CMM wondered why Uni Sydney Mark Scott was accompanied to the Times Higher Education conference in New York by senior staff, notably VP External Relations Kirsten Andrews  and MComms chief Johanna Lowe

It’s not as if the suave Professor Scott would need help with his talk on university “public service provisions.”

Turns out, they may have been there for the announcement yesterday that Uni Sydney will host THE ’23 which appears to be considered an olympian achievement, “and the winner is … Sydney Uni” Ms Andrews tweeted.

In Features this morning

Merlin Crossley (UNSW) on why digital courses don’t last and why creating content will depend on great teachers combining discipline specific knowledge, technical digital know-how and a love of teaching.

with Angel Calderon on the new Times Higher ranking, the ins and outs of whose up and down and what matters most (and doesn’t). Analysis without big-noting of university announcements

plus Tim Winkler (Twig Marketing) on outrage over early uni offers and why it misses the point

and All the cyber bells and IT whistles do not rate unless everybody in a university can use them, ADCET explains. It’s a new selection by Commissioning Editor Sally Kift, for her celebrated series Needed now in learning and teaching.

Funding agencies mandate open research data but scientists need help, and reasons, to get it out there

A new survey finds 80 per cent of researchers accept OA for data as common practice, but want help for it to happen. The finding is in a new REPORT from for-profit publisher Springer Nature and research services conglomerate (including Figshare) Digital Science.

A majority of the survey sample want more information on meeting funder mandates and strategies for long-term data storage and management.

“Taken in whole, the survey points to a need to plug holes around training in open data, to remove yet more administrative burden from researchers,” Figshare founder Mark Hahnel suggests.

And as for encouraging researchers, it appears to CMM that Jack Lang’s Law applies, motivations to share data are impact on citations (67 per cent ) and the visibility of  research (61 per cent), ahead of public benefit or journal/publisher mandate (both 56 per cent).

The regulator charging full cost for provider assessment is imminent – some of the regulated want courtesy in return

The Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency sets everything out in a new paper, which seems similar to what was discussed last year (CMM May 24 2021).

Another thing that is as was, is unhappiness in the organisations whose members will cop the costs hardest – private providers who are subject to the same flat rates of charges as vastly larger universities

Independent Higher Education Australia, accordingly calls for “scalable fees” and says a “service obligation charter … is essential. “Over the course of the last few years TEQSA has fallen short of sectoral performance expectations on various occasions.”

Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia also calls for a TEQSA to set “customer service standards.”  “In a cost-recovered environment, TEQSA needs to provide a higher degree of certainty and transparency in its interactions.” And to help the agency along, ITECA provides a draft set of standards, including one that surely should not need including for TEQSA, but ITECA thinks does, “be helpful and treat HE providers with courtesy.”

Ministers often leave research facility launches to Australian Research Council officers, what with their purposes oft arcane. One yesterday was too good to miss

It’s the Industrial Transformation Research Programme’s Steel Research Hub, based at the University of Wollongong.

Education Minister Jason Clare did the honours, accompanied by Alyson Byrnes, member for the local electorate of Cunningham.

Stand on tip-toes at UoW and you can just about seen the steelworks at Port Kembla, long a foundation of the Illawarra region’s economy.

With National Health and Medical Research Council Investigator grants announced, which institutions got what for all 2022 programmes is pretty much done

The overall outcome is an improvement on last year – just not a big one. 307 (16.4 per cent) grants were approved, of1 870 applications. This compares with 254 projects approved out of 1722 applications (14.8 per cent) last year.

The success rate for women Chief Investigators is up this year, to 19.2 per cent (166 of 863 applications)

There are 138 funded projects led by men (13.8 per cent of 999 applications).

Last year the success rate for women CIs was 12.9 per cent compared to 16.5 per cent for male Cis.

The winners this year are pretty much the same as they always are, with the big five accounting for close to 70 per cent of funds ($359m of $523m) – add Walter and Eliza Hall’s $26m and the research heavy weights account for nearly three quarters of funding.

Funding, plus success rate per total apps (compared to the 16.4 per cent national average) is Monash U $74.3m (18 per cent), Uni Melbourne $81.4m (22 per cent), UNSW $84.5 (20 per cent), Uni Queensland $42.2m (16 per cent) and Uni Sydney $78.9m (18 per cent).

This is largely in-line with last year,  (Monash U $62.9m, Uni Melbourne $80.4m, UNSW $89.3m, Uni Queensland $70.8m, Uni Sydney $76.2m).

Former Labor higher education and research minister Kim Carr receives the Academy Medal from the Australian Academy of Science. The award is for people who are not researchers but whose “ sustained efforts in the public domain, significantly advanced the cause of science and technology in Australia.” That would be Mr Carr, who Academy President Chennupati Jagadish calls, “one of the most significant federal science ministers in recent decades.”

 The Discovery Indigenous Research Grant awards are in CMM here.

 Ngaire Elwood (Murdoch Children’s RI) is having a good couple of weeks, newly appointed director of the Cord Blood Association and now inducted to the Victorian Honour Roll of Women.

Griffith U announces new council appointments.  Rebecca Frizelle (deputy chancellor) and pro chancellors, Amelia Evans, Karen Prentis and Jessica Rudd.

Yun-Hee Jeon (Uni Sydney) is one of the UN’s Health Ageing 50, (“working to improve the lives of older people”)

Philip Mendes (Monash U) wins the Australian Journal of Political Science’s Mayer Prize for his paper, “Is Conditional Welfare an Effective Means for Reducing Alcohol and Drug Abuse?”

Brenton Prosser joins UNSW in Canberra as a professor of public policy. He moves from Uni Canberra.