TEQSA invites people who must really need the money to join its temporary work register across 14 areas. Candidates must be “high-performing team members who are passionate about contributing to the excellence of Australian higher education.” Because nothing screams passion like the HE threshold standards.
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UTS VC Andrew Parfitt announced late yesterday what happens next on job cuts, following staff feedback on the original change proposal. Work now required means no word on “individual outcomes” (FC suspects he means sackings) before February, although he did acknowledge the process, “has been protracted and unsettling for us all.”
Specific moderations on the original prop include:
Academics: Law will likely achieve proposed FTE staff reductions by voluntary redundancies and Science may mostly manage with VRs. The FTE cut for Biz is reduced and is anticipated to be reached “through voluntary measures.” The same will likely apply in other portfolios, “however there is still some work to do to ensure staff levels match the future course and subject portfolio.”
Courses: “there was considerable feedback on balancing the public good of delivering some courses with our capacity to resource these to ensure high quality relevant offerings.”
Areas of “considerable attention” are:
Teacher education: stays, but “fewer staff will be required than at present, and reductions will therefore be made”
International studies: “the faculty has put forward a significantly redesigned and transformed version that will allow students to complete faster” but it will need fewer staff to proceed.
Public health: “nearly all of our postgraduate public health programs including in the areas of palliative care and diabetes education” will continue. But UG goes – consistently low enrolments.
Merger: The Law, Business, Transdisciplinary merger is off. The TD School head will report to the Law dean but the school “will remain a distinct and separate academic unit.”
The VC will brief staff in person and online Monday week.
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CSIRO does a Rumsfeld, announcing a “key focus area“ for research is, “disruptive science and engineering to unlock the unknown … .“ The agency does not advise if these will be known or unknown unknowns.
But what is inexplicable is news the agency will get additional money in MYEFO next month. Attorney General Michelle Rowland announced it in the Reps Wednesday, responding to a what sounded like a Dorothy Dixer from Rebekha Sharkie (Independent SA). Ms Sharkie wanted to know would the Government sling CSIRO an extra $75m to stop it cutting 350 jobs.
And Ms Rowlands (representing Industry and Science Minister Tim Ayres) responded it would and the amount would be announced “at an appropriate time.” But why did not Senator Ayres claim the glory? Perhaps because right about then Independent senator for the ACT David Pocock and Greens were successfully moving in the upper house an Economics Reference Committee inquiry into CSIRO “funding and resourcing,” to report by March 31.
So that is that and CSIRO management can cancel the tumbrils? Maybe, maybe not.
In the Reps, Minister Rowland assured members, “we want CSIRO's research facilities to be safe, fit for purpose and capable of securing Australia's critical scientific capabilities.” This is in line with one of the cases CSIRO management makes for staff cuts = that they are needed to pay for the cost of research kit and maintaining facilities.
And In the Senate, Minister Ayres stuck to the organisation’s other argument, that CSIRO is picking research priorities, which he supports. “I expect every research dollar, every dollar that goes into science, to be spent consistently with those national science priorities. I recognise that organisational change— the changes that have been signalled—is very difficult indeed. … But the future focus of this organisation, my responsibility as minister and this government's commitment to the CSIRO and to science are to make sure that we have an organisation that is fit for purpose.”
We will hear that a lot from Senator Ayres, plus however much is in MYEFO until the Senate committee reports.
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The OECD includes a chapter on R&D incentives in its new guide to member tax regimes and if there is evidence therein to support science lobby laments that Australia is way worst in the world, FC can’t find it. But the usual suspects will.
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Back in July, Uni Sydney received an independent report that recommended speaking up on human rights and not investing in companies that make military kit which are on the government’s Defence Strategic Goods List.
Chancellor David Thodey now says the former is adopted but as to the latter, the university agrees up to a point. Mr Thodey tells staff investment is nixed in companies sanctioned by the Five Eyes intel alliance (Aus, Canada, NZ, the UK and US) and which otherwise make munitions banned under conventions adopted by Australia. But in bad news for politicians looking to allege the university is way too woke, the Chancellor says it can uphold human rights and humanitarian law while “supporting defence and national security capacity building as important and legitimate endeavours for a research-intensive Australian university. “
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The ARC announces a Discovery Early Career Research Award round, with a miserable 13% success rate. As usual, engineers did best – picking up 67 of 200 awards, although that is only because they made so many applications– their success rate was bang-on the overall average. Group of Eight universities collected their standard 60% of awards. Although Uni SA and Uni Adelaide in combination did not generate the bonanza that friends of their combining in January hope for, (UoA nine and Uni SA one).
Marcus Korb, from the Early and Mid-Career Researchers Forum, laments the low success rate, attributing the 1530 applications to “deep structural uncertainty” about the ARC’s new grant structure and the new mentoring scheme, where “ individual senior researchers decide over the future of EMCRs.”
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Industry and Science Minister Tim Ayres announces unspecified money in MYEFO for a national AI Safety Institute, based in his Department and in biz next year.
The brief will be to advise the feds on regulatory reform and capability gaps in government, monitor AI models and work with researchers, “to make sure government is getting the very best advice.” Good-o but why in-house, when ANU, which has dedicated public funding as a national research resource, is just across the lake?
It would give deposed VC Genevieve Bell something to do, when she returns from exile to run the School of Cybernetics. Just a thought.
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Uni WA and Uni Oxford combine to offer “events … exploring the challenges and opportunities of generative artificial intelligence in higher education.” Kelly Webb-Davies (Oxon) “will explore how AI can be positioned in ways that enrich and transform academic work.” Celeste Rodriguez Louro (UWA) will critique “the common comparison of generative AI to a calculator.” Register for the WAXFORD sessions HERE.
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Jason Clare says, “the reading wars are over. We know what works. We know the tools and techniques that work to teach children to read.”
Not quite. Nathan Caruana (Flinders U) and colleagues report research on using social robots to help five to nine-year-olds learning to read. They found, “children are very much open to interacting with reading robot companions.”
Lisa Furlong (Flinders U) and colleagues report that of 309 early reading skill apps reviewed, only 85 rate for “development of foundational reading.” They want “greater regulation” of app stores and certification of those that “align with evidence-based methods of early reading instruction.”
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The feds are funding ten more med school places a year at Charles Sturt, Flinders, Griffith, Monash, Melbourne, New England, New South Wales, Notre Dame Australia, Sydney and Wollongong. They convinced the Commonwealth they will “focus the places on primary care training with more rotations in general practice to help address GP shortages in underserved rural and suburban areas.”
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A united front proposes the Victorian Government legislate more staff and student members of university councils. The Chancellors’ Council, the National Tertiary Education Union and the Council of Postgraduate aAsociations combine to call for 20% of university governing bodies to be staff elected (minimum three) with at least two elected students. The State’s Legislative Council committee inquiry into university governance might find this appealing.
But why a triumvirate? Sure, the chancellors are making noises about changing their managerialist ways but the union and CAPA have HE community opinion without them.