And the mixed metaphor award for May goes to Universities Australia’s first comment on the Coalition’s budget response. “International students not low-hanging fruit in race to the bottom.”
***
In Victoria, a Legislative Assembly committee is inquiring into university governance and held two days of inquiries last week, including one devoted entirely to Vice-Chancellors. Alas, there are no transcripts of their eminences’ evidence as yet, but Uni Melbourne has helpfully released its recommendations to the inquiry, which generally back the Jason Clare created Expert Council on University Governance’s final report.
The first one makes its’ position plain; the university wants any increase in elected members on councils, to “preserve the functional balance of skills, expertise and diversity and minimise the total size of council where possible.”
This appears to be a polite “nothing-doing” to demands half of university councils be elected and that a majority of those members be from the public sector.
***
The “stronger together” team running for the NTEU national leadership is campaigning on, “excellent pay and conditions, a stronger union in every workplace, (and) a well-funded, high-quality tertiary education sector.”
So how, a reader asks, will incumbent president Alison Barnes and colleagues fill in the time after they get that done in the first weeks of their four-year term?
***
The Feds’ enthusiasm for Free TAFE does not extend to releasing performance stats on the scheme that started in 2023 as Fee-Free TAFE. But the Victorian Auditor General Office offers an indication, with a review of the State’s similar scheme, before Labor took the idea national. VAGO analyses everything, but three pars demonstrate what the $700m spend did not deliver.
“ Free TAFE has cost the government between 33.4 and 94.2% more for each eligible enrolment than it would have if not for the initiative.
“Changes in reported outcomes for students in Free TAFE courses were similar to those in other courses at TAFEs and to those in comparable courses at private providers, before and after Free TAFE started.
“There has been a high take-up of Free TAFE for eligible students. However, proportions of priority cohorts participating in Free TAFE courses have not significantly changed.”
FC awaits national training minister Andrew Giles releasing way better numbers for the way more expensive national scheme.
***
Jason Clare had a look at Edith Cowan U’s grand new Perth CBD campus the other day. “I'm going to get into a bit of trouble for this, but this is about as good as it gets,” he said. Not from Perth’s other three public universities who are all focused on whether the State Government decides on merging them in one combination or another. Edith Cowan U has a pass in the process, apparently because nobody wants to divert attraction away from its schmick new city site.
***
The rusted-on relationship between union and ANU Interim VC Rebekah Brown is corroding. A fortnight back, National Tertiary Education Union ACT chief Lachlan Clohesy said, “nobody gets everything right but she has got a lot right.” But this week, he was letting her know what she got wrong in the end-days of former VC Genevieve Bell’s restructure.
FOI’d correspondence from July includes HASS dean Bronwyn Parry complaining to Brown, then ANU Provost, about staff, “who are repeatedly misrepresenting the work I am doing and have done, to consult widely and to produce a balanced plan.”
The IVC was all sympathetic ears, “really sorry that this crazy practise is happening … just so you know there is significant level crazy happening elsewhere across the organisation.”
This is not the party-line, as Dr Clohesy and union ANU branch president Millan Pintos-Lopez make clear in a complaint about “the attitudes and behaviour of Professor Parry.”
Nor are they happy with Professor Brown’s response back then “members are also concerned about your implicit support, as Provost.”
Given the union’s successful campaign against the last VC , “concerned” is not a word anybody at ANU should take lightly.
***
Cooperative Research Australia (successor to the former CRC Association) promotes a new free guide for businesses, “on how to engage effectively with Cooperative Research Centres and turn collaboration into real business value.” At least those of them who know anything at all about CRCs. This awareness enhancer may, or may not have anything to do with the recent Strategic Examination of Research and Development, which recommended new funding for many programs, including CRCs be reallocated to the proposed National Innovation Council.
***
Uni Tasmania’s Wicking Centre has long led the world for MOOCs that serve society – no cost information for everybody dealing with dreadful diseases, dementia, Parkinsons, Motor Neurone, traumatic brain injury. Now there is a MOOC from its U Tas neighbour, Menzies IMR, on preventing stroke, HERE . FC is long baffled while government does not fund MOOCs for people who need to understand, and fast, health and medical problems that make misery in their lives and those of people they love.
***
The ever-considerate Australian Research Council has decided to run two additional grant rounds this year, for Future Fellowships and the Industrial Transformation Research Program. Maybe they found a few bob under the office couch cushions. Plus, “in response to sector feedback” announcement timeframes of “most” outcomes will be reduced to two-weeks. But there is no word on pace picking-up for the time taken to assess applications. People who met the November ’25 filing deadline for a 2026 Future Fellowship will learn how they went this August.