At the University of the Sunshine Coast today mechanical engineering students are competing to build ‘Flintstones-era’ putting machines. Yabba dabba whatever.

New in CMM this morning David Myton explains why more professional HE staff from the UK could be heading to work in Australia’s universities.

Denholm Aspy from the University of Adelaide is looking for participants for his study of lucid dreaming, “where you know that you are asleep and dreaming while the dream is still happening. This makes it possible to then control what happens in the dream.” If you have dreams featuring Leonardo DiCaprio in  Inception call Dr Aspy quick.

An ANU crowdfunding project has exceed its target by a factor of 14, with a week to go. The Difficult Bird Research Group wanted $4000 for PKOs (possum keeper-outter), nesting boxes for Swift Parrots, who need sanctuary from predatory Sugar Gliders. It has raised $57 500 (but can still use more).

Deakin U wrote the book on funding small-scale research via Pozible in 2013 and now ANU is adding a chapter. There is still some sneering at crowdfunding but as a way of supporting real research that the ARC is unlikely to pick up it meets a big need, as in this case.

CMM recently reported Australian Catholic U educational psychologist Herbert Marsh achieving an H index of 150 and suggested it was a local record. It’s not, according to a learned reader, who reports University of Queensland social psychologist Roy Baumeister https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ShSEUuoAAAAJ has an H index of 155. “UoQ, loves coming top of anything” the LR observes.

UNSW has named its new institute of education for chancellor David Gonski. The Gonski Institute of Education will, “bring together scholars, policy-makers and practitioners to conduct research that will help improve academic and wellbeing outcomes particularly for disadvantaged students and those who live in rural and remote Australia.” Director of the GIE is former NSW education minister Adrian Piccoli.

“It will really help me push my message that science is interesting and important … and perhaps push the idea that women can do science too,” Prime Minister’s Scientist of the Year Jenni Graves, yesterday.

Peak bodies were restrained yesterday after the NXT announcement, with Universities Australia thanking “every senator who listened carefully to evidence about the damage that the government’s proposals, particularly the funding cuts, would inflict on Australia’s world class university system and the country’s future prosperity.”

The Group of Eight thanked NXT for “withstanding unrelenting pressure from the government to take a strong and ethical stand against the worst elements of the government’s education funding legislation.”

And looking to the next blue the National Tertiary Education Union warned any review; “must be more than just how cheaply we can educate & train more people.”

Education Minister Simon Birmingham can still defy the will of the Senate to make savings. The minister could reverse budget support for equity research. He could create a performance metric which claws cash back from under-performing universities rather than distributes it among other institutions, as his now defeated plan proposed. He could cut research funding for universities, while leaving the ARC intact, for cover. And he could tinker with the basis of the Commonwealth Grant Scheme indexation formula, based on CPI as of next year. As he said yesterday, “we will consider the options of this decision for higher education policy and, as always, will also ensure any budget implications are addressed.”

And yesterday Rebekha Sharkie appeared to put demand driven funding on the agenda of the NXT required review saying;

“Currently, we have students who are leaving university with high debts and little opportunity of securing stable employment in their area of study. We have too many highly qualified young people, with PhD degrees, stacking supermarket shelves or making lattes. We need to do better than this.”

Senator Birmingham could look for savings on this basis by capping growth in UG places. While this would be tricky given the government’s continuing support for demand driven funding, not all university lobbies are solid in support of the existing all-but open access scheme. The government could stretch existing money by transferring funds from HE to sub-degree places in VET institutions.

Whatever happens next the higher education community has now seen off two immensely skilful conservative ministers and this morning the universities look to be politically armour plated against cuts. As a learned observer of many budget battles put it last night, “the higher education lobby is the toughest in the country, including the medicos”.

Six of eleven bids for Cooperative Research Centre round 19 funding are shortlisted, Tony Peacock from the CRC Association reports. The surviving proposals are in ageing, digital health, farming smarter, food waste and fraud, mining and future fuels.

Is CMM. In yesterday’s report on the THE engineering ranking CMM incorrectly entered the University of Sydney’s rating. It is 76 (up seven on last year) not 96.

Troy Innocent from Swinburne U is the City of Melbourne Knowledge Fellow for 2017.

RMIT social work lecturer Christine Craik is the new president of the Australian Association of Social Workers. Her research focuses on domestic violence.

Rebecca Zhang from the University of Sydney is winner of the inaugural Ernst and Young corporate finance woman of the year award.

Peter Newman from Curtin U is the founding editor-in-chief of the Biomed Central(from Springer Nature) journal, Sustainable Earth.

Jim Watterston will be the new dean of the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. Dr Watterston is now director general of the Queensland Department of Education and Training.

Whistleblowing expert,  A J Brown from Griffith U, has yet another prestigious appointment, being invited onto the board of Transparency International. Last month Professor Brown was appointed to a federal government expert committee on whistle-blower protection.

Prime Minister’s science prizes

Jenny Graves from LaTrobe U is winner of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science.

Eric Reynolds from the University of Melbourne and the Oral Health CRC is the PM’s Innovation Prize winner.

Jian Yang, University of Queensland is Frank Fenner Life Scientist of the Year for his work on genetic factors in complex diseases.

Dayong Jin (UTS) takes the Malcolm McIntosh Physical Scientist award for bringing “a physicist’s perspective to the challenge of biology.”

In a big win for the Illawarra Neil Bramsen (Mount Ousley Public School) is the PM’s prize winner for excellence in primary teaching. Brett McKay from Kirrawee High takes the prize for secondary teaching.