No time to learn for learning's sake when a degree is at stake
June 3, 2005
SPEAK to anyone who's stepped inside a university in the past few years and the story is much the same: overcrowded tutorials, overworked academics, and ever-fewer contact hours. Then there are the whispers that courses are dumbing down and graduation standards declining. So the debate about declining standards and conditions has been long overdue.
International students have been central to much of the discussion. They are reportedly being accepted into courses without adequate English language skills and awarded degrees without reaching basic requirements, benefiting from more lenient approaches to plagiarism, and even having chunks of their theses written for them by their supervisors.
The reason? International students pay the full cost - or more - of their degrees, and universities need the money.
But while universities' reliance on overseas students for funding is a problem - for universities and for overseas students - the matter of declining academic standards doesn't end there.
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Universities aren't just dumbing down for international students, they're dumbing down for local students, too. And it's an issue that goes to the core of how higher education is valued.
Clumsily written excerpts from overseas students' letters and emails may make for easy jokes, but perhaps more disturbing would be excerpts from the essays and correspondence of students born, bred and educated in Australia - students who don't have the excuse of English as a second or third language for their failure to grasp it.
As a postgraduate student at the University of Sydney last year, I was shocked to see the apparent ease with which students can graduate from high school, obtain a credit average at university and even get a master's degree without writing in full sentences (as opposed to point form) or thinking critically about what's on the page in front of them.
It is not the traditional role of university academics to teach students how to read and write. But, as the cost of higher education has shifted from government to the student "consumer", the reasons people attend university have also changed.
Students who are paying through the nose for a degree and juggling study with paid work don't have the luxury of learning for learning's sake. They've been told they're paying for their degrees because they're the net financial beneficiaries of them, and they want value for money.
More than ever, university is a means to an end, a strategic manoeuvre designed to make the leap to the next stepping stone on the path to success that little bit easier. It's about qualification, not education, and passes make degrees, distinctions a summer clerkship at a top-five law firm, and an MBA a $65,000 starting salary as a business consultant. What those letters really signify is another issue altogether.
What we end up with is a higher education system focused on equipping graduates to fulfil specific tasks in specific industries, rather than providing the universal, transferable skills and ideas needed to thrive in an ever-changing workplace.
There are exceptions - and my undergraduate course was one of them - but even there most attempts to teach us how to think were greeted as a waste of time that could be better spent revising the specifics of television news production.
It's not that vocational education doesn't have its place or that students are wrong to want good grades. But, even as more people graduate from university than ever, fewer are graduating with the ability to think independently, to critically consider what's put in front of them, or to develop innovative ways of doing things - essential skills for a healthy democracy, economy and society.
Maybe it should come as no surprise, then, that the latest overseas research indicates that the "value" of a university degree in terms of the increase in income during working life is far less than what had been thought only a few years back.
International students make easy and highly visible scapegoats for declining standards: they pay more for their degrees and are often academically disadvantaged as non-native speakers of the language they're studying in.
But it's important we don't lose sight of the broader reasons underlying declining academic standards; reasons that go a lot further than increased numbers of overseas students.
Rachel Hills, a freelance writer, is a recent graduate of Sydney University's media, communications program.
June 3, 2005
SPEAK to anyone who's stepped inside a university in the past few years and the story is much the same: overcrowded tutorials, overworked academics, and ever-fewer contact hours. Then there are the whispers that courses are dumbing down and graduation standards declining. So the debate about declining standards and conditions has been long overdue.
International students have been central to much of the discussion. They are reportedly being accepted into courses without adequate English language skills and awarded degrees without reaching basic requirements, benefiting from more lenient approaches to plagiarism, and even having chunks of their theses written for them by their supervisors.
The reason? International students pay the full cost - or more - of their degrees, and universities need the money.
But while universities' reliance on overseas students for funding is a problem - for universities and for overseas students - the matter of declining academic standards doesn't end there.
AdvertisementAdvertisement
Universities aren't just dumbing down for international students, they're dumbing down for local students, too. And it's an issue that goes to the core of how higher education is valued.
Clumsily written excerpts from overseas students' letters and emails may make for easy jokes, but perhaps more disturbing would be excerpts from the essays and correspondence of students born, bred and educated in Australia - students who don't have the excuse of English as a second or third language for their failure to grasp it.
As a postgraduate student at the University of Sydney last year, I was shocked to see the apparent ease with which students can graduate from high school, obtain a credit average at university and even get a master's degree without writing in full sentences (as opposed to point form) or thinking critically about what's on the page in front of them.
It is not the traditional role of university academics to teach students how to read and write. But, as the cost of higher education has shifted from government to the student "consumer", the reasons people attend university have also changed.
Students who are paying through the nose for a degree and juggling study with paid work don't have the luxury of learning for learning's sake. They've been told they're paying for their degrees because they're the net financial beneficiaries of them, and they want value for money.
More than ever, university is a means to an end, a strategic manoeuvre designed to make the leap to the next stepping stone on the path to success that little bit easier. It's about qualification, not education, and passes make degrees, distinctions a summer clerkship at a top-five law firm, and an MBA a $65,000 starting salary as a business consultant. What those letters really signify is another issue altogether.
What we end up with is a higher education system focused on equipping graduates to fulfil specific tasks in specific industries, rather than providing the universal, transferable skills and ideas needed to thrive in an ever-changing workplace.
There are exceptions - and my undergraduate course was one of them - but even there most attempts to teach us how to think were greeted as a waste of time that could be better spent revising the specifics of television news production.
It's not that vocational education doesn't have its place or that students are wrong to want good grades. But, even as more people graduate from university than ever, fewer are graduating with the ability to think independently, to critically consider what's put in front of them, or to develop innovative ways of doing things - essential skills for a healthy democracy, economy and society.
Maybe it should come as no surprise, then, that the latest overseas research indicates that the "value" of a university degree in terms of the increase in income during working life is far less than what had been thought only a few years back.
International students make easy and highly visible scapegoats for declining standards: they pay more for their degrees and are often academically disadvantaged as non-native speakers of the language they're studying in.
But it's important we don't lose sight of the broader reasons underlying declining academic standards; reasons that go a lot further than increased numbers of overseas students.
Rachel Hills, a freelance writer, is a recent graduate of Sydney University's media, communications program.
