Even before the Covid pandemic hit, my son found himself doing his university degree online. Except that he wasn’t enrolled as an online student, he was an on-campus student. An ‘on-campus’ student who was lucky to have one hour a week on campus.
One of the main reasons for this parlous state of affairs, which almost amounted to fraud given that he was paying full fees, was that the university was “relocating its campus”. Yes, from a perfectly adequate, well-established campus just five minutes drive from the CBD, the university was buying up high-value real estate on a redeveloped waterfront precinct. Its money was also being ploughed into other costly real estate purchases.
The situation is so deplorable that even academics are finally arking up.
The PUA says university leaders frequently ignore the “core functions’’ of teaching, research and community outreach, while prioritising property development and investment vehicles.
The universities had a shrieking meltdown when the former government slapped a travel ban on Chinese nationals entering directly from China. They didn’t even hide that it was all about the money and nothing else.
Angry academics are blaming university chiefs for “dumbing down’’ degrees to enrol students with low levels of literacy and numeracy as “cash cows’’.
With 200,000 international students flying into Australia to begin university courses this year, an alliance of academics and student and postgraduate associations known as Public Universities Australia has criticised falling academic standards.
The PUA has warned a Senate inquiry of the “dumbing down of student assessment tasks to accommodate higher numbers of both domestic and international students with lower levels of literacy and numeracy’’.
At the same time, gutless academics and administrators kow-tow to the sensitivities of the Chinese regime, which is pouring truckloads of money into so-called “Confucius Centres”, by censoring course content that runs counter to Chinese Communist Party propaganda. Australian-born students who complain about the CCP’s influence on campus are beaten, hounded and even expelled.
The PUA is demanding legislative changes to “give staff, students and the general public more ability to hold university executives and senior managers to account for poor decision-making, incompetence, malfeasance and corruption’’.
Sounds like a great idea, especially when vice-chancellors are routinely trousering million-dollar salaries.
One little thing, though: let’s also demand legislative changes to hold academics to account, too.
Universities Australia, the recognised lobby group for universities, and the NTEU declined to respond to the PUA claims.
But UA chief executive Catriona Jackson hailed the return of 200,000 international students, saying: “These numbers are very encouraging as we continue to regain the ground we lost.”
The Australian
“Regain the ground we lost” meaning, of course, “Filling our coffers to bursting again”.
