Last year the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency  marked MU down – re-registering it for four years instead of the usual university seven (CMM July 9).

But now the issues that troubled TEQSA are addressed.

Chancellor Gary Smith tells staff, “the university has made significant progress to implement the recommendations of several reviews of academic and corporate governance and has made considerable strides in enhancing the monitoring and benchmarking of our courses.”

The regulator apparently agrees – extending MU’s registration to June 2028.

In Features this morning

Frank Larkins (Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education) sets out 2019-21 FTE job losses for casuals and total staff at hardest-hit institutions. But cuts in multiple universities were not necessarily caused by the pandemic. “There is almost no correlation between the total staff losses shown in the figures and the percentage reduction in overseas student enrolments. Some universities have used additional opportunistic strategies to determine their staff reduction policies within the pandemic environment,” he writes

The scholarship of learning and teaching too often rates behind research and the demands of the working. It shouldn’t and it needed.  Shannon Johnston and Michelle Picard (Murdoch U) suggests ways it can be incorporated in the work of the “everyday scholar”.  This week’ selection by Commissioning Editor Sally Kift for her series, Needed now in teaching and learning.

Maree Meredith (Flinders U’s Poche Centre) proposes  new approaches on closing the gap in health for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

 

The government’s core training reform will continue, but change, if the Opposition wins

The  proposed clusters are intended to be, “groups of aligned industries with a strategic leadership role” which would “forecast and respond to the current and emerging skills needs and workforce challenges of industry.“ They are intended to replace the existing industry reference committees of which there are said to be 67 (CMM December 7).

Labor skills shadow minister Richard Marles, “acknowledges the important work that has already gone into these reforms” and says that the clusters would “link strongly” to the Opposition’s proposed planner, Jobs and Skills Australia.

However Mr Marles adds, under Labor, the clusters will be tripartite, “incorporating voices from unions and businesses, both big and small.”

“It’s crucial that the industrial parties are represented in decision-making roles.”

To which Troy Williams from Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia suggests adding training providers. “The major fault” with the existing government’s model, “is that it disenfranchises training providers in so many ways,” he says.

by CLAIRE FIELD

Given there were university representatives in the audience at the recent Australian Financial Review Business Summit I have been surprised by the lack of discussion in the sector about the remarks made by the Director-General of National Intelligence, Andrew Shearer.

While his warning that China is now Australia’s key national security issue has been widely reported, his warnings for the higher education sector appear to have been overlooked.

He commented firstly that technology convergence meant universities were going to need to be more careful about the international students they enrol in technology-related courses and research programs.

Then in answer to a question about what the changing global landscape meant for universities, he said “… it’s incredibly important that we work as government officials closely with our higher education authorities… we want our students and our higher education institutions to have effective academic exchanges with other countries. But I think most of us would increasingly agree that a situation where Australian research is finding its way into capabilities to provide the (People’s Liberation Army) PLA or other advanced militaries with extremely damaging and dangerous capabilities is not an acceptable form of academic interchange. And that’s why the Taskforce that works between Commonwealth authorities and the higher education sector has an important role to play and why we… have to diversify our markets. And as the borders re-open and students start coming back you’d like to think that our higher education leaders have learned some of the lessons of that overly dependent past.”

His comments were in sharp contrast to those from Associate Professor Keyu Jin from the London School of Economics who advised Summit delegates that Australia must put contentious issues with China aside and instead look for areas of collaboration and mutual benefit. The two specific examples she gave were “knowledge exchange and university exchange”.

In other words the circumstances Shearer is warning the university sector against are precisely those a noted China expert suggests we need more of.

Shearer’s comments will strengthen the government’s resolve (and presumably the Labor Party’s too should they win the upcoming election) that universities need to diversify their international student cohorts.

The newly announced collaboration between Australia’s Genix Ventures and Holmes Institute with Tsinghua University in China and language training providers in India (supported by the Victorian government) provides an example of collaboration that strengthens and enhances geo-political and educational relationships without creating national security risks.

Let’s hope that as we navigate our changing geo-political relationships we see more of these kinds of partnerships.

 Claire Field has been engaged with the Chinese tertiary education sector for more than a decade. In 2019 she presented at the “For the Future: International Conference on VET Development” in Beijing at the invitation of the Chinese government

 

The peak tech uni group and an industry ally pitch for a place at the planning top-table

The Australian Technology Network and business lobby AIGroup propose government joins them in a skills forum.

Together,  “we can balance the needs of Australian workers, migrants, businesses, regions and the workforce to create a system that is high quality, targeted, measured and responsive,” the university and employer groups suggest.

They nominate four priorities.

Engineering: “better employment outcomes” for international grads from Aus courses and overseas-qualified migrants plus engineering careers that appeal to woman and sufficient resources for universities to maintain “world-class” education infrastructure

Tech: “flexible, adaptive and innovative education options” to meet a 16 0000 shortfall in workers by 2025

Healthcare: upskilling, reskilling and expanding the workforce

Data: more and better information to model skills demand

 

Elgene Lim (Garvan IMR and UNSW) receives the Cancer Council of NSW’s Sally Crossing Award for breast cancer research.

Nicholas Tally is stepping down as editor in chief of the Medical Journal of Australia but will stay on until a replacement is in-place