Yes mate, and given most of those lectures can be videoed and on sold over the internet, i.e., the costs should be going down!

And given we now treat uni's as areas of significant research; hence the additional cost structures, why doesn't the government help foster that by proving enough venture capital to thoroughly commercialize our better ideas.

At least that way, we'd keep our best people and their better ideas here, and earn all the profits they create here, along with any tax receipts they then pay in return for the original outlays, which is sure to more they make up for them, and very substantially!

What has the Atomic Absorption Spectrometer, i.e., earned since it was commercialized, OFFSHORE!
And there has to be hundreds of similar of lose lose examples!
Rhrosty.

No productivity improvement? What about the use of technology to help students have a more productive time in lectures - e.g. powerpoint presentations, online quizzes, etc. When I lectured at Monash, there were no afternoons given over to sport as there were when I was a student at Canterbury in NZ some 52 years ago. (Mens sana in corpore sano.)

let me ask you, if you were a lecturer, how would you improve the productivity of lectures? How would you motivate the students to do three hours of solid, private study for every contact hour? Have you ever witnessed the large group of students socialising in the talking permitted section of the library? Have you ever had to deal with gormless masters students, who, despite courses run by library staff at the beginning of each semester on the library resources and how to access them, come to their lecturer to complain that they can not find items on their reading list that are held in the Reserve section of the library?

From my experience, the greatest need for productivity improvement is in the area of student study techniques and their motivation to do the necessary work.

I am studying online and find the format great – it allows me to study when I want and fits in with work and other commitments. I do miss the class contact with other students and the lecturers though – online forums aren’t quite the same.

Studying online hasn’t stopped fees escalating. I have studied part-time off and on for the past seven years, and in that time tuition fees have more than doubled. The average annual increase was 12.5% a year, while average inflation was 2.7%

The cost disease is a scam set up by govt; They want the savings to go into a futures savings account for Med scientific research. The account has already been set up at futures savings AU. Along with savings from Medi Care and uni cut backs.

What is needed is to get Campbell Newman to take charge of the whole sector.

He managed to sack 20,000 totally unnecessary bureaucrats, without even a ripple in government services. Hell it even got some of the reminder, who had never done an hours work in their lives, attempting to be useful.

I'm sure he could do the same with 20,000 bureaucrats in the university sector, with equal lack of disruption, apart from a few noisy protest marches.

He could definitely could do the same with tenured academics, with a resultant dramatic improvement in the quality of instruction, & attention to their supposed work, of the remainder. I'd reckon the only people who would notice the removal of 20,000 academics would be the various pay offices.

I'm interested in exactly who you mean by academics Hasbeen.

From your comments it seems like you are criticizing mostly university bureaucrats, and those involved in the arts/social sciences type of courses.

However by saying "academics" you are also grouping those people together with people who teach productive courses such as engineering and science/medicine, as well as the non-teaching researcher and staff, who mostly have to fund their own salary and research costs, with the parasitic bureaucrats taking their cut from the productive members of the university.

Other than that, I agree with the informed comments made by Kevington.