29 July 2013

Centenary Professors for UC's quest for glory

| johnboy
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The University of Canberra has announced they’re setting aside some big bucks to lure big names to help them make the charts of world university rankings:

A new international recruitment campaign will bring 10 top researchers to Canberra to mark the capital’s centenary. The University’s strategic plan includes the goal of being world-ranked by the time the campus celebrates its 50th birthday in 2018 and the new recruits will play a key role in achieving this goal.

“Our research profile is already growing, and these 10 ambitious, global leaders will help take our research to the next level,” Deputy Vice-Chancellor (research) Professor Frances Shannon said.

“On every measure our research is on an upward trajectory. Our research income is growing, our publications are up and we’re attracting more research students and the very best research staff.

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The University’s strategic plan includes the goal of being world-ranked by the time the campus celebrates its 50th birthday in 2018.

Ahh, good old management by objective. As always, it leads to simplistic solutions like ‘let’s just buy a reputation.”

For the past few months, UC has touted these future professors in terms of “Rock Stars”. The results may instead be something like the warm-up band for White Snake in the 80s. Overall, it’s been a wonderful opportunity for “Prof X from Uni Y to say UC has offered me Z. What are you going to do?” UC hopes to limp till 2018 on the laurels of professors who have done the bulk of their work elsewhere to say…”Aren’t we great?” Is this research excellence for Australia? Sadly so.

Oh noes…more cr@p on how Dr Who is racist!

Given that unis are constantly crying out about funding cuts, I wonder how UC plans to pay for this – a few more lecturers bumped down to casual, few more tutors expected to do more lecturing?

Wait a minute, I thought the point of the Brumbies deal was the front row were going to get PhDs in sports science?

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