“Knock twice and ask for Milton”

ANU’s Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis announces, “new directions for inflation fighting workshop.” Turns out to be the subject, not where to find it.

There’s more in the Mail

In Features this morning

Garry Carnegie (RMIT) on the transformative power of rankings. “What we value is what we are, what we measure is what we become.”

Reporting changes can make it hard to know how many casuals universities employ. James Guthrie (Macquarie U) demonstrates the difficulty and why the actual numbers matter.

Michael Healy and Jason Brown on the new QS Employability rankings – and the need for way better ways to measure employability success.

What’s coming to campus

“What wizardry is this?”

There’s a bunch of tech that can enthral a live class – but do that many academics have a clue how to use it? Chie Adachi (Deakin U), Merlin Crossley (UNSW) Ray Fleming (Google) and Amanda White (UTS explore at ideas at CMM and partners’ coming conference on what the return to campus will be like. Details here.

Todays Headline Story

Rankings decline delayed (again)

The all but universally expected COVID-caused crunch in research performance scores does not show up at the top end of the Times Higher Education engineering and computing results

Engineering:

THE calls this as a good year for Australia with the local top eight all in the global 100. But the eight aren’t all as is easily assumed.

UNSW is = 46th in the world, followed by Monash U (55th), Uni Melbourne (57th), Uni Sydney (65th) just ahead of Uni Queensland (66th). But Uni Wollongong (83rd) is ahead of two other Go8 institutions, Uni Adelaide (92nd) and ANU (93rd) in the global top hundred.

This is another in a string of ranking wins for UNSW, which has lifted 13 places in THE engineering from its 2019 number–a solid improvement at the top end where gains are often incremental. And it follows a 20-place improvement in the recent Academic Ranking of World Universities (CMM August 17).

Computing:

Uni Melbourne is in its accustomed top local spot at 51st in the world, up 13 places. It is ahead of ANU (=56th), UNSW (=65th), UTS (70th), Uni Sydney (74th) and Monash U (=93rd).

(THE also provides a combined technology and engineering ranking, which skews the discipline results).

Admirably avoiding the obvious

Charles Sturt U wants volunteers to help establish a “pollinator garden” to bolster biodiversity. With admirable restraint, CSU does not call it (sorry) a working bee.

Unis not ducking hard data

There’s an exclusion that appears interesting in the new Graduate Outcomes Survey (from the team that delivers the excellent Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching)

The GOS (CMM yesterday) reports questions relating to generic skills and teaching were dropped from the survey “at the request of the QILT working group.” The overall satisfaction measure remained.

“Aha!” thought CMM, “universities who fear grads thinking badly of them wanted the data out.” But no – in fact universities value graduate reports on their performance and observers suggest some may even pay to have it collected for their own use.

The reasons the questions went is data housekeeping – there are three sets of satisfaction data across the QILT suite (students, graduates, employers) which don’t all align. Officials also feared complex questions in the grad survey could be driving down response rates.

What a difference a state makes 

Uni Sunshine Coast wants students set to start placements, (as many in health disciplines are) to get vaxed, so it has a pop-up clinic on campus. They need to wear masks while there but there is no vax requirement. Way different to NSW and Victoria.

Appointment, achievement

Rachel Wilson (Uni Sydney) and Scott Eacott (UNSW) win the NSW Education Research Awards from the state branch of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders.

 ANU announces women’s safety and equality advocate Brittany Higgins is inaugural visiting fellow at its Global Institute for Women’s Leadership.