Themes emerged in staff Q&A sessions in 2024

The Vice-Chancellor and University Leadership Team answer your questions from our Town Hall and faculty and division visits. 

This has been an incredibly busy year for UNSW and for the higher education environment in Australia. Here are some updates on a range of programs and issues that have been at the forefront during Q&A sessions with colleagues this year, including at the UNSW Staff Town Hall in August and the VC’s visits to faculties and divisions over the last few months. Thank you to all who have raised questions and offered insights at these sessions.

Campus life and development

As UNSW strives for positive societal impact, we are preparing our University’s physical spaces for the evolving needs of our learning, teaching, research and collaboration communities.    

We are developing a framework to inform long-term decision-making about our Kensington campus and a considered plan for how it will develop through to 2040. Our focus is on making it vibrant and engaging to ensure our community wants to spend time here.   

The new Campus Plan will enhance our environmental sustainability, accessibility, learning, teaching and research environments, student accommodation and amenities, and spaces to support partnerships and collaborations.   

It will prioritise well-curated spaces to facilitate better student experiences, including more convening and event spaces for both students and staff.   

With the Kensington campus currently at capacity, the new G25 building and the upgrade and extension of the BioLink Building will provide essential decant space to allow the University to begin a renewal process. We are removing older obsolete buildings and replacing them with flexible, sustainable buildings to set the University up for the decades ahead.  

The University is also focusing on delivering additional student accommodation, with more than 800 beds approved as part of the Western car park redevelopment. In addition, the team is undertaking planning work to provide more affordable accommodation on the Barker Street apartments site.  

We will continue to develop our presence at Paramatta, Liverpool, Wagga Wagga and in Canberra, where the new city campus will build on our longstanding presence in the ACT to drive growth and stimulate innovation.

Academic calendar

Over the past nine months we have undertaken a process of exploring different calendar models. Around 20 calendar options were mapped out including hexamesters, semesters, and 4- and 3-term models. Input from project advisory groups and University stakeholders has guided the development of two feasible calendar options, with supporting considerations across student, staff, administrative, logistical and financial factors. Both options – a semester model and a trimester model – are receiving equal consideration. Thanks to the hard work of the project team and all the people involved from frontline academic and professional staff to Associate Deans of Education and Heads of School, the aspiration that whatever model we move to will be a significant improvement for the University is being realised.  

These two calendars will be evaluated on a wide range of factors including student experiences and wellbeing, staff workload and wellbeing, pedagogy, financial metrics, capacity and space flexibility, alignment with UNSW’s Strategy, and the ability of the calendar to accommodate future education opportunities as the sector evolves.  While the work has started over the last month or two with the Heads of Schools, the key to activity in early next year will be to finish mapping out all the implementation implications of both models.   

Staff workload has been raised as an issue in relation to the academic calendar. Efforts to reduce the administrative burden on staff are being prioritised now rather than waiting for the new model, with many initiatives underway, including upgrading IT, HR and finance systems, simplifying and streamlining core administrative functions, and reviewing processes to minimise task duplication. These improvements are important regardless of which calendar model is introduced and will help alleviate some of the pressure on staff. 

A University-wide update on the progress of the Academic Calendar Project, with Provost Professor Vlado Perkovic and Deputy Vice-Chancellor Education & Student Experience Professor Sarah Maddison, was held on Monday, 2 December 2024.  

Read the article in this week’s edition of Inside UNSW for more information about the academic calendar work.

Proposed caps on international student enrolments 

The Australian Government has been attempting to introduce caps on the number of international students universities and other providers can enrol for 2025 and beyond. The proposed changes included both sweeping and micro-level regulatory controls of universities, as well as mechanisms to effect proposed enrolment limits. The proposed changes were introduced through the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024. This Bill was subject to several Senate review processes that involved consultation with stakeholders across the tertiary sector, including UNSW. 

This piece of legislation has been adjourned and not passed the Senate, with the Coalition, Greens and Crossbench publicly opposing it. 

It is therefore unlikely there will be international student caps for 2025 imposed by legislation given that there are no more parliamentary sitting weeks this year, and an election is due early next year. 

This news of no caps is very welcome and will be met with relief by those working in higher education, particularly if the Government rescinds (or significantly amends) Ministerial Direction 107, which inadvertently caught many universities in the Government efforts to crack down on visa integrity issues in the VET space.   

It is important to remind staff that great uncertainty remains with regard to our policy environment. Both the Government and the Opposition remain in favour of being tough on migration as we approach the next election and hence of introducing some form of international student caps. There are other mechanisms that the Government can deploy to achieve a reduction in international students in Australia, even as simply as stopping processing visas for students. While such mechanisms would be deeply damaging to Australia and the sector, these decisions are all being made in the context of an upcoming election. It is likely the government will cobble together something in the next few weeks to continue to impact international students.  

Regardless of the removal of the threat of caps, UNSW will be reducing our international student intake in 2025 compared with 2024, both to respond to the strong signals from the Government and also to meet our own strategic and operational aspirations. Fortunately, without the cap legislation, this can be achieved in a sensible and staged manner rather than the sudden and draconian reduction the proposed cap would have entailed. The past months have shown that our operating model is vulnerable to shifting Government policy, and there may still be some form of limitation on our ability to independently determine our international student enrolments. It is critical that we continue to carefully monitor our spending and that we stay committed to diversifying the University’s revenue base. More broadly, we should work with the following priorities in mind: 

1. Ensure we continue to work with the Government and across the sector to do all we can to improve the lives of Australians through increasing access to education and undertaking impactful and world-changing research. 
2. Continue to provide the best possible experience for our domestic students, alongside our increased support for students to enable access and success.  
3. Continue to prioritise the wellbeing of all students and staff to counter the negative political narratives from Government and in the media, including criticising international students and incorrectly linking their presence in Australia as the key driver of living and housing affordability crises. International students are a valued and important part of our vibrant student community and add an extraordinary richness to our campuses and to Australian society more broadly. 
4. Exercise financial restraint across the University, particularly with regard to discretionary spending. The more judicious we are now, the longer we will be able to mitigate the effects of future caps (should they eventuate) and their negative effects on students, staff and our ability to serve Australian society.  

We will continue to engage with the Government, Opposition and Crossbench to advocate for funding and regulatory settings that allow universities to thrive. I know there is a sense of fatigue, frustration and anxiety being felt by some colleagues from the sheer volume of change coming through the recent Government activity. I would like to remind staff of the positive vision outlined in the Government’s University Accord, which I hope will soon again be the major focus of Government reform, and how aligned the Accord is with UNSW’s own significant transformation objectives at the core of our UNSW Strategy: Progress for All.  

I encourage you to look out for yourselves and your teams, and I want to reassure you that we’re continuing to work diligently to manage our regulatory and funding environment so that we remain a globally leading research and teaching university – and that most importantly, we support our students, colleagues and the broader UNSW community.

UNSW Strategy

UNSW Strategy: Progress for All has been drafted and was endorsed by UNSW Council last Monday, 2 December 2024.  

This strategy is the culmination of comprehensive consultation with the UNSW community of students, staff, alumni, donors, Council, and industry and government partners. More than 7000 discreet pieces of feedback have been analysed, synthesised and incorporated into the draft.  

The strategy sets out our mission, values and vision for the next decade.   

At its core are nine Strategic Pillars that will focus our work for the next decade and beyond. Each pillar contains several objectives and flagship initiatives that will draw on our unique areas of expertise, ensuring we continue to pursue our ultimate goal of Progress for All in areas where we can really ‘turn the dial’.   

The Strategic Pillars are:  

1. Through accessible education, empower current and future generations.  
2. Through research, lead knowledge creation, innovation and translation.  
3. Convene across sectors and build networks locally and globally. 
4. Create a culture in which all people are united by purpose and can deliver their best work.  
5. Develop inspiring and cutting-edge environments and simple, effective, trust-based systems.  
6. Accelerate the transition to a sustainable society and planet.  
7. Advance economic and social prosperity. 
8. Enable healthy lives.  
9. Strengthen societal resilience, security and cohesion.  

The strategy will set UNSW apart as a University confident in our ability as one of the world’s leading research and education institutions to effect critical and positive impact. We will be fully focused on how, through our education, research and genuine engagement with people, communities and partners around the world, we can fulfil our ultimate objective of Progress for All.    

The strategy will be launched formally in the new year, with updates provided at key stages as it is finalised.

Safety and wellbeing – SpeakUp and psychosocial safety

The safety and wellbeing of everyone in the UNSW community is a top priority for the University, which is why we created the SpeakUp Strategy and campaign.   

SpeakUp is about fostering a culture of respect and integrity, where we all feel safe and included. It’s about ensuring everyone in our University community knows the expected behaviour set out in our Code of Conduct and Values, and it’s about ensuring we can recognise when behaviour is unacceptable. Importantly, it’s about making sure we all know how to report unacceptable behaviour and we feel safe reporting it.  

UNSW is implementing a systematic risk-based approach to supporting the psychosocial safety of our staff and developing strategies to optimise wellbeing. The University’s psychosocial risk program focuses on three pillars: prevention, responding to psychosocial hazards and promotion of proven effective practices. This requires a collaborative and coordinated approach at an organisational, team and individual level.

Middle East, global issues and Environment, Social & Governance 

We have been communicating with students and staff regarding the conflict in Israel and Gaza since October 2023 and more recently the broader Middle East, including providing information on support services for those affected by the conflict.   

UNSW is committed to contributing to the security and cohesion of the wider global community in accordance with the rule of law, and supporting social cohesion and tolerance at home.   

Staff members who are interested in supporting Scholars at Risk can reach out to Dr George Varghese, Director of the Institute for Global Development, who is in contact with their New York headquarters and is keen to build a network of UNSW scholars.   

The University offers a number of scholarships to support asylum seekers and refugees wanting to undertake coursework, and UNSW Scholarships is working closely with the Asylum Seekers Centre to raise awareness of our scholarship offerings. We also encourage you to share them with your networks.  

Also a quick reminder that there was a recent call for Expressions of Interest (EOI) from academic and professional staff from across the University to join an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Working Group on Financial Investments as part of the program UNSW has been running this year to review and align our investment frameworks and policies. The focus of this program is on ensuring investment decisions are made in accordance with our social and environmental responsibility.