{"id":137,"date":"2020-10-09T10:04:02","date_gmt":"2020-10-08T23:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/vice-chancellor\/?p=137"},"modified":"2020-10-09T10:25:03","modified_gmt":"2020-10-08T23:55:03","slug":"job-ready-graduates-legislation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/vice-chancellor\/2020\/10\/09\/job-ready-graduates-legislation\/","title":{"rendered":"Job Ready Graduates package"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Email to staff: 9 October 2020<\/p>\n<p>Dear staff,<\/p>\n<p>On Friday 18 September the Vice-Chancellor <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/vice-chancellor\/2020\/09\/18\/update-from-the-vice-chancellor-3\/\">wrote<\/a> to update you on his position on the proposed <em>Job Ready Graduates<\/em> legislation.<\/p>\n<p>This legislation was passed by the Senate yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>As noted in previous communications, this is a complex package with some positive and some negative elements.<\/p>\n<p>The legislation and associated guidelines in the <em>Job Ready Graduates<\/em> package includes several amendments from what was originally proposed, including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A higher growth rate for South Australian universities than was provided for in the original bill, plus annual indexation<\/li>\n<li>Criteria to protect students who fail 50% of their topics due to extenuating circumstances<\/li>\n<li>Four additional Regional University Centres in regional South Australia<\/li>\n<li>Support for the 10% discount for upfront student payments<\/li>\n<li>A review of the legislation after 18 months<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The guaranteed increase in places for South Australia\u2019s public universities means that Flinders University will be able to continue to meet the demand for access to higher education as we develop the highly skilled graduates required for the future workforce.<\/p>\n<p>We welcome the consideration of special circumstances for students who fail 50% of their topics which will enable them to retain their place should they experience particular health or financial difficulties.<\/p>\n<p>We also welcome the announcement in the budget this week of an additional one billion dollars next year for research support.<\/p>\n<p>We remain concerned about the overall cut in funding for places and argue still that the funding package does not cover the full cost of teaching including the capital investments we make in physical and digital infrastructure. We also remain concerned that there will be an increase in student fees for some disciplines which will be felt by students starting courses in 2021. It is not clear that prospective students will respond to this pricing differential by choosing courses which are cheaper when these do not match their capabilities and interests.<\/p>\n<p>We are supportive of the legislation being reviewed after 18 months to assess whether these measures have been effective in creating increased opportunity to access Higher Education and a workforce which is better able to respond to the challenges ahead.<\/p>\n<p>At a time of unprecedented disruption to our sector and the broader environment, the proposed introduction of new funding legislation created further uncertainty for the sector and for our students. The Australian university sector has been absorbing the increased costs of educating our students since 2017 when funding was in effect frozen for universities, and that situation was likely to only get worse. The new legislation presents a route towards a more sustainable future.<\/p>\n<p>While it is by no means perfect, we are pleased the package has now been finalised so we can proceed with some certainty to ensure Flinders University remains a student-centred institution known for the quality of our teaching and the excellence of our research.<\/p>\n<p>Regards,<\/p>\n<p>Clare<\/p>\n<p><strong>Professor Clare Pollock<br \/>\n<\/strong>Acting Vice-Chancellor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Email to staff: 9 October 2020 Dear staff, On Friday 18 September the Vice-Chancellor wrote to update you on his position on the proposed Job Ready [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":397,"featured_media":67,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-message-from-the-vice-chancellor"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/vice-chancellor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/vice-chancellor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/vice-chancellor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/vice-chancellor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/397"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/vice-chancellor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/vice-chancellor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/vice-chancellor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/vice-chancellor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/vice-chancellor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/vice-chancellor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}