The recruitment season starts with Charles Sturt U’s Wagga campus promoting its July 6 “MyDay”, which promises Year 11 and 12 students and their parents “a taste of university life for a day.” Trouble for people with jobs is that it is a Friday.  But not QUT which hosts OD on a Saturday July 29. It  looks like the usual QUT marketing effort, well, student focused and well organised.

The government is scheduled to get out of the astronomy industry on Sunday, with the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science transferring assets, and running costs, to Australian universities. But what is an imminent reality for astronomers has not generated much attention elsewhere, so much so, that employment changes for some staff were only signed off on Friday.

The Anglo-Australian Telescope (still so-called although the Brits bailed in 2010) will now be run by a consortium of universities, led by ANU, which owns the Sidings Spring Observatory site (near Coonabarabran NSW). The other 12 are UNSW, UniSydney, Macquarie U, Western Sydney U, UniMelbourne, Swinburne U, Monash U, UofQ, USQ, Curtin U, UniTas and UWA.

The national astronomical instrumentation resource, based at North Ryde in Sydney moves to another university group, Macquarie U, ANU and the University of Sydney.

In combination with an agreement on access to the big optical and infra-red telescopes in Chile, and funding for a decade there seems to be a sense in the astronomical community that this is an ok-ish arrangement, although Labor science spokesman Nick Champion lamented the loss of 15 jobs, “of highly skilled individuals who have committed themselves to what is a great national capability.”

But while the deal is done, it will be a near-run thing, the bill is still in the Senate. And only last Friday did the Fair Work Commission agree to 34 staff based at North Ryde being transferred to Macquarie U’s enterprise agreement.

Entries for the Association of Tertiary Education Management  best practice awards close on Friday. They are a great opportunity to demonstrate achievements and expertise in the ways administrators keep education running. Winners will be announced at this year’s Tertiary Education Management conference, in Perth on September 10.

Michael Spence is now in a win-win position as University of Sydney management considers a deal with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation – and the UniSydney VC has ANU to thank for it.

Yesterday ANU VC Brian Schmidt and Chancellor Gareth Evans  explained at length why they knocked back Ramsay-funded courses.  Slipping the cultural warriors’ tackles, they said their decision was based on Ramsay’s “extraordinarily prescriptive micro-management approach to the proposed program, unprecedented in our experience.” This only extends what Professor Schmidt had previously said but last night it appeared to have moved the discussion away from whether or not the Ramsay vision of western civ is suitable for study to university autonomy.

This is very good indeed for Dr Spence. If Ramsay wants a deal with UniSydney it will need to accept the vice chancellor’s terms on governance – which will go some way to address the concerns of the campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union (CMM Monday). This would not quieten critics of what the Ramsay Centre would teach, but Dr Spence could respond that the courses would be taught on the university’s terms.

UNSW’s engineering faculty has appointed an associate dean for equity and diversity. Lucy Marshall takes the job from a future fellowship in the university’s school of civil and environmental engineering.

All is amity at the NSW branch of the National Tertiary Education Union says, state secretary Michael Thomson.

Mr Thomson is backing president of the UTS branch, Vince Caughley, in the election for the union’s deputy national secretary while new federal president Alison Barnes (Macquarie U) supports WA official Gabe Gooding. “I am happy to support Alison and Vince,” Mr Thomson says.

Observers say this is not as contradictory as it sounds – that the NSW branch leadership is interested in setting strategy rather than splitting the national leadership. Given Mr Caughley’s low national profile his beating Ms Gooding, who led the long bargaining campaign at Murdoch U, seems unlikely. But running gives him and his state allies an opportunity to push for a new approach to enterprise bargaining based on industrial action, rather than negotiations with managements that run from one year to the next.

“Vince is reaching out to widen the conversation,” a union-watcher says. Victorian state secretary Colin Long, running for re-election makes the same point, saying “must speed up our ability to reach agreements to ensure that bargaining teams and members don’t experience fatigue.”

State and commonwealth education ministers have empowered AITSL to enforce initial teacher education standards. At Friday’s minco the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership was given seven new tasks, notably: advising state regulators on education faculties’ teacher performance assessments, developing national agreement on meeting accreditation standards, analysing the “impact” of ITE programmes and advising ministers on future work to ensure national consistency.

AITSL is unsurprisingly pleased, with CEO Lisa Rodgers saying yesterday AITSL is; “committed to supporting the national reforms so Australian school students have a teacher that is classroom ready from day one.”

This does not go anywhere near as far as the House of Representatives committee that called in May for a “reconstituted” AITSL to regulate teacher education ( CMM May 31 2018). But it’s a certainly more oversight of education faculties.