Blast from the rhetorical past

In the first week of a Labor Government the Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities announce, “it’s time”

In this case, “it is time for the price of university courses to reflect the cost of delivery,” the Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, (statement yesterday). People under 50 ask a passing oldie. Scroll down for details

There’s more in the Mail

In Features this morning

Garry Carnegie (RMIT) on the damage global rankings can do to university reputations.

plus Adrian Cardinali on student silence in the election and why they have been denied a voice for too long.

with Stephen Parker (Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education) on the Shakespearean future for universities.

and Sarah Lambert (Deakin U) on the why and how of replacing dated print textbooks. This week’s selection in Commissioning Editor Sally Kift’s celebrated series, Needed know in teaching and learning.

Math research spending: numbers still don’t add up to much

Maths peak bodies have updated their research funding report (CMM April 8) to include recent ABS stats on higher education research and development – the result remain not great

National universities maths partnership MATRIX and the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute add Australian Bureau of Statistics data on 2020 higher education R&D to find maths research took a $45m hit in 2020, adjusting for annual price changes. As a proportion of HERD funding, maths declined from 1.86 per cent in 2018 to 1.53 per cent in 2020. This is way down on the 2012 peak, 1.75 per cent.

Fundamental research “barely benefited from the funding surge earlier in the decade and declined in 2020” authors Jan de Gier, and Tom Keegan (MATRIX) and Maaike Wienk, (AMSI) warn.

No faulting ASQA for confidence

The vet regulator promotes it’s“self-assurance model”, via Twitter yesterday.

Deans demand end to high fees for humanities

A lobby for some of the disciplines which took the hardest hit from the last government’s UG fee changes wants them dropped

As part of its Jobs-Ready Package the Morrison Government jacked up the yearly cost of fees for students of humanities, bized and law to $14 600. This made them more expensive to study than medicine, at $ 11 400. Disciplines the government approved of, including maths, nursing and foreign languages were priced at $3 900.

And so the Deans of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences is, “calling for urgent fee reform, given the total lack of evidence that this clumsy attempt to guide student preferences away from humanities, arts and social sciences degrees is working.”

This has the makings of a loyalty-test for the new government, set by HASS disciplines, which believe they were treated with “disregard” by the Morrison Government.

DASSH suggests, “it is time for the price of university courses to reflect the cost of delivery, not a political agenda.” Deans of immensely expensive to teach disciplines that are heavily subsidised, such as medicine and vet may not agree.

All quiet on the Murdoch U front

Under previous leaderships MU was regularly reported in the media, but now not for months, to the point where CMM wondered whether new VC Andrew Deeks had arrived

Turns out he has been at work since late April, without making headlines. Perhaps he is waiting until his formal investiture next week. Or perhaps he has decided the MU community might have had quite enough of the university regularly being big news.

 

(Some) HE opportunities in India

The new trade agreement extends access for some Australian HE providers -just not very far

The Department of Education Skills and Employment reports on what India will now allow.

courses

twinning programme: 30 per cent of a qualification awarded by an Indian university can be studied at a foreign university, “through a conventional mode of study”

joint degree: syllabus jointly created by Indian and off-shore partners, minimum 30 per cent studied with the latter

dual degree: Not what it means in Australia. In India it is two degree in the same field and academic level. 30 per cent of total credits must be from the Indian university and subjects completed at either count to the degrees from both.

participants: Indian universities must meet specified national accreditations or be in the top 1000 on the Times Higher or QS rankings. Foreign universities must be similarly rated by Times or QS

Plan to make publisher pricing transparent

European open access initiative Plan S, announces a “journal comparison service”

It is for publishers to report on each of their journals and includes, publication frequency, peer review process, article processing charges, subscription costs and what they buy. Data is secure on-line for librarians.

“Such information will allow libraries, library consortia, and funders to understand better how the fees they pay are commensurate with the publication services they receive, OS states.

Appointments, achievements

Of the day

Bernice Redley, now Deakin University Monash Health Partnership starts in June as Health Complaints Commissioner in Victoria.

Ganna Pogrebna joins Charles Sturt U as inaugural academic director of the Cybersecurity and Data Science Institute. She moves from Uni Sydney

Of the week

The 2022 Australian Academy of Science Fellows were in CMM yesterday, HERE.

The Australian Critical Trials Alliance awards include, * Trial of the year: Lisa Higgins (Australian & New Zealand Intensive Care Society) and Monash U School of Public Health and Preventative Medicine * Excellence in trial statistics: Andrew Forbes (Monash U) and Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists * Consumer involvement: Anna Singleton (Uni Sydney) * Industry partnership:  Kim Bennell (Uni Melbourne Centre for Health, Exercise and Sports Medicine) and Medibank

 AusCert (cyber emergency responses) 2022 awards include, * individual: Marcus Mroczkowski, (Federation U) * individual excellence: Greg Sawyer (Council of Australian University Directors of Information Technology).

Tania Bezzobs will become UTS research director in August. She will move from ED, research at Swinburne U.

Leigh Carriage (Southern Cross U) wins the Humanitarian category at the Australian Women in Music Awards.

Laura Chahda (Uni Melbourne) wins the 2021 best paper award from the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology.

Paul Duldig (COO, ANU) is moving to become chief executive of Victoria’s state library. Prior to ANU he was at the University of Melbourne, where he led university services 2014-18.

Phil McManus (Uni Sydney) is elected VP of the International Geographical Union.

Ann Sherry is appointed chancellor of QUT. The businesswoman is a graduate of the university. Her five year term starts mid-August.

Natalie Taylor is appointed research director for UNSW’s School of Population Health.

Uni Melbourne’s Arts Faculty announces the 2022 Ernest Scott Prize winners, Janet McCalman (Uni Melbourne) for Vandemonians: the Repressed History of Colonial Victorians (Miegunyah Press) and Lucy Mackintosh (Tāmaki Paenga Hira/Auckland War Memorial Museum) for Shifting Grounds: Deep Histories of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (Bridget Williams Books).

Geoff Webb (Monash U) wins the distinguished research contribution award at the Pacific-Asia Conference on knowledge discovery and data mining.