2021: A CAPA homecoming

Errol Phuah, President, Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations

For years, we saw the higher education sector experience decades of sector growth despite the Government's aggressive funding cuts. Universities adopted a management-led culture focused more on expansion and profitability than delivering quality knowledge to our wider community.

This period of perceived sector prosperity was never going to last; we all knew the bubble would eventually burst, and as always, those with the least power or influence were going to be taken for granted.

In the land of postgraduates, 2020 was a year to forget. A large proportion of our cohort (international students) were made to feel unwelcome in Australia after a comment was made by our Prime Minister that students could just return home. Many of our coursework students were provided, rushed online learning material without any fee reduction for lower education quality.

Our research students were restricted to work from home, unable to gather data from lab experiments or in the field. Many universities were reluctant to provide scholarship extensions to cover living costs for students who lost time in research. Holistically speaking, these disruptions to our research, study, employment and social isolation bore heavily on our mental health.

To this day, much of these concerns have felt only superficially acknowledged by decision-makers. For many of us, 2020 ended with very low morale.

Where to from here?

NTEU and CAPA always had a long-standing working relationship. This collaboration can still vary from year to year, but as the new CAPA National President, I will be redirecting ourselves back to what we know and what has always been 'home'. So I will prioritise strengthening the working relationships between our organisations for this new chapter of our sector.

I'm fortunate to be based in Melbourne and will be on-site at the NTEU head office as often as needed. Frequently running into the National Officers in the office to bounce ideas off will bring an organic and coherent voice between university staff and students. I believe we are the majority and, therefore, the authentic representative voice of universities to parliament.

What to expect in 2021?

This is the year we regroup and push back. We saw last year, both staff and students were the designated cannon fodder through unprecedented record redundancies and poor education delivery for students. However, this is only the beginning, and we should always be prepared for the worst.

We should be under no illusion we could ever get back exactly what we had before. Then again, do we really want to bring back a broken system that did us wrong? No. We want a better system where our universities' success and prosperity flow through the entire sector, not just for the top end.

Priorities for 2021

Wage theft and Job Security. This includes the exploitation of international students who work for below minimum wage, the insecure employment of students engaged in sessional teaching.

Regional Representation. This is part of CAPA's long term strategic plan to build a Regional student representative community. We need to improve our long term longevity as an organisation, strengthen our working relationship with RUN and further legitimise our coverage of representing all postgraduate students.

Research Training Program. Universities have continued to stretch their resources to increase their research student cohort at students' expense. Many PhD programs are pulling back to guaranteeing 3 years of stipend only. We will be working with the Dept of Education to change any incentive to rushing student completions and hopefully increasing the minimum stipend amount.

Quality of Education. We want to see work-integrated learning used to enrich student learning and not a means of labour exploitation. We also want to see many courses back on campus fully and expect a standard to be developed for online learning.

SSAF. As always, we need to see our student organisations receive a higher proportion of SSAF. This ranges from working, helping less funded student associations develop to justify earning more SSAF. However, we will also be appealing to government(s) for greater accountability on the proportion of SSAF given to student associations. ◆