Despite the University of Queensland being the highest ranked university in the state, QTAC applications have shown that the Queensland University of Technology had overtaken them in four of the top five courses.

Campus Review spoke to Dr John Griffiths, CEO of QTAC, about any trends he has noticed this year – both institutionally and course-related – and the relevant health of the Queensland tertiary sector. He was pleased to highlight the fact that regional universities in Australia have developed solid reputations over the years, leading to many regional and remote students enrolling in their hometown university. Finally, he provided advice on what students can do if they have received an ATAR and do not know what they want to do – despite time running out for semester one admissions.

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An issue that kept coming back into the higher educator sector this year was the Ramsay Centre’s Western Civilisation degree and its attendant negotiations with the University of Wollongong, the University of Sydney and the University of Queensland. To date, only the University of Wollongong has committed to the western civilisation program, with the Ramsay Centre walking away from a negotiated deal with the University of Sydney recently. The Ramsay degree also failed to attract enough interest at UQ.

In some ways, the western civilisation degree was played out as a sort of culture war between the left and right and members of the Academic Senate at the University of Wollongong initiated litigation before withdrawing it after considering the costs involved.

Another important story this year originated from ABC TV’s Four Corners Program. In an episode called ‘Cash Cows’ allegations were made that some Australian universities were waiving important English requirement tests for international students who did not have the requisite IT skills to study a Master of IT, for instance. A coterie of academics, frustrated by what they believed was a clear case of putting profit before quality, blew the whistle on the issues occurring at Murdoch and one academic in particular has faced serious repercussions, .

These issues and more are revisited in our year in review and I look forward to bringing you the stories that matter to you next year. Wade Zaglas, Education Editor for Campus Review.

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A recent Indeed report concluded that searches for teaching jobs declined in 2019, with some states recording sharp drops. This follows an article in The Conversation last year lamenting the drop in first-preference applications in teaching, as well as a host of anecdotal accounts.

But is interest in teaching declining or is this just a lot of media hype?

Education Review spoke to Associate Professor Joanna Barbousas, Acting Head of School of Education at La Trobe University. Barbousas believes the decline is indeed real and can be attributed to many factors, including the changing requirements in becoming a teacher and negative reportage that is becoming more frequent.

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Catch up on the biggest higher education news stories we covered this week with education editor, Wade Zaglas.

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A new study led by Dr Jon Brodie from the ARC Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University is deeply concerned that harmful insecticides, including Imidacloprid, are damaging some of Australia's most pristine and biodiverse waterways.

But unlike some European countries, Canada and the USA, Australia is yet to ban the insecticide, which is very good at protecting agriculture such as cane from insects, but is highly soluble and makes its way into waterways easily. It is highly toxic to bees and other insects, a critical part of the the aquatic life food chain.

In an interview with Campus Review, Brodie talks about the issue and what he sees as the prioritisation of the agriculture sector over the environment by Australia's regulator - The Australian Pesticide and and Veterinary Medicine Authority (APVMA). He also says that on any day of the way, 40 different pesticides can be found, with at least three above national safety guidelines.

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Guilt by association has always been a vexed issue, but in the era of #metoo and corporate and social responsibility, careers can disappear overnight, lives can be destroyed, and reputations can be irrevocably damaged.

That might be the situation facing a teacher at MIT in the US, whose students are calling for him to be fired due to his ties with convicted sex offender Jeffery Epstein.

Seth Lloyd, a professor of mechanical engineering at the university, met with Epstein during the sex offender’s time in jail and received funding from Epstein’s foundation. This is despite the fact that the billionaire financier was jailed in 2008 for having for soliciting an underage prostitute and arrested again this year for the alleged sex trafficking of minors from 2002 and 2005.

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Hi, I’m Wade Zaglas, education editor for Campus Review. Once upon a time, having a degree – yes, any degree – was seen as a guarantee to getting into the workforce and eventually working up the ranks.

But a new report commissioned by Graduate Careers Australia, entitled The future work for Australian graduates, concluded that while having a degree still made your job prospects better, industry-related degrees that were in high demand not too long like maths and science-based degrees aren’t as sought after anymore.

A key reason why jobs for science grads were no longer guaranteed or likely is due to less funding being available for public science research, news.com.au reported.

For example, biology graduates now have a 15 per cent lower chance of gaining a full-time job than the general population.

In a harbinger of what’s likely to come, last year roughly a third of all jobs required at bachelor’s degree as a minimum. According to the Graduate Careers Australia report, roughly 800,000 jobs over the next decade across the country will require a degree.

The same report highlighted that, four months after graduating in 2018, teaching and medicine graduates were enjoying the best employment rates. Nearly 100 per cent of medicine graduates secured full-time positions four months after graduating, while 83 per cent of teachers also enjoyed high rates of full employment shortly after graduating.

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This week we celebrated the Prime Minister’s Award for Science, an important time to acknowledge Australian scientific work that has promising applications or has changed the world. And this year, women took out the majority of the awards.

This year’s prestigious award went to University of Western Australia’ emeritus professor of mathematics Cheryl Praeger, whose four decades of research on fundamental mathematics and algorithms has contributed to a lot of the technology we enjoy in modern life such as encryption messaging, internet banking, and search engines.

Another notable female winner this year was Dr Elizabeth New, who won the Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year and has been a colleague of Praeger’s for a long time. New was awarded the prize for creating fluorescent molecules that illuminate the chemistry of diseased cells.

Listen to the podcast for a full run down of the awards.

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Dr Sara James is a lecturer and cultural sociologist at La Trobe University in Melbourne. She has completed research on the factors that influence students' degree and course choices choices. As James' work has found, one of the key factors influencing course choices are the opinions of families and friends.

James is also interested in the changing nature of work in the future, leading to a new age of automation, lifelong learning and "micro-accreditation" through short courses like LinkedIn Learning.

For James, the shame about ATAR is that is discourages students from enrolling in subjects they really enjoy or are good at. Instead, students are encouraged to "maximise their ATAR - or in other words - "spend their score" by securing a high-paying job in the future.

But as anecdotal and research findings suggest, ATAR-driven choices often lead to students pulling out of courses or switching over to ones they find more interesting or are more talented at. This podcast is particularly timely given NSW's decision to overhaul ATAR.

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The Four Corners Cash Cows programs, which aired in May, caused a scandal throughout Australia's higher education sector. The program focussed on how many universities were treating international students as proverbial "cash cows" and were waiving or simplifying English language requirements to maximise international student numbers and revenue.

Now, Murdoch University has decided to launch a counter-claim against one of the whistleblowers who spoke out on the program: Associate Proferssor Gerd Schroder-Turk. The university claims that Schroder-Turk's comments in the program breached his "fiduciary duties" in revealing particular information to journalists and allege reputational damage to the university has resulted.

Schroder-Turk's claim, which related to him being dismissed from his senate position, and the university's counter-claim are expected to inform "an important test case", one law professor argues. Listen to the podcast for full details.

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