Cook Islands’ PM Mark Brown has just visited Monash U, “to discuss collaborative opportunities.” There is no word of the latter opening a campus in the former but it would be such a relief for those in the Monash community bored with the long-flight to the university’s Tuscan campus.
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The great regulatory pile-on continues, with the Northern Territory Government extending its authority over Charles Darwin U. Education Minister Jo Hersey announces changes to the University’s Act to “strengthen oversight” and that “accountability will be improved” in the Government/university agreement. “Reforms are focused on improved student outcomes.” The exercise of authority follows stuff-ups in CDU’s training division and new KPIs will focus on “better outcomes” for apprentices and trainees” but the government could certainly have a look at HE and research. The state’s other HE provider, the Batchelor Institute for Indigenous Tertiary Education, is also in the frame.
State Governments could follow, what with public universities, ex-ANU, being created by local legislation. This may strike some Premiers as unwise. Question Times are unruly enough without the Opposition asking about university scandals. Then again, the temptation to intervene is oft irresistible. Queensland Premier David Crisafulli stacked James Cook U’s Council the other month, when it raised the possibility of a name change and Peter Malinauskas decided that what South Australia needed was a university merger.
But whatever happens next, the NT has created another source of government oversight – standby for demarcation discussions involving the NT Gov, ATEC, TEQSA and ASQA.
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Jason Clare wished the Australian Research Council a happy 25th anniversary yesterday. It was his usual quality text, which is good, given it is going to be quoted back at him – quite a lot.
The Education Minister referred to wise funding decisions, WiFi, quantum computing, green energy, saying “the role of the ARC is to give our best researchers the opportunity to follow their best ideas” past, present and future. “We don’t know which research today will become part of the fabric of our lives in 2051. We don’t know what it will change. And we don’t know who will discover it. But somewhere in Australia today there is a researcher asking a question that could lead us there. Our job is to make sure they get the chance to find the answer,” he said
It’s a commitment to basic research – as long as it is in the national interest. “We can’t rely on importing discoveries made somewhere else. We can’t just be passive consumers of others’ ideas. We have to create knowledge too and make discoveries.
“ he AI race of the last few years has shown the importance of sovereign capability.”
Good-o but who gets to decide what capabilities to create and what disciplines will wither to pay for it?
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Goodish news and bad news on AI integrity.
Claude announces new versions of its Anthropic product, “will support machine-readable marking at launch” and “generated text will carry embedded watermarks.” Criticism that this will be easily manipulated and that SynthAI is already on to it began within hours.
But not even obvious made-up text is always picked up. The understatedly titled Problematic Paper Screener has a new ranking of publishers redacting “tortured articles.” These are mainly machine-produced papers that use confected expressions in place of well-known terms to confound plagiarism detectors. The journal Science points to “glucose bigotry” in place of “glucose intolerance.”
The Screener has a (very) long list of the percentage of tortured papers publishers have redacted. Among the big for-profits, SAGE redacted 89% of the 499 “tortured” papers it published, but Wiley 41% of 1255. Elsevier managed the same percentage out of 3,077.
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With a resolutely retrograde focus, TEQSA re-announces its 2022 guide, to “help students identify, avoid and report illegal academic cheating services.” As presumably distinct from all those law-abiding ones. But why bother warning people of an archaic technology, when students can use AI to do their own cheating?
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Teaching-research academic employment at the University of Sydney is an enterprise bargaining issue – again. The National Tertiary Education Union’s Peter Chen says his members want a floor for the percentage of such balanced roles and they do not want the union to negotiate with management for teaching-intensive continuing jobs.
The union also dug in during the last bargaining round, when Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott said he expected the 40% teaching 40% research 20% service model would remain for the majority but that he hoped for a discussion “whether a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach across an industrial agreement may not be the best outcome for our researchers, our teachers and the university as a whole.” (CMM August 10, 2021)
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After campus complaints, James Cook U pulls the plan to end the five-day study break before exams in each trimester. DVC E Mitch Parsell says the university has “learnt a lot about the importance of collecting student feedback.”
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The School of Education at Uni Melbourne offers a sign-of-the-times suggestion in its considered submission to the Senate committee inquiry into educational attainment;
“too many Australian students experience the senior secondary years as a narrow route organised around academic subjects, examinations and university entrance, even when their interests, strengths and future aspirations may be better served by more applied, technical, vocational or work-integrated learning.”
They suggest we follow Europeans, with “diversified senior secondary pathways, including high-quality vocational and technical learning opportunities,” which “would have a positive impact on student engagement and educational attainment across the Australian education system.”
Nothing the training lobby has not said for years, but now elite HE is agreeing.
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The research establishment announces a united front, with governing body members of the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Medical Research Advisory Board and the board of the Australian Research Council meeting, “to address shared challenges such as scientific trust and grant assessment and selection process reform.” So what did they talk about after lunch?