AUS Tertiary Update
Anger at Commonwealth scholarship cut
Widespread anger
has been expressed at the British government’s decision to
cut funds for tertiary-student scholarships from eight
Commonwealth countries next year. Current spending on the
Commonwealth scholarship plan is in the order of $NZ4.9
million and provides about 100 scholarships a year to
postgraduate students from New Zealand, Australia, Canada,
Bahamas, Cyprus, Brunei, Malta, and Singapore. Future
British government funding will be restricted to developing
countries, but those in the Commonwealth will receive no
special consideration.
The announcement of the end of the
scheme was immediately responded to by a 2,000-name
e-petition. In a letter to The Times, a number of
distinguished former scholarship recipients described it as
“one of the great success stories of postwar international
partnership” and said that the decision undermines the
British government’s policy of more internationalisation
in tertiary education. And, in a speech at a protest meeting
in London earlier this week, Professor Germaine Greer said,
“This so-called financial saving amounts to little more
than the price of a property in Bayswater, yet its
withdrawal will waste untold talent.”
She went on to
say, “In simply deciding that the Commonwealth scholarship
had not been worth the minute outlay, [British secretary of
state] Milliband has done something extraordinary. Of all
the investments this unfortunate government has made, this
is one that has produced a profit that can be measured
exponentially – one that goes on and on.”
Closer to
home, Association of University Staff national president,
Associate Professor Maureen Montgomery, called the decision
short-sighted and insular. “Hundreds of New Zealanders
have benefited from these scholarships in the past and many
have gone on to make a great contribution to this country
and to the intellectual capital of Britain itself. We
appreciate the widespread opposition to this move that has
already been expressed and call on the British government to
reconsider its decision.”
Speaking on behalf of the New
Zealand Vice-Chancellors’ Committee, University of
Auckland deputy vice-chancellor, Professor Raewyn Dalziel,
said that the committee is “disappointed that this step
was taken. It was presented pretty much as a fait accompli
to New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.”
“I think it
is a closing of opportunities that a number of New
Zealanders have had over a long period of time so we regret
it certainly from that point of view,” Professor Dalziel
continued. “It reflects the changing nature of the
Commonwealth and the decline in its meaning for the former
dominions.”
Also in Tertiary Update this
week
1. Equity reviews under way
2. No more jobs go at
Victoria’s college of education
3. FRST recognises
university research
4. Online resource for Māori PhD
students
5. Massey and Lincoln come
together
6. Australian universities also seek
collaboration
7. Tougher time for women
global?
8. California service workers on
strike
9. South African vice-chancellors ask poor to
pay
10. Cut and paste not plagiarism
Equity reviews
under way
Ten polytechnics and one wānanga have now
agreed to undertake pay and employment equity reviews in the
latter half of 2008. Under phase one of the government’s
Plan of Action for Pay and Employment Equity, all tertiary
institutions in the public-education sector were expected to
undertake reviews by the end of this year.
The
implementation of the plan has been spearheaded by Otago
Polytechnic, which is piloting a staff survey and a data
analysis tool. The initial survey has been completed and the
bipartite committee met for the first time this week.
Applauding the polytechnic’s initiative, Association of
Staff in Tertiary Education field officer, Kris Smith, said,
“The response rate has been very pleasing and the
committee is working together in a very constructive manner.
The most interesting phase will be when we start looking at
the data gathered from payroll and set that alongside the
survey results. We are expecting to receive this data in the
next month,” she added.
Progress across the whole
tertiary-education sector has been very slow, however, and
it took the formation of institutes of technology and
polytechnics and wānanga sub-sector groups to achieve even
this amount of progress. Universities have yet to establish
their sub-sector group and commit themselves to carrying out
reviews.
Reviews are undertaken by means of a bipartite
process involving employers and unions in which institutions
examine their policies and practices against three key
indicators: whether women and men have an equitable share of
rewards; whether women and men participate equally in all
areas of the organisation; and whether women and men are
treated with equal respect and fairness.
The most
important step in the review process is the development of a
response plan to address priorities and promote lasting
change. It is expected that the eleven participating
institutions will produce their response plan by the end of
this year or early next year.
No more jobs go at
Victoria’s college of education
Despite the story in
yesterday’s Dominion Post reporting that another sixteen
staff from Victoria University’s college of education have
lost their jobs, the local union branches confirm that all
those redundancies were voluntary and fell within the
twenty-nine jobs announced earlier. They add that, of
course. the term “voluntary” is relative and that there
is a good deal of sadness at the college at the imminent
loss of valued colleagues.
The job losses previously
announced follow the proposed reduction of the number of
schools at the college’s Karori campus to three, a move
that the Association of Staff in Tertiary Education (ASTE)
and the Association of University Staff (AUS), the two
unions with coverage at the college, have described as “ a
crude shift in emphasis from teacher education to research
in education based purely on an arbitrary figure for budget
overspending”.
The Dominion Post story quotes the dean
of education, Professor Dugald Scott, as confirming that
these were voluntary redundancies from academic and advisory
staff. He is also quoted, however, as warning that “there
is still work to be done to get the new structure in place
for the 2009 academic year”. The college’s balance of
124 staff have apparently been confirmed in their places in
the three new schools.
In an accompanying positive
development, the persistence of ASTE and AUS has paid off
with agreement by the university to accept a union observer
being involved in the selection process at the college. In a
letter to the unions, director of human resources Annemarie
de Castro, however, states that the decision does not create
a precedent for future change processes.
“We do
appreciate that this situation is having an impact on staff
and that the presence of an observer at the decision-making
phase will likely enhance staff confidence in the
process,” she said.
FRST recognises university
research
Universities’ crucial role as the major
research providers in this country has been recognised in
the awarding of contestable contracts worth $93.6 million in
the latest funding round by the Foundation for Research,
Science and Technology, according to the New Zealand
Vice-Chancellors’ Committee (NZVCC). In addition to that
funding, two universities are among nine organisations
involved in negotiating further contracts totalling $347
million under the “stable funding environment”
initiative.
University of Otago vice-chancellor,
Professor David Skegg, who chairs the committee representing
universities’ research interests, says it is pleasing to
note the contestable contracts announced by FRST recognise
universities as major players in the research, science, and
technology system. “Universities also look forward to the
foundation announcing details of the negotiated contracts as
they are completed so the institutions can assess the
results of the stable funding initiative now in its second
year.”
FRST has announced 96 contestable contracts in
its main 2008 investment round, worth $98 million in their
first year and $438 million during their lifespan.
Universities’ share of the total value of the contracts is
21 per cent. The NZVCC has published data which shows the
eight universities produce around 63 per cent of research
publications and 57 per cent of all patents in this country
per annum.
Among the university contracts announced by
FRST are an $8 million University of Auckland project on
creating a new generation of hybrid plastics, a $4.5 million
University of Canterbury project on MARS bio-medical
imaging, a $9.9 million University of Otago project on
handheld diagnostic devices, a $4.3 million Lincoln
University project on second-generation biodiesel
feedstocks, a $2.4 million University of Waikato project on
processing titanium alloy powders, and a $3.8 million
Victoria University project on nanostructures and composites
for radiation detection and imaging.
Online resource for
Māori PhD students
A unique web-based cyber community to
support Māori PhD students was launched yesterday at a
Massey University symposium in Palmerston North. The
community has been developed by the university’s Te Mata o
Te Tau: Academy for Māori Research and Scholarship in an
effort to create a virtual community and resource portal for
the more than 70 Māori PhD students currently enrolled at
the university. The students are based throughout New
Zealand and most have limited opportunities to visit a
campus or discuss issues with classmates.
Te Mata o Te
Tau director, Te Kani Kingi, says that, as far as he is
aware, this is the first virtual community of its type for
PhD students. “The cyber community has been designed to
address the sense of isolation many Māori PhD students feel
and to provide an innovative communication and resource
tool,” Dr Kingi said.
“There has been a concern that
PhD students didn’t feel like they belonged to a community
of learning. Often because their degree is not taught in a
traditional sense: they do not attend classes, are typically
off-campus, and therefore find it difficult to develop a
sense of collegiality,” Dr Kingi continued.
Initial
testing indicated that students wanted to see and hear other
people and to engage each other in a more interactive way,
rather than simply read text. “Through the use of
technology we will be able to foster a sense of community,
no matter where students are, and enhance their learning and
research outcomes,” he said. “We have students based in
Auckland, Wellington, Manutuke, and Hamilton who will now be
able to find out information and have face-to-face and
virtual dialogue with their peers and supervisor.”
Massey and Lincoln come together
Massey and Lincoln
universities are hoping to decide on a means of increasing
their collaboration by the end of the year, according to a
recent report in Education Review, and one option under
consideration is for a national college for agriculture,
food, and life sciences.
The two universities’
Agricultural and Life Sciences Partnership for Excellence
recently received approval for funding of $61,000 to explore
a possible “national vehicle for delivering enhanced
value” in those areas. The report claims that background
documents on the partnership reveal that Massey had wanted
funding to investigate development of a “national
university college” for agriculture, food, and life
sciences in association with Lincoln.
However, Lincoln
vice-chancellor, Professor Roger Field, is quoted as saying
that he did not believe that the idea of a national college
had “any wheels” and Massey registrar, Stuart Morriss,
as saying that a university college is a possibility but
that a range of models would be pursued.
“There are not
too many examples of solid co-operation,” said Mr Morriss.
“What we are looking for is a vehicle that enables Massey
and Lincoln to engage effectively to make sure we
collaborate and deliver for the land-based
sciences.”
World Watch
Australian universities also
seek collaboration
The University of Canberra and the
rural New South Wales Charles Sturt University have
confirmed they are exploring the establishment of a US-style
“system university”. While the two deny they are
discussing a merger, University of Canberra vice-chancellor,
Professor Stephen Parker, has previously advocated that the
universities, TAFE colleges, and schools in a system would
retain their own governing bodies but have a common board of
trustees.
Charles Sturt University vice-chancellor,
Professor Ian Goulter, has confirmed that he had recently
met Professor Parker. “Discussions were nothing as grand
as a merger but we have agreed to have a serious discussion
about systems,” he said.
The latest development
follows the May alliance between the Australian National
University and the University of South Australia, and may
foreshadow further alliances, mergers, and restructurings
expected to be triggered by the government’s
research-performance exercise. The US-style systems model is
aimed at giving universities greater clout in global
networks.
Professor Parker, a former senior deputy
vice-chancellor at Monash University, had earlier said that,
if the aim is to propel an Australian university into the
world top twenty, then two Group of Eight (Go8) universities
in Sydney or Melbourne would have to be merged.
“If
you want to get into the top twenty of the Shanghai Jiao
Tong University rankings, it would require a huge
improvement by the leading Go8 universities, but if you add
Melbourne and Monash you would almost get to the level of
the University of Tokyo,” he said.
However, National
Tertiary Education Union division secretary, Chris Game,
warned that a change to a systems model would have to be
accompanied by a workload impact analysis since the biggest
issue facing academic and general staff was “exploding
workloads”. She predicted that students are likely to
favour a systems approach if it means an increase in
enabling technologies, but not if it was expensive or
downgraded involvement of staff who supported their
studies.
From Guy Healy in The Australian
Tougher time
for women global?
A recent report coordinated by the
Netherlands’ Research Centre for Education and the Labour
Market at Maastricht University has focused on the problem
that it is still quite normal to assume that the success of
an academic or student is likely to be affected by gender.
The report points out that, while in the past twenty years
women have rapidly increased their share of positions within
higher education that were previously male-dominated (such
as medicine), women after graduation are more often
unemployed and earn considerably lower wages than men.
As
the report says, “This is not a result of self-selection,
as even women who place a high value on having a successful
career find it more difficult to be a winner in this respect
than men. The disadvantages are exacerbated by having
children, which has an additional negative effect on
women’s careers but a positive effect on those of
men.”
This results in lower wages for women. The
researchers quote statistics from thirteen European
countries that, taken together, show women graduates on
average earn 15 percent less than males. This is
significant, although the differences do vary between
Switzerland and Belgium with 5 and 6 percent respectively
and Estonia and France with 18 and 20 percent.
Even when
educational or disciplinary disparities are fed into the
figures using a model, female graduates still receive
significantly lower wages than males: about 10 percent less.
“Although the gender gap in earning varies between
countries, we can conclude that women in general might be
considered as wage losers and men as wage winners,” the
study concludes.
If this is the situation in Western
Europe, generally regarded as having more equal relations
between the sexes than many other regions around the world,
it can be assumed that inequality between men and women
graduates and academics is a global problem.
From Keith
Nuthall in University World News
California service
workers on strike
As many as 8,500 service workers at the
University of California’s ten campus and five medical
centre system will be walking out and picketing their
workplaces all this week. The workers, who do everything
from cleaning and disinfecting hospitals and dormitory rooms
to providing cafeteria service to patients and students, and
to ensuring that hospitals and campuses are secure, have
been negotiating with California executives for almost a
year. But they have remained deadlocked over “poverty
wages” for months.
“It is unfortunate that, after
almost a year of negotiating, it has come to a strike, but
with gas and food prices, our families are in crisis. We
cannot wait another month for university executives to end
poverty wages,” said striking service worker Angela
Vasquez. “My family could be homeless by then.”
The
university’s wages are as low as $NZ12.25 an hour. Many
workers are forced to take second jobs or go on public
assistance just to meet their families’ basic needs.
Typically, service workers live in low-income communities
farther away from campus, forcing a longer commute and
higher fuel costs that use a disproportionate portion of
their budget.
In an effort to prevent its workers from
taking action, the university sought to stop the strike by
going to court. On Friday, a judge said that workers could
not go on strike unless they had given the university the
exact strike dates with enough notice. However, since the
university was served notice of the planned strike dates on
Thursday, workers clearly had met the judge’s
requirements.
South African vice-chancellors ask poor to
pay
The South African university vice-chancellors’
association, Higher Education South Africa (HESA), has
challenged the concept of free higher education, arguing
that all South Africans, including the poor, will have to
pay for their education. On the other hand, the South
African Students’ Congress, with links to the ruling
African National Congress (ANC), and the South African Union
of Students (SAUS) have called for free university
education. And last December, the ANC’s annual conference
resolved that the government should progressively introduce
free education for the poor up to undergraduate level.
In
a speech to a recent SAUS conference discussing the
possibility of free education, HESA representative Jody
Cedras said that a policy of free higher education would
benefit wealthy students and adversely affect the poor.
“There is no ‘free’ higher education. In practice it
would be paid for by all citizens, including the permanently
poor, through indirect taxes, whether or not they know they
have been taxed,” claimed Mr Cedras.
“A big
percentage of the beneficiaries of higher education are from
the richer segments of society who can pay a portion of the
costs of instruction,” he continued, adding that South
Africa has a continuum of possibilities, from a wholly
subsidised higher-education system in which graduates are
entirely at the service of the state to entirely
unsubsidised, private and for-profit universities with
student customers and little research activity.
From the
Mail and Guardian
Cut and paste not
plagiarism
High-profile educationalist and long-time
commentator on online learning, Dr Dale Spender, has accused
universities of being out of touch with their students in
seeking to clamp down on “cut and paste” appropriation
from the internet, arguing that what is dubbed plagiarism is
just part of the way students learn.
She has also
attacked academics, noting that, while universities are
quick to clamp down on students for plagiarism, academics
recycle their own research papers, effectively plagiarising
themselves. “What they are all calling plagiarism isn’t
plagiarism at all, it is in fact a new and fast and
obviously digital way of synthesising information,” Dr
Spender said.
“What kids are doing in downloading text
is exactly what they are doing in downloading music. They
take bits and pieces, mixing and matching them and making
something that is their own product.”
Her recent
remarks extend her thinking in her online publication, From
Books to Blogs, where she wrote, “Today there is really no
such thing as online reading. You are taking charge of the
information that is there.”
When software programmes
such as turnitin.com can quickly identify repeated or
plagiarised phrases, Dr Spender argued, rather than focusing
on the failure of students to properly cite downloaded text,
assessors should be focusing on whether students had
answered the question and demonstrated their own
understanding.
“I don’t really care if there are
bits and pieces in their initial information that are
downloaded from different points. What I care about is: do
they understand it and did they use that information to come
up with a solution to solve a problem?” Dr Spender said.
From The Australian
More international news
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News:
http://www.universityworldnews.com
AUS Tertiary
Update is compiled weekly on Thursdays and distributed
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