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Strong words from the addresses
The top shots – and pot shots – from around the conference.
Campus Review hosted its annual conference in Sydney. Higher-education stakeholders gathered to debate the biggest issues facing the sector.
INTERNATIONAL TRAVAILS Saba Nabi is the national equity officer at the Council of International Students Australia( CISA) and a PhD candidate at Charles Sturt University( Wagga Wagga).
She said:“ The major challenges facing international students in Australia are safety and security issues, expensive courses, accommodation, travel costs, under-representation on committees and boards, employability and workplace rights and entitlements, and various visa frameworks.
“ Some of the initiatives CISA is pursuing include poststudy work visas for graduates, travel discounts and greater representation on committees related to visa consultation.”
RECIPE FOR DISASTER? Independent strategic consultant Peter Rohan is surprised so much focus is on technology but comparatively little is on the actual academic workforce, which he says is unsustainable. Some interesting statistics he furnished included:
• Half the members of the academic workforce are baby boomers, whereas that generation makes up only one-quarter of the population as a whole.
• In the next five years, the Australian university sector will have to replace half its employees, presenting a looming succession crisis.
• Senior management positions remain male dominated.
• Compared with the general population, there is a higher proportion of females in teaching-only positions and a higher proportion of males in research or research-and-teaching positions.
• Attrition rates for female academics in their 20s and 30s are about the same as for males at retirement age.
• Workforce is highly casualised with low levels of job security, and these individuals are most likely to be young and female.
• Nearly half of all people obtaining PhDs would prefer to work outside the tertiary industry.
LOUD AND CLEAR Science in Australia Gender Equality( SAGE) co-chair Susan Pond and Griffith University associate professor Susan Harris Rimmer both used the Women in Higher Education panel to criticise FUTUREPROOF 2016’ s organisers for scheduling this discussion at the end of day two –“ when all the VCs and politicians have ducked out to catch an early flight” – and for assigning four women on one panel to specifically discuss women in the sector, rather than across the program to canvass their views on HECS / HELP, VET, internationalism, disruption and so on.
It was pointed, fearless criticism and we at Campus Review definitely heard it and will be influenced by it when planning future conferences.
Sector wants to keep spotlight
UA’ s Glover announces ad campaign to maintain the focus on highereducation during election run-up.
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This may be a campaign in an election, but it is not an election campaign. It is not about influencing voter behaviours.”
That is how Universities Australia chair and Western Sydney University vice-chancellor Barney Glover described a new advertising blitz being undertaken to stimulate a discussion about higher education during the current federal election campaign.
UA and its composite memb ers are doing their best to keep issues affecting the university sector prominent in the media.
Glover unveiled the‘ Keep It Clever’ campaign, which began with print advertisements in The Australian and Australian Financial Review newspapers and will evolve to include television and digital components, during his keynote address at the FUTUREPROOF 2016 conference held at Doltone House in Sydney, May 16 – 17.“ The campaign features bright LED-lit balloons, which represent the scores of bright ideas that universities and our graduates have launched, growing the economy and creating a brighter future for all Australians,” Glover told conference delegates.“ These bright ideas emanating from the nation’ s universities and university graduates are vital to creating new jobs, new technologies and new industries. Many of them also save lives, lift wellbeing and enrich our community.”
Glover quoted statistics showing that for every 1000 university graduates who enter the workforce, 120 further jobs are created for those without degrees. Furthermore, he said, having more graduates in the workforce puts upward pressure on the wages of workers without qualifications, by $ 655 a year.
Glover called on both parties to make higher-education a tier one issue for this election. He chided both sides for not making it an issue for the 2013 poll.
“ During the last parliamentary term, we witnessed perhaps the greatest divergence for quite some time in the views of the two major parties on policy objectives for higher education,” he said.
“ Having withdrawn their plans for the full deregulation of student fees in the recent Budget, the Coalition has now floated a series of policy options for consultation. However, cuts of $ 2.5 billion remain in the Budget papers from 2018 onwards.
“ Labor, meanwhile, is heading to this election with the most detailed higher-education policy framework produced by an opposition in quite a while. [ However ] the sector well remembers that Labor in government also made sizeable cuts. But their current policy pledges an increase on current funding levels.”
Also speaking on opening day of the conference, shadow minister for higher education, research, innovation and industry, Senator Kim Carr said,“ There is plenty of daylight between the Turnbull Liberals and Shorten’ s Labor in this campaign. We need to remove the $ 100,000 degree and the lifetime of debt for Australian students, locking in proper funding for universities to teach the nation’ s future workforce and bringing education opportunities to more disadvantaged Australians.”
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