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Terrible timing for UoW in India
This week Nine Newspapers reported five Australian universities, including the University of Wollongong, are not accepting student applications from some states of India, for fear of fraud
The story ran widely in India, but yesterday UoW stated it, “has not placed any bans or restrictions on applications from Indian students, nor on students from any specific Indian states or regions.
“In fact, rather than introducing restrictions, we have streamlined our application process for all international students, including Indian students.”
It’s a message UoW needs to be heard for a couple of reputational reasons – for a start it has 2500 Indian students at its home campus and in Dubai and may well want more.
Plus, and a prodigious plus it is too, UoW is “on-track” to open its own “teaching base” in Gujurat state.
Guess which story will be quoted by the university’s competitors there.
There’s more in the Mail
in Expert Opinion
Michael Sankey (Charles Darwin U) on AI in teaching, HERE
and in Features
Individual assessment tasks don’t necessarily support the development of higher level graduate attributes or employment outcomes,” argue Nicholas Charlton (Griffith U) and Richard Newsham-West. What’s needed is a focus on programme, rather than course, learning outcomes. New in Commissioning Editor Sally Kift’s celebrated series, Needed now in teaching and learning.
ARC Review message: ministers must butt out
“The negative consequences of the perception of arbitrary intervention have been significant both within Australia and with our international partners”
The first review of the Australian Research Council Act is comprehensive in consideration of improving its performance.
But to get anywhere with that, the review had to deal with an issue as much politics than policy, loathed ministerial vetos of national competitive grant proposals. In particular, the six Discovery Programme grants recommended by the ARC but knocked back by then acting education minister Stuart Robert on Christmas Eve (CMM January 25 2022), because they did not meet the then government’s national interest test.
And on this the review panel (Margaret Sheil (QUT), Susan Dodds (La Trobe U) and Mark Hutchinson (Uni Adelaide) are adamant,
“individual grants under the NCGP should not require approvals by the minister, but recommendations and approvals should be made by those best placed to judge the intrinsic merit of the proposals. There should be appropriate checks and balances and the minister should retain the means to intervene in the extraordinary circumstance of a potential threat to national security. Where the minister does exercise directions in relation to the NCGP, these would require transparency and Parliamentary oversight.”
Which Education Minister Jason Clare will likely wear. In an interview after his Universities Australia conference speech last year, he said; “Labor governments have never interfered to veto grants. The only exception I could ever imagine to that would be on the grounds of national security,” (CMM July 11 2022).
WA Gov to help international students – some are already helping themselves
There’s $13.1m in new money, “to support student welfare and continue developing a sustainable pipeline of future students”
This follows $41m to attract and assist international students in the ’22-’23 budget.
The new funding includes $5m in grants for internationals “commencing studies” in WA, “in acknowledgement of the importance of financial assistance for international students.”
Last week Study Perth and the state’s private education industry association warned the state’s international education reputation is at risk from agents and students gaming the visa system, by enrolling at “high-level” providers then switching to “lower level courses” (CMM April 14).
Sheil panel’s five big ways for a better research system
The stand-outs in the ARC review are
* protection for discovery research: by incorporating the “commitment to funding pure basic, strategic basic and applied research into the purposes of the National Competitive Grants Programme” in the ARC Act.
* reducing the application burden: with a two-stage process, culling props at a two-five page peer-reviewed expression of interest stage with those passing developing full proposals
* ditching existing performance reviews, Excellence for Research in Australia and Engagement and Impact) but not replace them with metrics-formula, “because of the evidence that such metrics can be biased or inherently flawed.”
* empowering the ARC to review research performance by,
– working with regulator TEQSA to create measures of research performance for university registration
– developing “a framework for regular evaluation and reporting on the outcomes of the national competitive grants programme”
– “a programme to evaluate current and future research capabilities” starting with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers and research
* protect the ARC: by establishing a “board with responsibilities for appointment of the ARC CEO, the College of Experts and approvals of individual grants,” under the NCGP
Prescient Peter Coaldrake
A year back TEQSA’s chief commissioner warned the risk of contract cheating in student work was going to get worse (CMM March 14 ’22)
And lo it has with, ChatGPT, let alone successor GPT4.
Which makes well-timed the Tertiary Education Quality and Skills Agency’s new eight on-line modules on contract cheating and deterrence, by Kane Murdoch (Macquarie U) and Cath Ellis (UNSW).
The course covers the whys, hows and what to do about cases.
Professor Ellis talks about AI in teaching and learning in CMM Expert Opinion HERE
Rave reviews for the Review
Australian Research Council well-wishers love it
Early responses to the review were uniformly positive
Australian Academy of Science: “recommendations in the review are so important and sensible that the academy looks forward to their implementation as soon as practicable”
Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering: “help(s) strengthen Australian research, reduce administrative burdens, and minimise the potential for political interference”
Australian Technology Network: “important that ARC provides a trusted and stable cornerstone for Australia’s research system … if adopted, the recommendations of the Sheil Review will go a long way to achieving this.”
Group of Eight: “a vital first step towards ensuring Australia’s research funding agency is fit for purpose and can meet the future needs of the nation. … the review recommendations are also important in the context of the current Universities Accord process.
Innovative Research Universities: “ARC can play a valuable leadership role in increasing the impact, accessibility, equity and diversity of Australian research. This will require new resourcing for the ARC to deepen and expand its capabilities, build new collaboration with universities, and connect with broader reforms”
Science and Technology Australia: “a comprehensive, thoughtful blueprint for modernisation”
Universities Australia: “ a path forward for the ARC and we look forward to a favourable government response.”
Achievements
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences announces 2023 members, including
Jonathan Bland-Hawthorn (Uni Sydney), Ann McGrath (ANU), Lynette Russell (Monash U)