On 9 December 2006, 17 year old David Iredale and three mates went for a hike in the Blue Mountains as part of their Duke Of Edinburgh Award program. They planned it pretty carefully and they had detailed maps and stuff.But it all went terribly wrong: the maps indicated a fresh water source along the route, which wasn't there. It was hot - mid-30s centrigrade- and they'd run out of water. Somehow, David became separated from his mates - my recollection is that as the strongest of the hiking party, he struck out ahead of the others to seek assistance.He became severely dehydrated and rang emergency services on his mobile phone.It was very poor reception but he tried to get across to the … [Read more...]
SA TAFE facing BIG cuts and fee increases
22/12/2013 by
The Australian | 21 December 2013 TAFE in South Australia faces massive funding cuts and course caps at a time when Holden's closure is expected to trigger huge demand for retraining. The Weekend Australian reports the state government will next year slash $83 million or about 45% from TAFE South Australia's budget, initiating a round of redundancies and course closures. The cuts appear to have been prompted by a blowout in the state's training budget. After opening its training funding to full private competition last year, it had reached its target of 100,000 additional enrolments three years ahead of schedule. Victoria, which introduced a similar system in … [Read more...]
Ramp up fees: IRU
22/12/2013 by
The Australian | 20 December 2013 University student fees could be hiked by as much as 66% in some cases under a proposal from the Innovative Research Universities predicated on expectations that government funding will be flat at best or cut in the long term. In its submission to the review of the demand driven system of university places, the IRU recommends that the review "explore the value" of lifting the maximum student contribution in the various disciplinary bands to match the top band, which charges $10,085 a year for medicine, dentistry law, accounting and business courses. That would represent a 17 % from $8,613 a year for science, computing, engineering, … [Read more...]
