused by the perhaps imminent agency’s leadership, saying the Commission’s announced interim commissioners, “give the sector no comfort.” For readers just back from Mars, the trio are all from the team that brought you the Accord, Mary O’Kane, Barney Glover and Larissa Behrendt. Plus, IHEA wants ATEC to stick not its bib into other agencies, proposing that “policy levers currently available to existing regulators such as compliance reporting on quality issues, should be explicitly removed from ATEC’s remit.” Which rather assumes the Government will be in office after the election. AHEIA will have nothing to worry about if the Coalition gets up. Education shadow Sarah Henderson says there is no “compelling case” for ATEC.
