Three tiers for .edu.au?

Griffith University vice-chancellor Glyn Davis gave a speech at Melbourne University this week (full text is available).

Davis says the Dawkins era of single-tier higher education is coming to an end and "are on the threshold of radical change." Three things will significantly change the Australian university sector over the next few years:

• declining government funding, forcing universities to charge money for teaching students and doing other activities (the Productivity Commission predicts that by 2044 taxpayers will contribute 34 per cent of university funding, compared to 48 per cent in 2001-02, because our population is ageing; full report is available from the Productivity Commission's web site)
  
  
• the rise of private Australian companies that teach students but (unlike universities) are not required to also conduct research
  
  
• competition from overseas universities that set up teaching-only campuses in Australia (particularly those from countries with which we have free-trade agreements, like the USA and Singapore; see the Productivity Commission's paper on restrictions in trade on education services)

"National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes," a report by Gus Guthrie, discusses how to let private companies provide education in Australia. It was released earlier this month by the Minister for Education, Science and Training, with indications that private providers will be able to start enrolling students sooner rather than later.

Former education minister John Dawkins agrees with Davis's proposal that some universities should be allowed to focus on teaching without the research obligation.

The Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne has ranked Australia's 39 universities against six broad measures of 'international standing'. "The Australian" newspaper is delighted, and says 'useful rankings are here to stay'. Part of the delight comes from the credibility a newspaper gains from trumpeting such rankings, not to mention the possible PR spinoffs: remember, The Oz has long been associated with flogging the "Good Universities Guide" publications.

Who is Geoffrey Ebert, and what does he want with us Earthlings?

Geoffrey Ebert started posting to the ABC Science-Matters email list (of which I'm a long-standing member) in early November. One month later, he had spewed more than 80,000 words onto this public discussion list--most of them not actually his own but apparently copied from web sites and newsletters.

Most of his posts seem to be either arrant anti-science nonsense or personal abuse and veiled threats hurled from a position of high dudgeon. IMO, that is. You can judge for yourself by downloading the list archives for November 2004.

Geoffrey Ebert mentioned teaching 'his' students at a University of Queensland microscopy research centre; in fact, Geoffrey Ebert has never been employed by that research centre. (I asked a senior staff member of the centre about him.)

Geoffrey Ebert says he taught UQ students in an international and humanitarian law course, yet he's not registered with the Queensland Law Society as a qualified lawyer.

He says he treated patients at a Brisbane psychiatric hospital, yet Geoffrey Ebert is not registered to practise medicine in Queensland. (This information came from a listmember who is a medical doctor. Only registered doctors can actually treat patients in a psychiatric hospital; other health care professionals can examine and recommend, but it's the doctor who actually *treats* the patient.)

Geoffrey Ebert claims to be "a neurophysiologist... with 14 years of experience interviewing and testing people with peer review on the material..." -- yet the name Geoffrey Ebert doesn't appear as an author in any of the peer-reviewed science/research journals relevant to that field. (This information came from a listmember who is a well-regarded researcher in his field of neuropharmacology. It's based on a search of PubMed and other online databases of scientific publications.)

Geoffrey Ebert also promotes some... um... unusual beliefs. On 19 November 2004 he wrote in a message to the Science-Matters list:

"Space time is perhaps not so much of an enigma as we think.We only have to ask the right questions to the right beings... There are 56 species, from cosmic civilizations that are visiting us that can not only explain the theory, but show us how to use it practically."

If a duly appointed representative from one of those 56 species of sentient aliens currently visiting Earth would like to contact me (for example by e-mailing flipsockgrrl at gmail dot com and arranging a face-to-face meeting in a public place, with independent witnesses to record the event), then I would be happy to set the record straight about their existence.

In any case, this post has become a tad redundant: Mr Ebert stopped posting messages to the Science-Matters list in late 2004.

Originally posted 16 November 2004; updated 19 December; updated 18 February 2005; updated 14 March.

Voting + secretive software * no paper trail = distrust

Clive Thompson observes that electronic voting will, by its very nature, encourage distrust about the results of any election. Instead of being able to examine and count physical records of votes cast, we can only query abstract, digital databases. Seeing is believing, especially in a democracy.

Update 16/11/04: More from The Economist, on the perils of losing the paper trail, and from Slate on several ways to hack electronic voting machines, and from Dave Weinberger about security flaws in Diebold voting machines. Bruce Schneier explains the economics of hacking an American election--switching just a few hundred undetectable votes per machine could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the winning party.

Update 17/11/04: yet more from Bruce Schneier, this time about why it's difficult to develop reliable technology for recording and counting votes.

Rory Hume's new job

According to The Australian's Higher Education Supplement last week (10 November 2004), former UNSW vice-chancellor Rory Hume will chair the government's advisory committee in charge of developing a document called "Australia's National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy."

Hume resigned after the Hall Affair, in which UNSW medical researcher Bruce Hall was accused of scientific misconduct. Hume invstigated the allegations, and Hall escaped serious repurcussions. The UNSW Council, and others, were unhappy with the investigation, and eventually Hume was pressured into leaving.