As for the previous post, this one could be a witCH or a PoSWW, and, again, I’m not expecting anyone to bother. Last week, ABC’s Four Corners had a report, Campus Chaos, on the mad governance of Australia’s universities. The report was shit.
It was very pleasing, of course, to see some corporate leeches and some of universities’ little hitlers being raked over the coals. But, as well as being tricked up with cute video shoots and smugging pans of the all-wise reporter, Four Corners‘ report missed the fundamental point, that these leeches and little hitlers didn’t come about by chance. They are simply the inevitable carpetbagger consequence of the multi-dimensional perversion of a university sector that, decades ago, lost sight of any proper meaning or proper purpose.
You want Australian universities to make sense again? Then deal with the financial reality that no society can afford to have millions of their citizens tread educational water for 20+ years. Reduce the undergraduate student population to about a quarter of its current size, make undergraduate degrees properly solid and make them free. If you’re not seeking to do that, and no one is, you’re just talking bullshit. Which everyone is.
Not only in Australia, but none has guts to deal with it.
So you mean go back to the separation between universities (academic) and colleges of advanced education (more practical)? And teaching should be in the colleges of advanced education as it’s largely practical?
That’s a separate issue.
The degrees have been watered down. I cannot see the value, to anyone, of a system where kids do largely meaningless degrees, and professions demand these largely meaningless degrees. It serves no one and it costs, for either the kids or society, a fortune.
Why should a kid go to university? Why, for that matter, should a kid finish high school? There is nothing meaningful about having huge percentages of either, unless you are also measuring what “finish high school” and “go to university” mean in terms of actual learning. And no one gives a stuff.
We did have more academic unis until the late 80s when they were all merged – not sure that it’s entirely separate. Similarly we abolished tech schools – some of which were excellent. All in the name of one size fits all education. Don’t think it’s necessarily the underlying issue, but it’s part of the problem as Ed B notes below. In my view, teaching should be an apprenticeship.
The other major change was to make them corporate and market driven. It’s in their interest to credential as many students as possible and earn the dough! But it’s deeper than unis – the same issue applies to many not-for-profits – the sense of purpose is gone and they become like companies – goal is to make money (especially for all the managers and execs). That is definitely part of the issue and this is now affecting very expensive private schools, where education is now a product.
We live in an era of market-driven credentialism – but like the current amounts of bureaucracy, I don’t think most people want it – but how to change is another story.
My suspicion is that loss of moral purpose is the really underlying issue.
Part of the problem is that we have gotten driven by the need for formal credentials and the corresponding need for outfits to provide them (just look at the string of letters that comes after the name of almost any professional you have to deal with). A better model is to provide early hands-on experience for young people that introduce them to meaningful careers.
Instead of a situation where young people head for university in hopes of getting some position only to find them low on the totem pole of the service sector, I would look for a situation where a young person gets a job (with decent pay) in a sector where they are interested and then build up the knowledge and expertise they require as they advance. A lot of research requires people with mobility working in the field gaining experience, often doing things that require not a lot of training but involve a lot of time and attention to detail, much of it in far-off sites (e.g. Suzanne Simard and research on tree communities in British Columbia). If it works out, then make the investment to educate the young person as far as they need to go.
It used to me that in many professions (e.g. accountancy, optometry, actuary) students left school for a job at the Grade 10-12 level and worked through their professional examinations (often with assistance from the company that hire them in part through time off to study).
Yes, the credentialism is the underlying disease. Clearly, an apprenticeship model would would much better for many professions.
Teaching, for example, would (in the opinion of this teacher) be much better if done as an apprenticeship model.
Fully agree with (most of) the above. Grade inflation, the need for lecturers to get good “student feedback reports” and all the political crap that has perverted a system designed originally to sit above all this is a woeful sight to behold either from within or without.
There are people who care. They fall into one of the following categories however:
1. No one listens to them.
2. They are powerless to act.
3. They fear that doing anything will cost them promotions/job security/something.
4. A combination of the above.
Sadly, the small wins in our own backyards amount to very little in terms of real progress. And too many of those fighting are retiring in large numbers, so I cannot see change happening for at least a generation.
Pass the vodka.