[csaa-forum] CHASS Newsletter 24 March

[Toss Gascoigne]

Dear csaa-forum

CHASS Newsletter Number 15, for 24 March 2006.  Please feel free to pass on
to your colleagues.


1.  MINISTERIAL INTERFERENCE WITH ARC GRANTS ENDS
2.  EXPANDING HORIZONS CHOCKABLOCK
3.  CROSS-DISCIPLINARY DISCUSSIONS
4.  ENGAGING WITH EUROPE
5.  BRAIN DRAIN - OR RECIRCULATION?
6.  ARTS DEGREES UNDER FIRE IN UK

1.  MINISTERIAL INTERFERENCE WITH ARC GRANTS ENDS
CHASS welcomes a statement by new Education Minister Julie Bishop that she
will not over-ride the grant recommendations of the ARC.

Her views were reported in the Australian's Higher Education Supplement on
March 22:

"FEDERAL Education, Science and Training Minister Julie Bishop has expressed
strong support for the Australian Research Council and the system of peer
review it uses to distribute $540 million in research funds each year.

"She has also signalled she will not pursue the same controversial practice
as her predecessor Brendan Nelson, who vetoed research grants in the past
two years.

"I know Dr Nelson exercised ministerial discretion on a very few occasions,"
Ms Bishop told the HES yesterday.

"My view is that if the peer review process has the independence and
integrity to ensure that it's robust, then I would see no need for me to
second-guess that process."

This will help restore faith in the integrity of the processes Australia
uses to award research funding.  CHASS President Malcolm Gillies had written
to the previous Minister on this issue.


2.  "EXPANDING HORIZONS" CHOCKABLOCK
There was a last-minute tsunami of registrations of early-career researchers
and professionals for "Expanding Horizons", and 220 people will attend our
event on March 28-29.

The meetings with Members of Parliament have been finalised, and all
registrants informed on which MP they are meeting and the name of their
partner.

Minister Julie Bishop will address the group at the National Library, and
Sigrid Thornton's National Press Club address will be televised by the ABC
for those unable to attend.

ALP Finance spokesperson Lindsay Tanner will speak at a session at
Parliament House.  The full program is up on our web site: www.chass.org.au


3.  CROSS-DISCIPLINARY DISCUSSIONS
"Expanding Horizons" registrants come from science, technology, engineering
and medicine, as well as the humanities, arts and social sciences.

One of the drivers behind the event is to promote a discussion on
cross-disciplinary work.  The experiences and ideas of registrants will feed
into CHASS' project on this subject.

It was CP Snow who famously spoke of the divide between the humanities and
the sciences, in his Rede lecture in 1959, The Two Cultures.  He maintained
that these two cultures OUGHT to produce creative chances and new thinking:

"The chances are there now," he said.  "But they are there, as it were, in a
vacuum, because those in the two cultures can't talk to each other Š

"Thirty years ago the cultures had long ceased to speak to each other but at
least they managed a kind of frozen smile across the gulf. Now the
politeness has gone, and they just make faces."

Our event will test out Snow's claim, 50 years onŠ.


4.  ENGAGING WITH EUROPE
Claus Novotny of the European Science Foundation and Michaela Bauer of the
Australian Embassy in Brussels will lead an informal discussion on how
Australians can engage with Europe at the "Expanding Horizons" event.  This
will be at Parliament House on Wednesday March 29.

And Henk Stronkhorst, head of the Social Sciences Unit at the ESF, is
speaking on the same broad topic at a seminar on Monday 27 March at 3 pm at
the National Europe Centre, ANU.

He is visiting Australia for 8 days from March 20.


5.  BRAIN DRAIN  - OR CIRCULATION?
Moving Ideas is a new four-year ARC Discovery project to be conducted by
Professor Jane Kenway and Dr Johannah Fahey in the Faculty of Education at
Monash University. 

The study will explore the globalisation of ideas through the movement
around the globe of academics in the social sciences and humanities. It will
examine the movement of knowledge itself and its implications for academics'
ideas and identities, politics and ethics.

It will also explore implications for academic networks and research
policies. 

If you would like to participate, comment, or would like more information,
please contact Jane Kenway, Jane.Kenway at Education.monash.edu.au (03) 9905
2071 or Johannah Fahey, Johannah.Fahey at Education.monash.edu.au (03) 9905
2776.


6.  ARTS DEGREES UNDER FIRE IN UK
"Too many students are wasting their time and money on traditional arts
degrees that are likely to leave them jobless, a group of Conservative MPs
has warned.

In a new paper, the right-leaning Cornerstone group of Conservative MPs
argued universities were becoming overcrowded with students who would not
benefit from higher education study.

The paper, written by the Conservative MP for Canterbury and Whitstable,
Julian Brazier, suggests that vocational degrees in subjects such as media
studies provided students with better job prospects. Š

"Everyone with the educational attainment to benefit from a degree course
should have the opportunity to go to university - as [Conservative party
leader] David Cameron has rightly said. But this paper will suggest that
participation has already passed that point and growing numbers of those
entering the higher education system are not benefiting from it."

Mr Brazier said universities were staffed by academics that were seriously
underpaid and working under difficult circumstances.

"At the same time, much of the output from some of Britain's universities is
unproductive, not just a waste of money but a waste of the students' time;
over a third of students who enter higher education either drop out, become
unemployed or settle into jobs for which a university degree has little
value," he said.

(From The Guardian, Wednesday March 08 2006)
___________________________________________________________
You are subscribed to the mailing list for the CHASS newsletter.
Subscribers are invited to redistribute these reports with proper
attribution to the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.

To subscribe to this list, register your email address at the CHASS website:
www.chass.org.au.  Unsubscribe by removing your name from this list.
___________________________________________________________