Campus Morning Mail summer edition

From the Centre for Announcing the Obvious

The University of Adelaide reports teens lose sleep on school nights while they muck about with e-games and social media. “We believe it would be useful to develop public health guidelines to educate young people, parents and teachers about responsible use,” says Dr Daniel King from the School of Psychology. Yep, that’s what we need, guidelines. So much more effective than taking phones and tablets off them.

Micro markets

Everybody who argues free market economics is not natural should don their outrage armour and prepare for battle. A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science argues an economic market framework, “is a useful tool to generate specific and interesting predictions about microbial interactions, including the evolution of partner discrimination, hoarding strategies, specialised versus diversified mutualistic services, and the role of spatial structures, such as flocks and consortia”.

Blokey bunkum

The University of South Australia really needs to get serious about claims a couple of courses on men’s health are cover for misogyny. Despite a blanket denial yesterday the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations is not convinced. “The university says that these courses will study men’s health, but a brief outline of the proposed course offering includes units which examine gender bias in literature, male power and privilege and portrayals of men in popular culture,” CAPA Women’s Officer, Rukshala Seneviratne says. And CAPA President Megan Hopper agrees this is very bad news indeed, “with so many universities struggling to maintain their women’s and gender studies programs, it would be better to see attention directed toward improving the resourcing of gender studies as a whole, rather than focusing resources on an already privileged cohort.” Privileged cohort? She means blokes. This is a broader debate, and one where I am guessing UniSA will not want to be a battleground. It wasn’t just CAPA who decided the university’s statement was not enough- the Sydney Morning Herald followed the yarn yesterday. The university needs to shut this one down before the accusations go viral – it is the sort of story fact-free or not, that can stick.

Merlin to weave more magic at Kensington’s Camelot

(Sorry.) Merlin Crossley will serve a second term as dean of science at the University of New South Wales, it’s a job he is more than up to and people often wonder when he will move on to fiefdom of his own.  Perhaps nobody can match Lord Hilmer’s munificence.

Will Margaret mind?

Well done Bernard Lane (this morning’s The Australian) for ferreting out  the proposed Monash  course structure (which – what a surprise! –  resembles the University of Melbourne model not much). It seems the project is ready to go, with university opinion leaders lined up. Apart, perhaps for one, incoming vice chancellor Margaret Gardner. who takes over in September It is hard to see how she could be involved in the design – given work was done last year and her appointment was only announced at the end of last year.   Coming from teaching-intensive RMIT it is also hard to imagine Professor Gardner not having an opinion – I wonder if we will get to hear it.