High Wired update: The feds are coming FEDERAL government plan to take over NSW unis; how to get Stephen Fry's attention; and staying focused on student attrition. Gift horses and their mouths: The reported plan for the universities of NSW to be given glorious new federal statutes is an intriguing one. In the Fin 's report today, federal education minister Christopher Pyne is presented as somebody about to do away with a wasteful anachronism. After all, it's the feds who have long funded the universities and these days they are the quality cop, as well, courtesy of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency. So, the fact that universities rest on state legislation may well look like a historical oddity in need of attention. Then again, does it really bother the universities so much, now that TEQSA has taken over from a hodge podge of state regulators? Fred Hilmer, chief at the University of NSW, thinks so. But what's in it for the feds, apart from tidying up arrangements and pleasing some vice-chancellors, such that they'd be willing to shoulder responsibility for 80 per cent of the unfunded superannuation responsibilities of a state university system? And this at a time of supposedly dreadful finances down Canberra way. While we're at it department: The tantalising prospect of national legislation for universities prompts another reformist thought: why not give tertiary education a single, regulatory framework? Fry your research: The success of Deakin University in sourcing crowd funding for research through its hook up with Pozible should breathe new life into those jaded researchers forever getting ARC rejection letters. Key to the success of the Deakin researchers has been their preparedness to get on Twitter and Facebook and endlessly promote their projects. But for those not knowing where to start, they could do worse than study what floats the boat of British comedian Stephen Fry. Deakin's crowd funding organiser Deb Verhoeven told a conference that a "prize achievement" had been to capture Fry's attention. He tweeted one of their projects to his now 6.4 million twitter followers. And when that happens you will know about it because Fry's "people" call you up to make sure you have the server capacity to handle the upsurge in traffic. In Deakin's case what interested Fry was a project to "camera trap" endangered wildlife in Papua New Guinea. So maybe including a cuddly animal in your project would be a good first move. Fear and promoting: Laureate offshoot Torrens University Australia is ramping up its marketing ahead of first classes next year by adding a dose of fear to its initial strategy of offering discounts. Last week, Torrens warned of 20 per cent dropout rates in the wider sector, but apparently that won't be a problem with its "You First" approach boasting smaller class sizes. That dropout rate is old news of course, it has been around or just below that rate for ages. But what Torrens doesn't point out is that after accounting for students who simply move between institutions rather than drop out, the attrition rate is actually improving. Since 2005 it has fallen from 15 per cent to 12.8 per cent in 2011. Still, HW applauds anything that keeps the sector focused on the student experience given the loaded status placed on research.