TEU Tertiary Update Vol 12 No 11

TRAINING SUPPORT NEEDED FOR NEW DOCTORS

TEU president Dr Tom Ryan says that shortages of doctors is, in part, the result of a lack of support for medical students and recent graduates. The Waitemata District Health Board is so short of house officers and registrars (new doctors) that it has been closing services and diverting patients Auckland City Hospital.

Waitemata's problems are part of a national shortage of resident medical officers. Dr Ryan says house surgeons coming out of medical school after years of study face large loan repayments, heavy workloads, and ongoing professional education.

“The social contract we used to have with medical students and young doctors has changed – they have debt, social mobility, and the chance to go overseas to earn large amounts of money, or even stay in New Zealand and be a locum, ironically covering the staffing shortages for better pay, “ says Dr Ryan. “If we do not respect them, and give them the training support they need to manage better the transition into the permanent workforce, we will continue to pay to train doctors who won’t or can’t hang around.”

According to the New Zealand Herald, the Auckland region has a vacancy rate of 26 per cent, with 236 of the 900 house officers and registrar positions being unfilled. The obstetrics and gynaecology department at Waitakere Hospital has no house officers, while North Shore Hospital's acute gynaecology service has been closed twice in recent weeks when fill-in staff could not be found to ensure safe staffing levels.

“Investing to support the education and transition of our new doctors may cost more in the short term, but it’s a more rational and economic solution than training extra doctors to fill gaps left by previous doctors who have moved on,” concluded Dr Ryan.

ALSO IN TERTIARY UPDATE THIS WEEK:

1. Update: Manukau votes to take action
2. Students unclear about value of student assessments
3. Awards committee chair impressed by tertiary teachers
4. Manukau bands together to protect young people from recession
5. China's ‘inexorable rise’ reaches Wellington
6. University of South Pacific has other things to think about
7. British students turned away as recession bites
8. Report tracks plight of persecuted academics
9. University press hears pleas to freeze journal prices

UPDATE: MANUKAU VOTES TO TAKE ACTION

TEU members at the Manukau Institute of Technology (MIT) have voted to take industrial action to address the high workloads they face. Industrial actions are expected to begin next week.

It was reported in Tertiary Update last week that TEU members and MIT had reached a negotiating impasse over the issue of workload, and in particular the high number of timetabled teaching hours staff were expected to teach.

TEU national president Dr Tom Ryan says the issue of workload is one of the biggest problems facing tertiary education workers at present, and that the problem is particularly acute in the ITP sector, in institutes of technology and polytechnics and wananga.

“Staff at MIT, like all tertiary education workers, are reluctant to take industrial action because, in the end, they don’t want their students to lose out. But this time around they felt pushed into a corner by their employer. Expecting teachers to each stand in front of a class for 800 hours a year, on top of assessment and administration, not to mention the demands of research and professional development, is grossly unfair for both staff and students at MIT. Things have to change – and the employer has to lead the way,” said Dr Ryan.

STUDENTS UNCLEAR ABOUT VALUE OF STUDENT ASSESSMENTS

Students need more clarity about what happens to student course and teaching evaluations if those evaluations are to be regarded with more respect, according to the director of the New Zealand Universities Academic Audit Unit, John Jennings.

All our universities have student feedback integrated into their quality self-assessment - process, with students generally being asked to answer a handful of generic questions about the quality of the course they are studying and the teaching they are receiving. The generic course information from those feedback forms is normally made available to the heads of departments concerned and the specific comments to the teachers in question. However, Mr. Jennings believes that students are unaware about what happens after that point.

“It’s not clear what is happening in terms of how it is used or how the changes that result are fed back to students. That was one area that we noted during cycle three of our audits (2003-2006) that clearly needed attention.”

Mr Jennings says he can sympathise with parents trying to decide which is the right course or institution for their child to attend, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that New Zealand needs to adopt a public evaluation system of university courses similar to that operating in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

“That’s a genuine concern from the perspective of parents. It can be difficult for people to choose a university. They often have to go by peer reputation.”

However he says that it is hard to compare apples with apples when assessing universities against each other because they all have such different cultures. “The only way to take the gamble out of it and provide public comparison of courses across universities would be to have a standardised test and I don’t know if there is value there or not,” concluded Mr Jennings.

AWARDS COMMITTEE CHAIR IMPRESSED BY TERTIARY TEACHERS

Following Professor Noeline Alcorn’s recent appointment as chair of the Tertiary Teaching Awards Committee, Tertiary Update invited her to discuss the state of tertiary teaching in New Zealand. Professor Alcorn was working on an NZAID project at the time in Honiara. However, upon her return, and access to a more reliable internet connection, Professor Alcorn took time out to talk about her aspirations for tertiary teaching in New Zealand:

“I believe there is excellent teaching across a wide range of institutions and that the average standard is high.”

“Tertiary teaching has become extremely diverse and complex: a much higher proportion of the population is engaged in tertiary learning; the fields of study have expanded; the range of institutions has grown; flexible learning has increased. Courses can vary from a short intensive skill-based course to a lengthy degree programme. The student population is culturally and linguistically diverse. All these things make the job of tertiary teaching difficult but rewarding.”

Professor Alcorn says an encouraging trend in tertiary education is the amount of second- chance learning that is taking place. For a variety of reasons, individuals have left school without qualifications, but later find they need resources to develop study skills or in academic English before embarking in formal tertiary study.

“Teaching these students is different but no less demanding than working with high achievers. There is no blueprint for quality teaching though enthusiasm and concern for students are essential.”

Professor Alcorn says that while some people believe the current emphasis on research for those teaching in degree programmes will leave academic staff with less time to work on their teaching, and will cause them to see it as being less important, she reserves her judgement.

“My own experience is that most excellent researchers are also keenly interested in helping students learn, and that their passion for their work rubs off on their students.”

The full transcript of the interview with Professor Alcorn is available at www.teu.ac.nz/?p=1995

MANUKAU BANDS TOGETHER TO PROTECT YOUNG PEOPLE FROM RECESSION

Manukau City mayor Len Brown has told the Eastern Courier that he has a plan to get Manukau’s young people through the recession unscathed.

According to the Courier, Mr Brown is developing an initiative to link the city’s "employment stakeholders" to try to avert a recession disaster for the city’s youth.

He intends to link the city’s 18 secondary schools and tertiary education providers like MIT, AUT, and Te Wananga o Aotearoa into the project, along with private education providers, businesses that provide apprenticeships and jobs, the Department of Work and Income, and the council itself.

The project aims to create pathways for everyone looking for a job and is still under discussion. Mr Brown is motivated by the negative effect the last recession had on his community.

"The 1987-1992 recession caused 25 to 30 percent of our population in Otara to lose their jobs. It took us 20 years to recover from the effect of that."

So far the impact of the current financial crisis on Manukau City has been "irregular, with some businesses doing well and others struggling. Unemployment is supposedly between 7 and 8 percent. But on top of those people losing jobs we have about 5000 school leavers who will be joining the workforce.”

Among the alternatives Mr Brown wants to offer are continuing higher education, training, apprenticeships, and jobs. He calculates that about 17 percent of local young people aged between 17 and 25 were not in training, apprenticeship, tertiary education or employment in 2006, but now that number has grown to about 20 to 25 percent of young adults.

"I’m preparing a process of bringing together all the parties to pull together a programme. It will require a lot of logistics, energy and collaboration. So far we have nothing that has a comprehensive plan of action for every young adult,” Mr Brown told the Courier.

CHINA'S ‘INEXORABLE RISE’ REACHES WELLINGTON

The New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre was officially opened on Tuesday in Wellington.

The centre is supported by funding from the New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission, and will be led by Victoria University in partnership with the Universities of Otago and Canterbury and Auckland University of Technology (AUT).

Contemporary China will be the centre's primary research focus. Initially it will be concerned with how to do business in China, including the political and economic aspects of China's transformation, marketing and business management in China, the legal framework for business in China, New Zealand-China ties, and the impact of China in the Asia-Pacific region.

The centre's newly appointed director, Professor Xiaoming Huang, said the aim of the centre is to provide a national collaborative platform for China-related research. Following the official opening, the Centre hosted the first in its China symposia programmes, focused on the impact of the global economic crisis on New Zealand-China economic relations.

"China's inexorable rise as a global economic power in the 21st century has profound implications for the world and for New Zealand. The ongoing global economic crisis seems to further confirm this. We hope this symposium can be a useful platform for discussion and debate among scholars, policy makers in the public sector, and practitioners in the private sector on China-related issues that have significant implications for New Zealand," Professor Xiaoming Huang said.

The centre’s other activities are likely to include joint research projects, a national system of access to information on China, staff and student exchanges, and the coordination of scholarship and research funding. Senior visitor exchanges executive training, and lecture programs are also planned.

By Bi Mingxin at Xinhua News Agency

WORLDWATCH

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH PACIFIC HAS OTHER THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

In the wake of the latest round of political drama in Fiji, the University of the South Pacific has increased security but claims that “all is calm” at the Suva-based university. Vice-chancellor Professor Rajesh Chandra says the campus is calm and that there is no risk to students or staff at this stage.

However, it could be that the university is facing bigger internal issues. Professor Chandra announced last wee, at a graduation ceremony, a series of restructuring and rationalisation measures that will see 90 courses cut, reduced expenditure in some areas, and tighter financial controls throughout the whole university, including extra internal monitoring and audits.

The new plans are supposed to save the university about F$400,000 (NZ$396,000) per year. Professor Chandra has also introduced a formal workload policy for academic staff and aligned this to overall financial planning.

“We are in the process of fundamentally re-shaping the University, with the goal of a better, more relevant, and sustainable institution in a more competitive future, and to increase its value to stakeholders as well as relevance to the challenges that confront us all,” said Professor Chandra.

These changes have prompted the Australian Government to increase its funding to the university by AU$4.8 million (NZ$6 million). Australian High Commissioner James Batley told the graduation ceremony “The Vice Chancellor’s ability to turn the institution around through its reforms and being able to make the difficult decisions is a show of leadership.”

By Matangi Tonga, the Solomon Star and Radio Fiji

BRITISH STUDENTS TURNED AWAY AS RECESSION BITES

British colleges of further and higher education and schools with sixth forms face a severe funding shortfall as a result of the global financial crisis. The government argues that there is a £200m hole in the budget for 16-19 education caused by a miscalculation of the level of demand for places to study, which has soared during the recession. As a result funding per institution is £300,000 less than promised last month, and an estimated 35,000 students could be turned away at the start of the British academic year in September.

Christine Blower, the acting general secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), said that the government had failed to properly anticipate the rise in demand for education during the recession, and that places at sixth forms and colleges were being "rationed" despite high-profile pledges by ministers to guarantee all 16-year-olds a place to study. She said the government is undermining its own promises to expand educational opportunities for people from poorer backgrounds

Ministers are working furiously behind the scenes to come up with money to ensure that schools and colleges are not forced to turn students away. An added pressure is that those students who do not get a place in an educational institution will face the extremely tough prospect of the recession-hit job market.

The row has strong echoes of the problems facing British universities, which have been instructed not to take on any more students this September than they did last year, after the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills reported a £200m deficit. Universities also are facing a record demand, with applications for places increasing by 7.7 percent compared with last year.

One university told the Guardian it faces a 20 percent increase in applications and five “straight-A” applicants for every two places it has on its books.

By Polly Curtis at the Guardian

REPORT TRACKS PLIGHT OF PERSECUTED ACADEMICS

A report released this week by the Institute of International Education (home of the Scholar Rescue Fund), identifies trends in the nature of the persecution of scholars around the globe. The Scholar Rescue Fund which provides support, safe haven and fellowships to threatened scholars at safe host institutions around the world, used data from its applications and grants over the last five years to put together the report.

Scholar Rescue in the Modern World shows that academic oppression is surprisingly widespread, with applications originating from 101 countries over a five year period. In one example , a marine biologist in Ukraine reported being arrested after an academic conference for "compromising state security by showing slides at the conference of the seabed off the Ukrainian shoreline."

When the top applicant countries are analysed in terms of country and academic population, however, it becomes clear that Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, particularly Iraq and Iran, are hot spots of scholar persecution. Women scholars are more persecuted than male scholars, and governments are the main source of persecution, outnumbering non-state actors, such as militias and terrorist groups, by a factor of roughly 3 to 1. Fiji is the only country in the South Pacific to feature in the report’s data.

The report also proposes a number of new ideas and programs to mitigate the persecution of academics worldwide. These include establishing an index of scholar persecution, developing a UN convention against the persecution of scholars, decreasing barriers for academics to cross borders, and developing scenarios that might predict the next big academic crisis.

“Scholar persecution is a tactic that repressive governments and/or non-state actors actively and deliberately employ to achieve their objectives. And -- given the results that we are reporting here -- it is a tactic that is effective, strategic, and widespread," Henry G. Jarecki, the report’s co-author says.

By Elizabeth Redden at Inside Higher Ed

UNIVERSITY PRESS HEARS PLEAS TO FREEZE JOURNAL PRICES

In the United States one university press has responded to the pressure placed of the economic slump on library budgets by freezing its 2010 journal subscription rates at 2009 levels.

The small, non-profit Rockefeller University Press announced the move this week, following calls by two library groups, the Association of Research Libraries and the International Coalition of Library Consortia, for publishers to work with libraries in order to make sure both survive the downturn.

The coalition urged publishers to stabilize prices, warning that library budgets faced "significant and widespread cuts" and "reductions unlike the sporadic or regional episodes experienced from year to year, with real and permanent reductions to base budgets." Publishers need "to recognize these fundamentally different circumstances as we work together for the benefit of all parties," it said.

Mike Rossner, executive director of Rockefeller University Press, made it clear that those messages have not fallen on deaf ears. "We understand the pressure that librarians are under because of budget cuts in the current economic climate, and we realized that even if we kept our prices the same, we could continue, we hope, to bring in enough revenue to operate," Mr. Rossner said in an interview. "We still need income to publish journals," he said, but as a non-profit organisation, "we don't have to provide a dividend to shareholders."

Like almost all publishers, Rockefeller has been in the habit of raising its journal prices most years to cover costs. But "it's important for us to do what we can to make sure these journals are still read," the director said.

Larger publishers have not yet indicated if they will follow Rockefeller’s lead.

By Jennifer Howard at the Chronicle of Higher Education

TEU Tertiary Update is published weekly on Thursdays and distributed freely to members of the Tertiary Education Union and others. Back issues are available on the TEU website. Direct inquiries should be made to Stephen Day, email: stephen.day@teu.ac.nz

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