Campus Review - Jan 2013

WWW.CAMPUSREVIEW.COM.AU | VOL. 23 | NO. 1 | January 2013

Higher ed discarded in elections See page 22

Research careers stifled by grant process See page 18

VCs put on

business hat

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Putting HE on the agenda

PhD students struggle to find jobs

24 Campus fights back End of big lectures?

5 Copyright law reform

faculty focus 25 New engineering hub

Unis seek change to enable MOOCs

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$37.2 million for regional QLD

6 Uncapping student places Overcrowding a problem

26 Stamping out stereotypes Women in engineering

7 University applications

Results show demand slowing

8 UWS iPad giveaway

Free devices but courses chopped

10 Enterprise bargaining

28 Rocketing up the charts

26

UNE and USYD take action PM voices concern

UWS business school changes In the November 27 issue of Campus Review we reported that the University of Western Sydney said: “A decline in enrolments due to the uncapping of the system is to blame for the closure of some key subjects in the economics programs as well as three language majors in the Bachelor of Arts.”

This was incorrect, the university in fact said: “These proposed changes to economics in the UWS School of Business are driven by a drop in demand for the program. Demand for the undergraduate economics program has halved since 2008, a decline which precedes the uncapping of the system.”

v

tafe 30 Michael O’Loughlin

VET 34 Temporary migrant workers

policy & reform 14 Putting on the business hat

What are the costs and benefits?

VCs have to do the sums

36 VET cuts

Disadvantaged youth impacted

18 Research bids

School the problem, not uni

Summit at Wollongong

Barber on a business approach

Researcher says process too long

21 Stuart Middleton

29 Reaching out to schools

VC’S corner 32 Universities and innovation

international 12 UK peer review

Only 20 per cent successful

USYD’s space course

Learn from private providers

11 Gender wage gap

Audited 2,664 September 2012

www.campusreview.com.au

22 Election year

news 4 Job market

PUBLISHED BY

14

32

noticeboard 38 The latest in staff appointments

February 2013 | 3

news

NO JOB

SECURITY

By Antonia Maiolo

a

federal government report on career pathways of PhDs confirms that lack of job security is by far the worst aspect for aspiring academics.

The survey has revealed that researchers like their work but not the employment system in which they operate.

Respondents said it’s the lack of job security, uncertainty of funding and, for more senior researchers, the workload.

The Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) was commissioned to conduct the survey and eight focus groups by the federal Department of Innovation.

The purpose was to identify the needs of Australian researchers and to develop solutions for improving career pathways.

Of the 1200 researchers who participated in the survey, 80 per cent said that they are “very attracted” or “reasonably attracted” by a career in research, but also said that uncertain job prospects was a negative issue.

A reliance on short-term contracts was said to be one of the major problems, and this was irrespective of discipline, age, gender or institution, with natural scientists most concerned.

A female psychologist in her 30s said she has had to move states to find jobs. “I have had three jobs at three different universities across three states in two years,” she wrote.

“There is a lot of discontinuity,” adding, that this is has been a very costly process both socially and financially.

A male medical researcher also in his 30s said the job uncertainty was “appalling”.

“We are the most educated people in the country and we can barely provide for our family … This is extremely stressful,” the researcher said.

Key findings of the report show that the 4 | February 2013

research sector is underfunded to provide jobs for all those who would like to work there.

Toss Gascoigne, author of the ACOLA report, said: “It seems that positions in the research sector are limited by funding constraints.”

“The consistent rhetoric from governments of both sides is that Australia needs more highly trained people. This may be so, but there do not seem to be positions for these people in the research (or research and teaching) sector,” Gascoigne said.

He said respondents said they felt tricked or duped into taking up PhD scholarships and not properly informed about the limited number of job prospects.

Participants described the career path of an academic as “mysterious” and said the true picture should be available before people embark on a PhD. “We are not doing our job explaining what happens when you enter a PhD program … There is a lot of misunderstanding about what you are getting into. A lot is based on fantasy and we are not presenting this information in a way that we need to,” a female research manager said.

Gascoigne said the chances of winning a Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) or Discovery Projects grant are one in about five, and one in about eight respectively.

The report found that most early career researchers face a succession of shortterm contracts and that their chances of winning grants or fellowships are slim, and even lower if they have a limited record of publications.

Senior researchers face similar

challenges because of the equally competitive race facing them.

Gascoigne acknowledged that there are opportunities in other areas, such as teaching, government administration and industry, but questioned whether doing a PhD is the best training to give people who end up heading in another direction.

“Encouraging some of the smartest people in Australia to undertake training which leads to a limited job market, unsatisfactory short-term contracts and much heartburn seems to be a waste of talent,” Gascoigne said.

“These are people who should be nurtured and valued by Australia.”

He said that although their skills can be used in other industries that it is perhaps not the best training to prepare people for positions in other industries, adding that it’s not cheap and may not be relevant.

The National Tertiary Education Union has welcomed the release of the report by ACOLA. More investment in Australian universities and research institutions is needed to address this ever accelerating problem and stop the brain drain, said NTEU national president Jeannie Rea. She said the findings reinforce concerns that have been highlighted by the NTEU for some time. “Scholars finishing their PhDs are often between a rock and hard place – scrambling for short-term contracts and often competing against their old supervisor when it comes to getting grants.”

Rea said the NTEU plans to bargain and campaign on the job security issue this year. n Good research goes missing, page 18

news

Copyright law

‘blocking’

online courses

By Antonia Maiolo

L

aw reform is needed to ensure Australian universities are able to fully utilise digital technology and to remain competitive in a global market, say industry leaders.

Universities Australia (UA) and the University of Sydney have sent submissions to the Australian Law Reform Commission’s (ALRC) review of copyright legislation arguing that there is need for greater flexibility in copyright law.

They say the current Copyright Act does not support innovation in the sector particularly with the use of copyrighted material in the provision of massive open online courses (MOOCs). “[The] current Copyright Act 1968 is not flexible enough to promote innovation in the tertiary education sector and provide a cost-effective framework for management of copyrights in the modern learning spaces,” the vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney, Dr Michael Spence, wrote in the university’s submission to the review.

“Of particular concern are the communications limits that restrict the ability to teach our students in a way that is fair in other jurisdictions,” he wrote.

At present if a university faculty wants to make a reasonable portion of a published work available online it can only do so if no other part of the same work has been published by another faculty. The limitations place an additional administrative burden on university staff to ensure that copyrights are managed properly.

“Such limitations make no sense today and impede the effective delivery of course materials to our students,” Spence wrote.

UA, in their submission to the ALRC, said copyright is operating as a “roadblock” and Australian universities are limited in the content they can use for MOOCs, despite paying more than $200 million a year to commercial publishers for access to academic journals.

“Australian universities have much less flexibility than their US counterparts when determining what kinds of content will be included in courses offered via new MOOC delivery platforms,” UA wrote in their submission.

The peak university body said any new technologies will be obstructed by Australia’s outdated copyright regime.

The University of Melbourne, which already offers a number of MOOCs through Coursera, uses content created themselves as well as open licensed content such as Creative Commons material or material for which they have obtained a license.

Helen Thomson, the manager of the university’s Copyright Office, said the statutory licenses that it would normally rely on to

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use third-party content do not apply to MOOCs, so it had to find alternatives.

“Obtaining individual licenses for content is resource intensive and time consuming so it is not effective when dealing with large amounts of content,” Thomson said.

“The university would like to see greater flexibility to deal with innovations in education and digital technology.”

She added that broader fair use provisions would provide flexibility to adapt to changes in delivering educational content and engaging students, as well as future-proofing the Copyright Act. n

February 2013 | 5

news

Caps off means overcrowding

A

lthough the uncapping of Australian university enrolments has opened up university education to thousands more people, the NTEU says it has also resulted in overcrowded lectures and staff cuts.

NTEU national president Jeannie Rea said that while removing caps was a positive change in policy direction, it has also come with some drawbacks.

“While the federal government funding of universities has increased, the amount per student hasn’t kept up. Universities are having to do more with less,” Rea said.

As a result, universities are cutting back on teaching staff and the number of classes previously offered.

“Administrative and support staff are also losing their jobs,” said Rea. “Universities are also cutting the

number of classes formerly offered as part of courses, so the opportunity for interaction between teaching staff and students is increasingly limited.”

She said that half of undergraduate teaching is now undertaken by casuals, with casuals making up about 40 per cent of academic staff.

Casual academics spend limited time on campus and are often unavailable for students seeking feedback.

“That’s why the NTEU is attempting to address casualisation through this year’s enterprise bargaining round.”

Rea said the creation of teaching fellow positions across the sector to replace work that is currently casualised would be a positive development for both staff and students.

“At the same time, the government also needs to boost the amount it pays universities for Commonwealth Supported Places.

“The increase in student numbers shouldn’t come at the cost of students’ learning and a casualised, over-worked, and overstressed university workforce,” said Rea. n

National program

to increase

c

Radiation Therapy

ancer patients are set to get improved access to radiation therapy as Monash University leads a new program across Australian universities to be implemented by the middle of next year.

The national program will help improve access to radiation treatments that could be delayed due to increasing demand from the ageing population.

Funded by the federal Department of Health and Ageing, the educational program aims to train radiation therapists to become advanced practitioners, to reduce the pressure on radiation oncologists, who prescribe radiation therapy.

The $777,000 grant is expected to allow radiation therapists to acquire a new set of clinical skills.

They can then do traditional medical tasks on behalf of the oncologist, thus

6 | February 2013

generating a more efficient service.

Led by Caroline Wright and Kristie Matthews of the school of biomedical sciences at Monash, the program is being developed in collaboration with the University of Sydney, RMIT University, University of Newcastle, Queensland University of Technology, and the University of South Australia.

“What we are trying to achieve in the advanced practice roles is a method of restructuring the workforce to streamline the anticipated increase in demand,” said Matthews.

“The demand on radiation oncologists’ time is enormous and as radiation therapists, we see the impact even minor treatment delays can have on the patients’ health and well-being,” she said.

“We’ve seen a similar model developed in the UK to address these challenges and we know it works.” n

news

Undergrad numbers f latten With only a small increase in university applications this year there is some doubt about Australia reaching the bold 2025 target for graduates. By Antonia Maiolo

T

here has been a slight increase in the number of people applying for university places around Australia this year but some states have recorded a drop in overall applications.

Preliminary data from the federal Department of Tertiary Education shows that total applications for the 2013 academic year increased by 0.6 per cent to 229,770.

The figures show that 1400 more school leavers applied for university this year compared with the number of applications last year.

Western Australia recorded a dip in total applications of 2.6 per cent. Victoria also registered a fall of 0.9 per cent, while Tasmania had a 7.9 per cent increase in applications. NSW recorded a slight increase of 0.7 per cent.

The senior deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Technology, Sydney, Professor Peter Booth said it was understood that the school leaver population was stabilising and that there may even be a decline over the next decade in some states. This was in line with expectations, he said.

Despite estimations of significant increases, Booth questioned whether Australia could meet key participation targets laid out by the federal government in 2009, which includes 40 per cent of young people gaining a degree by 2025. “I think it’s a bit unclear as to whether that’s going to be achievable or not,” he said.

“UTS hasn’t planned significant growth, we have repositioned our undergraduate load because of the participation structure and deregulation,” Booth said. While he was not expecting the demand to significantly expand over the next few years in NSW, “it looks like steady demand”.

“There’s a bit of change internally, the non-recent school leavers tend to fluctuate

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a lot more and that is probably linked to labour market conditions I would guess, but the school leavers is reasonably stable,” Booth said.

Professor Bill Louden, senior deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Western Australia, said there is no longer any significant unmet demand for domestic university places in Australia.

“From 2010 to 2012 at UWA our total enrolments grew from 22,590 to 24,435 (more than 8 per cent). Other universities have grown even faster.”

But Louden doubts there is scope for further growth, especially among wellqualified candidates, adding that the drop in applications in WA could be attributed to the state’s strong labour market.

The preliminary data published by the federal Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education also shows a 1.9 per cent increase in socio-economically disadvantaged students applying for university, an increase

of 820 more applications than last year.

The government’s target for the future decades also outlines an aim to increase the proportion of disadvantaged people gaining a degree, to 20 per cent by 2020, up from 16 per cent.

Louden said to meet key participations targets UWA increased the number of low-SES students last year by offering wellsupported access places to school leavers from schools underrepresented in the usual intake group.

He said UWA supports the government’s goal of increasing access to underrepresented groups.

“We want to offer a place to every student who can benefit from a UWA education, but we have to deal with the fact of social inequalities in school achievement.

What is most important is that when we offer an access place we provide appropriate support,” Louden said.

Booth said this national result – a boost in low-SES students applying for university – is an “absolute gain”.

He said the results for indigenous students in particular are very positive.

Indigenous applications were up by 4.2 per cent, an increase of 100 from last year.

“Even though it’s only a small number its quite good, 100 more applications is a 100 more applications, a very positive outcome given what we know about their schooling and other things … we were delighted to see that,” Booth said.

The figures from the federal department also show that the strong trend of more women applying for university than men has continued, with 58.3 per cent of applications from women and 41.7 per cent from men.

This gender gap is similar to the one seen in the previous year. n

Preliminary applications by states State

2012

2013

% Change

NSW

74,361

74,848

0.7%

VIC

67,599

66,959

-0.9%

QLD

42,797

44,259

3.4%

WA

16,107

15,695

-2.6%

SA/NT

20,937

20,958

0.1%

TAS

6,533

7,051

7.9%

228,334

229,770

0.6%

Australia

February 2013 | 7

news

Reaction over

free tablets

T

he University of Western Sydney is pushing ahead with its move to hand out iPads to new students this year saying it is part of a curriculum renewal strategy over the next four years.

About 11,000 tablets will be distributed in what has been described as one of the largest and most innovative rollouts at an Australian university. Staff will also receive one of the popular devices.

Whilst critics have attacked the giveaway, Professor Kerri-Lee Krause, UWS pro vicechancellor (education), said the initiative is far from a recruitment tactic.

“The introduction of mobile devices like iPads is part of our broader investment in wireless networks, improved computer labs, IT-enhanced learning spaces and other IT infrastructure,” Krause said.

“The iPad will be a way for students to access more online and web-streamed material from wherever they are.”

A recent UWS survey of students’ technology use revealed that 77 per cent accessed computer labs on campus, 71 per cent owned a computer, and 45 per cent of students also reported they would like to use an iPad or tablet device for learning.

“The funding for the iPad rollout is part of a strategic decision to redirect funds previously used on building projects into IT development,” Krause said.

Students will be allowed to keep their iPad, however, those who withdraw their enrolment or otherwise do not continue their studies after the census date must return their device. Krause said this overall IT investment amounts to about $35 million over three years.

A spokesperson for UWS said the university’s wireless network is being upgraded and tested to cope with the expected higher levels of wireless usage due to the iPad rollout.

Last December, the National Tertiary Education Union condemned the university for the initiative saying that “courses should come before iPads”.

The NSW secretary, Genevieve Kelly, said UWS cut language courses in Arabic, Italian and Spanish but had the resources to offer free iPads to students and staff, at an estimated cost of at least $3 million.

“Giving every student and staff member a fourthgeneration iPad comes at an unacceptable price.

UWS is taking a sledgehammer to courses and staff. Technology, however trendy, is nothing without content,” Kelly said.

She said UWS has abolished the language courses, cutting four full-time positions and numerous casual jobs.

Despite the criticism, Krause said the aim now is to balance ongoing investment in physical infrastructure with a focus on investment in wireless networks. n 8 | February 2013

UWS says giving new students an iPad is part of a long-term technology plan and not an enrolment gimmick.

Antonia Maiolo reports

news

A CAREER WHERE INNOVATION MEETS APPLICATION

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University is a

FACULTY OF BUSINESS

FACULTY OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

government-funded tertiary institution in Hong Kong. It offers programmes at various levels including Doctorate, Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees. It has a full-time academic staff strength of around 1,200. The total consolidated expenditure budget of the University is close to HK$5 billion (US$1 = HK$7.8 approximately) per year. Committed to academic excellence in a professional context, PolyU aspires to become a world-class university with an emphasis on the application value of its programmes and research. Its vision is to become a leading university that excels in professional education, applied research and partnership for the betterment of Hong Kong, the nation and the world.

Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies Associate Professor / Assistant Professor Shipping, Maritime and Transport Studies

Department of Health Technology and Informatics Professor / Associate Professor / Assistant Professor Medical Laboratory Science / Radiography

Department of Management and Marketing Professor / Associate Professor / Assistant Professor Marketing Professor / Associate Professor Entrepreneurship / Strategic Management Assistant Professor Corporate Social Responsibility / Human Resource Management / Public Sector Management

Department of Rehabilitation Sciences Assistant Professor Occupational Therapy / Physiotherapy

FACULTY OF CONSTRUCTION AND ENVIRONMENT

FACULTY OF HUMANITIES

Department of Building and Real Estate Associate Professor Green Building / Urban Sustainability Assistant Professor Building Control and Maintenance / Real Estate Valuation and Investment

Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies Professor Bilingualism and Communication / Chinese Linguistics / Foreign or Second Language Education / Translation and Interpreting Associate Professor / Assistant Professor Applied Chinese Linguistics / Bilingualism and Communication / Chinese Language Education / Chinese Linguistics / Chinese Literature / Translation and Interpreting

The University is inviting applications and nominations for academic positions in the 2013/14 academic year.

QUALIFICATIONS Professor / Associate Professor / Assistant Professor Candidates should have a doctoral degree in their field of specialization.

Documented scholarly production and professional achievement in teaching and research are required for Associate Professorship. For appointment at Professor level, a high degree of proficiency in teaching and research, significant contributions to and made on impact on the field of specialization, and with an excellent international reputation as a leading scholar, are necessary. Candidates should also make significant contributions to the services of the University, professional bodies and the community.

REMUNERATION AND CONDITIONS OF SERVICE A highly competitive remuneration package will be offered.

Initial appointments for Assistant Professor will be on a fixed-term gratuity-bearing contract.

Re-engagement thereafter is subject to mutual agreement. An appropriate term will be provided for appointments at Associate Professor and Professor levels.

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING Department of Computing Associate Professor / Assistant Professor Cloud Computing / Social Computing Engineering

/

Software

Department of Electrical Engineering Professor / Associate Professor / Assistant Professor Asset Management and Transportation Systems Engineering / Energy and Power Systems / Utilisation and Power Electronics Associate Professor / Assistant Professor Asset Management and Transportation Systems Engineering / Underpinning Key Technologies including Photonics, Smart Materials, Computing and Control / Utilisation and Power Electronics

APPLICATION Applicants are invited to send detailed curriculum vitae with names and addresses of three referees and direct any enquiries to the Human Resources Office, 13/F, Li Ka Shing Tower, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong [Fax: (852) 2764 3374; E-mail: hrstaff@polyu.edu.hk], quoting the position and specialization applied for. Recruitment will continue until the positions are filled unless otherwise specified. Candidature may be obtained by nominations. The University reserves the right not to fill these posts or to make an appointment by invitation. The University’s Personal Information Collection Statement for recruitment can be found at http://www.polyu.edu.hk/hro/jobpics.htm.

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School of Nursing Professor / Associate Professor / Assistant Professor Mental Health / Nursing and Health Service Management / Nursing Therapeutics

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering Associate Professor / Assistant Professor Engineering Management / Product and Process Design Department of Mechanical Engineering Professor / Associate Professor Aviation Assistant Professor Aeronautical Engineering / Control, Dynamics and Acoustics / Design and Computational Solid Mechanics / Mechanics and Materials

Department of Chinese Culture Professor / Associate Professor / Assistant Professor Chinese Art / Chinese History / Chinese Literature / Chinese Philosophy / Chinese Religion

SCHOOL OF DESIGN Professor / Associate Professor Design Research Associate Professor Advertising Design Assistant Professor Digital Media / Environment and Interior Design

SCHOOL OF HOTEL AND TOURISM MANAGEMENT Associate Professor / Assistant Professor Foodservice / Hospitality and Tourism Planning / Hospitality Operations and Management

General information about the University is available at http://www.polyu.edu.hk More information on the faculty positions is available at http://www.polyu.edu.hk/hro/job.htm

February 2013 | 9

news

Sydney, UNE face stop-work action

I

ndustrial unrest is spreading in NSW with staff at two universities set to vote this month on industrial action over enterprise bargaining, following successful applications to Fair Work Australia by the National Tertiary Education Union.

The NTEU is planning action against the University of Sydney and the University of New England following the failure to come to an agreement over enterprise bargaining.

Neither university contested the union’s applications for protected industrial action ballots.

Michael Thomson, president of the University of Sydney NTEU branch, said the ballot would most likely be held early this month with members voting on different forms of industrial action: onehour stoppages, 24-hour stoppages, and indefinite stoppages.

In a letter to members, Thomson, said the union notified the university management of their plans for industrial action because they failed to “properly” engage in enterprise bargaining.

Following meetings over five months in 2012, management tabled their proposed agreement and circulated a link to it to all staff. The union said the university’s proposed agreement is “a serious insult to staff”.

“For the second Christmas in a row University of Sydney staff will go to the

break knowing the management has no commitment to staff. Last year it was job cuts, this year it is a substandard enterprise agreement,” Thomson said in the letter sent to members late last year.

He said management proposed an annual salary increase of 2 per cent, which is less than half of what Central Queensland University and Curtin University have agreed to for the next four years.

A spokesman for the University of Sydney said the NTEU’s claim for a 7 per cent pay increase is “totally unrealistic” and shows a “complete lack of understanding of both the university’s financial situation and of community expectations”.

He said university staff is currently the highest paid in the tertiary sector and even without any increase will remain so for some time. Increases in salaries and

Good looks pay off for men

I

t seems that physical attractiveness does matter for men in the workplace, with research revealing that males with above-average looks earned about $32,000 more a year than those with below-average looks.

The Australian-first study, which examined salary and attractiveness, found that handsome men typically commanded salaries of about $81,750 compared with their unlucky counterparts who earned considerably less at $49,600.

The authors of the study, economist Jeff Borland from Melbourne University and former Australian National University economist Andrew Leigh, who is now a federal MP, found that the “plainness penalty” was more important than the “beauty premium”.

In door-to-door interviews, it was found that men whose looks were rated as below-average by the interviewers

10 | February 2013

were earning about 26 per cent less than average.

On the other hand good-looking men earned 22 per cent more than average.

The study was conducted with researchers rating interviewees on a six-point scale from “very much more attractive than average” to “well below average”. The interviewers also viewed photos of other interviewees.

“It turns out beauty isn’t in the eye of the beholder,” Dr Leigh said. “There is strong literature showing views about beauty are shared.”

Men rated as having below-average looks had lower chances of being employed, at 15 per cent, and when they were employed typically had lower wages of 9 per cent. These men were also less likely to be married and had lower chances of being married to a woman with a high income. n

benefits in the NSW public sector are capped at 2.5 per cent, he added.

The spokesman said the university was keen to reach a “realistic” agreement as soon as possible but said the unions are not willing to make any concessions in their claims in return for salary increases.

Thomson said under the university management proposal there would be less job security, a reduction in sick leave entitlements and an undermining of superannuation provisions. He said there also wouldn’t be a limit on academic casuals, and that there would be fewer provisions for fixed-term staff to convert to ongoing positions.

Thomson said this year the NTEU will campaign for and “get a good enterprise agreement”.

At UNE, negotiations on the academic enterprise agreement have stalled, after eight months of negotiations.

Dr Tim Battin, NTEU president at UNE, said that agreements on any of the matters have not been achieved.

“Our main focus in this round is with the extent of arbitrary decision making on the part of management and the abuse of power, but despite the great patience of the NTEU team in presenting its claims with reason and evidence, no movement from the management is forthcoming,” Battin said. n

news

Gender pay gap worries PM T

he Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has expressed concern over data showing that women have fallen further behind men in the workplace, despite claims by a graduate employment group that the figures were misrepresented.

A recent national report from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) said the gender pay gap for young university graduates more than doubled last year, from $2000 to $5000 per annum.

WGEA used figures from the 2012 GradStats report by Graduate Careers Australia (GCA) that it said showed the median full-time employment starting salary for male graduates was $55,000 (up from $52,000 in 2011), compared with $50,000 for women.

However, GCA recently told the media that the figures, which were taken from its annual Australian Graduate Survey, were oversimplified by the federal government agency and that a “much smaller gender wage gap” of 3 per cent remained.

The next day, Gillard responded by saying that any gender gap is concerning, whether it’s for graduates or those who have been in the workforce for a longer period of time, adding that her government had already made a difference to gender pay inequality.

Dr Carla Harris, WGEA research executive manager, said: “It is very disturbing that men’s starting salaries have increased over the past year but those of women have not, especially given that women make up a majority of university graduates.”

WGEA said the gender gap for graduates was most pronounced in the areas of architecture and building, dentistry, optometry and law.

Harris said she was certain that any “female school leaver contemplating a career in dentistry would be outraged knowing that she can expect to earn more than $14,000 less than a man in her first year on the job”.

But GCA said there was in fact no increase in the gender pay gap with the 3 per cent gap remaining unexplained. GCA said the large $5000 pay gap favouring males can be attributed in part to the fact that males tend to be overrepresented in higher paying fields such as engineering.

“In addition, some of the larger wage

Artificial bone aids

dental implants

T

he pain and high cost of dental implants for some patients could be significantly eased if Griffith researchers are successful with the use of artificial bone to assist with the procedure.

A four-year study, assisted by a National Health and Medical Research Council Grant of more than $66,000, is being undertaken

by PhD candidate and periodontist Dr Jamil Alayan from Griffith University’s school of dentistry and oral health.

Alayan and his team are using the latest tissue engineering technology to produce synthetic bone “scaffolds” that can be grafted into the patient’s jawbone. These will then www.campusreview.com.au

provide a viable foundation within which to place titanium dental implants.

“Traditionally, people with missing teeth who have lost a lot of jawbone due to disease or trauma, would need to have these replaced with dental implants using their own bone,” Alayan said.

“This bone is usually derived from their jaw, but occasionally it has to be derived from their hip or skull.”

He said these procedures often cause significant pain, nerve damage and postoperative swelling, as well as extended time off work for the patient.

Alayan said the new procedure will be a less invasive method using artificial bone.

gaps are observed in fields with relatively low response numbers (e.g. dentistry, optometry), which could make them unreliable,” a GCA spokesperson said.

GCA said unknown variables were not collected as part of the Australian Graduate Survey, adding that it would therefore be “unwise to assume on this evidence that there is any sex-based earnings disparity that is necessarily the result of workplace inequality”.

The spokesperson said “GCA is concerned about the media reports as, at a time when many young Australians are making the transition from high school to higher education” statistics portrayed inaccurately could “cloud” their decisions. n

“A big benefit for the patient is that the risks of complications will be significantly lower because bone doesn’t need to be removed from elsewhere in the body. We also won’t have the problem of limited supply that we Dr Jamil Alayan have when using the patient’s own bone.”

Currently in pre-clinical trials, Alayan said the aim is to trial the new technology on humans within the next two to three years.

Regarding the anticipated cost of treatment, he said that this should be a less costly way of augmenting deficient jaw bone, with the saving expected to be passed on to the patient. n February 2013 | 11

international news

Levy submitted his paper to the nanoscience journal Small in December 2009. But he said it was not until February 2011, after review by seven referees, that it was unofficially accepted.

Stripy nanoparticles Photo: www.rsc.org/chemistryworld

Peer review ‘TOO LONG’ Questions have been asked over the time it took to have a critique published about a nanoscience discovery.

By PAUL JUMP

A

paper that was critical of another lab’s body of work and took more than three years to be published raises questions about the effectiveness of peer review and about the way such papers should be handled, a physicist has claimed.

Dr Raphael Levy, a researcher at the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Integrative Biology, finally saw the paper “Stripy Nanoparticles Revisited”, on which he was senior author, published in the journal Small at the end of November, almost three years after it was submitted.

It criticises a 2004 paper by Francesco Stellacci, currently a full professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, which purports to establish the existence of “stripy nanoparticles”: tiny particles of gold covered with stripes of other hair-like molecules called ligands.

Levy said the paper has been 12 | February 2013

followed up in more than 20 subsequent publications by Professor Stellacci, mostly published in high-impact journals. Levy, however, believes the stripes do not exist, and “Stripy Nanoparticles Revisited” argues that Stellacci’s conclusions are based on erroneous interpretation of microscopy data.

After rejection by several journals, including Nature Materials, where Stellacci’s 2004 paper was published, Levy submitted his paper to the nanoscience journal Small in December 2009. But he said it was not until February 2011, after review by seven referees, that it was unofficially accepted.

Small then invited Stellacci to respond in a paper of his own, to be published back to back. Both manuscripts were finally officially accepted in August.

While he emphasised that he made no claim of scientific misconduct and that Stellacci had a right of reply given the potential consequences of the criticism on his career, Levy said that a gap of

six months between submission and publication was already quite long in his field. In his view, the three-year delay – during which Stellacci published nearly a dozen related articles – constituted a “failure of the peer review system”.

Stellacci countered that Levy had made several postings to his blog during that period “with the clear aim to keep attention high”, and that none of the posts had put Stellacci’s case.

He accepted that “science is a process that sometimes is built on disagreement”, but warned that a “slow and careful process” was needed “to distinguish personal attacks from scientific debates”.

He also cautioned against drawing conclusions about the whole peer review system based on one instance.

He added that his original conclusions had been confirmed in various ways in subsequent papers.

But Philip Moriarty, a University of Nottingham professor of physics who contributed a guest posting on Levy’s blog describing Stellacci’s conclusions as “fundamentally compromised”, said even if the stripes were found via another technique, it would not excuse what he considered to be Stellacci’s original error – which he could not believe had not been picked up in peer review.

He said editors had a “duty of care” towards those attempting to build on papers they had published, and he urged them to reconsider how they handle criticism of published work. He suggested that a rapid blog-like forum might work better than more peer-reviewed papers.

Jose Oliveira, editor of Small, said he had followed standard practice in inviting Stellacci to respond to Levy’s paper in one of his own. “We see it as our duty to support the self-regulation mechanism, so we now look forward to feedback from the scientific community,” he said. n Times Higher Education

international news NO Shadow NO Bulb Replacement NO Calibration NO Drivers required NO Filter Cleaning MORE cost effective installation

www.campusreview.com.au

February 2013 | 13

policy & reform

Donning the

business hat Universities are billion-dollar enterprises today, so the leaders need training in financial practice or an understanding of it. By Louis White

P

hil Dolan may just be the role model for the academic of the future. The professor, who is dean of the University of Western Australia’s business school, has an impressive academic and professional background.

Not only does Dolan have an MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management (University of NSW) and a PhD from Stanford University, he spent 13 years at Macquarie Bank in the positions of associate director, division director, and head of investment research and development in the asset management division.

He also spent six years at Macquarie University as the director of the applied finance centre.

As the top Australian universities deal with

turnovers of about $1 billion each, and other institutions approach this figure, the role of leading academics has to include financial accountability. Some department’s finances alone exceed $100 million annually.

Real world experience too will become of paramount importance with multimilliondollar budgets to handle. That’s not to say the principal ethos of a university – to provide an environment focused on learning, educating, researching and preparing students for the reality of the world outside its doors – has gone, but the reality of being accountable for budgets will increasingly grow as federal government funding decreases in the future.

“The reality is that we need to utilise successful people in industry for the benefit of universities,” Dolan says. “I still believe that you need a PhD to be in academia but obtaining information and resources from people who have forged successful careers in their respective field of work will benefit students.”

“Not all business people will want to be academics and I believe that you need to study and work in an academic institution to understand all the nuances associated with it. Saying that, however, I think the best value can be obtained by leaders in industry imparting their real world knowledge into the classroom.

“Academics need commercial acumen because the reality of universities in the present and the future is that the federal government is expecting universities around Australia to become more self-sufficient.”

policy & reform Academics need commercial acumen because the reality of universities in the present and the future is that the federal government is expecting universities around Australia to become more selfsufficient.

UWA is one of Australia’s Group of Eight universities intensive in research and comprehensive in general and professional education. UWA is one of Australia’s most prestigious universities. It was established in 1911 and has formal arrangements with nearly 230 institutions around the world, which complements its 4500 international students.

“I also think universities can tap into the knowledge of business leaders by having them sit on boards,” Dolan says. “I think it would be helpful for vice-chancellors and deputy vice-chancellors to have business experience.

US experience

“In the US the vice-chancellor role is all about external fundraising and universities are coming under more pressure to find income outside their traditional sources.”

A good example of a university tapping into a successful businessperson’s skills can be seen in UWA’s relationship with Mark Barnaba. He is chairman of Macquarie Group, WA as well as chairman of the university’s business school board. He is also an adjunct professor in investment banking and finance at the business school and has an MBA from Harvard University.

“Universities need people with both sets of skills – academia and business acumen,” says Barnaba. “The reality is that business people won’t do the research but that doesn’t mean that their other assets, such as a forging a career in an area of business, can’t be imparted to young minds.

“One model that works well in the US is that of professors at large. They don’t teach in any one faculty but move around disseminating their knowledge to wherever it can be best utilised in the university.

That way the crème de la crème is spread throughout.

“Universities train people for the external world and we need to tap into the expertise in all fields that students want to enter.

Universities need to tap into the knowledge of successful business people in some capacity in order to make university learning relevant and to gain an insight to what is happening out there now.

“If universities don’t change to become more real world accountable then they will make themselves irrelevant in the future,” says Barnaba.

The ever-increasing presence of international students entering into Australian universities makes that reality stark. The international student presence in Australia brought in $16.3 billion to the Australian economy in 2010-11, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Many universities now rely on the income from full-fee paying international students to assist in the provision of quality education to all students both international and domestic.

The ABS figures also reveal that 22 per cent of students in Australia at tertiary level were international students. With static and potentially declining federal government funding, the pressure to retain these students and even increase their numbers with a high Australian dollar remains a priority.

It is believed that some of the top universities in Australia only receive 30 per cent of their income from federal government funding, meaning the emphasis on securing outside funds has become even more critical. Employing senior leaders with business knowledge, skills and contacts will become even more crucial in the future.

“Universities have extremely competent people,” says Jim Birch, the Oceania leader for Ernst & Young’s government and public sector area.

“The issue rising now is the increase in turnover not just in the corporate central but also in the faculties, which can exceed $100 million alone. There is a definite need for an understanding of managing budgets and understanding the realities of business.”

For the past six years Birch has been involved in organisational review, program evaluation, strategic planning, financial turnaround and change management. He believes it is time for universities to undertake a thorough examination of their management structures.

IT and marketing

“I don’t think universities should adopt a ‘one-all’ policy in regards to change but they need to look at potentially centralising

transactional services in areas of IT, finance and marketing. However, you can’t apply a central model and take away the incentives for individual faculties because you will demoralise them but maybe there is a way of centralising some services.

“The conflict arises with academic rigour versus the business reality. Private fundraising will become increasingly more important in the future and this might conflict with the fact that research at universities is rising in importance with worldwide ranking systems,” says Birch.

“Universities need to acclimatise to the fact that they need to raise different revenue streams and may need experts in that area to help them. The importance of international student revenue can’t be underestimated.”

But how will universities cope with a fundamental need to utilise more business people’s skills full-time within academia?

A cultural shift will have to be undertaken and that could take years to be fully embraced.

policy & reform The reality is that universities don’t have years to increase their revenue stream.

“Universities need to consider having a complete set of skills, covering academic leadership as well as commercial and business acumen,” says Professor Bruce Dowton, vice-chancellor and president of Macquarie University.

“If the senior executive leader of a university does not have experience across these broad domains then the executive leadership team should cover the breadth of required skills, with a preparedness by the vice-chancellor to take advice on commercial matters from those with deep business skills who in turn should respect the primacy of the academic mission of the organisation.”

Dowton is adamant that a businessperson should have had experience in academia for him or her to fully understand and embrace what an academic institution represents as well as acclimatising to the way it functions.

“Universities should not seek a person with only business skills to head their academic institution,” he says. “The leader of the institution should ideally have an understanding of, and experience with, academic or research organisations at some level. Whilst the field of candidates for individuals to lead universities with the breadth of academic and business/ commercial skills can at times be thin, the real message is that universities have a responsibility to develop the subsequent cohorts of leaders who do have such skills to take on senior leadership roles.”

Professor Andrew Vann, vice-chancellor and president of Charles Sturt University has a mixed background of business and academia. Vann trained as a civil engineer and worked in engineering consultancy before completing a PhD in the Civil Engineering Systems Group at the University of Bristol. He has worked in Australian universities for 17 years holding senior academic roles and undertaking research interests in structural monitoring and artificial intelligence.

“No vice-chancellor brags about their turnover,” Vann says. “It is not what we are about. You have to get the money in but it is a secondary consideration to your primary objective of providing the best teaching, research and education facilities for students.

Entrepreneurs

“But we do have to think more businesslike. Some business people have come into academia and done well, others have struggled due to various complexities such as the many different competing factors within a university.

“I think on the whole Australian universities have been very entrepreneurial.

16 | February 2013

Professor Andrew Vann with students

The emphasis on attracting and retaining international students has been marketed successfully and I think we are much more capable as a sector.”

Vann says that academics wanting to undertake head of faculty jobs or move to deputy vice-chancellor or vice-chancellor should be given every opportunity through the university offering them business and leadership courses offered by institutions such as the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

“There is a lot of training for leaders within universities with a variety of management courses on offer,” Vann says.

“You need to able to balance budgets and there will always be the potential for conflict between business and academia because of the outcome but we need to find a way to work together.”

Monash University has probably the biggest turnover of any Australian university at about $2 billion a year. With in excess of 63,000 students and more than 15,000 staff spread across its six campuses in Australia, it is a busy institution.

The university also has campuses in Malaysia, South Africa, China, India and Italy.

“Every university now has a complex array of funding activities,” says the vice-chancellor, Ed Byrne. “Every vicechancellor is the equivalent of a chief executive officer and needs a solid group of business principles to help him or her manage the university.”

Byrne says that the fundamental principles of a university focusing on education and research must remain. He says that for a vice-chancellor or head of

policy & reform

Professor Phil Dolan

faculty to succeed they need to have a solid background in academia.

“An academic grounding can only be obtained by an academic career. You need to respect what universities are all about but there is no doubt that you need business training to understand the financial issues associated with a tertiary institution.”

Byrne is a pioneering neuroscientist who has also completed an MBA. He had a very prominent career in medicine holding down positions such as director of neurology at

St Vincent’s Hospital and was a founding director of the Melbourne Neuromuscular Research Unit and the Centre for Neuroscience.

He was admitted as an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2006.

“They key is to identify talent both within and outside the university that can make a difference,” Byrne says.

“There is a range of management, leadership and overall business courses that people can undertake to get their skills up to scratch at Oxford, Harvard and

the like. It is becoming more important to seek and raise funds from nontraditional sources and to manage bigger budgets which puts added pressure on management within universities.

“With the added pressure of a rising Australian dollar and uncertainty within Asia, business skills within the tertiary sector are needed more than ever,” Byrne says.

Professor Peter Hoj, vice-chancellor and president of the University of Queensland, is another who has worked in both academia and the business world.

“You need a vast array of skills to be a vice-chancellor these days,” Hoj says.

“With the high Australian dollar, cheaper courses in America and a greater emphasis on retaining and growing the income received from international students, the pressure is on.

“The challenge for universities is to get it right both at a learning level as well as attracting new income. We don’t have shareholder pressure like a major corporation but we need to undertake a cultural change for people to understand that academia now has to think like a business.”

That challenge is upon universities now and will only increase in the future. n

You are invited to attend a Murdoch University Symposium.

“The 21st Century University: Transformation and resilience in a knowledge economy.”

Monday 4 March, 2013.

The idea of what a university is has changed.

We’ve seen them go from places of intellectual traditions to centres of innovation and research.

So what’s next?

What role could or should a university have in a rapidly changing global environment?

CRICOS Provider Code 00125 J MK_MUR2862

We’ll open up this question for discussion and debate at the Murdoch University Symposium, on The 21st Century University.

www.campusreview.com.au

It’s not simply thinking about what universities will be like. It’s a chance to bring together leading thinkers, academics and others from business, government and the community, to rethink what a future university could be like.

The plenary presentation will be delivered by Professor Tony Chan, President of Hong Kong

University of Science and Technology.

Professor Chan will speak on some of the major global trends in higher education and the stellar rise of his university into the ranks of the world’s top 100.

Other keynote speakers you’ll hear from include Professor Mark Considine, Dean of Arts, University of Melbourne, to discuss what makes the university enterprise distinct and Thomas Docherty, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Warwick, to discuss why the ‘University Idea’ matters.

This Symposium will present an opportunity for anyone with an interest in the future of tertiary education to help shape the universities of the future.

For more information and to register for this complimentary one-day event go to murdoch.edu.au/symposium or call Cat Bevan-Jones on (08) 9360 6233. Bookings are limited so be quick.

February 2013 | 17

policy & reform

Good research

goes missing

Australia does well in world academic rankings but the success rate for researchers applying for grants is only about 20 per cent.

Louis White reports

P

rofessor Brett Kirk is one of the lucky ones. The associate deputy vice-chancellor, research at Curtin University is part of a team that has received an $840,000 Australian Research Council (ARC) grant over five years This has been topped up with $667,000 of partner cash funding – to explore bioengineered bioscaffolds for Achilles tendinopathy treatment.

Researchers from the universities of Western Australia, Curtin, Griffith and Auckland, and staff at Orthocell, Sir Charles Gardener Hospital and Uniservices in Auckland, are all working on the project.

“Tendinopathy is a painful tendon as a result of overuse,” Kirk says. “Achilles tendinopathies, are often the most disabling tendinopathies because they

The research sector is unsustainable, it is difficult to start a research career and when you are in there is a high probability that funding will dry up.

18 | February 2013

prevent normal walking, representing a substantial burden to quality of life and the Australian economy.

“A significant contributor to the high costs associated with Achilles tendinopathy is the high rate of further surgery due to poor surgical healing. To improve surgical outcomes this project will develop new understanding of normal tendon behaviour (captured by predictive computational models), develop novel bioreactor tissue from cell-seeded bioscaffolds, and using the computational model and bioreactor tissue, investigate new surgical methods for tendinopathy treatment.”

Kirk says that the submission was pulled together very quickly. “We actually put the proposal together in a very short period of time – a couple of months.”

“There was a six-month time frame between the submission and the awarding of the grant. It is great that we are able to undertake this study as it will benefit many and we will discover new things along the way.”

But despite billions of dollars of federal government funding being poured into university research it seems that the money can’t keep up with the amount of academics applying for grants.

And even though 10 Australian

policy & reform

Professor Brett Kirk

universities are performing above the world standard for research, including four performing well above world standard, according to the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) 2012 national report, more and more academics are looking to private funding to help secure vital research.

“Success rates in applying for grants funding are near 20 per cent,” says Professor Les Field, vice-president and deputy vice-chancellor (research) at the University of NSW. “There is a waste of excellent research potential in the exceptional research that simply misses the cut and doesn’t get funded. Success rates at near 20 per cent means that the research sector is unsustainable, it is difficult to start a research career and when you are in there is a high probability that funding will dry up.”

Field is responsible for the strategic research direction and overall research performance of UNSW, and in particular, maintaining and advancing the university’s profile in research and research training, as well as technology transfer.

He believes there are three key areas that need to be addressed with the current system of allocating funding grants.

“Firstly, the fact that most of our research is never fully funded is the largest issue facing research. When we win a grant from our main agencies to undertake a research program, it takes at least another dollar for each grant dollar to actually do the research.

These are the indirect or hidden costs like providing lab space, IT, the library, insurance, administration support and other costs so the more successful you are at winning research grants the more dollars you have to find to actually make the research happen. www.campusreview.com.au

“The research agencies only partly cover the indirect costs and for a large research intensive university like UNSW, the shortfall runs to hundreds of millions of dollars each year that we have to find to support the research program.

“Secondly, supporting major facilities and research infrastructure. For a university like UNSW, where there is a significant fraction of our research effort in the physical sciences, engineering and health/medical/ biomedical areas, much of the research effort relies on access to large equipment and facilities which are an expensive but essential part of being able to undertake cutting-edge research.

“Thirdly, support for longer-term programs. In a tight budget environment, the tendency is to pull back on commitments into longer term. Most research is not really something that you can do well in stops-and-starts. The best research environment is one where we do have a view to the longer term – you can tackle bigger and more significant problems, you can build up stable teams and expertise.”

Field believes that governments need to set specific agendas for research and prioritise where needed.

“Governments need to firstly provide the strategic directions, broad priorities and a

Professor Graeme Wright

commitment to research programs that are supported,” he says.

“Secondly, once we have the direction and commitment then we should do whatever we do properly, so if we decide that research in an area or on a project or problem is important then we should commit to supporting it properly to achieve the intended outcome.

“In many instances this is a long term commitment, which will transcend the term of some governments but we need mechanisms to accommodate longer term programs,” Field says.

The federal government will provide about $1.67 billion in research block funding in 2013 through a number of programs administered by the ARC, National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education and many other government departments.

In 2011 (the latest period available) Australian universities also received $1.35 billion in competitive grant funding (largely from ARC and NHMRC), $414 million in other federal government funding and $108 million in Co-operative Research Centre Funding.

“Between 2008 and 2011, this government invested more than

February 2013 | 19

policy & reform

$43.2 billion in core university funding,” says the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research, Chris Evans. “Our investment continues to grow and between 2012 and 2015, we will invest a further $58.9 billion. The Gillard government recognises that research and innovation go hand-in-hand and translates into new jobs and new opportunities for Australians.

“Our investment has created a 24 per cent increase in the amount of research being undertaken, a 16 per cent increase in the number of patents being secured and a 9 per cent increase in the number of researchers employed.”

But even though the government is continuing to increase research funding, it is struggling to fully fund all researchers and keep up with the amount of applications it receives. “The government has increased funding for university research but at the same time the number of researchers seeking grants is actually growing faster,” says Professor Graeme Wright, Curtin University deputy vice-chancellor of research and development.

“It is imperative that we can keep the system competitive to attain research funding because if we don’t then researchers will drop out and no one will benefit from that. Another issue is the timing and size of research grants. We need researchers to be fully funded so they don’t have to spend their time seeking income from other sources.”

Wright, who has a PhD in spatial sciences, has an extensive role that includes the oversight of all research, research training and commercialisation and knowledge transfer activities within Curtin University.

He is regularly meeting industry players and seeking opportunities for Curtin researchers to attain the necessary funds to complete their studies and believes it 20 | February 2013

is imperative that all areas of research are given due consideration. “The ERA 2012 report shows that 22 fields of research were granted funds, with the collective group of medical and health services receiving the highest amount of $3.4 billion out of a total of $8.77 billion,” Wright says.

“The next two highest were biological sciences and engineering at just under $1 billion. That is a big gap and we need to ensure that all areas of research are given equal consideration.”

In the 2012-13 financial year the ARC is providing about $880 million to universities and other eligible organisations through the National Competitive Grants Program.

“The ERA 2012 results confirm that researchers at Australian universities compete with the world’s best in a wide range of disciplines,” says Professor Aidan Byrne, the ARC chief executive officer.

“They demonstrate that world standard research performance occurs at Australian universities of all kinds, in all states and territories. The results also provide assurance to Australian taxpayers that their investment in university-based research is well founded.

“The ratings achieved by Australian

universities were higher overall in ERA 2012 than in ERA 2010, and the range of fields of research assessed was wider,” says Byrne.

“In 16 of the 22 broad fields of research assessed in ERA, more universities are rated at world standard or higher in 2012 than in 2010.”

Australia has five universities in the Academic Ranking of World Universities top 100 for the first time ever, with 19 universities in the top 500. Australia now has the third highest number of universities in the top 100. Only the UK and the US have higher.

“However, ERA ratings provide a more detailed picture of performance relative to world standard than ranking systems,” Byrne says. “ERA results pinpoint the specific research strengths of each Australian university, as well as the breadth of capacity across the sector by discipline.”

While Australia may be moving up the ranking systems in terms of research performance, we could be doing better in terms of providing more comprehensive funding to a wider group of fields. We all lose out when a research application remains unfunded no matter what area the application comes from. n

policy & reform

False hope

of bold targets

Increasing secondary school completion rates needs to happen before we focus on more university graduates.

By Stuart Middleton

www.campusreview.com.au

H

impact. The reality is now, we are told, a realisation i ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go. In the that the government’s target of 40 per cent of young Year of the Snake with great Hobbit people will have a degree by 2025 – that is just 13 happiness and Middle Earth joy. But years away. frankly it hasn’t got off to a great start.

Note that the target applies to “young people” First a family funeral has to be brought forward because one family member’s child will this year face and clearly the size of this stream will be influenced largely by the performance of the school system. her SAT test at her school in the US. She must be The increase of 3000 school leavers in this year’s back for school on Monday! applications might be a good sign; increased Then, in another part of the family, arrangements numbers are meeting the standard. Or it might simply have to be changed because a grandson is “sitting mean that the higher education sector has picked a most important test in May”. This turns out be the all the low-hanging fruit in the first three years of the NAPLAN test. He is seven years old going on eight demand-driven regime and school leavers will start to and he will be in year 3 this year. It is hard to see the represent an increasing proportion of the university. perspective in all this.

Back in July 2010, I wrote in a blog (www.edtalknz.

Both the US and Australia have opted for a testcom) that: “Australian educators will be pleased based regime to see that no child is left behind and that Julia Gillard has been kicked upstairs by the that literacy and numeracy standards are being Labor Party. After all, it can’t be much fun having lifted. If this approach works it would have started to an Education Minister who exhibited so much joy in show clear improvements in the US by now and it hasn’t. If tests will lift literacy and numeracy then over lurching towards strange goals for tertiary education.

The Australians have set a goal of the history of our test-obsessed having 40% of all 25- to 34-yearsystems, standards would have It is time that olds with a bachelor degree or been at least held and might even above by 2025. This must have have been expected to have risen. the smoke screens sent shivers down the spines of Now I read in The Australian a were removed. education leaders at all levels.” report that numbers applying for The only statistics I further commented that this university have flattened. This is was: “… keeping up the tradition described as “stagnation”. The that matter are among the Group of Five Englishreport describes the tricks that are the successful speaking education systems of played, such as the reporting of aping each other regardless of increases in the percentage of low completion rates of common sense, they join the socio-economic students applying qualifications.

United States and Great Britain but which in reality is inflated by in setting this arbitrary target that takes little account the low base number of such students already in the of current performance and the reasons for it. The university system. While this group of students might British set a target of 40% (a key recommendation apply they are unlikely, we are told, to be offered of the Leitch Report) and more recently President places. Beware of percentages!

Obama has set a target that the US would simply It is time that the smoke screens were removed. have the highest proportion of college graduates in The only statistics that matter are the successful the world by 2020.” completion rates of qualifications. Let’s celebrate At that time I predicted that none of these three when there is an increase in the numbers of lowtargets would be met because of the performance socioeconomic students who graduate with degree of the respective K-12 schooling systems and other qualifications or in the number progressing to factors such as the extent to which the countries postgraduate work. Numbers in themselves mean can actually afford to seriously set out to achieve little but the telling numbers are everything.

An increase described as “healthy” in the numbers them. The increases in actual numbers of graduates will require three things: a substantially increased of indigenous student applications turns out to be teaching body, increased capital expenditure and, a mere 100 additional enrolments – three busloads. above all, improvement in the successful completion This isn’t going to lead to equity in a hurry. The of post-secondary qualifications. gap between population proportion and share of Moving beyond the focus on simplistic number applications for students in regional and remote targets and on tests that might or might not show areas is 6.4 per cent. This doesn’t reflect equitable what is happening to standards will be a sine qua outcomes at the school level. non in the future. Perhaps the Year of the Snake Now these figures might simply be a demographic could be turned into the Year of the Ladder. n blip or perhaps the figures for previous years have been inflated – demand-driven systems do seem to drive demand up for a time but then all the tricks of Stuart Middleton is director external relations at Manukau Institute of Technology, New Zealand. the sector have been exhausted and reality starts to February 2013 | 21

policy & reform

Be heard in an

election year Without taking sides in the political contest, it is important for the higher education sector to promote the huge contribution it makes to the Australian economy.

By Glyn Davis

22 | February 2013

policy & reform

s

ometime this year Australians will elect the next federal government.

If history proves a guide, higher education will not feature in the campaign.

Nearly a million Australians study at a university, more than 100,000 work in the sector and in many towns, cities and states, tertiary education is now the leading employer.

Education is Australia’s fourth largest export, and Victoria’s largest. Still, the campaign will be silent.

In 2010, neither major party released a policy on higher education until the final days of the campaign. There was no serious attention – debates, advertisements or lobbying campaigns around the future of universities.

Why? In part because the nation has solved some major challenges. The wide distribution of campuses and the demanddriven system create access for those Australians who wish to study.

The logic of HECS tempers concern over crushing graduate debt. Recent successes in global rankings assure Australians they own a strong and well-performing higher education system.

The stresses and strains of the system appear technical and arcane. Regulatory reform, more diverse student pathways, greater choice of curriculum and delivery mode – these are matters for insiders, not the stuff of an election campaign.

And yet the university sector needs a voice in the grand argument about national priorities.

It is imperative the electorate, and their political leaders, understand the contribution universities should make to the national future. From economic innovation to quality of healthcare, from jobs for the next generation to insight about ourselves as a polity, universities have much to offer.

There is substantial policy thinking required on completing the demand driven system. The links to sub-bachelor programs, and the connections between vocational and higher education, remain works in progress. Also unresolved is the role of postgraduate education across the sector, with the demand-driven system focused principally on bachelor qualifications.

Equity remains a challenge, despite enormous efforts across the sector.

Educational disadvantage shows in preschool tests, and is confirmed by the diagnostic tools now implemented across Australia. Universities are keen to be partners in addressing equity, but cannot do the work alone.

After several years of exciting and welcome growth in research funding, recent budget decisions have reversed some long-awaited policy gains. Australian research expenditure has improved, but

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remains modest by the standards of our regional competitors.

Australian higher education is now firmly part of a global economy, so issues such as visas, support for international students, and maintenance of minimum standards are all pressing policy concerns.

And funding is always a topic in any discussion of higher education. The most recent expert report identified significant shortfalls in funding per student across a wide array of disciplines, but it is unclear whether either party will address the issue.

All of this should be viewed in the light of important national priorities. The Australia in the Asian Century white paper invites universities to deepen their engagement with Asia.

Higher education, like other services, is shaped by the Australian preference for low taxes and modest public provision.

As a result, we invest less in universities than other nations in the region.

The roll-out of the national broadband network, and the sudden focus on online learning, provides scope to expand curriculum offerings and reach people who need or prefer to study away from campus. A more networked nation offers great opportunity too for community learning, for non-accredited training and for conversation about ideas.

Pressing public debates around climate adaptation benefit from research and expert opinion – no matter how difficult it can be to communicate the basis and findings of science.

And higher education, like other services, is shaped by the Australian preference for low taxes and modest public provision. As a result, we invest less in universities than other nations in the region.

This is never debated, but there are consequences. Success as an international student hub relies in large part on perceptions of quality. As greater resources

see universities in Singapore, Korea and Hong Kong eclipse their Australian counterparts, so competitiveness in the nation’s largest service export industry is under challenge.

Yet as things stand, universities will not become the centre of political debate. No perceived crisis drives public attention toward tertiary issues. Opinion polls suggest Australians overall are very satisfied with their tertiary system, and more concerned with employment, school education, healthcare access and the environment.

Yet there are costs in being invisible, as the sector knows from bitter experience.

The end of indexation in 1995, the major teaching cuts of 1996, and the loss of future research funding during 2012 attracted little public notice, and no outcry.

There is little evidence of wider concern about the long slow decline in staff-student ratios, from 1:15 to more than 1:20.

So the sector faces a challenge in this election year. We need the electorate, and their political leaders, to understand the contribution universities make.

When senior figures from universities speak in public about the state of higher education in Australia, there is much temptation to reel off the many things wrong with the system: insufficient funding of research and the cost of teaching, insecure employment for casual staff, and often outdated facilities with crowded classrooms.

All are important. Yet rarely does anyone also champion the benefits generated by Australian universities, the way education enriches lives. People take us at our own estimation – if the sector won’t speak in support of our own work, why should politicians?

Universities and their supporters can do a better job explaining what happens on campus, helping Australians understand what is worth celebrating, and why additional investment can benefit everyone in the community – our students first, but the many others who benefit from research and engagement.

The connections might not be obvious or direct, but they deserve attention. Until we take seriously the work of engaging with a broader public, with frankness but justifiable pride, our sector will remain of little political relevance.

This is the ambitious goal Universities Australia has set itself for the year ahead.

Without taking sides in a political contest the sector must set out its policy aims, and promote these through the year ahead. n Professor Glyn Davis is chair of Universities Australia and vice-chancellor of Melbourne University.

February 2013 | 23

policy & reform

Let the campus

Fight Back

With teaching numbers unable to match student growth, the idea of the huge university lecture has to be rethought.

By Geoff Hanmer and Richard Leonard

W

hile K to 12 staff-to-student ratios have fallen over the past 30 years, higher education staff-to-student ratios have increased.

Universities have coped by having larger and larger lecture venues, and accepting that a tutorial can consist of 20 students or more.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) or distance education of any sort can’t emulate the richness or diversity of a good campus based education, particularly for younger students.

However, the decrease in staff to student ratios over the past 20 years has seriously eroded the quality of student experience at our HE campuses to the point where the sector risks fatally damaging its brand.

Since 1989, when John Dawkins put the HE system on steroids, almost 350,000 full-time students have been added to the sector, nearly 30 per cent of them international.

These international students put about $5 billion dollars into the system annually, which has meant that the federal government has been able to reduce its funding per student in real terms and particularly in comparison with the richer OECD countries, all of which outspend Australia by large margins. The institutions which attract the largest number of international students, such as UNSW, Melbourne, Sydney and Monash are well off compared to the ones which don’t.

If anything, staff to student ratios in Australia are likely to get worse. The government has committed to achieve the Bradley targets by 2025 and this will add at least another 150,000 full-time students to enrolments. Current funding arrangements virtually guarantee that very few additional academics will be hired to teach them.

The first thing the HE sector needs to do is admit that the lecture and tutorial-based higher education of the past is no longer 24 | February 2013

Open spaces encourage collaborative learning

working. Professor Warren Bebbington, the vice-chancellor of the University of Adelaide agrees. He recently announced a raft of changes to teaching that will deliver less lectures but a guarantee of a “small-group experience” to students. Adelaide is doing what others have been thinking.

With almost 1 million full-time equivalent students enrolled by 2025, the Australian HE system must devise ways to successfully educate a large number of students using relatively few academics.

Since the government is not going to provide extra cash, institutions must introduce new pedagogical models, or risk having their student experience damaged to the point where MOOCs and overseas competitors become a real threat, rather than an imagined one.

Almost everyone in the sector would agree that active pedagogies improve student learning outcomes compared with lectures, and yet the lecture is still the dominant model of teaching.

Why? Because it’s cheap.

A lecture with 1000 students costs much less than any active pedagogy imaginable and consumes less than half as much space. A typical large lecture theatre can achieve one student for about 1.2 sq metres, whereas an active teaching setting will normally require between 3 and 4 square metres per student. Part of this is down to packing efficiency, but part is due to the need to separate working groups of students to achieve speech intelligibility and to allow academic staff to walk between tables comfortably.

Whichever way active teaching spaces are analysed, they are expensive; expensive to build and expensive to run, but in our

view they are essential to ensuring that students have a good experience and can learn effectively. We also think that a large lecture theatre which students don’t attend can’t be considered to be cost effective.

So, how do we manage to provide active and engaging learning experiences to a very large number of students without additional government funding?

Firstly we have to face up to the parlous state of our teaching infrastructure; dark and uncomfortable lecture theatres, dilapidated classrooms and ill-equipped tutorial rooms – most of them in formats precluding active teaching styles.

Across the Australian HE sector, ARINA Hayball estimates that there are more than 500,000 teaching seats. At present, less than 10,000 seats are in active formats.

Poor quality or not, this represents an investment of $5 billion which can’t be thrown away.

Second, we must learn to lecture less.

If lectures happened every second week, we would free up about one quarter of our existing teaching spaces. It would then be possible to adapt many existing teaching facilities to provide good active learning spaces at an affordable cost, as Hayball’s work with the Melbourne School of Land and Environment demonstrates (see photo).

The idea of lecturing less is sometimes frightening for university managers and academics, but it is better than some of the drastic alternatives, and preserves the real advantages of a campus education. n Geoff Hanmer and Richard Leonard are directors of ARINA Hayball, specialist architects with a focus on higher education, community and public design.

faculty focus

Unis to share

learning hub Queensland engineering students are set to benefit from a learning centre that employs advanced virtual reality technology.

ENGINEERING RESEARCH AT USC

bid for $30 million from the government’s Education Investment Fund, which made the project possible.

“I’m thrilled at what this facility will mean for the Sunshine Coast, somewhere with a very special place in my heart,” Swan said.

“By delivering first-class education facilities we will help generate jobs and future prosperity for the Sunshine Coast region, and the country.”

A Labor senator for Queensland, Claire Moore, said the new facility will give Queenslanders access to better quality education and training opportunities and world-class facilities.

“The project will help increase the number of engineering students in the region by working with TAFE and high schools, giving more students access to rewarding engineering jobs in the future,” Moore said.

She said it was not just a great result : for 2 1the : universities, 3 0 A M but A Ealso S T for the entire region. n

A range of exciting research opportunities in civil engineering is now available at the University of the Sunshine Coast. The USC Engineering team is developing the Queensland Functional Pavement Centre to undertake pure and applied research programs associated with future transport and pavement needs. A series of test road sections and a test track are being established, and research projects are being developed in partnership with major overseas research organisations.

USC is seeking motivated and talented higher degree by research students to work within our defined research areas: • monitoring and simulating innovative road pavement designs • new and alternative road pavement materials • performance of permeable pavements in tropical and subtropical climates • impact of climate change on coastal urban infrastructure Graduate engineers with an interest in working in these areas should contact Mark Porter, Professor of Engineering, for further information and advice on a USC research degree.

Tel: 07 5459 4527 | Email: mporter1@usc.edu.au

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www.usc.edu.au

CRICOS Provider Number: 01595D

E

data in ways that they understand,” he said. ngineering education in regional The hub will also feature cutting-edge Queensland has been given learning and teaching spaces, including an a much needed boost with a interactive lecture theatre for 120 students partnership between the University of that can be quickly reconfigured for group Southern Queensland and the University of work activities or scenario work. the Sunshine Coast.

The new hub will also address skills USQ will assist USC to optimise the use needs in the region as well as at a national of the new Engineering Learning Hub at level. Professor Frank Bullen, dean of the the Sunshine Coast’s Sippy Downs region Faculty of Engineering and Surveying at by enhancing pathways to engineering in USQ, was enthusiastic about enhancing the area. the opportunities for students.

The new facility will link to visual facilities “USQ engineering is proud to extend at USQ enabling collaboration in producing learning pathways in Queensland for future 3D scenarios in mechanical and civil engineers,” Bullen said. engineering.

“To be part of this education USC’s professor of civil engineering, infrastructure fund bid proves USQ’s Mark Porter, said these specialised visualisation theatres for immersive learning leadership position in engineering education and these facilities will also at USC and USQ, with support from the further enhance the education advantages University of NSW, would set the facility that USQ offers.” apart.

The Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer, “Combining visualisation techniques with 0 1 virtual 8 4 6 reality _ U S technologies C _ 1 8 5 x 6will 7 C R . p dWayne f P Swan, a g e recently 1 2 5visited / 0 1USC’s / 1 3 Sippy , 1 1 3D0and allow Downs campus to mark their successful students to see and interact with complex

February 2013 | 25

faculty focus

If the

hard hat

FITS

For me it is biomechanics and the study of electronics, movement analysis and physics.

Sarah Marsanich 26 | February 2013

faculty focus

Schoolgirls who want to pursue a career in engineering need to keep up their science studies in years 11 and 12, says a successful graduate.

F

orget the stereotypes. Women are an increasing force in the university engineering ranks across Australia.

They are still outnumbered almost 10 to one by their male counterparts but the winds of change are blowing.

“There is an increasing recognition that women have been under-represented in the engineering workforce,” said Griffith University pro vice-chancellor Professor Debra Henly, who heads the university’s Science, Environment, Engineering and Technology Group.

“Engineering is not always about dirty overalls and work boots. Many engineers are employed in project planning and management roles and work in corporate environments.”

Devon Halligan is one such woman creating her own pathway.

She recently returned home to the Gold Coast as a world and club champion from the 2012 World Surf Life Saving Championships in Adelaide. The 19-yearold engineering student is excited about the opportunities that lie ahead in both her sporting and engineering careers.

“I really enjoy a challenge and love learning, so I find the courses and the experiments we get to work on in electronics and mechanics really interesting,” Halligan said.

“For me it is biomechanics and the study of electronics, movement analysis and physics.”

For Halligan, engineering was a natural choice having always been good at maths and physics through high school, but she is

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also aware that she is in a minority.

“Yes, that’s definitely true of my classes, but I don’t have any problem with that.

I have spent so much of my life around surf clubs which are largely dominated by males,” she said.

“I look at it positively as an opportunity to prove myself in a challenging field. It’s probably because I am so competitive in everything that I do. My goal is always to get the best results I can and I don’t mind competing with the guys to achieve that.”

Sarah Marsanich, a 23-year-old geotechnical engineer, graduated from Griffith University with a Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) in 2010, earning a university medal in the process. She also secured a graduate position with AECOM, a global company providing professional, technical and management support services in areas including transport, the environment, energy, water and government.

Through AECOM, Marsanich is working with the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads and has the challenging task of rebuilding roads in the state’s south-east following the devastating 2010-2011 floods.

“The floods brought terrible heartbreak to the region, and it also caused extensive damage to our road networks,” she said.

“Not only are we repairing the road network, but we are also learning a lot about the impact of heavy rainfall in certain geological settings so we can build safer and more enduring infrastructure for the future.”

Marsanich started her tertiary studies in Sydney but later moved to the Gold Coast, where she found a world of difference at Griffith University, which started its engineering school Devon Halligan in 2006. It now has more than 1000 students and will be expanding its course offerings even further this year.

“The lecturers and support staff genuinely care about your success,” Marsanich said.

Professor Henly said: “Griffith University has a study program which supports women in engineering and all of our graduates are highly sought after.”

Now at the start of what promises to be a long and successful career, Marsanich already has sound advice for others wanting to pursue a similar career path.

“I would urge students, especially young women, to continue their science studies into years 11 and 12,” she said.

“To participate in today’s society you need a level of understanding about the world and modern technology that you can only get through knowledge of science.

“As a bonus, science allows for limitless career opportunities, and I would recommend the field of engineering where you get to do challenging and rewarding work that can really influence the future of the world we live in.” n February 2013 | 27

faculty focus

Rocket science tops ATAR list

Female students drawn to UNSW engineering

T

he University of Sydney’s Bachelor of Engineering (Mechatronic) (Space) course had the highest Australia Tertiary Admission Rank cut-off of any degrees offered to students in the main round offers this year.

The University Admissions Centre made offers to more than 55,000 students in the main round. Universities made 72,089 offers in total, including offers from earlier rounds, compared with 70,186 at the same time last year.

The mechtronic engineering degree at the University of Sydney covers a broad set of areas including orbital mechanics, robotics, rocket propulsion systems, satellite technology, aero- and astrodynamics in the space environment, as well as the fundamentals in engineering science and design principles. It is the only course of its type in Australia.

Salah Sukkarieh, professor of robotics and intelligent systems at the school of aerospace, mechanical and mechatronic engineering said the course generally hits the top end of the student intake, due to entry requirements.

Applicants needed an ATAR of 99.8 for this year.

“The degree requires in-depth knowledge and testing of a broad set of areas. Students not only require the ability to learn complex science and maths from a broad area, they have to translate that to a practical solution that meets various constraints imposed by the space environment,” Sukkarieh said.

He said the nature of the degree requires students who are generally well versed in maths and sciences and who have an aptitude for technology.

The degree calls for staff who have knowledge in the aero and astro fields coupled with staff in the mechatronics field.

Sukkarieh said you then need lecturers and teachers and the supporting infrastructure that can bring the two together in a proper curriculum.

He said this combination is what makes the degree so special for the University of Sydney.

“If you couple this with the highest rank aerospace school in the country and the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (the largest field of robotics research institute in the world that is tied to the mechatronics degree) then you have a very powerful synergy that gives students the best experience.” n

28 | February 2013

Deniz Kayis (Centre), with her mother, Assoc Prof Berman Kayis (Left) and sister Ann

M

en still dominate in the field of engineering, with women making up only 15.8 per cent of enrolments in engineering courses at Australian universities in 2010, says the latest Engineers Australia report.

However, there are signs that more women are choosing the profession as a career path. One of them is Deniz Kayis, who will start at the University of NSW this year for a combined engineering/law degree.

The 18-year-old Sydney Girls High student secured a place at a UNSW course along with 7800 students during the main round of university offers.

UNSW’s engineering faculty is planning to boost female enrolments to 25 per cent by 2020. This could happen sooner than the target year with encouraging signs already visible.

Last year, women comprised about 19 per cent of the engineering student population, while in sub-disciplines such as chemical engineering and biomedical engineering, women made up about 40 per cent of students.

Also, UNSW’s female engineering students who remain and complete the program are well above the national average in terms of course completion and retention.

Pro-vice chancellor (students) Professor Wai-Fong Chua said the university had become attractive to school leavers with high academic achievement – receiving the highest number of first preferences from the “Top 500” group of students.

Kayis was one of more than 40 high achievers who attained an ATAR of 99.9; she was awarded a UNSW Scientia Scholarship worth $10,000 annually.

Kayis continued a family tradition by accepting the UNSW offer.

“UNSW is a great university. Both my mother and my sister are there so I know I’ve made the right choice,” she said. “The combined degree also gives me flexibility and options later on.”

Her mother Berman Kayis is an associate professor in the school of mechanical and manufacturing engineering, while her sister Ann has just enrolled in a PhD with the Australian School of Business after finishing a combined commerce/law degree.

“If I decide to go down the research path I can choose something that encompasses both – maybe legal issues in engineering or if I’m working in corporate law, having a background in engineering can help there too,” Deniz said. n

faculty focus

Schoolgirls get hands-on experience

Y

ou have to break things to find out how they are built, the manager of safer roads performance at Transport NSW, Delilah Marta, told a group of teenagers at the annual Women in Engineering Summit at the University of Wollongong.

Marta said being an engineer involved “crashing, splatting and exploding” things every day in order to learn how to put them back together and solve problems. “I still find the field exciting and interesting,” she said.

About 60 high school students attended the four-day summit, which is designed to encourage females to consider engineering as a career.

While more than 90 per cent of Australia’s engineers are male, it should not be thought of as a “man’s job”, said the summit’s organising committee chair Dr Laura Banasiak.

The environmental and civil engineer, from the school of civil, mining and environmental engineering, said great opportunities in all the engineering disciplines are out there for women.

“Perhaps the problem in the past has been that teenage girls don’t necessarily

understand what engineering involves, and how much variety there is. The summit program was devised to demonstrate that there are many different fields of engineering, all offering great career opportunities,” she said.

Students explored a range of areas such as environmental, civic, mining, electrical, mechtronics, materials, computer, and telecommunications engineering during the summit, where the Faculty of Engineering and female engineers gave presentations.

The girls also had a hands-on experience with the university’s world-class

engineering facilities through field trips to major sites including Railcorp’s rail freight facilities at Bluescope Steel’s port area.

They also looked at the iconic Seacliff Bridge in Wollongong’s northern suburbs, as well as other developments.

Last but not least, the students visited the Science Centre and Planetarium where they experimented with superconductivity.

“Look into grad programs, challenge yourself and set goals, work in teams to solve problems and don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone,” said Transgrid’s high voltage design manager, Angela Klepac, who gave some tips for success in the profession.

Vice-chancellor Paul Wellings said: “An engineering degree will provide you with a broad set of skills you can apply in all areas of the workforce.

“UOW is a very interesting place and there are lots of exciting things happening.

We are a university who put teaching and learning centre stage and I hope to see many of you here in the future.”

“Theodore von Karman really was right when he said that ‘scientists study the world as it is; engineers create the world that has never been’.” n

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February 2013 | 29

TAFE

Flexibilitykey to survival For public providers to compete with private operators they will have to adopt new teaching methods and embrace online tools

By Michael O’Loughlin

I

think I can say without fear of contradiction that the VET system and the TAFE system in particular have come under great pressure in the past few years.

The turmoil in the Victorian VET system, which has been at the forefront of national reform, has received enormous media coverage.

As a CEO of a Victorian public provider, I have had to steer my organisation through a number of years of uncertainty and dramatically reduced funding. I have had to ensure that it not only survived but carves out a place for itself in the new tertiary education landscape.

While state governments in other jurisdictions have closely examined the impacts of the Victorian reforms and have publicly stated their intention to learn from these experiences, there is little doubt that the winds of change are sweeping the national VET system.

Supporters of these reforms would say that some state and territory governments have formed the view that they can achieve better value-formoney for their investment in VET by introducing a student entitlement model and engendering greater competition and diversity into the provider market.

Others would say that this is a cover for an unprecedented attack on the VET system in general, and public providers in particular, driven by a perception that public providers are inefficient and slow to change.

Whichever view one takes it would seem that in some jurisdictions there is now a crisis of confidence in the VET system.

These challenges are particularly focused on the Victorian VET system and readers will need to judge the extent to which they apply to their own systems.

In addition, the traditional champions of VET (industry organisations and local enterprises) seem to have gone remarkably quiet.

30 | February 2013

Recognising the value of VET

A first key challenge facing the VET system and public providers in particular is to re-focus the attention of governments, industry and the community on the value of the contribution that VET and the public provider can make to economic and social development.

It was not that long ago that skills formation through VET was championed as a key strategy to re-dress the decline in the productivity of the Australian economy through innovation and workforce development.

The Australian VET system was also seen to be among the best in the world, and being able to play a leading role in support of our regional neighbours in their economic growth through skills formation. For some reason governments and other stakeholders seem to have lost sight of the key role of VET and the public provider in meeting industry skill requirements, supporting workplace productivity and innovation, improving rates of participation and engagement in education, training or employment and contributing to community development.

In addition, the traditional champions of VET (industry organisations and local enterprises) seem to have gone remarkably quiet. The days of vigorous lobbying of governments for increased investment in skills formation seem to be a thing of the past.

This is particularly surprising given that Australia’s productivity and international competitiveness has declined over the past decade or so. There does not seem to be a focus on business innovation and the introduction of new technologies supported by investment in workforce up-skilling and re-skilling.

To re-engage industry we must, in my view, refresh and revitalise both what is delivered and how it is delivered. If we are to become a smarter country and lift productivity we will not do it through the current training package construct. The nation and therefore the training organisations need to embrace a range of new forward-thinking constructs which will allow our teachers to focus on meeting both the current and future skill needs of our workforce.

Equipping our graduates with a broader range of skills that enable them to thrive in a new and changing workplace, rather than the narrow skills base defined in training packages, is critical.

A necessary accompaniment to this new construct

TAFE

is refreshed pedagogies. While there have been great strides in the development of innovative training delivery it is evident there is a long way to go. It could be argued that the success of private providers in some jurisdictions has rested on their ability to deliver training in a more customised, flexible and time efficient way.

Students themselves will force change by demanding more and better resourced flexible delivery, with lecturers becoming more mentors, individual coaches and assessors rather than delivers of the knowledge.

The knowledge now isn’t restricted to the institution as it was in the old days – it’s now freely available. The “flipped classroom”, where the lecturer no longer delivers the knowledge to the class but directs the students to the online place where the knowledge is contained, will become the norm. The “class” can be reserved for project work utilising the knowledge gained and the lecturer can work with individuals to address gaps in understanding.

The public provider is constrained in its ability to refresh its training delivery strategies by the current industrial agreements for their teaching and support staff. The current agreements are built around the out-dated notion of the face-toface classroom or workshop delivery where teachers are engaged with groups of students based on a structured timetable.

Much training delivery is now a blend of face-to-face, on-line, on-the-job, workshop and so on, which is often difficult to express as a teaching load for the purposes of the agreements. I do not see this as reduction in working conditions, but rather better recognising and rewarding the diverse nature of teaching in the VET sector.

A further challenge relates to the need for much higher levels of teaching skills in our staff. They are confronting increasingly complex challenges of delivering training that is at the cutting edge of industry practice in the classroom, workshop, workplace and online. As is almost always the case, one the first items of expenditure to be curtailed in times of constraint is staff professional development and up-skilling.

We need to re-invest in our teachers.

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Integrated tertiary education

The second key challenge for the VET system is carving out a place for itself in the new integrated tertiary education sector. The uncapping of higher education places has certainly seen a greying of the boundaries between VET and higher education in the AQF 5 to 8 ranges.

Many universities are moving into the sub-degree programs and are actively developing integrated programs where VET qualifications form a substantial component.

The clash of the VET competency based training and higher education knowledge based education paradigms has generated the need for compromise, and perhaps even some fudging, as articulation arrangements and integrated programs are developed.

The challenge for the VET sector is to preserve its distinct focus on industry relevant skills formation in this environment.

The key role industry has played in the VET sector may well be diluted substantially as the higher-education, knowledge-driven curriculum tends to take precedence over the skills focus of industry.

Again industry has been remarkably quiet on the threat to its central role in shaping what skills are taught and to a lesser extent how they are delivered.

We need to find solutions that preserve the very legitimate goal of skills formation while facilitating the better integration of and transition between the VET and higher education sectors in both directions.

Contestable training market

The third key challenge for 2013 is probably the one that is the forefront of the minds of the staff of public providers; that is surviving in the student-entitlement-driven, contestable training market.

To be successful in this new environment, requires a shift in thinking for all staff, it isn’t “open the doors and they will come” any longer, students have real choices and staff need to ensure that their organisation is the trainer of choice.

The reforms in Victoria provided both an opportunity and a threat.

Delivery statistics in Victoria show that while there has been a dramatic increase in the market share of private providers, this is not uniformly at the expense of public providers. Some public providers have blossomed while some have become unviable and their future is unclear.

The challenge for the leaders of any provider is to build the capabilities of the organisation to deal with the increased competition. Public providers are at a distinct disadvantage in many respects.

Being part of the public sector with all the bureaucracy that goes with that while trying to develop and sustain a viable business creates tensions and dissonance.

On the other hand public providers have some great advantages. Pre-eminent among these is access to the investment that governments have made over many years to human, technological and physical resources without a requirement to provide a dividend to government as is the case for most government trading enterprises.

Private providers need to repay investors and banks.

From my experience the ability to survive and thrive comes down to corporate culture. A clear focus on outcomes, the bottom-line and driving growth and profitability has served Wodonga TAFE very well over the past three years with 30 per cent growth in delivery at the same total salary expenditure. Our corporate culture has ensured that we have not only survived but thrived by growing delivery, becoming more innovative and generated increased financial surpluses to re-invest in our business.

For 2013 and beyond there are many challenges facing the VET system, and public providers in particular. To maintain our position as one of the world’s best VET systems we will need to address the challenges of quality, innovation, industry relevance and positioning VET in an integrated tertiary sector. n Michael O’Loughlin is the CEO of Wodonga TAFE and DECA Ltd. Prior to this he was a senior manager with Rio Tinto Iron Ore, and CEO and senior manager in the WA TAFE system and a number of public sector agencies.

February 2013 | 31

VC’s corner

Innovate or

deteriorate If we are to improve our reputation for innovation, universities must be more aware of the business approach to marketing and development.

By Michael Barber

32 | February 2013

W

e hear often today about productivity and innovation. Productivity is seen as the key to the future, unlocking national wealth by achieving more effective use of resources, both human and natural.

In turn, innovation – the process which realises novel economic, social or environmental outcomes – is seen as critical to increasing productivity. Indeed the federal government’s white paper Australia in the Asian Century sets a target of Australia being in the top 10 most innovative economies by 2025.

So how do we rank today? How feasible is that goal and what is the role of universities in attaining it?

The most sophisticated assessment of national innovation systems is the OECD Global Innovation Index developed by INSEAD. In the 2012 index, involving 141 economies, Australia ranks 23rd.

The top five countries are Switzerland, Sweden, Singapore, Finland and the UK. The leading Asian countries after Singapore are Hong Kong at 8th, South Korea 21st, Japan 25th, and China 34th.

Year on year comparisons are a little fraught since the make-up of the index has been changing.

However, Australia’s position has at best remained constant, if not declined, over the past few years whereas, for example China’s trajectory would appear to be upwards.

A second and in some ways more interesting assessment, since it is a survey of perceptions, comes from the GE 2012 Global Innovation Barometer. This is based on a survey of 2800 senior business executives in 22 countries and the results show a very interesting insight into how the rest of the world perceives Australia.

Asked to nominate the three countries that were seen as leading innovation champions, 65 per cent of respondents included the US, 48 per cent Germany, 45 per cent Japan and 38 per cent China.

Only 2 per cent included Australia although 18 per cent of Australian respondents thought we were an innovation champion.

Misplaced, as we might be tempted to think it is, this perception of Australia’s capability for innovation is extremely important, particularly for the higher education sector.

We are already challenged by the high value of the Australian dollar and, if the view that Australia is not an innovative country becomes entrenched, this

perception could further undermine our efforts to attract international students to our universities.

The GE survey also points to 21st century innovation being very different from the past. More than 70 per cent of respondents agreed with the following statements: • The way companies innovate in the 21st century will be totally different from the way they innovated in the past • SMEs and individuals can be as innovative as large companies • Innovation needs to be localised to serve specific market needs.

Sixty-nine per cent of respondents agreed that innovation today is driven more by people’s creativity than by high-level scientific research. These findings perhaps challenge conventional wisdom and may even be uncomfortable to many but they create great opportunities for us in higher education provided we are prepared to let go of past practices.

While the methodology behind these surveys is far from perfect it is clear that Australia has considerable work to do if we are to attain the target set in the Asian Century white paper.

What roles can universities play in doing so? Universities are very important parts of any innovation system and make a significant contribution through research and the graduates we produce.

However, it is important to recognise (far more than we do in this country) that while research, and particularly scientific research, can, and often does, lead to, or contribute to, innovation, it is of itself not innovation.

Equally (and often more critically) innovation relies on design, marketing and the development of novel business models and business processes. We often bemoan the ability of Australian business to adopt innovative technologies or research outputs.

While this is a serious issue it is also true that researchers tend to fail to appreciate how significant these other factors can be not only in successful innovation but also in a commercial decision to commence that process.

So what does it take to improve innovation?

Certainly we need to maintain, if not increase, our investment in research and development.

However, if we are to gain the full benefits of this

VC’s corner

If the view that Australia is not an innovative country becomes entrenched, this perception could further undermine our efforts to attract international students. investment through innovation and hence increased productivity we need to change policies, attitudes, behaviours and rewards.

For example, take the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative, which is the lynchpin of higher education research policy.

I have no argument with the principle of ERA. It is vital that we recognise highquality research in this country. However, from a perspective of encouraging innovation it has a number of very significant weaknesses, even liabilities: • The research codes used do not align with the fact that innovation is increasingly interdisciplinary • A high volume of academic output is very important to attaining a high ranking • The message is very explicitly given, and further emphasised by the weightings used to distribute Sustainable Research Excellence (SRE) block funds, that if you have been rated at a three (world standard), aim to become a four (above world standard) or five (well above world standard) rather than reach out and work www.campusreview.com.au

with non-academic partners to deliver innovation.

Introducing an impact measure into future ERAs goes some way to addressing these issues but it still gives the strong impression that research comes first and then innovation.

Furthermore, we never talk about the fact that despite all the effort involved, ERA assesses less than 3 per cent of the research which might contribute to Australian innovation. We give absolutely no recognition to innovative utilisation by Australian universities of the other 97 per cent of world research.

In this context what sort of university culture might facilitate innovation? I think some of the characteristics include: • Flexibility, responsiveness and adaptability • An outward focus that is collaborative and engaged in genuine partnerships with the wider innovation system • A keenness to understand the challenges and opportunities faced by those partners and a willingness to let such

partners influence (and even help set) research agendas • An ability to apply expertise rapidly from one area to innovate in another • A willingness to take risks but quickly terminate unsuccessful or nonproductive approaches • Internal support functions that are service-oriented, enabling and responsive • Promotion and reward systems that recognise innovation as well as research success.

If universities are to play the role that they need to play in driving innovation, it behoves us to ask how our internal cultures and reward systems measure up against such criteria. Unfortunately I suspect the answer is not too well. Addressing that challenge should be a major priority for 2013. Doing so might begin to help lift Australia towards the top 10 most innovative nations by 2025. n Professor Michael Barber is vicechancellor of Flinders University.

February 2013 | 33

VET

away from the coast The training for people who work in remote areas needs to focus on lifestyle issues as well as skills.

By Llandis BarrattPugh

34 | February 2013

W

hen I was developing a research proposal in 2011 focusing on skill shortages, I phoned a research colleague in Melbourne, who is also a highly skilled welder. I explained that as a West Australian I was becoming very interested in exploring the dilemmas of skills shortages and the related opportunities for training and relocation.

She listened to me, and told me quite firmly, that she did not believe that there was a real skill shortage for the resources industry, just a lack of skilled employees willing to relocate and work in remote environments, often dislocated from their family and social relations by intensive blocks of shift work.

In the past 12 months I have been involved in a study exploring the other side of this dilemma: costs and benefits associated with temporary migrant workers on 457 visas in the resources industry within WA. While the thrust of the study has been to investigate their experiences with relocation agencies, in the workplace and in the community, the experiences of those managing recruitment and resettlement have continually provided information about the lack of success for their local training and recruitment programs.

Statements in the media about this issue usually take sides about whether such schemes are displacing local job opportunities or creating them through maintaining a rapidly growing economy.

The Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency in their recent July discussion paper about the

National Workforce Development Strategy, indicate that temporary skilled migration has always acted as a “shock absorber� for the Australian labour market, contributing in the peaks and closing down in the troughs. Indeed as the voices in our study indicated, no company willingly spend in between $6000 and $60,000 on re-locating a skilled migrant if there is a more rational local alternative pathway.

Briefly, our project indicates that there are three groups of 457 temporary visa workers. One group are part of an international labour pool where highly and specialist skilled workers move from continent to continent and from project to project, for the same international employer. They typically leave WA for the next resources project in another country, on another continent.

There is another group who present skill-ready, employment-tested, and are willing to undertake remote working assignments who may or may not find future permanent residency an attraction. Finally there is a third group who do see the opportunity as a wonderful opportunity to change their lifestyle in the short term, and in the longer term to live and work in Australia permanently.

In many ways the evidence in the study indicates that the resources sector is currently making significant investment in building the skilled labour pool of the country for the future. Indeed Australia will also benefit from the knowledge such skilled workers bring with them as it remains within Australia even after they have departed. However, while our study has focused on exploring and bringing some empirical data into the debate about the costs and

VET Temporary skilled migration has always acted as a “shock absorber� for the Australian labour market, contributing in the peaks and closing down in the troughs. benefits of temporary 457 visa workers, I have been unable to stop myself exploring the question of what this all means to the Australian VET sector.

Our study has focused specifically on the experiences of skilled workers on 457 visas but the data suggests that there are several reasons why our labour market may continue to need such an external skilled pathway alongside our local investment in training and relocation. The Australian labour market at this time is especially skewed towards the resources sector and this will continue for some time.

The nature of the industry and the increasing attractiveness of previously distant and uneconomic resource locations places high demands for skilled labour in rural and remote working environments.

It appears that at any one time that there is only a certain percentage of the skilled labour market who are prepared to move their home to, or spend long periods in, isolated situations.

There may be even fewer who would be prepared to adapt to the new social and family stress that a long-term association with such work patterns would generate.

Indeed I will not even venture into the adjacent territory about the value of such work arrangements for ongoing personal and social wellbeing.

In short, there will be times, as is the current situation, in this vast continent when the start-up demands of resources projects require more skilled workers than are immediately available. In addition, even with a significant increase in the training and skilling of the prospective employees generated locally, there will only ever be a smaller group who will willingly take up remotely located work, and an even smaller group who will be able to maintain such employment as a lifestyle choice.

www.campusreview.com.au

There is little evidence from our study that the 457 visa temporary work program in WA is displacing local skilled workers.

Indeed, the statistics indicate a historical pattern of skilled migration to WA outpacing skilled interstate skilled migration to WA by about 5:1 and at the core of the past two decades of the economic growth pattern.

So where does this leave us? Modern Australia is a country built though skilled migration, and is likely to continue to be so. As we are well aware training and re-training programs have long lead times, due to their own infrastructure demands. Indeed our own state structure may continue to reinforce a parochicial vocational training perspective when what we are experiencing is evidently a national skilled labour realignment.

How many people recognise that by tonnage Port Hedland is now the largest port in Australia and that the combined populations of WA and Queensland are slowly creeping up to that of NSW? These changes in the labour market appear to be creating a number of tensions. Training and retraining programs are often frustrated by the difficulty of attracting potential participants to manual work when they are surrounded by a knowledge economy. Skilled training completions are eroded as trainees are lured away in a growing economy to related higher paid local jobs. Local skilled workers may often lack the work tested and ready capability needed for remote working locations. Finally, trained workers

may find that the work they have trained for is located far away and requires them to adopt a very different lifestyle.

Living in a continent where the population still clings to the shorelines perhaps there is need to recognise that we can skill people for job opportunities, but that an empathy with the industry culture is what will secure a long-term employment relationship for Australian workers.

My point is that it is imperative to ensure that skilling and especially re-training are closely linked with learning about the associated employment realities and social cultures. We may have very different views on the realities of such social changes and their impact on employee welfare and opportunity.

However, my reflections, as our current project draws to a close, is that we will need to link training and retraining even more closely to the eventual workplace realities of employment. Not just to the social culture, but to the possible locations of work.

Training has historically been linked to servicing local industries. That pattern is rapidly changing. Increasingly the Australian labour market is nationwide and may involve very different working patterns.

In such a situation, learning about these realities would appear to be almost as important as acquiring the skills that are required. n Associate Professor Llandis Barratt-Pugh is with the school of management at Edith Cowan University. Dr Sue Bahn and Dr Gially Yap were co-researchers in the recent 457 visa study.

February 2013 | 35

VET

A Brotherhood of St Laurence study has found disengaged youth could be left behind by recent changes to vocational training. By John Mitchell

Cuts hit ‘at risk’ students T here is an old saying that you can judge a society by how well it looks after the most disadvantaged in its midst. Applying that saying to education today, society might not rate too well, given the new trend of reducing government support for disengaged young people who hover in that space between school and vocational education and training.

The reduction in the Victorian government’s support for the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) – a year 11 to 12 senior secondary school certificate – has received widespread condemnation in that state.

A new report has provided an in-depth analysis about how the reduction in VCAL funding can affect 15- to 19-year-olds in one of these programs that has 50 students.

Toss into the mix a simultaneous reduction in funding for student support services at Victorian TAFE institutes, where many in this VCAL group are meant to head, and this fragile group of young people is even more at risk, says the report’s author, Dr George Myconos, a senior researcher in the research and policy centre of the Brotherhood of St Laurence (BSL).

36 | February 2013

The report, Re-engagement, training and beyond, is an evaluation of the second year of a community based CAL (CVCAL), a BSL education program conducted at Frankston, on the outskirts of Melbourne.

The evaluation of the program shows that the CVCAL model can have a profoundly positive impact on “at risk” young people, but the funding cuts to VCAL, VET and TAFE raise fresh concerns.

"One effect of the VET cuts is that there will be fewer RTOs providing much maligned courses such as hospitality, personal training and retail,” said Myconos.

“These are easily disparaged, but they can be the crucial stepping stones back into education and work for the kids we deal with. And, of course, the cuts make it harder for TAFEs to provide the kind of back-up support we mentioned [in the report]," said Myconos.

The BSL evaluation focused on the CVCAL program offered in a community setting to young people in Frankston who had disengaged from conventional education and had, in many cases, suffered significant hardship beyond the school setting.

Myconos found that “among the students’ most pressing needs on entering

the program were sustained and effective pastoral support, stability, respect and safety”.

He also reported that “the students’ needs were complex and did not always become apparent until well after commencement.

In responding to problems including excessive drug and alcohol consumption, the staff were stretched to their limits.”

Unsurprisingly, Myconos emphasised the need for extra and specialist support for this group.

“Effective and specialist wellbeing assistance, within a supportive, nonjudgemental setting, is essential to meeting such needs,” he said.

A core part of the CVCAL program is to help participants find pathways into vocational education and training, but this was far from straightforward for the Frankston cohort.

“Vocational education and training (VET) posed significant challenges, particularly for the younger students. They had difficulty adjusting to VET’s emphasis on self-reliance within a trainer-centred learning context, removed from the BSL setting.”

Myconos found that “a lot of the kids

VET

parties. “We have kids that we expect to be attending their VET that we deal with are working from a fairly low base in terms of programs when they may not be, and we have kids whom we confidence and motivation” and don’t have the skills to make a know are attending but not making any progress, and yet there’s phone call to a training provider or make a decision about which no formal institutionalised systems whereby the one educational course to enrol in or which career to pursue. “There is indecision, organisation is saying to the other one ‘Do you know this is they make u-turns, which means that the overall support [needed happening or this is happening?’ from CVCAL staff] is that much more onerous.”

“From the training provider’s point of view, I’m sure they’d like to “The students’ lack of readiness for VET and some training know whether this 16-year-old boy has had a history of depression providers’ inability to adequately cater for the young people’s needs meant that staff engaged in time-consuming consultations or anxiety or low literacy or whether they’ve been homeless in the last week, or if a boy’s behaving in a certain way that there might with students to find the most suitable and realistic training be reasons for it. So there have to be more of those institutional options.”

Myconos pointed out that the group of students in the Frankston links,” Myconos said.

One of the solutions to the problem is to improve the program has special needs, which his organisation can cater for relationships between the CVCAL and VET institutional staff, so but which training providers are not always able to consider: “The that all parties are aware of the range of difficulties this cohort of young people have a really tenuous link to education, having just young people is dealing with. “When we have these discussions re-engaged. Some of them haven’t been to school for two or three [with training providers] we all seem to come back to this point of years, given anxiety, depression, suffering violence at home, drug relationships: it’s a matter of everyone, trainers, people who enrol dependency, the whole box and dice. people, people who run courses, being attuned to the turbulent “They enter a re-engagement program like ours, but that means times that the kids are going through.” there are two learning environments running concurrently. There’s All stakeholders need to be aware of the world of these young the classroom-based learning in a re-engagement program like people, said Myconos. “The culture that they’re ours – it’s a low student/teacher ratio, very nonliving in, the insecurity and anxiety that they’re adversarial wrap-around service, student led, One effect dealing with; and then add another layer to that very secure and intimate environment, trained where you might have these kids also dealing with secondary teachers and a very flexible curriculum. of the VET history of personal problems, familial problems, “You’ve got that happening in one setting, but cuts is that self problems, violence.” for one or two days a week they switch to a very there will be Myconos asked VET training providers to different VET environment where they, or the revise their view of these students. “These 17- to programs they’re in, may pay for a private RTO that fewer RTOs 18-year-olds sitting in the VET training room might has almost diametrically opposed features. providing seem an adult, and they might be in the city in “You could have high student/teacher ratios and an adult setting, but they’re living through such the VET trainers can often be unaccustomed to much turbulent times and may be dealing with so much, dealing with 15- to 19-year-olds let alone those with maligned so it’s a question of being attuned to that.” real issues, and so the list goes on. It can be a very courses such Ultimately Myconos called for educational intimidating setting.” sectors to work on removing the cultural While TAFE institutes traditionally have some as hospitality, gaps separating them. “We have hundreds of support systems available, private RTOs struggle to personal thousands of 15- to 19-year-olds doing VET, accommodate the additional needs of this cohort, so I don’t think we can think of these sectors said Myconos. “The TAFEs have some wellbeing training and – secondary, re-engagement, Catholic and support but we think of the many private RTOs that retail independent, VET and higher education – as wouldn’t. So these kids are switching, within the separate sectors. The numbers of kids that in same week, from a very supportive environment one moment are in a secondary school or reto one that’s quite arms-length; and of course the engagement program and then in another moment they’re in a training is much more competency based, and book heavy, which TAFE or a private RTO is enormous, and I think that we have to get brings questions of literacy into play.” our heads around that overlap.”

Even TAFE institutes with extra support services – now under There is so much overlap that if our society is to cater for the attack from government cutbacks – are not an ideal setting for most disadvantaged, it needs to ensure there are “more cultural these young people. “There is the intimidating setting of a larger and institutional linkages”, at least between the school, reTAFE campus, a more crowded campus, mixed age groups and engagement and VET sectors. the like. I remember one kid saying that if only we could have sort In his report, Myconos formally recommended that the CVCAL of smaller spaces in bigger places. operation “build closer relationships with training organisations – “Those big institutions needn’t be alienating and it may be that particularly TAFEs – to improve enrolment, wellbeing and learning the more fragmented landscape made up of more of these tiny outcomes for CVCAL students undertaking VET subjects. This little re-engagement programs is the answer, or maybe it’s not. may build on existing efforts to tailor VET programs specifically for Maybe it’s just making bigger institutions more nimble, more the CVCAL cohort”. nuanced.”

The problem is that Myconos’s evidence-based Myconos offered a range of suggestions for better co-ordination recommendation will require additional funding, just at that between the CVCAL program and VET providers. “Institutional moment in history when his state government has reduced funding changes need to happen to try to bring these two sectors – the for VCAL and TAFE institutes. History can be the judge of our re-engagement sector, a growing sector, and the VET sector society. n – into line. On an institutional level, the organisations that we have spoken to, the TAFEs and the private providers, they are all See the reports at www.bsl.org.au/Research-reports sensitive to the needs of more collaborative case management, better transition support, better information sharing.”

Dr John Mitchell is a VET researcher and consultant www.jma.com.au At present, important information is not shared between the www.campusreview.com.au

February 2013 | 37

noticeboard Rheumatology posts

The University of Sydney has announced two appointments with the establishment of a second chair in the field of rheumatology.

Arthritis specialist and professor of medicine David Hunter, has been appointed Florance and Cope Chair of Rheumatology while fellow joint and bone expert Professor Lyn March will assume the role of the newly formed Liggins Chair of Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Epidemiology.

While Hunter’s work has been focused on clinical and translational research in osteoarthritis, March has been conducting clinical trials in fish oil, glucosamine and stem cells for osteoarthritis and leading an international group measuring the global burden of musculoskeletal disorders.

Both will be based at the university’s Northern Clinical School within the Royal North Shore Hospital. The dean of the Sydney Medical School, Professor Bruce Robinson, acknowledged the support of Arthritis Australia, which provided funding for the Florance and Cope Chair and for the funds from the Liggins Bequest to the University of Sydney.

Keeping Canadian ties

strictlyspeaking

International computer crime expert Dr Sara Smyth has been appointed as Bond University’s director of Canadian Programs.

As the author of several books, government reports and research studies, Smyth’s expertise encompasses the rapidly growing fields of cybercrime, internet child pornography and cyber fraud.

She has studied crimes associated with online gaming environments, the drug

Evans stays at ANU

ANU chancellor Professor Gareth Evans will continue in the position for another term of three years, from the start of this year. Vice-Chancellor Ian Young said he was very pleased that the university council had approved the renewed term, and that Evans had agreed to continue to serve as chancellor. “Professor Evans makes an invaluable contribution to ANU in many ways, especially in positioning ANU as Australia’s leading public policy institute. Gareth also works tirelessly in Australia and around the world to raise the profile of, and generate support for, this great institution. He has contacts, reach and respect.”

trade, money laundering and terrorism.

Moving to Australia from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, she joins a number of Canadian law academics now teaching at Bond University, adding to the depth of specialist knowledge available through its Canadian Law Program which has been running for more than 10 years.

There are currently more than 150 Canadian students studying at Bond’s law faculty and a large contingent of the university’s law graduates now work as partners and senior practitioners across Canada.

Legal couple for USC

The University of the Sunshine Coast has appointed two professors to lead its new law program planned for 2014.

The university said that after a rigorous selection process for the inaugural USC Professor of Law, it had appointed Emeritus Professor Neil Rees and Professor Anne Rees, a husband and wife who were both formerly deans of law at the University of

Newcastle.

USC deputy vice-chancellor Professor Birgit Lohmann said USC will benefit greatly from the leadership of Neil and Anne Rees who both have decades of diverse and eminent experience in their professions and

academia. Neil Rees was most recently chairman of the Victorian Law Reform Commission. Anne Rees was head of Deakin University’s School of Law for five years until March and was commissioner of the Australian Law Reform Commission in the 2000s.

UWS Lithgow outreach post

The University of Western Sydney’s Outreach Campus at Lithgow, which is scheduled to open later this year, has appointed Anne Forster as a provost to supervise dayto-day operations.

Forster has worked in higher education for more than 30 years and held academic and management roles. She has also worked as an independent consultant in Australia and overseas.

Forster is currently an adjunct associate professor with the University of Maryland where she has taught online in the master of distance education and e-learning degree. She has also worked at the University of Sydney, Bond University and the Australian Graduate School of Management. Forster’s work as a consultant has focused on institutional change, entrepreneurial program development and e-learning strategy.

“We are proud to welcome someone of her calibre who has internationally recognised expertise in e-learning and working with disadvantaged groups,” said the chief executive of UWSCollege, Dr Kerry Hudson. n

When someone says that they will get something done “in a jiffy”, we expect it to happen quickly – though the vagueness of the meaning of jiffy in common parlance makes the promise hard to pin down, and it may never happen at all. The first attested use in the Oxford English Dictionary (from 1785) suggests that it is a specific length of time: “In six jiffies I found myself and all my retinue ... at the rock of Gibraltar”, although it is a quote from the adventures of Baron Munchausen, so not to be relied upon as a true measure. Remarkably, the jiffy is a genuine unit of time in some disciplines. In computer engineering it refers to the length of time between microprocessor clock cycles (also known as a “tick”). This is not a fixed unit as it changes according to the speed of the operating system, but is measured in fractions of a nanosecond. In quantum physics a jiffy can be even shorter, signifying (according to various authorities) the amount of time it takes for light to travel a metre, a centimetre, or the width of a nucleon. So if a quantum physicist promises to meet you in a jiffy, don’t take them too literally.

JIFFY

Written by Adam Smith, senior research assistant at the Centre for Language Sciences, Macquarie University

38 | February 2013

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