CAPA in the media

Postdoctoral researchers are the quiet winners from the $3.1 billion innovation budget splurge. While media attention has been claimed by the $907 million Super Science Initiative – 22 major research infrastructure projects in areas like astronomy, nuclear science, marine research and information management, funded through a surprise allocation from the Education Investment Fund – the government has committed another $30 million to establish new Super Science Fellowships. 

Multiple sources:

The Sydney Morning Herald (AAP)
Brisbane Times (AAP)
Nine News (AAP)
The West Australian (AAP)
Business Spectator (AAP) (article titled “Student income support gets boost”)
The Age (AAP)

THE federal Government has placed performance targets at the centre of a $5.3 billion, six-year package intended to move higher education funding towards a more sustainable basis.

Teaching funding is to be linked to agreed performance outcomes on quality, participation and completions rates and a new regulatory agency, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, will be formed to oversee standards and performance.

Universities will be prohibited from spending the proceeds of a new student services fee on any political activities, under draft guidelines.

From July 1 universities will be allowed to charge students fees of up to $250 a year to support student amenities and services.
Student bodies have had their funding cut by about $170 million following the introduction of voluntary student unionism by the Howard government in 2006.

The National Tertiary Education Union has called on the federal government to spend $105 million to attract recent PhD graduates and convert casual employees into full-time positions to ensure the nation's ageing academic workforce is replaced.

At the launch of its workforce development policy in Canberra last week, NTEU president Carolyn Allport called the issue of an ageing workforce an "imminent crisis" for universities.
"It's because the academic workforce is ageing - and ageing more quickly than we are replacing them," she said.

UNIVERSITIES will claw back some of the extra living money they have been paying research students if the federal Government boosts the postgraduate stipend, the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations has warned.

CAPA president Nigel Palmer said he believed "a number of institutions" already had decided to recoup any such savings by reducing top-up payments to research students with commonwealth scholarships. He said the savings should be reinvested in university-funded scholarships.

The federal budget will need to reduce student poverty if Australia is to build the workforce it needs to prosper after the global financial crisis, student groups say.
National Union of Students president David Barrow said that, after many years of neglect, the top priority for the government in higher education should be reforming student income support.

Australian universities need at least 1800 new full-time academics over three years to plug the hole left by an ageing and retiring workforce.

Launching its budget submission, the National Tertiary Education Union warned universities could not sustain a 52 per cent rate of casual staff. The union has proposed the Federal Government help fund 600 permanent positions in the existing casual workforce, based on merit. The other 1200 places would be found by attracting new PhD graduates to the sector.

The Greens have secured major amendments to the federal government's $42 billion economic stimulus package to benefit higher education students as the Rudd government finally secured passage of its controversial stimulus measures.

On Thursday last week the Rudd government's stimulus package was defeated in the Senate after independent Senator Nick Xenophon voted with the opposition. This tied the vote in the Senate, meaning the bill didn't pass.

The bill was set to be debated in the Senate again on Friday, when it was finally passed.