As she foreshadowed (CMM February 22), Charles Sturt U VC Renée Leon gave evidence at the RoboDebt Royal Commission yesterday

She was asked about her involvement with the programme as secretary of the then Department of Human Services, answering questions from Counsel Assisting Justin Greggery.

She chose her words carefully and calmy – running CSU will hold no terrors to match the problems she described.

In Expert Opinion

Entrepreneur and long-time research governance expert Tony Peacock on the importance of discovery science, how applied research can work in universities and industry and the need for Australia to increase research and development spending, HERE.

In Features

Lisa Grech (Monash U) argues the NHMRC gender-equity policy does not do enough. “It is only through targeted, specific, measurable and accountable processes that support researchers in minority groups that true equity and diversity in research will be achieved,” she writes,  HERE.

plus Angel Calderon (RMIT) on the new student data from 2021 and why student progress rates are set to slid.

with Teaching students transferable skills works best when they know how to apply them in jobs. Gayle Brent (Griffith U)  suggests, “the experiences we provide for our students while they are students must prepare them to effect this transfer for themselves.” Commissioning Editor Sally Kift’s new selection for her celebrated series, Needed now in learning and teaching.

and, Mary O’Kane calls on universities to prepare for the long term. Sean Brawley and Richard Cook  set out Uni Wollongong’s structure designed to do just that HERE.

The James Martin Institute expands to five members

Charles Sturt U and UNSW join the Institute, which brings, “academic expertise into the early stages of policy making, working in partnership with government, to enable the contestability of ideas.”

They follow founding universities, Uni Sydney, UTS and Western Sydney U.

The Institute, named for a 19^th century NSW premier, was established in 2019 with a founding grants from the state government and support from participating universities.

by CLAIRE FIELD

Excluding students from one institution may lead them to trying at another

Angel Calderon in CMM this week highlights an important issue which I had expected to feature in the “levelling up” panel discussion at last week’s Universities Australia conference – i.e. the Job-ready Graduates reforms aimed at reducing the number of students who incur significant HECS debts but do not complete.

In 2020, Andrew Norton described these reforms as “too heavy handed”. He explained their complexities thus “say a student fails to complete four of eight subjects in first year. They keep their entitlement. But if the student then fails to complete three of four subjects in the first semester of second year their running total is seven failures to complete twelve subjects taken” and they lose access to Commonwealth support. For students undertaking sub-Bachelor courses their failure rate “starts calculating from four subjects.”

As Angel Calderon warns, the ‘student progress rate’ is currently falling, i.e. more students are likely to have Commonwealth support withdrawn. And on top of that, anecdotal advice indicates there is another significant flaw in the reforms.

Students are failing enough subjects that they cannot continue their course with their existing university … and so they are starting again at another university. Not only does this mean the reforms fail to achieve their aim, but students need to leave the university where they have built relationships and established themselves, to be able to keep accessing government funding for their studies.

Have these reforms created a hidden, circulating, cohort of vulnerable students desperately needing more support and unable to gain it at the institution of their choice?

In a separate issue from last week’s UA conference – Megan Davis was right to call out the political nature of the university sector’s decision not to collectively support the Voice.

It was disconcerting to hear university leaders who spoke at the conference, all taking the time to recognise and pay respects to traditional owners, yet most apparently do not wish to publicly support a change to provide this kind of respect and recognition in the Constitution.

As Ross Wissing, Andrew Saniga and Robert Freestone wrote in 2021, Australian universities are on unceded land. The time is now for the university sector to fully grasp this critical issue and to lead the debate. Australia is decades behind other Commonwealth countries in its recognition of First Nations people.

A promising step (in the interests of encouraging free speech) would be for UA to make the video of Prof. Davis’ speech freely available on their website.

Claire Field is an adviser to the tertiary education sector

 

Staff have backed the enterprise agreement offer jointly proposed by management and the National Tertiary Education Union

And by a thumping majority of those who turned out – 96 per cent of academics voting approved as did 93 per cent of professional staff.

It was delivered on a low turn-out, around 30 per cent of academics and professional staff – which demonstrates a cordial process, the happier people are with management and union negotiators the less they feel the need to vote.

This is a big win for QUT management and the union – an agreement reached, in around six months must be close to the land-speed record for enterprise bargaining. It contrasts with QUT’s cross-river rival, the University of Queensland, where bargaining has been underway for 18 months or so (CMM February 16).

At QUT  the 1.8 per cent tranche of the pay rise due on the agreement coming into force will be paid now, rather than waiting for the Fair Work Commission to certify it. Nice touch the FWC does not always move at lightening pace.

 

The university announces researchers are part of a team of astronomers who have discovered, “the exact process of how high-mass stars are born”

Good news for the day when Chancellor Alison Watkins and VC Rufus Black appear at the Legislative Council inquiry into the provisions of the university’s act. It might be worth a mention, what with the inquiry’s terms of reference being of galactic-width.

Think ChatGPT is the big problem? When it comes data Aus is undergunned

The Kingston Group of professors of AI* sets out the challenge and some responses in a new paper.

First up, Australia must work out how to do more work with what we have got. “The core research design for Australia to solve is how to train AI faster and more accurately with smaller amounts of data and in close collaboration with humans.

“We need this ‘small data’ capability to give us a competitive edge against much larger economies and companies that rely more on vast datasets, computing infrastructure, and a larger engineering workforce to build their AI capability.”

And that will take a national strategy, says the Kingston Group (as in the Canberra suburb where they met).

What is needed

* “research into the careful and clever use of mathematics and coding to achieve disproportionate performance with more limited resources. Some of the specific research areas include: efficient learning, lifelong learning, transfer learning, expert knowledge, common sense and reasoning.”

* “a profound increase in skills development at all levels,” from VET techs to core research and postgraduate skills development “at between two and ten times the current rate to match investment by global peers.”

The Kingston Group is, * Joanna Batstone (Monash U) * Peter Corke (QUT) * Stephen Gould (ANU) * Richard Hartley (ANU) * Anton van den Hengel (Uni Adelaide) * Sue Keay (OZ Minerals; Robotics Australia Group) *  Dana Kulić (Monash University) * Jie Lu (UTS) * Simon Lucey (Uni Adelaide) * Michael Milford (QUT) * Ian Reid (Uni Adelaide) * Ben Rubinstein (Uni Melbourne) * Svetha Venkatesh (Deakin U) * Toby Walsh (UNSW)

Kate Groves joins the Australian Academy of Science asphilanthropy director.

Julie Shinners becomes University Secretary at Uni Southern Queensland, moving from director of the VC’’s office.

Data management provider Informatica names Anthony Perera its Asia-Pacific data analytics champion for 2022