Thoughts - Higher Ed

A recent thread on LP discussed Andrew Morton's critique of Universities Australia's economic argument RE: the benefit of a University Education. The basic line was that Uni's are good because of the economic benefit they bring so we need more funding.

Of course, such a narrow focus for establishing credibility was always going to bring about a pile of criticism and as one LP commenter noted:

Education is also about intellectual enlightenment and personal empowerment.

which leads me to my gripe, namely the problem with our faux University system.

Since the late 80's when all the CAE's were converted to Universities, we've seen a gradually watering down of the role of our uni's from leaders in academia to churn factories for voc. ed. and in doing so, the old 2 year diploma's have been converted into watered down, 3 year degrees. In the process, the cost of education has gone up impacting on both Uni's and thus students.

Isn't about time we acknowledged that the majority of our uni's are no longer focused on academia and are instead producing viable fodder for industry? If we did that, then surely we'd be better returning to the CAE model where students wishing to gain pure employment could simply study a 2 year diploma - focused on their area of expertise - which would cost less to provide and thus burden the student less in the long run?

This would leave a small number of institutions to return their focus to what they did best - research (or prepare students for a life in academia). Yes, a lot of these students will go on to lead productive life in business, but unless the focus remains preparing students for research instead of preparing them for a job then, alas, I think we're all doomed (or at least, the quality of our education system and the future of pure science is).