CSU Institutional Support for Marriage Equality

As is plain from the debate in the media, the issue of Marriage Equality has been a difficult one for us as a nation. Clearly there are many people in favour of Marriage Equality. I recognise that there are also many of those within our community who are opposed. There are a further category of people who feel uncomfortable about this issue because even if they are personally supportive or undecided, they are concerned about others being forced to deal with the question.

Speaking personally, the decision to support Marriage Equality is straightforward for me. I know many same-sex couples in long-term relationships, some of whom are parents. Personally, I cannot see how it can be right to deny them the opportunity to have their commitment to each other legally recognised by society. I have already ticked ‘yes’ on the ABS survey form.

But that is my personal decision. Unlike most people, as the Vice-Chancellor of this institution, I have additional responsibilities on behalf of the whole University community. In an organisation of nearly 5000 staff and 40,000 students, this is a more complicated decision to make while being respectful of the different positions I outlined above.

I have had representations from staff members individually, from the ALLY program members and from the Online Student Representative Council all of whom have asked me to pledge institutional support.

I have sought the advice of a number of people including my Leadership Team and the Chancellor. From this advice it is evident that ultimately, as with the broader society, there is not a unanimous and perhaps not even a consensus view on this. There are a good number of people who think the University should not take a position except to encourage people to participate in the national vote.

However, from my discussions and the representations that have been made to me, I do not believe we can sit on the fence. This would be celebrated by some and seen as an abdication of responsibility by others so it is not a neutral choice. Given the lack of clear consensus, it is also clear to me that this is a decision that ultimately I have to, and must, make myself in my role as Vice-Chancellor of the organisation.

I do not want to stifle debate. As a University, we should be a space in which difficult issues can be discussed. That is the academic mission of the University and I fully support that and the right of people to exercise free speech within it. As Vice-Chancellor I cannot tell anyone in the University what to think.

However, the University also exists as a corporate body, as an employer of staff and a community of students, and it is in that light that I consider the question of the institutional position. When I consider our key Value of ‘Inclusive’, I believe the right decision is that we should support Marriage Equality before the law and that is the decision I have taken.

As patron of CSU’s ALLY program, a program dedicated to supporting and empowering the LGBTQI+ community, I stand by the LBGTQI+ community and I cannot see how to do that without supporting Marriage Equality before the law.

To the numerous staff who have emailed me personally asking for organisational support, to the Online Student Representative Committee who called for me to make a stand on this issue, and to RivColl, the Riverina Student Representative Committee and your leadership who have taken a stand, the University stands with you in supporting the right of all to have equality before the law.

I have no doubt this decision will be met with criticism by some individuals, and I accept this. I can only do what I think is right and I know that I would regret it later if I do not do that. I also accept and celebrate everyone’s democratic right to take a position in the Marriage Equality debate and I encourage all of you who are entitled to vote to do so in line with your own views and conscience.

Given our Value of Inclusive, CSU is stronger together and we will accept and support all members of the CSU community and recognise their equality before the law. I trust that whatever the outcome of the vote and whatever process follows, we will retain respect for and continue to support each other.

Thank you for taking the time to engage in this important debate in Australia’s history.

Regards,

Andy

Support is available: If you need support or feel distressed during the same-sex marriage debate, please contact a Student Counsellor, the Employee Assistance Program or an ALLY trained representative on your Campus.

Professor Andrew Vann

Vice-Chancellor
Charles Sturt University

Higher Education Policy Reforms

As you may well have read or heard in the media, the Federal Government has released its long-awaited proposed higher education policy. While we are still analysing the package to determine what it means for CSU, I wanted to share some initial thoughts with you.

As Minister Birmingham indicated, this package has been designed to “spread the pain,” with students set to pay more, universities to receive less funding and the Government achieving smaller savings than it originally intended.  I think it has been quite cleverly constructed to do this, to address some long-standing issues as well as provide some sweeteners to go with the cuts.

One significant part of the package is the impact on students and graduates.  The ratio of student to Commonwealth payments for degrees will shift, with students to pay on average 46% (up from 42%) of the cost of their degree. This is probably not as bad as we had feared.  In addition, HECS-HELP repayment will now begin at $42,000 at 1% repayments which on the other hand is lower than we had expected.  Acknowledging these, I believe investment in higher education represents good value, particularly for a university like CSU which has very strong graduate employment outcomes.

Another significant part is the imposition of two 2.5% efficiency dividends on Commonwealth Supported Place (CSP) funding to the sector in 2018 and 2019 which the Department of Education estimates will overall have a 2.8% impact on CSU teaching and learning funding.

On the Minister’s figures, combining both measures, the Federal Government will achieve a cumulative saving of approximately 10% in expenditure which is less than their original intention of saving 20% of Commonwealth expenditure.

You will see the Government justifying these cuts by stating that universities have more money than they need to deliver teaching and learning.  This is based on a report commissioned from Deloitte which shows that Universities only spend about 85% of their funding on teaching and learning.  Previously, there has been an acceptance that teaching money supports somewhere between 15-30% research and community engagement.  If we accept this metric, universities are at best close to breakeven or actually underfunded by about 15% which is consistent with previous studies.

The Government also claims that the Deloitte study shows that university funding has risen faster than costs based when compared to previous findings of the Lomax-Smith Review (2011).  In my view, these two studies can’t be directly compared.  They were conducted using different samples and methodology so you can’t draw clear conclusions by comparing the two.

Overall, while the package is less severe than we feared, I of course do not welcome yet another round of cuts to university funding.  I am very concerned that these cuts will again challenge our mission of extending a university education to Australians who have previously been excluded from higher education.

Over recent years, we rightly sought to improve our efficiency, and best use the public money provided to us.  University staff have worked hard for this and should be proud of their achievements.

We will therefore be strongly communicating that further squeezing budgets can only have a negative impact on our ability to serve our regions.  As we all acknowledge, universities are a critical part of driving innovation and we need to help rural and regional Australia expand and grow our economy.

A portion of our funding, 7.5%, will now be contingent on reaching performance measures. In 2018 these relate to providing teaching and research data, as well as compliance with the new admissions transparency requirements. In 2019 however, we understand these measures may reference retention and employment outcomes amongst others. This will require extensive discussion with the Government to ensure it really does support universities to do better work.  I also note that one of the cuts that has already been applied to the sector is the removal of additional performance funding.

In positive news for the University, the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program (HEPPP) will now be moved into the Higher Education Support Act (HESA) legislation, guaranteeing the fund moving forward. As we all know, HEPPP has played an important role assisting us to extend a university education across our communities, and I am pleased this wonderful work by many dedicated CSU staff may continue and have certainty.

Sub-bachelor degrees will now be part of the demand-driven system, as long as they meet industry needs, which is a great outcome. Likewise, the current clinical loading for medicine will be extended to dentistry and veterinary science programs. This will provide an additional $1394 per student. CSU has advocated strongly for this outcome, and we are pleased to see it included in the policy package.

Finally, we are still working to understand how a number of other measures will impact universities and CSU in particular. Postgraduate Commonwealth Supported Places will initially be cut and then be moved to be student-centred on merit, with the scholarship tied to the individual student and applicable at any institution. We will need to understand how ‘merit’ is defined to appreciate what this will mean for students – for example teachers in regional NSW studying Masters degrees.

The Federal Government is also to provide seed funding for eight new regional study hubs, based on the Geraldton and Cooma models where they support many students.  We have had experience with both of these so look forward to getting more details on this.

Lastly, a new Work Integrated Learning program is to be developed, with work experience able to be counted towards degree programs and with better support from Commonwealth funds.  CSU has a strong track record in work integrated learning, and if this helps to better support students on placement that would be a really good thing.

Obviously this is a significant package of policy measures and changes. We are committed to considering each fully, and advocating strongly to ensure the best results for our institution, staff and students.

You can see our initial media release and response here:

20170502 Higher Education Policy Media Release

As always, if you have any thoughts I am happy to hear from you.  I look forward to providing more detail and analysis as it becomes available.

2016 Close

As I mentioned, it has been a year of great achievement and perhaps sometimes it can be hard to see the big picture across the University from our individual areas. This year, we have put together just a small selection of statistics and facts about exactly what we have acheived this year. I would urge you all to take a look – it is a snapshot so it doesn’t have everything in there, but it is a very impressive reminder of the scale and achievements of staff and students in a very busy year:  2016 Achievements

At the last meeting of Council, the new Strategic Direction document for 2017-2022 was approved.  This has been built on the back of the strategic foresight exercise that was carried out, and the four possible scenarios for 2030 created as part of this were posted on Yammer.  The new strategy will be worked through, planned and explained in more detail next year, but the three big areas are engaging with our communities to help them build their future, transforming our learning and teaching and finally to underpin all of this, building our internal capability.

Final Post for 2015

I’m writing this as graduations for 2015 draw to a close. It has been a big year in which a lot has happened, including a lot of change. I am very proud of the achievements of staff and students throughout this year and in particular of our staff for maintaining their focus on students while we have been going through the change process.

Graduations have been, once again, a wonderful occasion. I aim to get to at least one graduation from each Faculty and at least one at each campus and by the end will have been to every campus except Canberra. It is a very special day for the students and their families and, when there is the opportunity, it is great to hear a little of their story as they walk across the stage. I wanted to thank all the staff from across the University who have been involved in the graduations process and a particular thank you to academic staff for processing and being there for the students. For the first time we held a graduation ceremony in Port Macquarie where we congratulated about 130 graduates, some from Port but some who had also studied via distance and online education.

In research, on the last set of audited figures, which are for 2014, we increased both income and publications significantly against 2013. The Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) results, which were released earlier this month, also show that we have grown the number of areas of research rated at world class or above significantly from the previous round in 2012. We now have 16 compared to 9 in 2010. This is a testament to the great work produced by our researchers, the vast majority of it addressing issues in our communities. We also have our first ‘5’ rating, or well above world standard, for Horticulture which includes wine production.

I am looking forward to 2016. We are now almost at the end of appointing people to the new Common Support Model structures in the Faculties. Once again, I acknowledge that this has been a disruptive process for staff and I know that some staff members are still waiting on the outcomes of appointment processes. However, my sense from the staff roadshows conducted over the last couple of weeks is that people are turning their minds to the new structures and want to be sure that we get the best out of them. I would like to thank all staff involved in this as it has been a significant effort both for applicants and those making the selections.  As advised last week, we will cut over to the new structures in the middle of next year in between the two major sessions. Planning is underway at present for the training development to support staff moving into their new roles and details of this will be advised in the first few months of next year.

The Engineering and Law programs will commence at the start of next year, and student numbers for these programs are looking healthy. The new Port Macquarie Campus build will also be complete in February and is a great building which will be an excellent home for the students and staff there.

We have increased our marketing activity this year and while it is early days, this is showing promising signs for 2016 with numbers forecast to increase from 2015. It is clear that the whole sector has become a lot more competitive. Applications and offers are strongly up but we still need to be attentive to conversion to encourage students to choose us – this will, I think, be the new reality. However, at least on the current figures we appear to be adapting well.

I have mentioned in the staff roadshows that CSU has achieved some amazing things:

• During 2013 we had the largest number of Indigenous students and completions in Australia. The 2014 figures have now been released and University of Newcastle have overtaken us again – we have 908 and they have 914 so it’s still pretty close.
• We are the largest provider of postgraduate IT education in Australia.
• We are the world’s largest provider of university education in law enforcement, counter-terrorism, emergency management, customs and border security studies.
• Our 15 year partnerships with four Chinese universities are among some of the longest of any Australian university.
• Our graduates continue to enjoy some of the highest employment rates in Australia.
• The Veterinary Science School had commented that with a 97.1% teaching satisfaction rating in the UES survey (and an approximate 3% error bound), no-one in the country could be shown to have a better teaching rating in the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) indicators. This is indeed good and prompted us to go looking where the raw number placed overall. Vet Science is in the top 6% on this basis, but it turns out that CSU Occupational Therapy had the fourth highest ranking in the country out of 1000 university/subject area combinations. Unfortunately, the Occupational Therapy subject area has been removed from QILT so this isn’t easily visible, but it does show that we have some terrific ratings for our teaching.

Being Vice-Chancellor of CSU is an amazing and privileged role to have. To close off, I wanted to let people know that I am in the process of finalising a new contract with the University Council to extend for a further five years beyond the end of my current contract period, which runs to the end of 2016. I do hope and intend to be here until the end of 2021. CSU is making a real and positive difference in people’s lives and for its communities. To my mind, there is no better contribution to make than that.

I wish everyone a peaceful and safe Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

PS: At the end of February, we have entered a CSU team in the Royal Far West Ride fundraising ride for Country Kids.  Royal Far West have provided health services to rural and remote children for nearly 100 years.  We have been finding ways to collaborate with them as our missions are strongly aligned and we have had dental students placed at their Manly site.  The ride is 380km over three days from Port Macquarie to Coffs Harbour. I will be taking part along with Dr Tracey Green, Greg Linsdell and Johnathan Hewis from the Port Macquarie Campus (pictures taken at the graduation this week).  They are all very much fitter than me and what seemed like a good idea a few months back is now coming round at a rapid pace.  If anyone would be generous enough to support the team, the fundraising page is at http://rideforcountrykids2016.gofundraise.com.au/page/CSU-Ride4CountryKids