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There’s more in the Mail
In Expert Opinion (ep 22) this morning
Bindi Bennett (Australian Catholic U) talks to Tim Winkler talk about students engaging with Indigenous communities. It’s a pointer to tomorrow and Friday’s on-line conference on the future for Indigenous leadership in Australian higher education.
and in Features
GEORGINA BARRATT-SEE, ELLA KAHU and KATHY EGEA on ways to avoid burnout. “We can only be compassionate caring educators if we are well ourselves,” they write. New in Commissioning Editor Sally Kift’s celebrated series, Needed now in learning and teaching.
plus PhD students did it tough in the pandemic. AI TAM LE (Deakin U) sets out six ways to help them
and JIM NYLAND (Uni Southern Queensland) on why we need an engaged universities accord and what should be in it.
ANU’s Schmidt takes the deep waters on nuclear submarines
The vice chancellor sets out how to create the needed skills and how ANU can help
In a speech to the Submarine Institute of Australia today Brian Schmidt warns Australia must start scaling up now to have the technology base to maintain and crew nuclear submarines.
“Whatever submarine design ends up being chosen, we won’t be able to build and operate it locally unless we address the fundamental issue of Australia’s workforce capability gap,” his address text states.
Professor Schmidt points to skills gaps, across STEM and policy disciplines and warns, “the strained labour market conditions we face now in 2022 will cripple us in 2032 if we don’t take urgent action now to grow our sovereign capability.”
And he takes the high ground on the potential of ANU as a teaching and research resource to do the growing, including in physics, “for more than 70 years, ANU has been the only university in Australia providing comprehensive training in nuclear physics from undergraduate to postgraduate level,” he says.
The vice chancellor also proposes three things government can do now,
* list “nuclear stewardship” as a Sovereign Industrial Capability Priority, to “support universities who will need to play a central role in building the skills and knowledge base”
* a career pathway towards the nuclear submarine programme for now school-age students
* removing (unspecified) funding rules, “that prevent universities from being more dynamic in meeting national capability priorities.”
Deal done at Swinburne U
Voced staff have voted to accept a new enterprise agreement offer
It includes a 3.25 per cent annual pay rise across 2021-24 and a two stage lift in superannuation to 17 per cent in July 24 for continuing and fixed-term staff.
The offer was jointly proposed by management and the National Tertiary Education Union and the Australian Education Union, but only after months of robust negotiations and accompanying protests.
The super increase brings voced staff at Swinburne into line with their higher ed colleagues.
Uni Melbourne to have one faculty fewer
The university proposes breaking up the Faculty of Vet and Ag Sciences and closing its animal hospital
VC Duncan Maskell tells the university community, there is “a compelling academic case” for moving the two faculty schools, Vet and Agriculture and Food, into Science. The Vet school will stay as is in Science but Ag and Food will merge with the School of Ecosystem and Forest Science.
There will be no “discontinuation” of teaching and research, the VC states, nor mention of any job losses, apart from Vet-Ag dean John Fazakerley who finishes on Friday and will take leave prior to exiting the university.
The end of the animal hospital means switching to “:a distributed delivery model for clinical teaching,” which is recognised by accrediting bodies.
However the animal hospital closure involves job losses. Although Professor Maskell does not mention how many, he adds the Equine Care centre at Werribee continues and that the university is looking for a “a third party commercial veterinary business” to operate from the hospital.
The proposal to close it follows staff shortages and a doubling in net costs.
Students are being trafficked for sex: Claire Field argues regulators can do more to help stop it
by CLAIRE FIELD
closer reviews of accounts would create an opportunity to closely question providers charging very low fees
Last week Nine Media exposed the role some independent providers are playing in facilitating sex trafficking – charging low student fees and turning a blind eye to student non-attendance. Sadly these are issues the sector has been dealing with for years. Home Affairs needs to do more, but so too do the sector’s regulators.
It was good to subsequently see ASQA and TEQSA issue “sector alerts” reminding providers of their responsibilities. It would be even better to be reassured that their regulatory approaches are identifying these providers before they damage too many lives.
TEQSA keeps close scrutiny on providers’ financials, while it is my understanding that ASQA no longer routinely reviews financial documentation at re-registration. Given the financial stress many international providers experienced during COVID, it would seem timely to undertake a closer review of their financial position, plus a one-off check of their audited accounts and enrolled student numbers in PRISMS would give a crude estimate of their actual fees, and provide an opportunity to closely question providers charging very low fees.
Both regulators recently issued their annual reports. With most independent international students enrolled in VET, I will focus on ASQA’s report. In 2021-22 they processed:
* 282 new provider registrations
* 488 renewals of registration, and
* 6 574 change to scope applications.
The agency separately reported:
* 356 performance assessments
* 100 review monitoring activities, and
* 113 evidence review activities.
ASQA defines a performance assessment as “the systematic and documented process used to assess a provider’s on-going compliance with the Standards for Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) 2015 and the National Code of Practice for Providers of Education and Training to Overseas Student 2018.”
While most change to scope applications are risk assessed as not needing a performance assessment, there is a gap between the 770 new registrations and provider re-registrations processed and the 356 performance assessments (audits) undertaken.
During the year ASQA found non-compliances in 244 cases but then took comparatively few regulatory actions against RTOs:
* 10 sanctions to cancel registration in full
* seven sanctions to suspend a provider’s registration
* three in part scope suspensions
* seven conditions
* one civil penalty, and
* 84 directions issued.
ASQA issues written directions to providers when they find a non-compliance which does not pose a significant regulatory risk. That appears to leave just 28 serious regulatory responses to RTOs in a year when ASQA found non-compliances in 244 RTOs, and an unknown number of other providers were working to undermine the visa system and facilitate women being brought to Australia as slaves.
Claire Field is an adviser to the tertiary education sector
Nothing unique about uni wage deals to come
Round eight of enterprise bargaining is underway at universities across the country – it may be the last of its kind
What’s in and out in the government’s new industrial relations legislation is changing fast but there’s a fair bet that what passes parliament could have a major impact on universities.
This could happen if managements or unions, want one agreement to cover institutions, with “common interests,” say, similar markets and missions, resources and regions. If a majority of staff in each uni involved agreed, union and management reps could do deals that applied to all in the set, perhaps by reaching terms at one institution and then asking the Fair Work Commission to have it introduced at others.
This might work out alright, say for managements at similar regional unis, but not so much in big cities where old and rich institutions could afford wages and conditions that newer, smaller institutions would hate to have imposed.
It would surely give unions an opportunity to set a top standard for wages and conditions, which could be extended to other unis. Such thinking was around last week when opponents of a wage offer at Southern Cross U argued it was less than Western Sydney U new pay agreement.