CAPA in the media

Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations

Funding an important win for postgraduates

The Gillard government today had the first reading of the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill 2011, and it has a number of important wins for the sector.

“With the growing number of people attending university for tertiary education, we are glad to see the bill highlights all postgraduate coursework degrees as well” said John Nowakowski, Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations National President. “The new measures will help more students access FEE-HELP and participate in education.”

Salad Days In Higher Education Spending?

Sure, Gillard is spending more on higher education than Howard did – but is it enough? An 'unwavering commitment' to education needs to be matched by sustainable funding, writes John Nowakowski

This Is What A Funding Crisis Looks Like

Ed Byrne, the Vice Chancellor of Monash University, one of the prestigious Group of 8 institutions, sent an email to all staff on 13 October last year about the "challenging market conditions" weathered by Australian universities. He got to the point quickly:

Poor language skills a bar to lively debate

WHEN Jamie Quinn started her coursework masters degree in public health at Queensland University, she looked forward to rich and challenging tutorial discussion. Instead, she found the room often silent, as international students struggled to articulate their thoughts.

The language barriers were further complicated by group work, which commonly accounted for 40 to 50 per cent of a subject's assessment, in which strongly performing students were sometimes purposely matched with those struggling with English.

Some problems can be solved simply by throwing money at them

Reports from one university recently that all tutorials in a particular faculty had been re-badged as demonstrations were
met with outrage amongst the few casuals and activists from the sector who heard them. Yet another penny-pinching
measure by a university under financial pressure from years of underfunding by government, and one that universities
are accustomed to getting away with as casuals are all too often isolated and unable to organise collectively (the ‘silent

A tutor walks into a classroom, and...

A tutor walks into a classroom, and...

Welcome to the first co-badged issue of Connect, as the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) and the NTEU begin new ways of working together on the issue of the casualisation of the workforce. CAPA has a long history of lobbying for the rights of casual academics, right back to the reason why postgraduates began the Association in 1979, and we’re still finding new ways to address the matter going into 2011.

What is CAPA?

Postgrads for hire. Will work for soup

Show me a postgrad working as a casual who is 100% happy with the conditions and remuneration and I will buy you a bottle of wine. Oh, wait, many postgrads guest lecture happily for a bottle of wine, you say? Why of course they do, we all like free wine. But it wasn’t free, you say? Well of course it was, postgrads teach to gain experience and improve their
future employability – they should be grateful for the opportunity.

If only the previous paragraph was actually parody.

Relief as draft TEQSA legislation released

THE long awaited release of legislation for the new higher education
regulator has brought relief to a university sector that had been nervous of
excessive red tape, but students fear standards now won't be rigorous enough.

The release of draft legislation to establish the Tertiary Education Quality
and Standards Agency by tertiary education minister Chris Evans is the first
time debate on its content will be extended beyond the previous closed door
consultations.