OMG Titanic was like for realz #wtf

12/04/2012 by
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Lauren Rosewarne The Conversation 11 April 2012 Trending on Twitter this week has been Gen Y shock and awe that Titanic isn’t  just the name of a film.   Apparently someone has accidentally stumbled onto the fact that the Titanic story was a tad more than just a bad Celine Dion song and some King of the World-ing on the prow of a ship.  OMG why didn’t someone tell me this sooner? There’s an easy story here about dumb kids.  A tale of stupidity, naiveté and the downside of education gleaned largely from the screen.  A more interesting story however, is the question of why Titanic should be considered more important than any other historic event. Like many disasters – think the … [Read more...]

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Dangers of overskilling

12/04/2012 by
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_________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Australian   11 April 2012 The expansion of tertiary education might serve the needs of the economy, but it increases the risk of it not paying off for the growing number of people who undertake bachelor degrees, according to Tom Karmel, managing director of the National Centre for Vocational Education Research.  ”We’re expanding the pool of qualified people faster than the jobs really require, so we’re seeing more people with high-level qualifications in certain jobs. As everyone else becomes more educated, it becomes tougher for the individual.  He was referring to a recent NCVER … [Read more...]

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UNSW students win cyber challenge

12/04/2012 by
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UNSW News Room   12 April 2012 A team of undergraduates from the University of New South Wales has won Australia’s inaugural Cyber Defence University Challenge.  The 24-hour competition was an endurance event in computer hacking, where 15 teams from universities across Australia were required to identify IT vulnerabilities in a fictitious business.  The teams were given access to a fake company’s website, and were required to search for vulnerabilities in the web applications that might allow them to embed foreign code or extract information from their website’s database and server.    The team from UNSW will now travel to a Black Hat security conference inLas Vegas in July 2012, paid for … [Read more...]

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New ANU “Kennedy School” to lead national public policy debate

12/04/2012 by

ANU Media  12 April 2012 ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Young has announced that a renamed and expanded Crawford School of Public Policy will become the ANU ‘gateway’ to public policy, on the same model as Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Former Treasury Secretary Dr Ken Henry will be appointed as part time Executive Chair of the associated Institute of Public Policy, which will bring together, under the new Crawford School banner, a number of new and existing programs designed not only to advance the University’s traditional research, teaching and outreach roles, but to significantly enhance the professional development of the Australian Public Service and public … [Read more...]

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The Scan 12 April 2012

12/04/2012 by
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Control and click headlines and highlights to link to articles Links may not work unless you or your organisation is a paid subscriber to the originating media outlet.  Check with your communications people about subscriptions. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ Academic pay: good news, bad news.... New research comparing academic salaries in 28 countries paints a picture of a profession that is not really valued as a key to the knowledge economy.   The good news is that academic salaries in Australia are comparatively high - about 8th of the 28.  The research shows that where salaries are inadequate, the ‘best and … [Read more...]

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