Many will attribute the coming deregulated fee system as the beginning of the end for many universities in Australia - and whilst very much true, the rot set in much earlier.
In the glory days of fee free education, Universities were largely self regulating. The undertook research at their whim and their focus was research - undergraduate study was just a means to and end - a way of weeding out the chaff from the wood.
However, once fees we're introduced, all that changed. I can recall a friend attending a subject some years later and being told of her horror of having to do roll call for a subject - apparently if they missed more than 1 lecture they would fail.
Since then, we've seen the rise of "helpful" lecturers who send out reminders to students that assignments are due.
What on earth is going on here? Well, it seems that as soon as you commodity education, students are no longer students - they're customers. And governments who bankroll these students expect performance rewards from the universities - so they expect people to pass, not fail.
Both of these aspects are what is killing the university sector - an inevitable rush to the bottom to both attract "customers" but making it easy enough for them to pass - after all, when you're paying $100,000 for something, you want to be sure you get something at the end.
The solution? Let's rewrite history and follow the European model and make universities free once again. Open to anyone with the right qualifications and allow them to do their own thing. But limit access. Not everyone deserves Uni - most will suffice with a technical qualification from a college - it happened years ago and it should return to that.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment