Top Stories
Features
No issue Monday
CMM is off for the NSW public holiday – back, if the fates allow, Tuesday.
Announcing CMM Expert Opinion
We ask the people who know what’s going on in education, “what’s going on?”
Our new Zoom interview series launched yesterday, with Angel Calderon putting the new QS rankings in an Australian context and outlining the genre’s applications and limitations. The first Expert Opinion is HERE.
There’s more in the Mail
In Features this morning
Merlin Crossley on building a community of teaching-focused academics. UNSW’s visiting teaching fellowship is part of it.
with Angel Calderon explains the new QS ranking and why an ok result for Australia may not last
plus James Guthrie (Macquarie U) on what MU’s annual report reveals, a lack of cash and a reliance on debt.
and Ryan Naylor (Uni Sydney) on student transition. This week’s addition to Commissioning Editor Sally Kift’s celebrated series, Needed now in teaching and learning.
Deakin U finds opportunities in India
As bonanzas go, India’s new international education policy is no Lorne Greene, but Deakin U is working with what’s there
DU states the new rules offer “significant possibilities for the internationalisation of Indian higher education institutions” and so it is working “with a select group of partner universities” on collaborative and joint programmes.”
Which sounds like it covers a Deakin U arrangement announced in India with O.P. Jindal Global University for business degrees from each plus a Deakin U masters, with study in both Australia and India.
Deakin U has long-committed to growing in India, with dozens of research and education partnerships (CMM April 17 20219) but it is slow progress. There has been talk for years of foreign universities being allowed to open in India but new policy changes allow programmes with local institutions (CMM May 27).
Uni Melbourne to “dramatically” reduce reliance on casual staff
In an interview the ABC describes as exclusive Provost Nicola Phillips apologises for underpayment of casual staff, announces the university “would overhaul its employment model” and “ ‘dramatically’ reduce its reliance on casual staff”
This repeats Vice Chancellor Duncan Maskell’s statement last September, that ““the university will continue efforts already underway to fully remediate affected individuals’ claims, and to put in place systems and processes to prevent these under-payments being repeated.” “There had been a “systemic failure of respect from this institution for those valued, indeed vital employees,” he said (CMM September 10)
Universities, including Melbourne have long been under pressure to address widespread payment of casual academic staff below enterprise agreement specified rates.
Last year Uni Melbourne conceded it had underpaid 1000 past and then present casual academic staff in the faculties of Arts, Fine Arts and Music, Engineering-IT, Medicine–Dentistry–Health Sciences and Science and paid “around” $9.5m owed (CMM September 10).
And this March the university was in dispute with the campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union over whether PhD qualified casuals should be paid the doctoral rate for all teaching. “We intend to look in more detail at this issue with a view to developing consistent standards and qualification requirements for casual sessional teaching across all of our faculties,” Uni Melbourne management said then, (CMM March 22).
Underpayments of casuals at campuses across the country has attracted attention from Senate inquiries and in March Victorian Higher Education Minister Gayle Tierney directed all the state’s public universities to advise her on measures to ensure underpayment of casual staff has stopped (CMM March 21).
Professor Phillips’ reference to reducing dependence on casual staff also confirms management’s stated position last November that relying on them is “neither desirable nor sustainable,” (CMM November 15). However, in last year’s conversion round for casuals seeking continuing employment, required by the Fair Work Act, 72 of the several thousand casuals on Uni Melbourne’s books were deemed to qualify on the basis of hours worked (CMM September 24).
The hours test used by universities has subsequently been called into question in a test case at Flinders U (CMM May 16).
TEQSA turns ten
The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency has quietly celebrated its first decade with past and present commissioners and staff attending “an informal event”
CEO Alistair Maclean describes the agency’s establishment following a recommendation from the Bradley Review of HE, although he makes no mention of TEQSA’s difficult start, when the Braithwaite, Lee Dow review of the agency reported, “all new regulators have teething problems and their cultures can and do evolve. The strength of the sector’s reaction however, indicates that something more fundamental has gone awry”(CMM August 6 2013).
But that which was wrong was addressed and TEQSA has made it ten – as for what comes next, “the next ten years will be a period characterised by new challenges, requiring us to draw on lessons from our first decade and be innovative in our thinking and approach.” Mr Maclean says. Who would have thought!
First QS then QILT
Mute, it seems, was the university marketer who found nothing to promote in yesterday’s QS rankings – although there was not much mention of a crucial score
“Australia has consistently performed poorly” on staff to student ratios, which QS considers a proxy for teaching capability, the ranking report states.
Nearly all universities had worse scores than last year and only three are in the top 500, ANU, Bond U and Uni Newcastle.
There will be more evidence on student satisfaction with teaching in the imminent QILT undergraduate survey – which universities often do not report in detail, either.
Dolt of the day
Is CMM who got the “New” and “Renew” tickets mixed up for the National Tertiary Education Union elections. Anastasia Kanjere is running on the former.
Appointments, achievements
of the day
La Trobe U’s Institute for Molecular Science appoints two deputy directors, Brian Abbey and Stephanie Gras, both are internal LT U appointments.
QUT with architects BVN, win the Queensland Government’s award for urban design. It is for the Campus to Country project, recognised “for its connection to, and engagement with, Aboriginal culture and knowledge … embedded in the daily campus experience.”
Elsdon Storey (Monash U) wins the Bethlehem Griffiths Research Foundation Medal for his research on neurological disorders.
Omer Yezdani is moving from Australian Catholic U to become chief data officer at Uni Sunshine Coast, from August.
of the week
AARNET announces new board appointments. Ian O’Connor (former VC of Griffith U and ex chair of the Higher Education Standards Panel) become chair. Alec Cameron (VC RMIT) and Anthony Molinia (Uni Newcastle) join the board.
Tracey Bunda joins Advance HE’s Australian Advisory Board. The UK based charity is best known for its professional recognition fellowships for HE teachers. Professor Bunda is academic director of Uni Queensland’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit.
Patricia Davidson (Uni Wollongong VC) is elected an honorary fellow by the Royal College of Nursing.
Graeme Hankey is the inaugural Perron Institute chair in stroke research at UWA
Alison Kitson will continue as ED of Nursing and Health Sciences at Flinders U for five more years. She is also named a Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor.
Peter McDonald (Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research) receives the 2022 laureate award from the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.
Bronwyn Parry will join ANU as dean of Arts and Social Sciences. She moves from Kings College, London. She will replace Rae Frances, dean since 2017.
The state government announces the 2022 Queensland Greats, honoured for their “social, scientific, health, environmental and cultural contributions.” They include, Stuart Pegg – burns specialist, Uni Queensland emeritus professor. Else Shepherd – engineer, QUT. Gracelyn Smallwood – First Nations health and human rights advocate, James Cook U. Peter Timms – koala conservation, Uni Sunshine Coast.
Burns specialist Fiona Wood (UWA) receives the Australian Society for Medical Research medal.