“Monash is the most sought-after university to study at in 2018, with one in four Victorian students putting us as their first preference,” MU, via Facebook yesterday.

“This afternoon VTAC released first round undergraduate offers, with four out of the top five most popular Victorian courses being UniMelb degrees,” the University of Melbourne tweeted around the same time.

Before Christmas the Australian Academy of Science and Science and Science and Technology Australia wrote to the prime minister urging him to rectify the absence of a science minister in cabinet. “Four science ministers in three years have made it difficult enough for the minister of the day to provide leadership and for the science sector to feel any degree of certainty. No science minister at all makes it impossible,” they warned. Mr Turnbull has not replied.

“Capping student numbers is a short-term measure not a long term solution, Innovative Research Universities head and Flinders U VC Colin Stirling warns. It is also unfair, denying “access to life changing opportunities,” as well as being out of touch with the times. While the DDS grew Australian universities enrolments by 200 000, to one million in the same period China increased its university student population by five million. “We can’t afford an under-educated workforce compared to Asian powerhouses,” he says.

And he warns that the funding freeze will put “downward pressure” on high-cost programmes on “disciplines in need,” in science, engineering and health.

Nor is Professor Stirling impressed with the government’s ideas for objectives universities will have to meet to secure growth places when the two-year freeze ends. “The metrics floated so far, graduation rates, attrition, time to complete, are goals from the ‘80s. Students now have much more complicated lives, they juggle work and study, attrition is very often independent of university. Even the idea of employability – if Flinders graduates a self-employed entrepreneur with a part-time job the government would view this as a failure because they are not employed full-time.”

Nor has the demand driven system failed on these sorts of measures, with graduate employment and student satisfaction both in the 80s. “Over the life of the demand driven system the attrition needed barely moved, Professor Stirling says.

“We are seeing people deriding the sector and its performance by anecdote, but the plural of anecdote is not data,” he adds.

Professor Stirling says the IRU would welcome “ a review of the entire post school education system, to meet the needs of the economy and young Australians.”

PhD students look beyond their ivory towers, demonstrated by a new survey of their engaging outside the academy. Some 58 per cent of STEM researchers and (a surprising) 44 per cent of HASS scholars say their research, “is oriented towards industry or society,” Peter Bentley, Emmaline Bexley and Mollie Dollinger  report in a new study for the Australian Council of Graduate Research, based on responses from 3700 PhD students at a representative sample of ten universities.

Overall, few of them actually engage outside the academy, while 39 per cent of all students had participated in lectures/seminars with non-university organisations just 7 per cent had either paid/unpaid work related to their research outside the university. But this does not mean they aren’t interested in a wider perspective. ACGR adds that over 70 per cent of doctoral students report “they had benefited from external contact or advice on their PhD from non-university organisations.”

Denise Cuthbert from ACGR also points to the unexpected high-level of engagement among HASS students, suggesting it is, “an opportunity for universities and the communities they serve, to work together to ensure even deeper levels of engagement and the involvement of individuals from the university.”

Overall, Professor Cuthbert says the survey provides, a chance “for universities and government to rethink the dynamics of university-end user relationships in research training.”

The research originally included eleven universities but while the University of Melbourne was part of the 2016 pilot, surveying half its PhD students, it declined to participate in the full implementation for the other half last year. This seems strange, given the authors are University of Melbourne researchers.

Tama Leaver and Gwyneth Peaty will teach, “how the media got social,” for Curtin U, via edX, starting Monday week. The course examines how technology created the base for social media to become “the default mode of the mobile web we use today.”

“Hot chilli added to food can help with weight loss,” Victoria University announces. Perhaps, because incinerating your tongue isn’t appetizing. But it could be a case of pain for less gain. As chilli researcher Anthony Zulli explains; “fundamentally, weight loss can only result from a controlled diet and regular physical exercise.”

Just before the MYEFO funding freeze in December, Griffith University offered staff a 7.5 per cent pay rise across the next enterprise agreement, more, a learned reader suggests, than universities which now know their newly straightened circumstance will propose. Certainly the University of Queensland said last year it would not make an offer until the size of government funding cuts was clear.

But Griffith may have wriggle room – the National Tertiary Education Union did not agree to last year’s offer, calling it an “opening gambit,” (CMM December 15). The gambit might be as good as they could have got.

“Restoration works are underway on our historic clock tower,” ANU Art and Design reports. Insofar as works completed in 1939 are “historic”.

The University of Sydney branch of the National Tertiary Education Union had a big 2017 and set out its wins in a debrief, here. The big ones include jobs saved, an industry-leading pay-rise and the establishment of worker representation in university decision making. “Our fight against rampant managerialism at the University will be assisted by some new participation structures,” the comrades advise.

Professional staff will be represented on committees covering “key areas of the university” and there will be “local democratic processes … for establishing and reviewing academic workload policies in all academic workplaces across the university.”

This will be useful given the union says management’s strategic plan means, “a tidal wave of change proposals will likely be released in coming months.”