Staff are unimpressed with the university urging them to “explore alternative modes of transport” such as cycling, carpooling and public transport.

It comes as the university has seen a return to pre-Covid campus attendance, with most car parks full during peak periods.

The prices during non-peak times are capped at $7.05 a day for red permit areas but peak pricing will see costs rise to $10.60 a day.

At peak times prices will double, surging from $107 for a normal 28-day permit to $212 for a peak permit.

The highest costs will be in the first four weeks of semester one and two and during Clayton campus May and September graduations.

The new 'Pay As You Use System' will take effect today on the Clayton, Caulfield, Peninsula and Parkville campuses.

According to an all staff email, the rise in fees is to “meet the increased operational and maintenance costs associated with parking”.

“We strongly encourage you to explore alternative modes of transportation whenever feasible. A shift from single-occupancy vehicles towards sustainable alternatives such as carpooling will contribute to Monash University’s Net Zero Transport Strategy by reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with travelling to Monash campuses," the email said.

Social media posts made after the announcement directed towards Bradley Williamson, the university’s executive director of buildings and property, made it clear staff are not happy.

One noted that she would need “ an additional 1% pay rise JUST to cover this additional cost”.

Another said: “I am expected to be at work five days a week so I guess I am supposed to be ok spending $200 a (month) for parking at work in March”.

Others accused the university of “greed” and “price gouging at its best”.

National Tertiary Education Union Monash branch president Dr Ben Eltham said staff were not consulted about the price hike, which will also have an impact on students.

“The university has offered staff a three per cent pay rise this year - but these parking hikes are as high as 106 per cent. There’s been no consultation, just an email out to staff with the bad news.

“These charges hurt students and frontline teaching and administration staff the worst. Public transport to Clayton remains substandard and not everyone can easily get there on a train, plus a bus."

One source said staff “who have to be on campus for three weeks over O Week and semester will pay $300 for three weeks of parking”.

Many pointed out that taking public transport to the main Clayton campus adds an hour to the journey each way.

The university was contacted for comment, but did not respond before the time of publication.

The university launched the campaign, A Brighter Future for All, last October after running it in a “quiet phase” since 2019, the year that vice-chancellor Carolyn Evans ­arrived at the university.

The latest donation, $6.3m from natural health magnate Marcus Blackmore’s family foundation, has taken the campaign halfway towards its goal and the pace of fundraising is stepping up.

“We plan to reach the goal by 2025, Griffith’s 50th anniversary year, and we are confident we will exceed it,” said Marcus Ward, the university’s vice-president of advancement.

He said Griffith’s fundraising had more than doubled, with money raised in the past two years exceeding money raised in the four years prior .

“Griffith’s philanthropic performance now consistently exceeds that of several Go8 universities,” Mr Ward said.

The latest $6.3m donation from the Blackmore Family Foundation will establish the Blackmore chair in the Griffith Business School. The appointee to the chair will focus on innovative business leadership.

The gift will also support three Blackmore Leadership Summits, the first in 2025.

“The summit will create a community of business executives, entrepreneurs and innovators with shared aspirations of leadership excellence for positive impact,” said the university’s pro vice-chancellor (business), Caitlin Byrne.

Mr Blackmore said his foundations’s partnership with Griffith University would “help steer our future business leaders in the right direction”.

“As someone who grew up and went to school in Brisbane, I was keen to invest in my local community, in particular on building a successful business,” Mr Blackmore said.

“I can also pass on how to stuff it up, but the reality is that you learn from your mistakes in life more than your successes.”

Mr Ward said the university had boosted its fundraising with the help of “significant multimillion-dollar partnerships” with philanthropic organisations and benefactors including the Clem Jones Foundation, the Paul Ramsay Foundation, the Stafford Fox Medical Research Foundation, the Perry Cross Spinal Research Foundation, and Rotary.

He said there was a goal to make 100,000 “meaningful engagements” with alumni, including volunteering and support.

Also, 738 staff and university council members have made ­donations in the past 12 months, mostly to support student scholarships. Mr Ward said this was nearly 15 per cent of the workforce, which is nearly four times the national average for workplace giving.

The money raised in Griffith’s philanthropy campaign will support scholarships for students as well as research and other programs in four areas – health, the environment, deeper relationships with the Asia-Pacific region, and stronger communities in ­Australia.

The SA Tertiary Admissions Centre (SATAC), that processes uni applications for SA and NT students, saw 49 per cent of applicants list a medicine or health degree as their first preference.

The NSW and ACT University Admissions Centre (UAC) said 24.5 per cent of 69,400 applicants listed a health course as their first preference.

Also, five out of the 10 most sought after courses were in the medical science field.

The combined Bachelor of Medical Studies/Doctor of Medicine at the University of New South Wales was the most popular course with 1,481 first preference applications.

NSW and ACT students also showed interest in society and culture (including law), followed by management and commerce courses.

The Bachelor of Business at the University of Technology Sydney was the second most popular, with 906 first preference applications, followed by the Doctor of Medicine at Western Sydney/Charles Sturt University with 902.

The study field of Education made up 5 per cent of total first preference applications.

The Western Australian Tertiary Institutions Service Centre (TISC) also saw its applicants put health and medical science as their first choice.

The double Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery at Curtin University saw 1,125 applications out of the five WA universities TISC processes applications for.

The second most popular courses are tied between commerce and engineering fields.

There were 11,203 school leaver applications processed through TISC, part of 13,615 total WA applications.

This has increased from 9,439 applications last year, that TISC said is possibly mostly due to Murdoch University and UWA requiring all Year 12s to apply through the centre this year, instead of directly to the universities as students could in previous years.

Victoria Tertiary Admissions Centre (VTAC) applicants preferred science over medical degrees this year, although science qualifications can often be used to get into medical or health fields.

Of the 42,929 offers VTAC made in their biggest ever December round, 1,463 teaching offers were made, an increase of 8 per cent from this time last year.

In Queensland, medicine and engineering were popular first preferences for this year's applicants.

1. Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (Townsville) at James Cook University (JCU)
2. Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) at Queensland University of Technology (QUT)
3. Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (Cairns) at JCU 
4. Bachelor of Business at QUT 
5. Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) at the University of Queensland (UQ)
6. Bachelor of Dental Surgery at JCU 
7. Doctor of Medicine (MD) at UQ 
8. Medical Program Bachelor of Medical Studies, Doctor of Medicine at Bond University 
9. Bachelor of Arts (St Lucia) at UQ 
10. Bachelor of Psychological Science (Honours) at UQ

Six of the top ten are health or medical science courses, also accompanied by engineering and business courses.

Along with school leavers, QTAC said mature aged students are picking up tertiary study as a whole.

On top of the 20,000 school leavers starting university next year through QTAC, 9000 mature aged students will begin or continue their tertiary study.

QTAC chief executive especially congratulated the adult students who received offers across all fields.

"We’re equally as happy to see a strong number of adults securing offers and taking on tertiary development," Dr Griffiths said.

"This shows us a continued commitment to lifelong learning, showcasing the unwavering determination of individuals to enhance their skills and open new doors."

Note: This data represents students who applied through tertiary admission centres across Australia in by December 2023. University applicants can also choose to apply directly to universities, or up until February 2024, although some centres also process direct applications.

Last week UTS released the winning design for the 250-bed college that aims to be a city home for Indigenous students, giving many an opportunity for higher education that wouldn’t otherwise be there.

The winning design – by the firms Greenaway Architects, Warren and Mahoney, and OCULUS – merges an accommodation tower with an existing 1950s modernist building that will house the college’s cultural centre, exhibition space and areas for gathering and conviviality.

Jefa Greenaway, one of the architects, says the project is a national first.

“There hasn’t been a bespoke from-scratch First Nations college,” says Mr Greenaway, the cultural design lead of the winning team who is a descendant of the Wailwan and Kamilaroi people of northwest NSW.

He sees the college as a place to “support and enable Indigenous people to flourish through education”.

“[Designing the building] also comes with an acute responsibility. We really saw it as an opportunity to reimagine and create a benchmark for Indigenous design leadership.”

Mr Greenaway says the design connects with Indigenous culture on several levels. The on-campus site is not far from Redfern, a long time centre of Sydney’s urban Indigenous community and an incubator for activism and civil rights.

Then there are the deeper links to the Gadigal people, the traditional owners of the area.

“You can concrete over country but country still exists, the stories are encased in place,” Mr Greenaway says.

The architects have sought to bring that out in the design, using colours of country, the provenance of the materials, and paying particular attention to outdoor spaces. The shape and texture of the building also is intended to evoke a landscape shaped by age that is not rectilinear. “Water erodes,” Mr Greenaway says.

Within the building, instead of what Mr Greenaway calls “gun barrel” corridors, rooms are structured to build communities with meeting places and communal kitchens on each floor that connect to the outside.

There’s a range of room sizes including double rooms and four-bedders. The college is intended to cater to mature-age students as well as school-leavers. It also could house families.

“Mature-age students have kids,” Greenaway says.

The college will be adjacent to another notable UTS building, the Frank Gehry-designed business school. “We needed to develop a language and a dialogue with that building. We needed to provide a counterpoint,” Greenaway says.

UTS vice-chancellor Andrew Parfitt says the college will “raise the bar on efforts to increase Indigenous participation, retention and success in higher education, and help to remove a major barrier by providing access to cost-covered, culturally informed and enriched accommodation”.

Accommodation and living costs for most Indigenous students will be met through the federal government’s Abstudy scheme and by the university.

UTS pro vice-chancellor (Indigenous leadership and engagement) Robynne Quiggin says the college was the vision of now emeritus professor Michael McDaniel, a former holder of her position, who “identified a strong need to provide a place that feels like home to Indigenous students”.

The college – which is planned to have an elder in residence and offer pastoral care to students – will not be exclusively for Indigenous students.

“We want a majority of First Nations students. We want a culturally informed, culturally safe space,” Ms Quiggan says.

“Non-Indigenous students will have the experience of a place run on Indigenous cultural values.”

She says there has been a deep consultation process with the Indigenous community to inform the design. They wanted light-filled spaces to come together, and other facilities such as communal kitchens and a cultural centre.

Founding donors to the project include Woolworths, which gave $10m, the NSW government ($10m) and the City of Sydney ($1m).

A Queensland University of Technology (QUT) survey of 1191 participants found all cohorts – 790 social work students, 196 educators and 294 practitioners – overwhelmingly think internships should be paid or come with financial support.

Professor Christine Morley from QUT School of Public Health and Social Work presented her findings to the Senate, stating that 1,000 hours of unpaid work placement that students are required to complete causes some to drop out, live in poverty, and/or struggle with mental health.

"Placements impede students’ capacity to do paid work, which means many cannot afford food, rent, healthcare and transport," Professor Morley said.

"Given that social work students are often drawn from disadvantaged backgrounds, they are more vulnerable to experiencing poverty, which is even more serious with the marked cost of living increases.

"Some are mature-aged students with families to support who are also unable to afford to continue their study."

Ninety per cent of surveyed students said they wanted the quality of their learning to be of higher value than the number of hours worked, instead of the current inverse.

Social work students complete their internships in two 500-hour blocks, but cannot undertake their placement where they already work, even if it is an appropriate social work setting.

Increased flexibility was a popular solution to the stress that comes with juggling their existing job commitments and placement hours, and could include offering remote or virtual learning opportunities.

“Funding for unpaid work while students are learning, equivalent to the minimum wage, is needed urgently to provide financial assistance to domestic and international students undertaking field placements,” Professor Morley said.

“These factors put potential students off studying, cause students to drop out, and stop people from completing their degrees.

“This means that people from disadvantaged background are prevented from getting a professional degree, which especially limits diverse cohorts from studying vital progressions such as social work, nursing and teaching, and, indeed, the sustainability of these professions.

“Student attrition is directly linked to workforce shortages, particularly in Australia’s regional and rural areas and a shortage of high-quality placements for future students.”

One student reported they weren’t able to be recognised for prior learning relevant to the coursework and had to do their placement all over again.

“I am withdrawing from social work as I ... have 20-years-experience working in mental health running groups and can’t get any recognition for workplace experience” they said.

“I’ve worked under supervision from a social worker and they are as frustrated as I am. This is absolute madness.”

The University of South Australia recently trialled a virtual learning tool for students studying social work, but it does not act as a replacement for the 1,000 hours.

Deakin University’s Global Centre for Preventative Health and Nutrition (GLOBE) released its Uni-Food 2023 report yesterday, benchmarking the healthiness, equity and environmental sustainability of university food environments in Australia.

Globe Co-Director Professor Gary Sacks said he was disappointed by the results in the report and that universities need to do more to improve the campus food environments.

“University campuses have an important influence on the diets of students and staff,” Professor Sacks said.

“Historically, they have been some of the first organisations to support young people’s health. For example, by implementing policies such as ‘smoke-free campuses.’

“Universities are in a position to showcase a healthy and environmentally sustainable environment, and demonstrate the health, environmental and financial benefits of doing so.”

Nine universities across Victoria, Tasmania, Queensland and New South Wales opted into the assessment in 2021/2022 and were scored on the healthiness, equity and environmental sustainability of their campus food environments.

The average score of all nine Australian universities was just 46 out of 100 points, with Monash University topping the list with a score of 66 out of a possible 100 points.

“We found some strong examples of universities working to improve their food environments by reducing food packaging, ensuring vending machines only sell healthy food, offering nutrition counselling and creating community gardens, but none of these initiatives go far enough to score well on our scorecard,” Professor Sacks said.

“Most universities lack comprehensive policies and commitments to make the necessary improvements to their food environments.

"Universities pay a lot of attention to where they rank against each other on research and teaching. These scorecards provide further opportunities to show leadership,” Professor Sacks said.

Key recommendations for universities to improve their score include limiting the availability and marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages and ensuring on-campus food retail outlets provide affordable, healthy and environmentally sustainable foods.

Last week, Melbourne-based RMIT FactLab cleared one hurdle when the US-based International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) announced the restoration of its certification. 

Meta suspended its partnership with RMIT FactLab in August after revealing the unit had been conducting fact checks without IFCN certification.

However, a second hurdle to reinstating the partnership remains. 

Following the IFCN announcement, a Meta spokeswoman told the media that staff at the organisation, led by director Russell Skelton, would be required to undergo training before Meta would give the hub the green light to fact-check content published on its Facebook platform.

“At a high level, all third-party fact checkers are required to stay current on mandatory trainings on our program and RMIT is subject to the same process,” the Meta spokeswoman said. 

Meta has not provided further details on the training requirements.

RMIT FactLab has been under intense scrutiny for completing numerous fact-checks on content, including that related to the October voice referendum.

The hub’s fact checks heavily targeted work regarding the ‘No’ campaign, while barely any fact checks questioned the ‘Yes’ campaign. 

Content labelled as “false information” can no longer be viewed on Facebook.

Sky News Australia criticised RMIT FactLab after it slapped multiple “false information” labels on video pieces published on Facebook. 

Among those labelled was prime-time Sky News host Peta Credlin’s editorial commentary that said the Uluru Statement from the Heart was not a single-page document but 26 pages long.

Sky News published a lengthy report on the FactLab’s conduct in the “Fact Check Files” by digital editor Jack Houghton, revealing Mr Skelton retweeted numerous pro-voice posts by Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney. 

Mr Skelton’s biography on the FactLab website states he is “responsible for the research hub’s strategic direction and editorial policies”.

“This includes oversight of research projects, approved fundraising, and editorial partnerships involving misinformation, disinformation, and project collaborations.”

Regrettably, the plight of these academics is part of a broader decline in the study of history in Australian universities over the past few decades.

As our yet-to-be-published research shows, the ACU cuts are dramatic and extreme, but not inconsistent with the way Australian universities have treated one of their foundational disciplines for some time.

What is happening to academic historians?

In 1989, there were about 450 full-time equivalent paid positions in history disciplines in Australian universities. In 2016, we did a detailed survey showing they had fallen to 347 – a 23% drop. This is despite a huge increase in size of the overall university sector during the same period.

At the time of our study, we attributed this drop to the effects of the commercialisation of Australian higher education, through the increasing reliance on industry funding, overseas students and fee-based courses.

There was also a misguided belief on the part of some potential students – and parents and others advising them – that humanities degrees do not lead to meaningful jobs. Political hostility from conservative governments and some sections of the media would not have helped.

We repeated the survey in 2022 to gauge the impact of COVID cost-cutting by universities and the Morrison government’s Job-ready Graduates program.

This program was introduced in 2021 and made humanities subjects, including history, 113% more expensive in a bid to steer students towards other fields such as nursing and teaching.

We asked all heads of history programs to provide us with student and staff data. We also collected the same figures from New Zealand universities for comparison.

Our findings

The results were alarming and point to a crisis in the study of history in Australian universities.

We found student enrolments (anyone studying a history course) had declined by roughly 23% since 2016.

Teaching and research staff numbers had also continued to slide, down another 8% to 319 full-time equivalent positions. This takes the overall drop in staff numbers to 31% since 1989.

However, it does not factor in the staff who are set to lose their jobs at ACU. A draft document circulated by ACU in September suggested up to ten positions in history could go. On Tuesday, ACU Deputy Vice-Chancellor Abid Khan told The Conversation the university’s plans had not been been finalised, “therefore proposed or perceived numbers about roles are not accurate”.

There are also fewer staff and students in history in New Zealand than there were in 2016. But the decline there has been half that in Australia – a 4.6% decline in staff and 10.1% reduction in student numbers.

Why are we seeing this decline?

The recent decline may owe something to the Job-ready Graduates package discouraging humanities study.

But other factors are also likely to be at play here. The massive size of the international student market in Australia – and its role in cross-subsidising research – distorts university decision-making about investment and resources even in good times.

This means resources are diverted away from disciplines such as history and into areas such as management, information technology and engineering (where there are far more international student enrolments).

On top of the political and commercial hostility towards the humanities, there is also a belief arts degrees do not lead to meaningful jobs. This is misguided.

A 2021 Workplace Gender Equality Agency study revealed earnings of those with undergraduate humanities degrees are comparable to positions in the science and maths sector.

In the tougher COVID era, when combined with explicit messages from the government that students should stay away from the humanities if they want well-paid and rewarding work, the effects are predictably pernicious.

Why is this a problem?

Historical perspectives are key to understanding the present. So if people are not studying, teaching and researching history, this is an enormous problem for Australia.

Consider any major issue affecting Australian society, from Indigenous affairs, to housing policy, bushfire readiness and domestic violence. Historians have produced research, informed public policy, and educated students.

Jobs today and in the future will not just need technical skills but skills taught by the humanities, including critical thinking, creativity and expression. The rise of artificial intelligence and robotics only serves to underline this reality. The very skills taught in humanities and social sciences, including history, will be needed to discern what can and cannot be automated with advantage to society.

There is also a civic dimension. A healthy democracy relies on a large population of citizens who can discern the difference between evidence-based knowledge and wild conspiracy theories.

What can we do about this?

If we want to protect and promote history (and other humanities disciplines), we need the support of governments and university managers. The fixes themselves are not difficult.

One immediate fix is to reverse the fee changes introduced by the Morrison government in 2021. The Universities Accord interim report has all but confirmed Job-ready Graduates will be scrapped, but we don’t yet know what will replace it.

Governments could also fund and insist universities fund foundational disciplines such as history, science and maths properly.

Another possibility might be to provide stronger incentives for study across different realms of knowledge. Why shouldn’t architects understand something of Ancient Rome, or medical students learn more about the minorities they will be working with? By the same token why shouldn’t arts students be required to grapple with commerce and science, or the latest digital technologies that might extend their reach?

If we don’t find solutions soon, we will, as the aphorism has it, not know ourselves.

Martin Crotty is associate professor in Australian History at the University of Queensland
Frank Bongiorno is professor of History at the Australian National University
Paul Sendziuk is associate professor in History at the University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Omnichannel is an operating model that retailers use across sales, marketing and customer experience. It integrates all delivery channels, such as in-store, online, or in-app, to create a consistent experience for the customer. 

In this world, the seller accepts that they can sell virtually or through bricks and mortar, and that both are desirable and in a state of balance and continuous adjustment. When it’s working well, the vendor is able to choose the channel that best suits them.

In this model, the buyer chooses the mode of accessing the product via a seamless array of physical and virtual platforms and the vendor adapts to the customer needs. It entails meeting customers where they’re at, whether online or instore.

Higher education is far from omnichannel at present. Some of the universities that have got closest to an omnichannel model have established sophisticated learning innovation units and strong partnerships with EdTech eco-systems. But the challenges of integrating that offering with their on campus and face to face models of delivery, and the systems that sit across the two, are significant.

Others have made less progress towards omnichannel delivery and are even moving further away from it. When the University of California resolved to preclude its students from choosing only its online courses it was indicating it believed such an overall experience was less rigorous. This is despite plenty of research demonstrating it being more effective in some circumstances than face to face learning.

Examples of full commitments to an omnichannel model are rare in universities. Even somewhere as innovative as Arizona State University, which has embraced online learning encounters barriers to balancing fully online with its campus-based operations.

EdPlus at ASU is a highly innovative way to create experimentation and exploration. It is committed to inclusion and through digital innovation, student support, and ever-evolving UX, it is leading the way.

In many ways, leadership is the act of listening and making room for innovation and change and creating the cultural imperative to innovation. This drives its approach to partnerships including with employers and businesses. 

Careers  are evolving quickly  and will continue to do so. This will challenge our capacity to prepare and teach curriculum and arm our  graduates with skills for the future workplace  unless we create greater fluidity between the classroom and the workplace.

In many ways the ultimate omnichannel university of the future will be one that not only has open choice and undifferentiated quality and experience between online and face to face offering of learning, but that it is indistinguishable as an experience between working and learning.

The episode features a conversation about these ideas with Professor Ann Kirschner, interim president of Hunter College CUNY, which I then discuss with Sue Kokonis, chief academic officer at OES.

The Thrive smartphone app was rolled out to the Monash community – providing mental health support in response to the challenges and needs reported by students throughout Victoria’s pandemic lockdowns.

Developed by Thrive researchers at the Turner Institute, and co-designed by students, the app encourages users to check in daily, be more aware of their feelings, and identify if they’re struggling.

Turner Institute director and Thrive co-lead Professor Kim Cornish said the app is unique in Australia because it is a not-for-profit resource that records no student data.

"There are hundreds of mental health apps available via app stores, and unfortunately, many share private health information with third parties without disclosing it," Professor Cornish said.

"Thrive has been developed by a mental health research-trained lab for the community good, with privacy, co-design and evidence-based research baked into the development from day one - and it’s free for all users."

Users can log and monitor trends in their mood and access well-being resources covering topics like dealing with stress, mindfulness and breathing exercises, journaling, and procrastination-fighting tools.

Thrive co-lead and lead researcher Melinda McCabe said the app’s intensive design phase included two clinical trial-type studies, one with over 60 students and another with over 150 students. 

"The main goal of the app is to help students become more aware of their mental health and to seek help early if they need it," Ms McCabe said. 

"We hope all students find something within the app that they benefit from, whether it's the journaling tools called the ‘Wheel of Feels’ or the evidence-based Pomodoro timer to fight procrastination when their workload starts to build."

"We wanted something for everyone."

The Thrive app is available to all Monash students and staff with an active Monash email address and is available for free through all major app stores.