People get research helps us all – the pandemic proved that

But popularity does not set policy and researchers face new challenges of purpose and priorities. Join policy experts and opinion shapers at CMM-Twig Marketing’s on-line conference, starting tomorrow, “What’s next for the people who can save the world.”  Details HERE.

In Features this morning

Cathy Stone (Uni Newcastle), Sharron King (Uni SA College) and Chris Ronan (Country Universities Network) on how metro universities can best present to regional students. This week’s selection by Commissioning Editor Sally Kift for her celebrated series, Needed now in learning and teaching, HERE.

plus Merlin Crossley (UNSW) asks, “do you really need a committee on volcanos?

and Adrian Barnett (QUT) explains why he is alarmed by what the National Health and Medical Research Council wants to add to research approval guidelines HERE.

But joy is not unconfined at the Curtin U based National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education

Certainly, Education  Minister Jason Clare has promised $20.5m over four years, for the NCSEHE, but to do more, differently. “The centre has been around for a while.  And it does good research.  But I want to see a step change.  I want to see real results. That means trialling, evaluating, implementing and monitoring the sorts of things that will really shift the dial,” he told the Universities Australia dinner, last Wednesday.

And in an announcement Thursday, he added, “the centre will also work with universities and other education institutions to evaluate and improve their equity programmes.”

So with $5m pa for four years and the apparent promise of system-wide evaluative authority, what’s not to like?  And yet there is anxiety among some equity experts that the NCSEHE as now is will not be part of the “step-change”

They might be right. Curtin U issued a statement to CMM late Friday, “recognising the excellent research base from NCSEHE to date, the minister has asked that a new centre be formed  to focus on research translation.

“No plans have been finalised, but we envisage the new centre to be quite different albeit with some continuity with the past and using the research accumulated to date from NCSEHE and the broader literature.”

Which way is up for “a step-change”  Productivity Commission Michael Brennan points  to what might be a possible direction. In a speech to the Universities Australia conference last week Mr Brennan suggested, “the expansion of access created opportunities for a different-looking cohort of students, and many of them had the transformative experience that university can provide.

“But they were clearly a group with different qualities and needs, and one clear conclusion was that universities need to take their responsibilities that group of students seriously – not to assume that the student experience is generic and have a one-size fits all, volume based attitude to enrolment,” he said.

This appears in-line with Mr Clare’s announced objective of increasing the HE participation rate of low SES Australians to 20 per cent (a still un-reached goal set by then education minister Julia Gillard in 2020).

NCSEHE research is big on this – what might be the difference Mr Clare has in mind is his statement that the centre work with universities to “evaluate and improve their equity programmes.”

The campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union is calling for management to provide a 4 per cent pay rise, before bargaining begins for a new enterprise agreement

It follows a precedent for such a pay rise set by U Tas VC Rufus Black last week – a 4.6 per cent pay rise, with a one-off $1000 payment for staff earning under $80 000, “recognising that we are in an inflationary environment and cost of living pressures are affecting everyone,” (CMM July 4).

At Monash U, the union argues the 1 per cent rise due this week, under the old enterprise agreement is “ inadequate to inflation” and staff need 4 per cent more, “to keep our wages from falling in real terms.”

A 5 per cent rise would be in-line with what the NTEU wants per annum for the life of three year agreements across the country, now being, or due to be, negotiated.

The national union upped its original ask (4 per cent per annum for three years) when inflation first showed signs of taking off (CMM May 31).

Uni Sydney announced a 2.1 per cent increase plus a flat $1000 one-off, “in the context of increases to the cost of living” in May – which may be a low ball enterprise bargaining, which is now underway, tactic. It certainly would be a challenging sell for the university to make it the standard annual rise for the next agreement, what with the recently announced 2021 $1.04bn headline surplus.

But there’s a backup option

Some who heard Education Minister Clare’s speech last week at the Universities Australia conference hoped that the announced review of Australian Research Council governance will the end ministerial veto of ARC recommended research grants.

But in  a later interview with Michelle Grattan, 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.”

Labor senators also saw the need for such an exception. In assessing a Greens bill to end ministerial veto  they suggested it should stay, “the ministerial veto contained in the ARC Act is a mechanism to facilitate the accountability of executive government.”

But they did recommend amending the council’s act to require a minister vetoing a grant to table “the reasons, evidence and advice” within 15 days. They also recommended a review of the “role and governance of the ARC to ensure its independence and prevent any—real or perceived—political interference,” (CMM March 22).

With a review announced it’s a fair bet both will be addressed in it

Iain Hay (Flinders U) receives the Australian Institute of Geographers 2022 Australia-International Medal (for contributions by geographers resident in/outside Australia).

Dan Hunter leaves QUT to become executive dean of the law school at King’s College London.

Danny Kingsley starts next week as Director of Library Services, University of the Sunshine Coast. She moves from Flinders U.

Katie Makar (Uni Queensland is elected president of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia. Her term starts in January.

Sherif Mohamed joins Uni Southern Queensland as head of the School of Surveying and Built Environment. He moved from Griffith U.

Lynette Pretorius (Monash U) has a Global Impact Grant (“to share work with demonstrable impact on staff and students”) from the UK’s Advance HE. It’s for her research on academic integrity.