“The benefits of having a city campus means Sydney is our playground. So wherever you spot a jacaranda, you can probably see us in the background somewhere! That’s right University of Sydney. We have jacarandas too.”  UTS, via Facebook, yesterday.

Karen Hapgood will step up to be executive dean of the faculty of science, engineering and built environment at Deakin University, starting in July. She is now head of Deakin U’s school of engineering. Professor Hapgood joined Deakin in March, moving from Monash U where she spent 11 years, five as head of chemical engineering (CMM September 23 2016).

Hanrahans of the humanities gathered in Sydney on Monday night to launch the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, which will team with universities to teach undergraduates “the establishment and development of western civilisation.” An announcement of the universities that will share project funding was expected but the news is said to be delayed until the new year.

However it seems there is one, the University of Newcastle, that does not want a piece of the action. Dean of arts Catharine Coleborn argues in The Conversation that; “the ‘civilisation’ model of history, which suggests peoples and empires existed separately from one another, and rose or fell over time, is now viewed as deeply flawed.”

Given UniNewcastle has just cancelled independent courses in philosophy and two of four ancient history teaching positions are gone, this is not surprising.

The university says it has “no intention to downgrade the humanities,” (but and it is quite a big but for supporters of western civ,) “the current levels of staffing in the humanities disciplines simply cannot be sustained, and we’re looking at ways of becoming smarter about our delivery of courses to students needing flexibility in their programs of study.”

In October the university told CMM, “our research shows that students are seeking degrees with applied aspects and with a focus on careers in social assistance, human services and social impact and innovation.”

Back in 2015 CMM wondered when Australian National University VC Brian Schmidt would get himself a provost, to implement all the Nobel Prize winner’s intergalactic ideas. And now he has, with the university appointing Mike Calford, now provost at the University of Tasmania. Professor Calford will stay at UTas until new VC Rufus Black arrives in March.

Jessica Vanderlelie is appointed PVC student success at La Trobe U. Associate Professor Vanderlelie is presently the Innovative Research Universities innovation fellow. She is the creator of the IRU’s open access case study collection “across 2o high level themes”, developed “to encourage broader collaboration across the sector and provide a powerful means through which to prevent institutions ‘reinventing the wheel’ “.

In Feature’s today David Myton report on this year’s Business Higher Education Round Table award winners.

With the government’s committing to the transformative power of its new impact and engagement metrics the BEHERT achievers are an intriguing mix, demonstrating the power of relationships over rhetoric.

Relationships like that between the University of Western Australia and Chevron, which BHERT CEO Peter Binks says is based on a mutual commitment by senior staff at both. It demonstrates how convenient claims on both sides of the industry-academy divide are plain wrong in the case of campuses and companies which have long term relationships. “BHERT company members understand the challenges universities are going through and the unis understand the challenges and are developing skills.”

But to bridge the divides that do exist Dr Binks says we should consider the contrast between Australia and Canada. Here, most new PhDs want to work in universities, while close to 70 per cent of Canadians are in industry. Dr Binks own career makes the point, a theoretical physicist by training he has worked in research roles for McKinsey, BHP, Telstra and on a nanotech launch. “I admire entrepreneurs who go from start-up to scale-up,” he says.

The challenge for BHERT, he adds, is to match the existing success of alliances between business and university in established Australian industries, agriculture, minerals, energy, for example, with emerging research and product/service development, in artificial intelligence, health and medicine, for example. It is a task that appeals to his experience and inclinations; “I admire entrepreneurs who go from start-up to scale-up,” he says.

In the golden west three out of four public universities have new enterprise agreements, with staff at UWA, ECU and Curtin U ratifying deals negotiated between managements and the National Tertiary Education Union. The stand-out is Murdoch U where negotiators are at no-speaks.

VET policy resembles a Jacobean tragedy acted by the Marx Brothers and yet students are endlessly forgiving of what it leads to. The estimable National Centre for Vocational Education Research reports that data collected mid-year shows 87.3% of graduates were satisfied with the overall quality of the training, up 1.3 percentage points from 2016 and 90% of people who took individual courses were happy. And before the TAFE lobby starts, yes these figures cover all training, including private providers.

This is students being very generous indeed given just 56 per cent of people who complete a course “had an improved employment status” and barely half the people not working before study had jobs after completing.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has announced 396 new fellows. Two Australian academics made the cut; Andrew Holmes from the University of Melbourne (natural and non-natural synthetic targets in chemistry) and the University of Sydney’s Dacheng Tao (artificial intelligence).