campusreview. com. au
POLICY & REFORM
UTS: As if completing one of the most stunning architectural makeovers ever undertaken by an Australian university was not enough, UTS also made more than a small stir in the international academic community when it announced the appointment of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniac. The world-renowned inventor and programmer will work with students in the Magic Lab( Innovation and Enterprise Research Laboratory).
The Magic Lab is part of the university’ s faculty of engineering and IT, which earlier this year finally had its imposing new hightech home unveiled on the edge of the Sydney CBD. The building, which survived a potentially catastrophic engineering disaster of its own when a crane caught fire and collapsed during construction in 2012, opened earlier this year and was recently complemented by an even more striking structure – the Frank Gehry-designed UTS business school( see“ Convention Crumpled”, p26).
Gender equity: The National Health and Medical Research Council upped the ante with regard to gender equity – albeit tentatively – consulting over plans to provide grants only to those institutions it deemed to have met base standards with regard to workplace policy supporting women in research.
The initiative is in response to data indicating that the research sector is continuing to haemorrhage female researchers and that women hold only a small percentage of senior roles. Meanwhile, academics were well represented in a recent list of the nation’ s most influential 100 women, with more than 1 in 10 of those chosen holding university appointments.
Universities were also represented heavily amongst the 2014 Workplace Gender Equity Agency’ s Employers of Choice for gender-equity citations.
The future of STEM: A landmark strategy launched earlier this year by Chief Scientist for Australia Ian Chubb aimed to provide a longterm plan for a sector showing signs of fatigue as the number of high school graduates seeking careers in the area continues to wane.
Chubb and other senior STEM figures have been critical of Australia’ s failure to maximise the commercial potential of much of the nation’ s research output and have urged support for improvement in this area.
Industry minister Ian Macfarlane has since announced $ 188 million in funding to establish six planned growth centres, which the government says will pool the expertise of business and industry with the research and university sector to foster greater collaboration.
AND IT WAS AN INTERESTING YEAR FOR... VC pay: A National Tertiary Education Union paper titled“ How much do our vice chancellors cost?” caused a stir.
The paper revealed ACU chief professor Greg Craven was the highest valued VC in Australia, with a pay package worth more than $ 1 million. The lowest package – worth $ 445,000 – was found to be offered by Edith Cowan University. However, the methodology of the paper quickly came under question and the union was forced to issue a correction and apology for its claim that CSU had increased its VC remuneration package by about 75 per cent between 2012 and 2013. The actual rise was a far more modest 9.5 per cent.
Deregulation: Amid the various budgetary savings measures the Abbott Government announced with little warning in its first federal Budget was the news that it would seek to reduce its contribution to student university fees, reduce overall university funding and pursue a real interest rate on HECS-HELP loans.
The centrepiece was the plan to deregulate course fees. Yet despite broad support from the VET sector and university VCs for the reforms, which would bring changes taking effect in 2016, the first version of the legislation put to a vote in the Senate was ultimately rejected thanks to Labor, the Greens and a handful of cross-benchers. However, the passing of a new incarnation of the bill by the lower house ensures that the controversy and debate over the Coalition’ s reforms will continue into 2015. ■
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