Monash University > News and Events > Monash Memo

Ancora Imparo, November, 2008

5 November 2008

Much has been happening over the last month in every sphere of activity for Monash University.

As indicated in last month's AI, the Australian University Games were held with Monash as the principal partner university. They were a great success, although the tragic death of a Griffith student as an innocent and random victim in a senseless road accident put a dampener on the celebrations of the event. Monash University's team was placed first, narrowly beating the University of Melbourne with the University of Sydney a distant third. Martin Doulton, the Director of Monash Sport and the whole of Team Monash are to be congratulated. While speaking of sport, more than 400 Monash students, staff and friends took part in the Around The Bay in a Day event.

Monash researchers received their largest ever share of ARC Linkage grants and NHMRC Project grants although the ARC Discovery Grants announced were $6m less than last year's record. Altogether, it was a strong performance, although there is still room for improvement.

The Monash Passport was successfully launched with much positive publicity. The educational reputation of Monash University is rising rapidly as shown by the initial indication of preferences by students through the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre where Monash was the most popular Victorian university for both first preferences and total preferences with an increase of 16% in first preferences.

The shortlisting of 14 of the 55 of the Higher Education Endowment Fund was brought forward to 22 October as one of the steps taken by the Federal Government to stimulate the economy by capital expenditure. One of Monash University's two applications, The New Horizons Centre, was shortlisted. New Horizons is a visionary project which, if funded, will play a critical role in the ongoing objective to establish Monash University's Clayton campus as the centre of the most significant technology innovation hub in the Southern hemisphere. It provides a wonderful opportunity to co-locate 500 Monash and CSIRO engineers and scientists in state-of-the-art facilities alongside existing major infrastructure including the Australian Synchrotron, the Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication, the Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy and the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute.

The Legislative Assembly of the Victorian Parliament had a regional sitting at our Gippsland campus on 15 October. The new auditorium was rearranged to be a most authentic chamber. I was asked to address the Parliament and was able to describe some of the contributions made by our Gippsland campus to the local economy and the cultural life of the region as well as the broader role of universities in the community. The campus staged the sitting superbly and it was a great public relations exercise.

In the face of all these achievements we are attempting to complete the process of setting the budget for 2009. As previously reported, the Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding is only to increase by 2.1% (with some additional funds for new Commonwealth supported places partly to substitute for lost full-fee paying domestic undergraduates and for some transitional funding to compensate for the loss of fees). The international financial turmoil makes prediction of international student numbers difficult, although initial indications suggest continuing strong demand. Ongoing capital commitments make the cashflow situation particularly difficult. However, the Prime Minister's Science Engineering and Innovation Council, and particularly the Prime Minister himself, responded positively to the recommendations of the Cutler Review of Innovation and we await the Bradley Review of higher education. It is to be hoped that the Government response to these reviews will address the inadequate funding of research costs and the need for more dollars per student for undergraduate Australian students.

So next year will be very tough, but there is hope that there will be some resolution of the financial issues facing all Australian universities in the foreseeable future.

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