In Features this morning. Debra Bateman (RMIT) on universities caught between a compliance rock and a quality hard place.  It’s a new essay in commissioning editor Sally Kift’s series on what is needed now in teaching and learning, here

And the August international student numbers: Dirk Mulder presents all the states, all the sectors, all the stats, here   Plus, scroll down for his news story on the numbers.

Will universities performance funding assessments be published?  Senator Louise Pratt (Labor-WA) asked in Estimates. The short answer is no – not that it will matter much

“The assessment of universities under the performance scheme, I don’t expect will be published; that’s a matter of some consideration we still need to have with the sector, I think, to manage whether they want to release their results or not.”   Dom English, Group Manager, HE in the Department of Education advised.

Not that it matters as a measure of performance. Senator Pratt also asked how many universities officials expected to qualify for maximum funding, “We don’t expect any to not receive all of their funding one way or the other, David Learmonth, Department of Education deputy secretary, replied.

“There are some in the sector who do not like the phrase a lot, but I think ‘earned autonomy’ is a reasonable concept to apply here. If your performance is clearly strong and in line with the benchmarks that the panel has determined, then you get the funding and off you go. If there is a gap, then there is a case to be made as to the things you are doing to address that gap, and then the rest of the funding will be released to the provider,” Mr English added.

The TEQSA contract cheating tour played Adelaide yesterday and is on in Darwin today – with 18 dates across the country to follow, through to December 2 in Lismore

The academic integrity all-stars presenting the workshops are Tracey Bretag, (Uni SA), Guy Curtis, (UWA), Christine Slade, (Uni Queensland), and Margot McNeill, (International College of Management Sydney).

The Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency says the workshops cover ways to promote academic integrity, strategies to prevent contract cheating and what to do when you find it.

Avoid scalpers and book  here 

Academic jobs said to be safe but not necessarily professional staff

Vice Chancellor S Bruce Dowton announced the faculty’s end yesterday. But he did not detail where constituent departments will move, committing to consulting “on the challenges that face us and the changes we will need to consider to simplify the way we work, to align our people and resources with our strategic framework.”

The faculty’s teaching/research departments are Cognitive Sciences, Educational Studies, Linguistics and Psychology.

It hosted the former ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and is a member of the Hearing Cooperative Research Centre.

MU watchers suggest Cognitive Sciences and Psychology might move to Medicine and Health Sciences, with Education and Linguistics off to Arts.

According to union president Nikki Balnave, there are no plans for academic redundancies, but “we believe many professional staff jobs are now under immediate threat.”

Among the voced political and policy arguments it is worth remembering who the VET system is meant to help – people from all sorts of backgrounds and abilities who have a right to the information and experiences they need to find the course that suits them

So good for Federation U who has a five-day short course on “creative techniques of hair braiding.” It’s “a taster into the world of hairdressing” – a snip (sorry) for $300.

Want to grow training? Make it easier for people to find out what is in it for them.

With a new enterprise agreement adopted, a new structure in place and new teaching positions allocated, the hard stuff seems sorted. It isn’t.

The campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union is lodging an industrial dispute over academic workload models. According to the union, allocation of work starts next month, but “academic staff in most parts of the university have no idea how workload is measured and allocated.” This, the union says, breaches the new enterprise agreement, not least because, “management appears to persist with secretive, opaque and non-compliant workload allocation machinations.”

The NTEU calls for meetings of management and staff at each college to settle on “a collaborative process” to develop workload models. To which the University responded last night, “we have just received a notification from the NTEU and will assess and respond in accordance with the requirements of our Enterprise Agreement.”

Carol Evans will become Griffith U PVC Learning and Teaching in February. She joins from the University of Birmingham in the UK.

Also in February, Bianca Beetson will become Griffith U’s new director of the Indigenous Research Unit. She will move from the university’s Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art.