AUS Tertiary Update

AUS Tertiary Update

Volume 10 Number 20, 14 June 2007

University staff to consider pay offers

Union members at the country’s eight universities will begin a series of meetings next week to consider whether to put new pay offers to ratification. Details of proposals to renew academic and general staff collective agreements will be outlined at the meetings which will be held over the next fortnight, starting Monday.

Association of University Staff General Secretary, Helen Kelly, said that, while discussions with some vice-chancellors had not yet concluded, minimum guidelines for the settlement of collective employment agreements had been established nationally and endorsed by the national bargaining committee. Details of proposals to renew collective agreements are expected to be finalised by the time the meetings are held.

The proposed settlements follow the recent Budget announcement that $20 million will be made available by the Government this year to ensure the long-term sustainability and international competitiveness of the sector. “It has been agreed with vice-chancellors that the new funding will be used to supplement the individual universities’ contribution to salaries,” Ms Kelly said. “That will not only allow salary settlements to be higher than the rate of inflation and other settlements nationally, but also for universities to make progress in resolving some of the relativity and other problems we have highlighted over the past few years.”

Ms Kelly said that the unions’ national approach to bargaining had successfully resulted in a process through which national issues facing all universities, such as funding and salaries, could be dealt with on a national basis. “Our intention was to engage constructively with government and the vice-chancellors to deal with issues facing the sector, and that is occurring through the tripartite process.” she said. “As well as looking at sustainable approaches to university funding and salaries, we expect the Universities Tripartite Forum also to deal with broader issues such as workforce development for general staff and strengthening cooperation among universities.”

The funding which has been made available by the Government will take effect from 1 July.

Union members at universities are entitled to attend the meetings without loss of pay. The meeting schedule is available at:

http://www.aus.ac.nz/Current/bargaining/meetings.asp

Also in Tertiary Update this week

1. Honours for top tertiary teachers

2. National divided over student loans, warns Cullen

3. Bid to break through glass ceiling at universities

4. PTE lobbyist gets ITPNZ top role

5. University denies tenure to outspoken Holocaust academic

6. Egyptian Court overrules University’s restrictions on religious garb

7. Go8 plan triggers fears

8. US administrations censured

Honours for top tertiary teachers

Eight university staff were named among the top ten New Zealand tertiary-education teachers at the annual Tertiary Teaching Awards ceremony held at Parliament on Tuesday night. The awards, which were established to encourage excellence in tertiary teaching and to help teachers further their careers and share best practice, recognise exceptional teachers who show outstanding commitment to their subject and demonstrate knowledge, enthusiasm and a special ability to stimulate learners’ thinking and interest.

The Prime Minister’s Supreme Award, worth $30,000, was awarded to Selena Chan, Principal Academic Staff Member at the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (CPIT). It is the second year in succession that a CPIT teacher has taken the supreme award.

The other recipients, each of whom were awarded $20,000 for sustained excellence, were Margo Barton from Otago Polytechnic, Donna Buckingham and Associate Professor Katharine Dickinson from the University of Otago, Dr Christine Rubie-Davies from the University of Auckland, Dr Diane Johnson from the University of Waikato, Associate Professor Angus McIntosh from the University of Canterbury, Peter Mellow from AUT University and Drs Tracy Riley and Bryan Walpert from Massey University.

Presenting the awards, the Minister for Tertiary Education, Dr Michael Cullen, praised the winners for their outstanding skills and teaching excellence. “It's always a pleasure to recognise the very best in our tertiary sector. Excellent teachers inspire students to achieve their best. They make a vital contribution to our efforts to raise the quality of tertiary education across the sector,” he said. “To transform New Zealand into a highly skilled, innovative economy, we need to equip the tertiary sector with the framework and tools to provide world-class education, skills and research.”

The 2007 teaching-award recipients represent varied expertise, ranging from innovative programme development to leadership in eLearning to dedicated lecturers who have gained the respect of their colleagues and students for their ability to engage others in the learning process. Awardees were recognised by both their students and their peers within the profession for their innovative teaching methods, their original thinking and their outstanding commitment.

From next year, Ako Aotearoa: the National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence will run the Awards in conjunction with the Tertiary Teaching Awards Committee.

National divided over student loans, warns Cullen

Students have been warned by the Minister for Tertiary Education, Dr Michael Cullen, that the National Party cannot be trusted to preserve interest free student loans if elected to government next year. Dr Cullen told Parliament yesterday that National Party leader, John Key, has indicated that National would retain Labour’s interest-free student loan policy, while National’s tertiary-education spokesperson, Dr Paul Hutchison, has indicated it would go.

Despite campaigning and voting against Labour’s interest-free student-loan policy, Mr Key, when asked if National would retain the policy if elected to Government, said that it would be hard to turn the policy around and say it is over. Two weeks ago, Mr Key told Campbell Live that there are now half a million New Zealanders who have got used to not paying interest and “we would have to listen to that pretty carefully”.

Dr Cullen says, however, that written parliamentary questions from Dr Hutchison indicate that he does not support interest-free student loans. “He wrote to me expressing concerns that '…interest-free student loans are directing saving resources away from other priorities (such as improving the quality of tertiary education, and expanding access to industry training and apprenticeships), while at the same time creating no obvious educational benefits,” he said. In another written question, Dr Hutchison also asked what is fair about taxing people without tertiary education in order to pay for an interest-free student-loan scheme.

“Clearly Mr Key is going to have trouble persuading his caucus to back up the impression he has tried to create that the interest-free student-loan policy will be safe under National,” said Dr Cullen. “Once again Mr Key is publicly saying what people want to hear. But privately, National has a secret agenda. Remember Mr Key strongly campaigned against interest-free student loans at the last election and voted against them.”

Bid to break through glass ceiling at universities

Twenty women from all eight New Zealand universities are this week ensconced in the first-ever week-long residential programme aimed at improving the number and status of women at the top in the tertiary-education sector. The nationwide leadership programme for senior academic women was established by the Human Rights Commission, and will run twice a year, with the second intake due in September.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioner Judy McGregor said that the programme was long overdue, given that women still represent only 16.9 percent of professors and associate professors in New Zealand universities. “All of the women chosen [to participate in the programme] are senior lecturers or above and we hope to see them becoming professors, deans and vice-chancellors in future,” she said. “This shows how much interest there is from academic women themselves and from universities to develop the potential of outstanding women.”

Association of University Staff Women’s Vice-President, Associate Professor Maureen Montgomery, said the union welcomed the establishment of quality leadership and mentoring programmes at individual universities as a means to address the lack of women in senior positions.

Australian academic Professor Eleanor Ramsay will speak on managing change, including transformation, conflict and negotiation, and a range of senior women from universities and the public and private sectors will provide networking opportunities for senior academic women.

On the lighter side, a debate will pit a team of female Members of Parliament, Marian Hobbs, Sue Kedgley and Dr Jackie Blue, against Jane Diplock, Securities Commission, Marie Shroff, the Privacy Commissioner and Joy Liddicoat, Human Rights Commission, all women leaders in public service, on the topic of why there are so few women politicians and so many women in public service.

PTE lobbyist gets ITPNZ top role

Private-tertiary-education lobbyist and consultant Dave Guerin has been named by the Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics of New Zealand as its new Executive Director. He will take up the position on 6 August.

Currently running his own company, Education Directions, Mr Guerin acts as a lobbyist and provides secretariat services to the private-tertiary-education-providers’organisation, Independent Tertiary Institutions, and management services, policy analysis and advice to both public and private-tertiary-education organisations.

ITPNZ Chairperson Mark Flowers said that he welcomed Mr Guerin’s appointment and looked forward to seeing him build on the excellent progress ITPNZ has made in the last year or so. “ITPNZ supports the Government’s strategy for the tertiary-education sector. It offers great opportunities and benefits for students, employers and tertiary-education institutions,” he said. “But there are also some important issues we need to resolve with the Tertiary Education Commission on behalf of our member organisations. Dave comes with the skills we need to resolve these in a positive way.”

In turn, Mr Guerin said that he looked forward to the challenge of supporting the work of institutes of technology and polytechnics. “They make an important contribution to New Zealand’s economy and community,” he said. “ITPNZ has the opportunity to lead implementation of the tertiary-education reforms in its sector, and it can build much stronger relationships with the public and key stakeholders. I plan to work closely with the members to achieve those ends.”

Mr Guerin declined to answer questions from Tertiary Update asking his view on the key priorities for ITPNZ or about the change from private to public sector advocacy until he takes up his new role. “I would point out though,” he wrote, “that my work within Education Directions is considerably broader than you have described.”

Worldwatch

University denies tenure to outspoken Holocaust academic

What has been described as one of the most rancorous disputes in American academia has ended with a prominent political scientist being denied tenure at one of the United States’ top ten private universities. Norman Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry, has lost his bid for permanent employment with the Political Sciences Department of DePaul University in Chicago and will lose his job when his current fixed-term contract ends.

Finkelstein, a frequent critic of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, says he has been “blacklisted” by the University and would now have to leave teaching after initially having been offered lifelong tenure.

The decision came at the end of several months of wrangling both within the University and within the wider academic and Jewish communities in the United States. Finkelstein has argued that claims of anti-Semitism are used to dampen down criticism of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians and that the Holocaust is exploited by some Jewish institutions for their own gain.

His position as a Jewish intellectual critical of Israel and of some elites within the Jewish community has prompted passionate debate on both sides. Intellectuals such as the writer Noam Chomsky and the Oxford historian Avi Shlaim have spoken out in Finkelstein's favour, but others have decried his views. His most bitter opponent is Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law professor, who campaigned heavily to prevent tenure being granted.

Soon after Finkelstein applied for tenure, Dershowitz sent DePaul faculty members a dossier of what he categorised as the “most egregious academic sins, outright lies, misquotations, and distortions” of the political scientist.

From The Independent and The Chronicle of Higher Education

Egyptian Court overrules University’s restrictions on religious garb

An Egyptian court has ruled that the American University in Cairo cannot ban woman who wear the traditional niqab headdress from entering its library in the latest episode in the struggle between religion and secularism on Egypt’s university campuses.

The case was brought by a graduate student at al-Azhar University in Cairo, which holds library privileges at the American University, after the American University outlawed the niqab, a garment covering the entire head except for a narrow slit for the eyes, on the basis of personal safety and security.

The verdict, delivered by the High Administrative Court, upheld an earlier decision which said that the policy breached personal freedom. The ruling followed a series of incidents in which Egypt’s traditionally secular universities have clashed with a rising religious tide across the country.

Late last year, administrators at Helwan University near Cairo came under fire for preventing students who wear the niqab from entering the dormitories, defending the policy on the basis of a fear that men might try to infiltrate the dormitories disguised under the Islamic garb.

Earlier this year, fifteen students were arrested at Minufiyah University, about forty miles from Cairo, for their involvement in an event affiliated with the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

Officials of the American University have admitted that their niqab policy exceeded security concerns and related to the essence of their educational philosophy. However, it is understood they are consulting with lawyers and awaiting a further review of the case by the Court.

From The Chronicle of Higher Education

Go8 plan triggers fears

The Australian Group of Eight Universities' plan for a deregulated higher-education sector has reignited divisions, with some non-Go8 universities warning that the plan would have “grave consequences” if implemented.

The Go8 policy paper, Seizing the Opportunities, promotes student vouchers and price deregulation and calls on the main political parties to support a rewrite of higher-education policy with new legislation, a new student-loan scheme, more student support and a market-driven system. It also calls for an overhaul of advisory structures and an Australian tertiary-education commission to oversee planning and regulation of tertiary education and to allocate funds for post-secondary education.

Curtin University of Technology Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Greg Craven, said the Go8 plan was a prescription to make richer and powerful institutions even richer and more powerful, with very grave consequences for the sector as a whole. “Eight universities are big winners and thirty universities are big, big losers,” he said.

Margaret Gardner, head of the Australian Technology Network, said the paper failed to address the skills shortage and the international role of universities, while University of Tasmania Vice-Chancellor Daryl Le Grew said the plan failed to consider the impact of its proposed reforms.

The Australian

US administrations censured

Delegates to the Annual Meeting of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) voted this week to place four New Orleans universities on its list of censured administrations as a result of actions each university had taken in the aftermath of last year’s Hurricane Katrina. The universities are Loyola University New Orleans, Tulane University, the University of New Orleans and Southern University at New Orleans.

Censure by the AAUP informs the academic community that the administration of an institution has not adhered to the generally recognised principles of academic freedom and tenure jointly formulated by the AAUP and the Association of American Colleges and Universities and endorsed by more than 200 professional and educational organisations.

An AAUP Special Committee on Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans Universities found that there was “nearly universal departure from (or in some cases complete abandonment of) personnel and other policies” by the New Orleans institutions as they contended with the disaster.

The Committee’s report identifies several specific areas of “widespread dereliction”, including the fact that the number of staff who were dismissed as a result of the disaster “exceeded the inescapable or minimal needs of the institution, sometimes substantially”; that the notice and timing of personnel actions “failed to meet AAUP standards and created needless, even at times unconscionable, uncertainty”; that alternative placement of affected faculty “universally fell below AAUP standards, but also fell short of the institutions’ apparent capacity to mitigate the harshest effects of inevitable personnel reductions”; and that the opportunity for internal review of adverse judgments “failed to meet most accepted standards of due process as well as the institutions’ own established review procedures.”

ENDS

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