CAPA in the Media feed
This Is What A Funding Crisis Looks Like
Poor language skills a bar to lively debate
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.
Full-Time Rabbit vs Part-Time Turtle
Full-time focus for postgraduate awards or tunnel vision?
A CALL for universities to focus Australian Postgraduate Awards on full-time students to get better value for money has been labelled as unfair by postgraduate groups.
University of Melbourne deputy vice-chancellor Frank Larkins has said it is more efficient for universities to focus on full-time students, and increase their stipend. He argues that the lower completion rates for part-time research students risks wasting limited resources.