Planning is under way to prevent a future staffing shortage across New Zealand universities as traditional sources for academic staff dry up at the same time as a large proportion of the academic workforce retires.

The Academic Workforce Planning - Towards 2020 (AWP-2020) - is a collaborative project across the eight New Zealand universities. It has received funding under the Tertiary Education Commission's Priorities for Focus Fund and is an initiative of the NZVCC's Human Resources Committee. This group has appointed a steering committee to lead the project. AWP-2020 Steering Committee chair and University of Otago Human Resources Director Kevin Seales says the eight universities share concerns that as New Zealand moves towards 2020, universities will face significant difficulties in maintaining an effective and efficient academic workforce. These concerns are at the heart of the project.

The traditional offshore sources of academic staff (replacements and new areas of study/research) were decreasing and New Zealand staff were also being attracted into other sectors as well as offshore. During this same period members of the existing academic workforce would be retiring at a higher rate than ever before experienced. Due to the changing demographic profile in New Zealand it was also expected that this workforce would need to include a significantly greater proportion of Māori and Pacific peoples than at present.

"With this situation in mind the overall aim of the project is to develop a workforce plan that quantifies the supply of and demand for academic staffing within New Zealand's universities and identifies strategies to address any issues towards 2020," Mr Seales says.

A significant component of the project would be the collection and analysis of demographic information about the academic workforce from all the universities. The project would need to analyse this data across a variety of dimensions - including gender, ethnicity, academic discipline and age - so that all significant gaps could be identified between forecast demand and supply. The steering group had contracted BERL (Business and Economic Research Limited) to do this work.

However, demographic information about universities' academic staffing was currently difficult to obtain with no single body accountable for its collective integrity.

The project would also be supported by an advisory group consisting of academic staff members from each university, and the universities' HR Information Expert Group, which would attempt to overcome the information and data issues that could be challenging. A subsequent project would be considered to look at planning issues related to the general non-academic staff workforce. Other items Final Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarships awarded The Tertiary Education Commission has announced the final recipients of Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarships with this aspect of the Bright Future Scheme now discontinued as a result of a decision in this year's Budget. The commission received the final round of applications for the scholarships in May this year and funding commitment to scholars in the final round will cover a period of three years. All other current Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarships will be honoured. Recipients of the final Top Achiever awards include University of Auckland students Brendan Harvey and Amy Smith whose respective research topics are development of catalysts for green chemistry and the role of immune cells in adult neurogenesis. Two of the last Top Achiever recipients will carry out their research at overseas universities. Leon Henderson is off to Cambridge for a research project on low energy urban delivery vehicles while Ross McGurk will go to Duke University for his research which centres on hybrid-optimisation in radiation therapy treatment planning algorithms. Three Massey University students also received Top Achiever awards. Sylvia Yuan is investigating the identity of New Zealand missionaries in China during the period 1890 to 1953 while Bronwyn Clark's research title is "missing pieces, understanding the influence of clients' religious and spiritual beliefs within the frame of cognitive case conceptualisation". Jane Richardson's research will focus on Northland rivers and whether they are synchronised with global climate change. University of Waikato students were successful with four Top Achiever applications. The title of Naomi Simmonds' research project is "reconfiguring Māori maternities: a mana wahine perspective on childbirth". Michael Walmsley's research will look at automatic creation of dynamic second language reading texts while Samuel Sarjant will investigate statistical relational reinforcement learning. "Verifying nonblocking in discrete event systems using abstractions" is the title of Simon Ware's research project. Victoria University of Wellington student Gregory Haslett will use his Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarship to research deciphering the molecular fingerprint of allergens. The other two students to receive the final Top Achiever awards are based at the University of Otago. Danny Baillie will look at finite-temperature theory of cold gases in optical lattices, with Chelsea Goulton investigating the mechanisms of pharmacological preconditioning in vitro and in vivo. Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarships supported 36 months of study. They attracted an annual stipend of $25,000 with a loading where the scholarship was undertaken overseas. Up to $3000 could be claimed for conference attendance. Relocation costs and medical insurance were paid to students studying overseas and the award also covered annual course fees. Typically a New Zealand-based award was worth around $100,000 while an overseas award could be worth up to $250,000.

National standards for Australian universities resisted

A proposal by the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) for a system of national academic standards has met with resistance from the Australian universities' representative body, Universities Australia.

An AUQA discussion paper on standards attracted 55 responses, including one from Universities Australia which said AUQA's plan could stifle innovation, subject universities to micro-management and saddle academic staff with an administrative burden.

Mike Gallagher, Executive Director for Australia's Group of Eight Universities, has been quoted by The Australian newspaper as saying that people are anxious about government intruding into academic affairs. The same report quoted Universities Australia Chief Executive Dr Glenn Withers to the effect that the logical extension of the AUQA approach was a prescribed curriculum.

The Australian story said reaction to the AUQA discussion paper had been coloured by uncertainty about the nature of a new national regulator for tertiary institutions. In May, Australian Education Minister Julia Gillard issued a media statement announcing the establishment of that regulator. It said: "The Rudd Government is investing $57 million over four years to establish a new national quality and standards agency as a core component of its response to the Bradley Review of Australian Higher Education. "As part of a move towards a student-focused university system, the Bradley Review proposed a significant re-design of the regulatory environment for universities and the development of a new quality assurance framework. The Rudd Government will establish a national regulatory agency and a new quality assurance framework, to balance the move towards a more demand-driven funding model and expansion of higher education. "The new Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) will work with the higher education sector to develop objective and comparative benchmarks and to carry out rigorous audits. Arrangements for establishing the TEQSA will commence this year and the agency will be fully operational from 2012.

"The Government will also establish a new performance funding stream to encourage universities to strive for and achieve quality and other benchmarks. This will commence in 2012 and will be worth approximately $206 million over the forward estimates.

"The new agency will accredit providers and carry out quality audits. It will protect the overall quality of the Australian higher education system, encourage best practice and streamline current regulatory arrangements to reduce duplication and provide for national consistency. The agency will work with universities to improve areas such as retention, selection and exit standards and graduate outcomes." TEQSA would therefore appear to supplant AUQA, described on its website as an independent, not-for-profit national agency that will promote, audit, and report on quality assurance in Australian higher education.

"AUQA was formally established by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) in March 2000. It operates independently of governments and the higher education sector under the direction of a board of directors. AUQA is owned by and receives core, operational funding from the Commonwealth, State and Territory Ministers for higher education who are members of MCEETYA," the website says. The Australian story notes that education ministers asked AUQA to pursue the issue of standards well before last December's Bradley report, "which noted shortcomings in the agency and called for a new national regulator".

Tuition fees for public universities in Iceland?

The OECD has reinforced its advice to Iceland to consider the introduction of tuition fees at public universities as the country struggles to emerge from economic meltdown, according to University World News.

"The OECD had previously recommended that Iceland's public universities should be empowered to charge tuition fees. But the epic banking crisis that precipitated a deep recession prompted it to repeat the advice in a recovery plan published earlier this month. The Icelandic government sought international help for a medium-term adjustment programme to restore policy credibility and economic growth. The latest OECD economic survey found that much remains to be done in implementing the programme, despite some progress.

"The survey identified tuition fees as one of the outstanding issues. It pointed out that Icelanders spend an unusually long time completing upper-secondary education, with most students taking the university entrance examination only at the age of 20. It argued that as a result, relatively few students complete their studies, contributing to maintaining a persistent gap between the low skilled and high skilled in the labour force, despite high public spending by international comparison," the University World News report said.