Redundancies

Colleagues outside Australia have asked me to clarify for them the issue of redundancies in Australian universities. This is not easy to do, since different universities have different processes, generally negotiated with their union representatives as part of an individual university’s enterprise bargaining procedures. (Enterprise bargaining involves employees, typically although not necessarily via a trade [...]

USQ, the supply of mathematics skills, and mathematics teacher training

A number of colleagues, both in Australia and abroad, have queried with me our reasons for taking such a strong position on the threats to dramatically cut mathematics at USQ. I should give a little background here, directly connecting the challenges facing USQ and a number of other universities (the University of New England is [...]

Lost opportunities sadden maths whiz

Last Thursday, there was a two-page spread in the Toowoomba Chronicle concerning various aspects of the USQ restructuring proposal. One page was devoted to the impact of the proposal on students in the Bachelor of Music (which is being discontinued, being replaced by a less specific “Bachelor of Creative Arts”), in an article by Merryl [...]

Gazette Issue 2 (May 2008) now online

Issue 2 of the Gazette is now online. In Maths Matters, previous Gazette editor, Jan de Gier, shares his thoughts on the challenges that young academics face to establish a career. In the Communications section, you will find a paper on the MVT by John Koliha and his student Peng Zhang — a follow-up on [...]

Student-teacher ratios

According to Universities Australia (using data supplied by DEST), student-teacher ratios at Australian universities have risen from 13-14 in 1990 to over 20 by 2005; net numbers of staff have grown slowly over this period, but not nearly as fast as student enrolments. (Some related data by Universities Australia can also be found at this [...]

Shortage of specialist maths teachers, and the Gillard interview

There is a companion article in the Australian to the one pointed out by Peter yesterday by Andrew Trounson, entitled “Shortage of specialist maths teachers“. Apparently, the long-running shortage of trained maths teachers in Australia is beginning to have a non-trivial impact on high schools, with some schools forced to cancel advanced maths programs purely [...]

USQ staff cuts begin

According to today’s Toowoomba Chronicle, the staff cuts for the current round of the USQ “Realising our Potential” initiative have begin, with four forced redundancies in the Department of Biological and Physical Sciences, and with 17 further “voluntary” redundancies sought in academic staff across the university, including three positions in mathematics and two in statistics [...]

Best brains won’t make the numbers

There’s an excellent extended article in the Australian today by Andrew Trounson entitled “Best brains won’t make the numbers“. It covers the growing shortage in Australia of qualified maths teachers, as well as of other professions requiring quantitative thinking in maths and statistics. While the primary and secondary schools in Australia are still maintaining high [...]

An update on mathematics, statistics, and computing at USQ

No discussion of current affairs in mathematics in Australia would be complete without mentioning the state of affairs at the University of Southern Queensland, which as part of its restructuring proposal entitled “Realising our Potential” had planned to eliminate several majors including mathematics, statistics, physics, and chemistry, as well as all non-service courses in these [...]

ICE-EM mathematics textbooks review

The International Centre of Excellence for Education in Mathematics (ICE-EM) has recently completed a full set of mathematics textbooks and related teaching resources (homework sheets, CD-ROMs, etc.), entitled “ICE-EM Mathematics“, that covers the transition period between primary and secondary education in Australia (or more precisely, from Upper Primary to Year 10). This package has been [...]