Learned readers advise that union and management at the University of the Sunshine Coast are down to final drafting details for a new enterprise agreement and it took less than a year – (which may be a record)

A deal has been off and on for weeks with the last divide being how to move academic staff to teaching only roles. Management is said to have proposed allowing it to move people from teaching and research workloads to teaching-only after consultation. Word is this did not go down at all well with rank and file National Tertiary Education Union members at USC. “Everyone in higher education knows that consultation ends up being ‘we have an idea, what do you think?’, ‘okay but we’re going to do it anyway’, an observer of life at its-always sunny at Sippy Downs says.

After locals dug their heels in, new terms were reached with a working party representing management and a representative selection of researchers to come-up with a new definition of research-active. What they propose will go the VC, who can either adopt it, or stick with the existing measurement.