Main Edition | 18 October 2012 | Issue no. 95 _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Education, research grants hit by budget review 18 October 2012 | Close to $1 billion in grants across the innovation, research and higher in education portfolios are on hold ahead of Treasury’s Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) due soon, which is shaping up as a mini-Budget, with billions of dollars in savings and cuts, as the Commonwealth government struggles to maintain its projected Budget surplus. An announcement may come as early as next week. Universities Australia expresses concern over possible research … [Read more...]
Curtin leads way on pay
18/10/2012 By
Australian Financial Review | 15 October 2012 Curtin University staff are set to receive a 16% salary rise over four years after agreement was reached on a ground-breaking deal last week, the National Tertiary Education Union says. The Curtin agreement is the first to be struck in a new enterprise bargaining round for universities and will probably be mirrored nationwide. Along with the pay rises, it makes way for the introduction of a new, union-sanctioned category of academic devoted to teaching, as well as caps on teaching workloads overall. The deal will run over four years – not the typical three – in a deliberate union strategy to secure pay and conditions for … [Read more...]
From unease to alarm: the flawed process of VET “reform”
18/10/2012 By
John Mitchell Associates | 18 October 2012 To inform future policy decisions about VET, education and training consultant John Mitchell has collated 22 of the articles he has written for Campus Review over the last year, on the concerns raised by ‘VET reform’ and the cutbacks to TAFE. Many of the articles examine, either directly or indirectly, three pillars of the model of VET reform, particularly: ‘market design’, that is the proposition that an effective market for vocational education and training (VET) can be designed and implemented government officials, while still meeting industry skill needs ‘student entitlement’, that is providing eligible … [Read more...]
Education, research grants hit by budget review
18/10/2012 By
Australian Financial Review | 18 October 2012 Close to $1 billion in grants across the innovation, research and higher in education portfolios are on hold ahead of Treasury’s Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFEO) due soon, which is shaping up as a mini-Budget, with billions of dollars in savings and cuts, as the Commonwealth government struggles to maintain its projected Budget surplus. A $500 million round of education infrastructure spending earmarked for the regions has been caught in the freeze, along with spending on the key programs through which the government supports research and development by universities and industry. One of the programs under a … [Read more...]
Getting some quality into the standards debate
18/10/2012 By
18 October 2012 Over the last year governments have changed the names and role of their vocational and higher education regulators from assuring quality to maintaining standards. This minor change in terminology is meant to indicate a major change in role. Quality is relative to goals which may be different and is somewhat subjective; standards are meant to be met by everyone and should be more objective. This should result in much better regulation of vocational education. However, there are at least 2 problems with current thinking about vocational education standards reflected in the Australian National Skills Standards Council’s consultation paper for its review of standards … [Read more...]