AUS Tertiary Update

Massey no comment on split allegations
Massey University has declined to comment on a recent report of splits within its Council, with one group said to be backing the Vice-Chancellor and the other the Chancellor. Neither does it want to comment on an apparent leaking of information at senior levels within the University.
In its current edition, Education Review reports that it has received a letter from a Council member alleging that a group of core councillors effectively runs the Council, acting as an “A team” that makes decisions which are then signed off by a “B team”. The letter’s author suggests that boundaries between governance and management are blurred and that the Vice-Chancellor is “regularly and deliberately” undermined. It goes on to say that there has been no strategy to pull the Council together because that “would not suit the cause”, that some Council members are back into “war” with the Vice-Chancellor and that it will not be long before details leak out and become public.
Sources spoken to by Tertiary Update say that there is no doubt that the letter sent to Education Review is genuine and its claim of a divided Council not over-stated. It is also understood that senior University management are privately furious at the leaks from within Council but are saying nothing on the record.
The latest allegation follows last week’s revelation of rifts between the University’s Council and senior management, with the Council claiming authority to overturn a senior-management decision to close the University’s Engineering course at its Wellington campus.
When asked for a comment on the reported conflict of views over decision-making with regard to Engineering at Wellington, a University spokesperson said that while, “clearly there have been differing views”, a decision is imminent. The Council is due to meet this Friday.
Despite recent reports, the Council Chair, Nigel Gould, is reported as saying that the Council is “very collegial” and there is plenty of evidence that it was not divided, wilful and fragmented and that such rumours were the product of the way universities are structured.
The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Judith Kinnear, is due to retire in March next year.

Also in Tertiary Update this week
1. Caught up in purgery?
2. Fee increase story not true, says Key
3. ASTE confirms amalgamation intention
4. Education figures released
5. Policies attract top international PhD students
6. UK lowest on academic-freedom list
7. Iran University invites Bush to speak
8. ACLU sues Government over exclusion
9. Israel boycott illegal, UCU says
10. Say goodbye to the office

Caught up in purgery?
In something akin to the notion that history occurs twice, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, Lincoln University appears to have adopted its own version of the political purge and historical revisionism when reporting a recent expedition by staff members to the former Communist stronghold of Russia.
Under the headline ‘Lincoln academics take landscape love to Russia’, the University last week issued a press release saying that three Christchurch landscape architects with extensive international experience have helped organise a global conference in the old Russian capital of St Petersburg as a contribution to the emerging landscape architecture profession in the former Soviet state. The release also names another Christchurch resident, unconnected to the University but present at the June conference.
In its telling of its story, Lincoln omits the name of a fifth person, one of its own then staff members, Associate Professor Glenn Stewart, who was both part of the staff group at the Conference and a major contributor. Not only was he on the Conference Programme Committee, but Associate Professor Stewart also helped to arrange speakers, was the senior editor for the 213-page Conference proceedings, chaired one session and presented a paper in another on Urban Ecology and then moderated the main conference panel discussion.
Keen readers will observe that, in August, Tertiary Update ran a story saying that Associate Professor Stewart, a highly respected scientist with a more than thirty-year career in Ecology and Conservation, was sacked without notice in late July after an investigation by Lincoln University into a complaint of alleged serious misconduct. AUS believes the dismissal to be both procedurally and substantively unfair and a claim of unjustified dismissal is due to be heard in the Employment Relations Authority on 4 and 5 December.
The question which arises is whether there is any connection between the Associate Professor’s dismissal and the removal of any reference to him from Lincoln’s public record of the St Petersburg Conference. If analogies with the soviet past are to be drawn, one recalls that there was at least a show trial before a purge was carried out.

Fee-increase story not true, says Key
The National Party says it has no plans to remove the fee-maxima policy which prevents tertiary-education institutions increasing student-tuition fees by more than 5 percent in any one year. The denial follows claims that National Party leader John Key told an audience at an AUT Business School Breakfast Club address that, under a National Government, there would be no restrictions on fee increases.
The New Zealand Union of Student Associations says it is alarmed that National may be considering freeing up the rules around fee increases, particularly given that tertiary-tuition fees increased at alarming rates under a National government in the 1990s, in some cases by as much as 100 percent in a year. “This set the path for New Zealand students to now be paying some of the highest fees in the world,” said Joey Randall, NZUSA Co-President. “The result is a collective student debt that has now ballooned to over $9 billion.”
Mr Key says, however, that the assertion about removing the fee-maxima policy is incorrect. “I did not make that statement,” he said.
Following reports of Mr Key’s address to AUT, acting Minister for Tertiary Education Steve Maharey has warned that a National government would make a giant leap backwards for tertiary education. “The focus on collaboration and cooperation would once again be ditched in favour of more ideologically driven free-market competition,” he said. “Just like their health policy, which would see fees for visiting your local GP skyrocket, National’s approach to tertiary-student fees is all about ideology and shows little interest in the people that end up paying more.”
Meanwhile, students at Victoria plan to protest against that University’s plan to increase tuition fees for 2008 by 5 percent at its Council meeting on Monday. It is understood that, after a protest meeting, students will attend the Council meeting in an effort to stop the fee increase.

ASTE confirms amalgamation intention
With the results confirmed from all but one of its branches, members of the Association of Staff in Tertiary Education have given their union an overwhelming mandate to proceed towards the creation of a new tertiary-education-sector union.
Almost 94 percent of the 1900 members of ASTE who participated in the ballot have cast their vote in favour of amalgamation. ASTE now joins AUS, whose members voted by a 73 percent margin to proceed towards amalgamation. The results from the Tertiary Institutions’ Allied Staff Association, the third union expected to make up the proposed Tertiary Education Union, are expected to be confirmed later today.
ASTE National President, Tangi Tipene, said that her union was particularly pleased with the clear mandate that union members had given for the amalgamation to proceed. “Our union has promoted the concept of amalgamation for a number of years, and so we were confident of a high level of support”, she said. “In fact fifteen of our branches gave unanimous support.”
Once the final ballot result is known, new rules will be drawn up for the proposed union and final consultation would be held around proposed new structures and staffing arrangements. The new union would become operational at the beginning of 2009.

Education figures released
New Zealand spent 5.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on education in the year 2006/07, according to figures just released by the Ministry of Education. As a proportion of government expenditure the spending on education is 17.9 percent.
The proportionate figures reported in Education Statistics of New Zealand 2006 show that, while this year’s figures are both lower than those for 2005/206, there has been a steady increase in this country’s education expenditure since 2001/02. The forecast spending for the 2006/07 year is $9.64 billion against $9.9 billion in 2006/06. The spending in $2001/02 was only $6.47 billion, or 5.1 percent of GDP
While Education Statistics of New Zealand 2006 deals primarily with statistical information at the pre-tertiary-education level, it also includes enrolment data around the age and ethnicity of tertiary education students at July 2006 and details of the number of each type of tertiary-education institution.
Interestingly, it shows that the number of private training providers has dropped from more than 500 in 2002 to 323 in 2006. The number of polytechnics or institutes of technology has dropped from 22 in 2001 to 20 last year and the number of wananga and universities has remained constant over the same time period, at three and eight respectively.
Education Statistics of New Zealand 2006 can be found at:
http://educationcounts.edcentre.govt.nz/publications/homepages/education-statistics/ed-stats-2006.html

Policies attract top international PhD students
New Zealand universities are attracting some of the world’s best doctoral students because of two Government initiatives, according to the Acting Minister for Tertiary Education, Steve Maharey. He says that enrolments by international PhD students in New Zealand universities rose by 56 per cent in one year, more than double the annual growth rate from 2003 to 2005, as a result of the Government’s domestic fees for international PhDs policy. “We will also have thirty-eight new International Doctoral Research Scholarship recipients studying in New Zealand from next year,” he said.
Total international PhD enrolments rose from 693 in 2005 to 1,084 in 2006. The rise follows the introduction of government policy in January 2006 whereby international students enrolling in New Zealand institutions pay the same fees as domestic students.
The domestic-fees policy builds on the success of the International Doctoral Research Scholarship introduced three years ago, which provides full funding for course and living costs for up to three years while students undertake PhD work in New Zealand.
The largest growth in PhD enrolments from 2005 to 2006 came from India (up 205 percent), China (up 103 percent), and the United States (up 102 percent). Most new enrolments were in Sciences and Arts subjects.
The International Doctoral Research Scholarship recipients come from twenty countries and will be researching subjects ranging across glacial changes resulting from global warming, molecular biology, film and environmental chemistry.
Mr Maharey said that the Government wants New Zealand tertiary-education institutions to participate actively in the global academic community as it helps businesses and communities gain access to international research and technology. “If we are to transform New Zealand into a higher-wage, knowledge-based economy, this kind of engagement is vital,” he said.

Worldwatch
UK lowest on academic-freedom list
The United Kingdom is the worst country in Europe for supporting and protecting academic freedom and free speech, according to a new research paper from Lincoln University. The paper says that the UK suffers because academics have comparatively weak job protection, more limited self-governance and, in particular, because the UK lacks formal guarantees of freedom of expression or academic freedom.
The research was carried out by Dr Terence Karran, a researcher at Lincoln’s Centre for Educational Research and Development. He studied legal provisions in twenty-three European Union member countries and graded countries’ provisions as high, medium or low. Spain, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Finland came out best, with the UK at the bottom of the table.
Dr Karran blamed “the (apparent) need for greater managerial professionalism, both as the participation in higher education rises and as the universities’ research role becomes ever more important in determining national prosperity within the emerging global knowledge economy”. He said the right of academics to “question received wisdom” and to put forward unpopular ideas was enshrined in the 1988 Education Reform Act, but the Act had the effect of weakening academic freedom by removing tenure from newly hired academics and staff at former polytechnics.
Dennis Hayes, of Academics for Academic Freedom, said UK academics suffered from a cosy indifference to the problem. “Academic freedom in the UK is constrained by a politicised and compliant academic culture in which debate is discouraged for fear of causing offence to colleagues, students, ministers or the quangocracy,” he said.
From The Times Higher Education Supplement

Iran University invites Bush to speak
An Iranian University has invited United States President George Bush to speak following his Iranian counterpart’s hostile reception at Columbia University last week. The University’s President, Lee Bollinger, introduced Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to an audience of 600 as a “petty and cruel dictator” and said that his Holocaust denials suggested he was either “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated”.
The head of Ferdowsi University in Iran’s second city of Mashhad said Mr Bush could answer students’ questions about the Holocaust, terrorism and human rights.
A White House spokeswoman responded, saying that, if Iran were a free and democratic society that allowed its people freedom of expression, wasn't pursuing nuclear weapons and wasn't advocating destroying the country of Israel, the President might consider that invitation.
On his return from the United States, President Ahmadinejad cancelled a speaking engagement at Tehran University. Students there wrote him a letter asking about the academic freedoms he had described to his New York audience. They complained about arrests of students and staff members and what they said were the appalling punishments handed out to critics of the President.
Meanwhile, in the US, one Republican senator has introduced legislation that would prohibit federal grants to or contracts with Columbia University in retaliation for its hosting of Ahmadinejad. “It is troubling to see that a university such as Columbia, with a reputation as one of America’s leading universities, is more receptive to America’s adversaries than it is to the military that protects its right to free speech and assembly,” the senator said.
From the BBC and Teheran Times

ACLU sues Government over exclusion
The American Civil Liberties Union has issued legal proceedings against the United States Federal Government in an attempt to try to force it to allow a senior South African academic to enter the United States. The scholar, Adam Habib, has been barred from entering since last year, when he was detained at a New York airport and deported after arriving for a series of academic meetings. Recently, he applied for a new visa, in hope of attending the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in New York in August, where he had been invited to speak on a presidential panel. US authorities never responded to his request.
Dr Habib, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research, Innovation, and Advancement at the University of Johannesburg, is one of a growing number of foreign scholars whom the Bush administration has barred from entering the United States. Like many of the others, he had been a frequent visitor before being designated undesirable. Like almost all the rest, he has never been given any explanation.
His supporters believe he was excluded because of his views as the US-educated academic has been a prominent critic of the US-led war in Iraq and certain aspects of the “war on terrorism”.
Melissa Goodman, a staff lawyer with the ACLU’s National Security Project, says that the Government is acting illegally and unwisely in keeping Mr. Habib out. “When the Government excludes scholars who have been invited to speak here, especially when they’ve had no problem travelling here in the past but have been vocal critics of US policy in recent years, it sends the cowardly message that we are afraid of their ideas,” she said.
From the Chronicle for Higher Education

Israel boycott illegal, UCU says
The University and College Union in the United Kingdom has dropped plans to debate an academic boycott of Israel universities after being given legal advice that such a boycott would be unlawful and could not be implemented. UCU had passed a motion at its Congress in May calling for the circulation and debate of a call to boycott but, since then, the Union has sought extensive legal advice in order to try to implement Congress policy while protecting the position of members and of the Union itself.
The legal advice makes it clear that making a call to boycott Israeli institutions would run a serious risk of infringing discrimination legislation. The call to boycott is also considered to be outside the aims and objects of the UCU.
UCU General Secretary, Sally Hunt, said she hopes the decision would allow the Union to move forward and focus on representing its members.

Say goodbye to the office
Coventry University in the United Kingdom is pioneering a “no desk” work scheme in which academics would agree to give up their permanent university desks and offices in return for contracts allowing them to work on the move or from home, coffee shops and bistros.
The voluntary scheme is to be piloted for two years by the University’s Business and Environment School and is backed by £250,000 from the Joint Information Systems Committee, which is hoping that other universities will consider similar moves.
Staff who work flexibly will be provided with the technological trappings of a home office and the equipment needed to work on the move, including laptops and mobile phones with internet access, and will be permitted to work almost anywhere.
“The big question is how much we can persuade academics not to have their cake and eat it. Are they prepared to benefit from flexible work but also give up their treasured offices and desks?” a University spokesperson said.
From The Times Higher Education Supplement

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AUS Tertiary Update is compiled weekly on Thursdays and distributed freely to members of the Association of University Staff and others. Back issues are available on the AUS website: www.aus.ac.nz . Direct enquires should be made to Marty Braithwaite, AUS Communications Officer, email: marty.braithwaite@aus.ac.nz

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