When the university proposed this last year the  National Tertiary Education Union argued the university’s enterprise agreement forbids publishing evals that identify staff, which students who knew what academics could teach which courses could do. The Fair Work Commission agreed with the union  (CMM November 23).

However UNSW appealed and yesterday a full bench found that the university can publish its “myExperience” course surveys.

“We accept that in some cases a person can be identified without being named. If a certain attribute is widely associated with a particular person, a reference to that attribute could identify the  person,  even  though  the  person’s  name  might  not  be  used, “ yesterday’s judgement states.

“But  the  proposed  form  of  the data to be published simply does not do this. No staff are identified. Even if the clause were concerned with identifiability, to the extent that any staff may be identifiable, this is not because of the form of the data or its content but because of an independent capacity to access extrinsic information  about  course personnel.”