Commentary by Professor Jane Edwards

 

Strengthening HASSE’s future

Those of you who attended the VC budget presentation are aware of his intention to be transparent as to the challenges we face.

In 2023 HASSE had 1500 fewer students enrolled across our course offerings compared to 2021. Our applications and enrolments continue to drop, though not in all courses. This is a sector-wide challenge, and we are advised by our marketing colleagues that although we are dealing with this sizeable contraction, many other universities have greater reductions. We are managing our budget well, but you are likely aware of ongoing spending constraint. We must continue to be vigilant and direct in actions needed to address the contraction of income.

One of the expenses we cannot afford is to offer units that have very few students. The UNE Council have decided that UNE can only afford to have 20% of units that are at or below 3EFTSL, or 24 students. Currently more than 40% of HASSE units are 3 EFTSL or below, with 24 or fewer students. Please confirm this for yourselves using Power BI – an increasingly trustworthy data source.

I note student feedback that they prefer to study in larger units. In the past few years we have not only kept our units but added in many more. This year we have 30 more units on offer than last year. Stretching our declining student numbers more and more thinly over a burgeoning offering is not sustainable.

What do we need to do? We will review the practicality of offering units that are not part of a major, and have very few students, especially where they are heavily casualised. Can some small units be combined within a shell unit? We will only develop new units where more than one genuine unit is retired. We will be more vigilant about courses and majors in teach out, ensuring we set final delivery dates for unit offerings and communicate these to our students. We will review possible duplication.

Whether you are a unit co-ordinator, course co-ordinator, discipline convenor, or Head of Department each of you has an important role to play in reviewing units in your remit, and speaking with the Head of School about ideas to contract our offerings to right size in relation to actual student numbers. It is definitely not intended this will reduce the number of courses or disciplines. Instead it is a clear-eyed focus on our current and future sustainability advised from the DVC. The other strengthening move is to develop new courses made up of existing units that have strong interest and will grow our domestic and international student numbers.

You are welcome to share any new course ideas with your Head of School.

 

Academic freedom and joy

As we move past census date in the first trimester of 2024 let me remind you of the great joys of academic life. As you continue to engage with students your work will make their life better by the care and responsibility you take for creating and delivering excellent learning experiences, and by assessing student work with diligence underpinned by the desire to build their skills and capacities. Multiple survey sources point to our HASSE students highly valuing you and your work. Thank you.

Most of you have a research weighting in your appointment which involves a commitment to conducting research as part of your work with UNE. This involves a range of actions such as thinking, reading, data collection, analysis, creating, performing, exhibiting, reviewing, writing, and publishing. The excitement of these activities is a powerful contributor to your current and ongoing wellbeing, and future aspirations. The life of an academic involves great privilege and immense responsibility. Doing your best every day, working to create knowledge, and engaging your students and colleagues with positivity and inspiration is a way of being in the world that few other work experiences can match.

As we start the first PPDR meetings for 2024 I urge you to reflect on the concept that stating your goals focuses your work within the structures of expectation and achievement that are essential for your wellbeing, and your creative and aspirational self. These in turn contribute to organisational impact and expansion of ideas. I observe that UNE provides as much freedom as possible around research expectations of staff. However, our forthcoming re-registration with TEQSA requires us to look more closely at our regulator’s expectations. In regards research it is clear that research cannot just involve research activity, it must involve – and is this is not one of my favourite words – outputs. https://www.teqsa.gov.au/guides-resources/resources/guidance-notes/guidance-note-research-and-research-training I hope you can find your love for writing and publishing if it is waning – a recent look at our publications suggests too many HASSE staff have stopped or slowed their publishing activity – or if you continue publishing actively I hope your enthusiasm for your work gathers ever greater momentum to carry you forward. Let your PPDR goals help set you on a path of further exploration and growth in your chosen work.

Proposed restructure of the faculty executive

Three of HASSE’s five executive staff contracts finish between June 2025 and January 2026. Options for ensuring business continuity and stability are under consideration.

A current proposal in development was recently shared with all heads which they are free to share further with their teams. It is proposed to create half-time deputy appointments for the roles of Dean and Heads of School, the positions where contracts will end soon. While we do not anticipate additional salary costs there is always consideration as to need for backfill, but only if teaching load in the discipline warrants.

We are also taking the opportunity at the time of making this change to create a new 0.5 position for a Level D Associate Dean Indigenous. As there are currently no Level D Indigenous staff at UNE we likely will need to pay salary uplift at 0.5 for the incumbent. This involves a modest cost which will be absorbed into faculty operational costs similar to the process of taking on the additional costs of annual academic promotions.

The current proposal is that these positions will be offered for 2 years. Apart from the Associate Dean Indigenous, these will not have funding attached, and will be treated similarly to service appointments. If we do not do this, or something similar, we will go back to the problematic situation of having interim appointments at a time of crucial importance when HASSE needs stable leadership to ensure growth of new programs and maintenance and uplift of existing courses to ensure our numbers do not reduce further. There is also the TEQSA re-registration process which is demanding on executive time and effort.

Having served as interim HASSE Dean for 18 months I can attest that the precarity of the interim role is a difficult place from which to support new initiatives, and attend to growth expectations. I also know we have fabulous leadership talent within HASSE, and should not need to bring in executive staff from outside if we create opportunities for our leaders-to-be from within.    

Executive retreat days

Recently HASSE Executive completed three on-campus retreat days with facilitator Silvia de Ridder from Unconscious Potential. I invited Silvia to work with us to improve collaboration and working together of the Executive, especially regards enhancing our meetings, and our decision-making processes. Two sessions were held in 2023 with the final session held recently on March 14^th.

I learned a great deal from the days, and the feedback from the team in the final session was positive. On the final day we focused on learning and teaching in the morning, and research – grants, publications, and HDR supervision – in the afternoon. We agreed a number of priorities to pursue in courses and programs, and research actions. These will be communicated and socialised with you in due course following a process of further refinement.

The Universities Accord Final Report

Looking at the future of the sector following the 47 recommendations in the Accord, from the Executive Dean position I anticipate changes in how we support and deliver educational opportunities to our students while ensuring the sector is financially viable. Possibly we will see movement towards the following:

• Greater scope to collaborate with other universities in areas such as procurement, finance systems, library resources, and information technology.
• Increased compliance and reporting requirements, especially in regards student wellbeing and support which UNE may struggle to achieve with the current staffing envelope and systems.
• Possibly a one-off funding uplift for universities like UNE and JCU which predominantly serve larger student cohorts with HEPPP status.
• Greater expectation that we provide evidence of the value of university education, and challenge the irrelevancy narrative.
• Higher expectations of industry relevance of courses, and collaboration with sectors where graduates are likely to be employed in future. For HASSE this will be as wide ranging as GLAM sector, education and wellbeing services, local government, social institutions such as religious and not for profit organisations.
• Concern that there will possibly lower fee income per student in the HASS disciplines apart from Creative Arts, English, and Languages, along with greater accountability to ensure that every interaction with a student is of the highest quality.