High Wired update: Male studies maelstrom GETTING to the truth of the men's health course; changes afoot at Monash; and painful logo explanations. Men's watershed: Universities in our smaller cities can develop a somewhat fractious relationship with their local media outlets. And so it was in Adelaide on the weekend when an article linked a new course on male studies at UniSA with two US-based extremist, anti-feminist lecturers. While the article does note the course will explore issues ranging from men's health to gender bias, its focus is a little less balanced, preferring to dredge up stuff about guns, violence and derogatory names for women. Shame new NUS president Deanna Taylor jumped on the bandwagon, condemning the university and the course in a press release without first having checked the facts. "It is disgraceful that a major public Australian university is allowing its students to be educated by extremists with fringe views, one of whom has referred to women's studies as 'witches' studies'," Ms Taylor chimed in. Last night, the university was still trying to hose down the firestorm. "[Inflammatory] comments [in the story] were not made by UniSA staff and have no relevance to the new health-related certificate being introduced by the university," the uni said in a statement. But that's not much of a story, is it? Secret squirrels: The Higher Education section got word that Monash University has a massive overhaul of its curriculum in the wings in a way that may (or may not) bear similarities to its Go8 neighbour Melbourne. But getting some hard facts has proven to be elusive. The media team didn't appear to know anything about it and the senior executives involved are on leave until the end of January. Seems no one else could be found to help explain it. Strange, strange, strange. Symbolic signifiers: Not sure whether the Facebook post "OMG this is super interesting !!!" is meant to be sardonic. But Victoria University yesterday posted on its Facebook page a long and convoluted explanation of its logo. The white circle in the middle? That's you! The chevron/diamond conveys excellence. The dark sky-blue colour carries associations of hopes, aspiration and the future. The subtly graded perforation of the logo communicates the idea of accessibility. Basically, it symbolises the individual student surrounded by excellence, accessibility & their own hopes and aspirations. Phew, that's a lot of concepts to get into one small logo. HW's taste is a bit more traditional, preferring the creatures of mythology to grace logos: unicorns, angels and dragons. Oh, really: New US research has confirmed something we already know: universities lose money on research. Seems grant money doesn't cover indirect costs such as staffing, equipment and facilities. HW seems to remember that former research minister Kim Carr was keen to rectify that dilemma here, but then something called a budget deficit got in the way. Not so streamlined: The Swedes might have a great eye for pared back furniture design, but they aren't so good at designing streamlined visa policies. While Australia is bearing the fruits of relaxed post-study work visas, Sweden's have been described as the "worst in the entire EU." Students and researchers have to get out of the country just 10 days after completing their course of study. Not much time to sight-see or get a job.