Something new (or old?) to worry about as an editor and reviewer. Imagine someone taking a paper from a good journal written by someone else but in a related context to their own and on a topic that matches their own research interests. Now instruct the AI to rewrite the paper by changing the focus to the one that you are interested in, revising quotes etc. to be about your context and tweaked focus. Revise manually to add some local flavour and references so the bibliography isn't a complete match. Submit to a high ranked journal and profit...

The Ministry of Education is consulting on the topic of "Realising the potential for technology to support personalised and tailored learning in the future". Details are on their website https://preview.education.govt.nz/have-your-say/consultation-long-term-insights-briefing-topic/details. Technology is a catalyst that is accelerating the challenges facing the tertiary education system. Those challenges are not a consequence of technology and framing a Government response on a purely technocratic basis will fail to address the needs of New Zealanders over the coming decade. Read on for my submission.

Hopefully many folk in the sector have contributed to the work of the University Advisory Group established by the government to "consider challenges and opportunities for improvement in the university sector, including the role of the Performance Based Research Fund; ways to best achieve equity for all learners; and the role of international education" (https://uag.org.nz). This is my submission. Hopefully others will be made available soon also. This is a submission made personally and may not reflect the position of my employer.

Why should you care whether we have universities? A timely question given that today we are not only anticipating the irrecoverable loss of portions of numerous New Zealand universities, we are also contemplating the inevitability of wider–ranging future cuts. It is worth understanding what we are losing. And why.

The recent op-ed on Stuff by former Minister and VC Steve Maharey places the blame on the sector – I think we need to look slightly further afield and listen to the people making these choices.

Local media have picked up on a piece by Guy Curtis on the Conversation which in normal click-bait modern journalism style is titled "1 in 10 uni students submit assignments written by someone else — and most are getting away with it". This makes the pretty strong claim that 10% of students are cheating, so clearly we should all join the Australian Universities running around attempting to prevent this plague facing our countries (no not COVID-19 - cheating). But maybe, perhaps, we might take a closer look at these claims.

The Internet is full of folk talking about the unprecedented pandemic we are all experiencing and how its "Black Swan" character has meant the necessity to be agile and develop responses in reaction to the new and unexpected demands it is making on our societies, systems and on Universities. We have all seen a flood of newly developed advice from experts, vendors, agencies and leadership teams aimed at helping academics, professional staff, students and the wider community respond effectively. These are in the main excellent and helpful crisis responses, its just a shame that so many are in response to issues and needs that were entirely predictable, easily able to be addressed by ordinary good organisational practice. This event is not a Black Swan, at best it was a Gray one, and we need to take a hard look at how we can be better prepared for the next one as well as real Black Swans.

One of the great benefits of this time of the year is that there are more opportunities to read more widely and deeply. I have been influenced by Nicholas Carr's book "The Shallows" in holding myself to account for better reading habits, but the tempo of the year doesn't always cooperate with my good intentions. Anyway, I digress (another lovely consequence of the less frenetic context - one has time to digress even recursively...).

There's something about the start of a bright new shiney year that provokes a little reflection and consideration. It may simply be the rest giving spark to creativity, or the sense that the coming year is going to be another challenging one defined by ambiguity, uncertainty and change.

Change is almost always confronting and a natural, possibly even necessary, response is a form of displacement or avoidance. Its normal to deny troublesome knowledge, to reframe situations to avoid change. When this avoidance becomes habitual, it can enact itself as one of a set of organisational pathologies that I am going to describe as the Seven Deadly Sins of University Change.

I was very excited when I read the Cabinet paper by Education Minister Chris Hipkins outlining his plans for a major change, dare I say it - a transformation, of the New Zealand vocational educational system. Although aimed at the failing Institutes of Technology and Polytechnic (ITPs) and Industry Training Organisations (ITOs) this ambitious proposal has important implications for universities and for New Zelaand society as a whole.

The rest of this post is the text of my submission on the proposed review, joining the hundreds of others that have been made. One submission I found very interesting was from the Office of the Auditor General which I found very much in line with my own in raising concerns about the change process and the need for clear and effective leadership. Assuming the Minister creates a transition team as recommended by OAG the composition of that team will be an important signal of how he conceives this change occuring - I do hope it goes beyond solely the vested and established interests to find people with ambitions for the public interest in this new model.