Future Campus

Universities must grapple with a valued but achievable purpose to unlock hearts and minds of the community, UNSW DVC Merlin Crossley writes.

Grappling with a Big New Purpose Today the purpose of universities is often framed as solving the world’s problems. This makes sense because new knowledge can help solve many problems. But here is my point - have we expanded our purpose so far that we can no longer deliver on it?

What We Learned Insights from challenges shared by both Australian and Ukrainian universities.

Friday marks the fourth anniversary of the Russian forces rolling in to occupy Berdyansk, in Southern Ukraine, and Professor Yana Sychikova and Professor Igor Lyman from Berdyansk State Pedagogical University are leaving Australian audiences impressed and deeply moved by their story.

Their personal stories are remarkable – Yana lived three months under occupation and for the last month was hunted by Russian forces, sheltering in safe houses before escaping to relative safety in Ukrainian-held territory. Igor, a Professor of history, saw the signs and escaped days before the Russian invasion.

On Monday, they told the Future Campus symposium in Canberra about the challenges, achievements, and also sobering realities of running a university without walls, following the occupation of their campus. Despite incredibly difficult, often life-threatening situations, they have achieved remarkable results - albeit with ongoing concerns about sustainability due to staff exhaustion and burnout.

Watch sessions from Monday's University Without Walls Symposium here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAapKNJGlZk

Profound Insights for the Future of HE The challenges faced by Professor Yana Sychikova, Professor Igor Lyman and colleagues at Berdyansk State Pedagogical University in Ukraine are mostly similar to those faced by Australian universities, albeit of a different dimension, exacerbated by war. They have shared clear insights that are relev...

Newcastle VC Alex Zelinsky makes the case for supporting an ATEC in Future Campus today. Professor Zelinsky explains why he has opted to support the new tertiary commission, with some caveats - read in the link below.

futurecampus.com.au

A coalition of Vice-Chancellors has sued for terms following the House of Representatives passing the ATEC legislation on Tuesday, ahead of tomorrow’s Senate committee hearing to consider it.

Read more in Future Campus online this morning

VC’s Switch To Try Saving ATEC A coalition of Vice-Chancellors has sued for terms following the House of Representatives passing the ATEC legislation on Tuesday and ahead of tomorrow’s Senate committee hearing to consider it.

It's more than 50 degrees C colder in Ukraine than Australia this week, as temps in Kyiv bottom out at around -20 C, but the Future Campus community is rallying around our fundraiser to provide generators and emergency relief for students.

Find out more in the link below.

FC Community Digs Deep For Ukrainian Students It's more than 50 degrees C colder in Ukraine than Australia this week, as temps in Kyiv bottom out at around -20 C, but the Future Campus community is rallying around our fundraiser to provide generators and emergency relief for students.

The National Health and Medical Research Council’s new Open Science Policy requires researchers to “share their data and methods as openly as possible.” It also applies to the Medical Research Future Fund and covers the “entire research cycle.”

Stephen Matchett reports on a major shift in policy affecting medical researchers across the country.

NHMRC Mandates Open Science The National Health and Medical Research Council’s new Open Science Policy requires researchers to “share their data and methods as openly as possible.” It also applies to the Medical Research Future Fund and covers the “entire research cycle.”

"Regrettably, the social licence discussion appears to have been infected with the same plague of polarisation we’re seeing in the broader community. In this case, two camps have emerged: one stressing one-eyed public responsiveness with limited regard for commercial considerations; the other championing a market-driven focus on competition and surplus," ACU Vice-Chancellor Professor Zlatko Skrbis writes in Future Campus today.

"To transcend the current discourse, we must move beyond this either/or mentality. We must practice the art of holding two truths simultaneously, balancing perspectives to find consensus and chart a new way forward."

"This means accepting that without sound financial management, universities cannot fulfil purpose. It means acknowledging that without a commitment to purpose, financial considerations become meaningless."

"The path forward requires dialogue, not diktat. It demands that we listen to critics, learn from failures, and lead with both principle and pragmatism. Most importantly, it requires us to demonstrate – through actions, not just words – that we can balance our books while staying true to our mission and values."

Read the full story through the link below

Restoring Social Licence Requires A New Consensus So, how do we regain the public’s trust, and with it, our social licence?

"Current debates in higher education about generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in assessment are frequently framed around the search for a technical mechanism capable of detecting, attributing, or policing student writing." Mark A. Bassett from CSU writes in Future Campus today.

"This framing assumes that the central problem confronting institutions is the absence of sufficiently capable technology, rather than the compatibility of existing assessment practices with contemporary writing conditions."

"The rapid uptake of so-called “AI detection” tools, proposals for watermarking GenAI outputs, assessment process-tracking and post-hoc verification software reflect this assumption, despite its lack of evidentiary foundation. These responses do not address a newly created problem but instead recast a long-standing challenge in assessment—the limits of unsupervised written work as evidence of learning—as a technical deficit to be resolved through surveillance."

Read the full story below

What Gen AI Exposes About Written Assessment "GenAI has not created a new assessment problem, but it has removed the conditions that once allowed institutions to avoid confronting an old one."

News Highlights from the past week in Australian HE from the legendary Stephen Matchett.

The Week That Was Key news in Australian HE from the past week.

A great read, tracing the history of tertiary education commissions in Australia and lessons that will influence the future of the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC).

ATEC: Lessons from tertiary tsars of the past Australia’s earlier experience with tertiary education commissions suggests that their durability will depend as much on how governments choose to live with the institution as it will on autonomy and architecture.