2009 Budget on Tertiary Education

Just went to a public seminar on 2009 budget and tertiary education yesterday. The speakers painted somewhat darker picture of the budget. I only remember some of aspects:

• The government wish to increase the domestic student placements, but the funding as suggested in the budget falls short of covering the tuition cost. The tertiary education provider will still seek to balance this by admission of international students. It was noted however that TAFE can run a course at lower cost (federal support can cover this), and hence the government should to explore the possibility of more degree from TAFE institutes.
• Student with financial difficulty: the good sign is that the by-postage criterion will be scraped and replaced with a better measuring system. It was noted that more could be done at secondary education level, which prompted the question regarding the role of universities.
  
• TEQSA: this will be a new institute that the speakers hope to fill many gaps between the government and the universities. Since there is no real guideline on the role of TEQSA, many hope that it will act as a regulator to ensure that the minimum standard is met by all tertiary education providers.
• Performance-based funding: a few questions were asked of its necessity. It still depends on the government. In my opinion, I believe that under this scheme there will be tendency to overstimulate in a few areas of research, which may or may not be good for Australia. Concern was raised regarding the institute that fails to meet the performance benchmark; how should the government assists in increasing its performance.
• Bradley report: the speaker mentioned that someone has calculated that after all the bucks get in the system, only 37% of recommended by Bradley report will be achieved - not good considering that Australia needs to catch up with other developed countries in term of research.
• Good news is an increase in fellowship placement aimed to stop "brain drain", and attract bright young oversea researchers.
• Recent ethnic conflict in Melbourne demonstrates the need to ensure the better conditions for oversea students. It was hoped that TEQSA will cater for that since currently there is no written guideline or regulation for university on its responsibility for its (international) students. Current system is based on good faith. 
• This leads to the question of international attraction.  Bradley report recommended 1000 PhD scholarship places which this government chose to omit in this budget. This will go a long in term of attracting new oversea researchers.

Beyond Zero Emission

On the last Saturday, I had a chance to meet some people from BZE, who introduced me to an idea of compiling a solution guide to our current climate woe. 

The problem with current approach to climate change is that when face with a daunting task, politicians immediately switch to business-as-usual mode and hence nothing is done. They end up doing little enough to win the next election, but in this case, it is often too little to have meaningful desirable outcome. One example comes to my mind, and that is Kevin's soft target of 5% emission reduction compared to 2000 level by 2020. 

So, if the government lacks a political will to do something we feel deeply about, what do we do? We must provide them with a step-by-step solution. By dividing emission target (which I like 100% reduction by 2020) into smaller set of achievable targets, we can hope to eliminate an initial shock. In doing so, BZE believes that it will provide a framework, which will allow us

1. to convince the government into action, as we have specific achievable short-term projects, which bureaucrats understand;
2. to initiate discussion among environmental organisations towards solutions; and
3. to inform the public and give them hope. 

Convinced by this idea and partly because I have enough of ranting, I decided to join the fun and contribute my crazy ideas. So, feel free to join in at BZE. They have meeting every fortnight. 

Australian train...

In the last month, I had privilege to "enjoy" Australian train. The trip was simple: I needed to travel to Wollongong for AMSI summer school. 

To Wollongong:

Interestingly, it was cheaper for me to travel to Sydney first before backtracking down south to Wollongong. Then, it made some sort of sense. Countrylink (the train operator) was having a promotion on the trip between Melbourne and Sydney. This was fine with me, since I wouldn't mind meeting my friend in Sydney. 

Waiting for the train on the platform at Spencer st Station (I refuse to call it Southern Cross), the first impression I get wasn't good. The train was delayed by at least an hour. Now, instead of going faster, the operator decided to go slower. In combination with the track work between Campbelltown and Moss Vale, the train had to do a detour through Wollongong!!! 

Now, I don't know the people who designed the program, but it seems illogical that the train passed through Wollongong, but it refused to stop there. Given that they knew in advance that there will be a track work there and still refused to adapt the program to the new situation, this clearly demonstrates the mentality of those involved in transportation business.  

Ok, I was a little too critical on the fact that I arrived in Sydney three hours late. Nonetheless, I should point out that I never heard of European train that arrives at their destination three hours late.  

Never mind, I should also mention the condition on the train. This should be more of amusing incident rather than anything else. It turns out that the air condition in the compartment that I was allocated was broken. I have my suspicion that its thermostat was broken, which means the machine just kept pumping cold air into the carriage. When I found out about this, it was already in the morning so I decided to be manly (yeah, that's right. It is about a boy trying to be a man) and braved the cold. In any case, that was fun. 

But the return trip was better. 

From Wollongong:

The journey started at 17:20 on Friday 6th. I caught a coach from Wollongong, which arrived in Moss Vale by 19:20. That wasn't too bad a trip despite the fact the train was diverted through Wollongong anyway. Now, here come my problem with the system. On the schedule, if the train was on time, it will arrive at 22:30. Now, I don't know about anyone else but I would assume that during timetable designing process, they would make sure that the commuters don't have to wait three hours for their train. 

Anyhow, that wasn't too bad if the train was on time. Luckily, I got a chance for an ultimate waiting experience in my life. The train ended up three hours late. On the plus side, I managed to read twenty pages of math book (for comparison purpose, this is equivalent to reading 100 pages of any novel.), completed most of math problem I set for myself and still had about an hour left to test my mental strength after I was too exhaust from math. 

The rest of the trip was far from incident-free. I was waken up at 6am to be dropped off at Albury, and forced to catch a coach from there back to Melbourne. I arrived at Spencer st at 11am, which concluded 17:40 hour trip (compare to about 8 hours driving). The best part is that Saturday 7th was the hottest day on record in Melbourne. Someone also told me that apparently on that day Melbourne was the hottest city in the world. 

So, am I happy with train in Australia? Well, they will always continue to surprise me. But sorry, I will take a bus next time.....