Our “You Don’t Say!” correspondent reports La Trobe U has an updated Student Communications Policy, “to improve how we communicate with students.”
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Central Queensland U becomes the 14th university to have an enforceable undertaking imposed by the Fair Work Ombudsman. It is for breaching enterprise agreements over a decade by not paying staff $1.3m in the correct rate for wages and entitlements. The university reported itself to the FWO and attributed underpayments to “incorrect configuration of its payroll system; over-reliance on manual processes; staff turnover and staff errors.”
The FWO slugs CQU with a $30,000 contrition payment to a charity and requires it to fix systems. As Ombudsman actions go, this is not severe – in July Uni NSW was slugged $500,000 for underpaying staff $32m. The FWO acknowledges CQU “self-reported” its issues.
But as with other universities, that only happened after the FWO issued a system wide-warning that it was watching.
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Major General Mick Ryan now has a PhD from Uni Queensland. His dissertation is on “application of historical military stories in the intellectual preparation of military leaders.” How the retired Australian army officer found the time eludes TWTW. He writes regularly on Australia’s strategic circumstances and covers current conflicts in deep-expertise informed detail. Want to know how tech is changing war and what is going on at the front in Ukraine? Dr Ryan is your man.
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Standard & Poor’s really rates UNSW, even while acknowledging government policy will lower international student enrolment and thus reduce its surplus this year. Its underlying result for ’25 was $365m, on $3.8bn revenue. “We continue to view UNSW as having a deep talent pool with high-calibre managers. An experienced council, comprising a diverse range of experienced and influential members, supports its management team.” The ratings agency expects; “operating margins remain sound, financial resources remain strong, and debt stays low over the next two years.”
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The Innovative Research Universities group was the most data-driven of the lobbies when it came to making its members’ case; and still is, in its new incarnation as the 2050 Alliance. It shows in the evidence underpinning its recommendations to the House of Reps committee inquiry into educational attainment, including:
- Lifting male post-school attainment rates: they lag the national post-school 73% rate and really lag the 80% objective. Only 36.8% of men aged 25-29 holde an HE qualification and it’s worse in the regions, men: 20%, women: 35%. Low SES males represent just 5.1% of CSP enrolments.
- Lifting socio-economic equality in study: Low SES students account for 24% of nursing enrolments but 10% of medicine. There are inconsistent representations of gender across disciplines.
“Growth through equity means ensuring that university graduates – including our nurses, teacher, doctors and engineers – closely reflect the Australian population. There are moral, social and economic reasons for a more equal spread – to meet skills shortages, foster social cohesion, and maximise opportunity for as many students as possible to pursue their ambition and talent,” the 2050Alliance argues.
“We should try to avoid low SES students becoming concentrated in certain courses or universities.” it urges.
The lobby also adds to its adamant opposition to Job Ready Graduates. “There is no credible evidence that graduates in humanities and creative arts have employment outcomes to justify the high cost of their courses.” The lobby calls for, “an equitable student contribution system based on projected potential lifetime earnings.”
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Curtin U has a statement for international students on why authoritarian regimes stick their bibs into campus life and how they do it, with a link to a support page. “Remember, no one has the right to use hate speech, make or suggest threats, attempt to censor, or silence others, create fear through intimidation and demand or coerce changes to academic subject matter.”
Quite right too. But why now and does it have a government in mind? Curtin states that it is a regular start of Semester thing. University stats have no entry for Iranian students, although there are 1,600 from China on-shore.
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ATEC commissioner Stephen Duckett does not explain the work he is leading on university teaching costs in a new article on health system funding – but it will give you the idea. With Jane London (Uni Melbourne) he argues against Primary Health Networks compiling their own separate data, when, “average needs are often broadly predictable, based on population characteristics and consistent across Australia.”
“A better use of the public purse,” they argue, “would be to define this average need centrally, drawing on large datasets and a deeper evidence base than is typically available to individual PHNs.
“The process of defining the average might be a consultative one, making explicit that defining needs, even average ones, is a social process. Identifying this ‘average’ might also be accompanied by identifying what an average response ought to be, what works and is cost-effective, further avoiding reinventing the wheel. Data could also be produced centrally about regional differences to facilitate localisation work.”
Universities preparing to defend their cost structure as unavoidably unique might want to start thinking of a new argument.
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The House of Reps committee inquiry on educational attainment attracted nearly 100 submissions from all sorts of ed-organisations and individuals, including academics. But not the Australian Council of Deans of Education, which tells TWTW that it “encouraged members, recognising that institutions were best placed to provide submissions reflecting their own expertise, priorities and perspectives.”
It did not work that well. Out of 35 universities offering initial teacher education courses, nine filed submissions.
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The Australian Space Agency issues a statement “to position Australia’s space sector to meet demand, address national resilience needs, and maximise opportunity within a rapidly evolving global environment.”
The idea is for the Feds to take “thematic actions where Government activity enables conditions for investment, coordination and delivery.”
And so the Agency nominates four target areas, where Australia’s “capability differentiates globally, has market potential, and supports national resilience: spaceflight, microgravity ecosystems, space platforms and exploration tech.
There will now be consultations, following which, “the Government will provide further information on the actions to be taken to support our vision.”
There is no mention of public investment, leaving science entrepreneurs to do the full Clooney, floating alone in out-of-finance-space.