CAPA in the Media

One of CAPA's main responsibilities is to ensure the postgraduate voice is heard at the national level. Below is a sample of recent media featuring postgraduate issues promoted by CAPA.

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.

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.

Pod Rights Transcript - Episode 15 (Interview of Tammi Jonas)

Graeme Innes:  Hello and welcome to Pod Rights, a series of podcasts from the Australian Human Rights Commission.  I'm Graeme Innes, the Disability and Race Discrimination Commissioner.

Education portfolio split concerns many

Also published in Sydney Morning Herald

 

The federal government's decision to split the education portfolio has led to concerns the move will result in a fractured approach.

New peak body for all international tertiary students

Australia’s new peak body for international students has its work cut out for it.

International students from all post-school educational sectors now have unified a representative voice, following elections to the new Council of International Students Australia (CISA) in Hobart last week.

Growing a research workforce

A new consultation paper examines the challenges of building and sustaining a high-quality research workforce as the nation strives to keep pace with skyrocketing global demand for researchers.

The federal government may finally expand its postgraduate scholarships program as part of wider efforts to attract and retain researchers here.

An extravagance of rectitude

Fiscal rectitude isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But it beats rectal vicissitude.

ABC local radio in Sydney is playing “lingo bingo” this election. An on-air bell rings every time a politician incants one of 30 clichés including “moving forward”, “unAustralian” and “fiscal conservative”.

New peak body for international students

COAG might be scrambling to put together a strategy for international students. In the meantime, they’ve put together their own representation.

Office bearers for a new international students’ peak body will be elected in Hobart this week, picking up the strings of the old National Liaison Committee for International Students (NLC) and ending a two-year gap in dedicated representation for Australia’s overseas students.