The Industry Training Federation’s Budget wishlist will be published at 9.30am today, the second in our series. NZUSA’s view will probably be published on Monday.

1. Student Loan Fees David Do of NZUSA was on Breakfast yesterday to chat about proposed new student loan fees. The Manawatu Daily Standard has supported the change in its editorial.
2. SIT’s Big Surplus SIT has announced a surplus of $3.5m for 2009, up from the budgeted $104,000.
3. Hide that Degree A WINZ staffer is being excoriated for telling a grad to take her degree off her CV when applying for short-term low-skilled work before entering the Navy in July. Seems like a sensible idea to me.
4. Guineapig.com The real site is called GetParticipants.com and, since its December 09 launch, it has helped improve recruitment for involvement in research studies.
5. Medical Research Sticking with the medical topic, Tony Ryall launched the Medical Research Centre in Wellington yesterday. It has the University of Otago, Massey University and Whitireia Community Polytechnic as partners so I might look into it more later.
6. Study or Work A Bay of Plenty Polytechnic student would rather have the work, as he struggles to pay the bills and eat, and is standing with a sign (”will swap sign for work”) at one of Tauranga’s busiest intersections. On a related note, UCOL students shaved their heads in return for donations to the local foodbank.
7. SIT at Cannes An SIT student is showing his short film at Cannes this year – SIT is giving him $5K towards costs. There’s a review of the film here.
8. Building Robots NZ teams did well at the Vex Robotics World Championships held in Dallas, Texas. Two NZ school teams, mentored by Massey University academics, joined up with a Chinese team to win the grand prize. The University’s student team also did well.
9. Is Otago a  Sieve? It seems that way sometimes, with staffing changes taking mere hours to leak to the ODT. Here’s the latest one, about changes in the commerce department. The interesting part is the ruthless approach to increasing research outputs. I have no objection to that, as universities can have a tendency to announce, rather than implement, strategies.
10. Safer Streets Auckland City Council and partners has helped to fund a 15-minute DVD on safety in the city for international stduents.
11. 35 Canterbury Librarians …are facing the chop under a restructuring proposal, according to the TEU, although I’m not sure how many new positions will be established.