Business “Masters” courses are an interesting topic. Again, standards have shifted downwards over the past 10-20 years. There was a time when one didn’t have an MBA; rather an M (pause) B (pause) A, spoken with some reverence. Albeit, technically, an MBA is not a post-graduate degree, because exceptions are allowed from Bachelor degrees and the “101” subjects have the same content as undergraduate degree.

A true Masters (with stream) has only higher-level content and if the student has completed any standard subject, credit by substitution comes into effect. That is, no exceptions are granted, the student takes a replacement miscellaneous post-grad subject in lieu. Twenty years ago achieving enrolment a Business Masters was quite hard, requiring a testimonial from an employer and a lengthy writing statement of purpose from the applicant. Baqck then,some universities required the student to enrol at first in a Graduate Diploma and only if they achieved a Credit Average (top 20%) or better could they progress to final 4-8 subjects.

Today, too often, Business Masters programmes are more likely treated as Continuing Education without the a clear shift from undergraduate to post-graduate levels of difficulty (assumed knowledge). Instead, we have a string of additional subjects which are really not as challenging as was once the case. Philosophy and heavy Research Methods are avoided, because most students would fail – too hard.

Also, today, poor students are carried where group work amounts to more than 20% of the coordinated mark.

Another problem is students can leverage the complaint system. In the street (not at uni.), I recall once walking behind a group of students who were whinging about the difficulties they were having with a subject. One suggested that the solution was to complain about their instructor!

Herein, maintaining standards can sandwich lecturers between the commercial funding imperatives of the University and administrators who job it is too progress often unjustified complaints by whinging students, who given a real universe course would fail.

Very interesting comments, Oliver.
A relative of mine received a dodgy MBA that fits your scenario perfectly.
And as you say, students, especially if they 'whinge' as a cohort, wield considerable power. There's about 50 students in a class I teach and inevitably one or two who resent not getting good grades (even when they do nothing to earn them!). I hope for my sake they never organise!
I receive lots of emails too from students sounding off about one thing or another, but one has to be very careful to respond indulgently. I'm sure that if my mere tone was deemed to be off, a student might successfully bring a complaint and have it validated. Look after the pennies (students) and the dollars take care of themselves.

With your knowledge of the system, Oliver, I should start a thread on how to obtain lucrative Post-Docs, and get you to contribute! I'd rather do research than teach---more rewarding and less dangerous!

I go onto a lot of industrial sites, and one of the first things I now look for is the safety statistics displayed on the wall. If there are no safety statistics being displayed on the wall, I don’t have much confidence in that company, because I know that the company is likely to have no interest in risk management.

Many (if not most) large companies now have a policy of zero injuries, and fortunately there are more companies now developing policies of zero injuries / zero waste. This is good because it means these companies are now heavily into risk management.

I recently worked in a company with a policy of zero injuries and zero waste, and they had just finished developing their own code of practice, which was over and beyond anything required by state or federal legislation.

The standards they were aiming for were over and above anything required by legislation.

Comparing all that to education, I see no safety statistics displayed on the wall of any school or university I have been to, and any standards they have are completely indistinct.

In general they have no interest in risk management, and their general levels of efficiency are likely to be very low.

The schools and universities belong to an era that is located somewhere back in time.