A certain amount of truth here. Credentialism has gone mad. Unis are pretty much like Bunnings and floq expensive qualifications all across the qualification framework. Even so, Gillard's push to get more young people to complete Bachelor degrees is spot on. The future is technology and applications. Current students are, and future students will be, some of the best educated on the planet. How they use their brains is up to them.

Oh they're not doing science or IT Chezza!

IT - 5%

Natural and Physical Sciences- 11%

Management and Commerce - 21%

and, the kicker...

Society and Culture - 26%
Creative Arts - 7.5%

So, a third of students doing the airy fairy stuff, a fith doing w@nker banker stuff, 1 in 20 doing IT, and 1 in 10 doing Science (Including 'environmental science' no doubt).

http://www.deewr.gov.au/HigherEducation/Publications/HEStatistics/Publications/Documents/2008/2008AllStudentLoad.xls

It wouldn't really matter how many graduates were being produced provided they were receiving a broad general education.

They are not.

They know a bit more than some others about a Little and bugger all than most about a Lot.They cannot,in the main, even be described as highly trained twits.

Maybe they shouild all be compelled to gain an Arts degree first,( a great degree except for Employment purposes ) and then after having obtained some "education "from that degree,only then , can they proceed to obtain a "real" degree.

I blame it on the Universities,who having become the Rest Homes for drop-out socialists, then have to justify their existance!

...Here is a career path that many kids I observe follow, leave school at fourteen or earlier if possible, roam around town aimlessly until arrested for petty theft; continue on this recognised course until accumulating enough demerit points to accord a jail sentence: The “everyday” kids version of Tertiary Education .

...After a minimum of two years tucked up securely with likeminded youths behind bars, the sense of total inapplicability of themselves towards society begins to dawn. What follows is the emergence of a serious career path, where, with the addition of an addiction to drugs and alcohol, all necessary education is complete.

...I look forward to your stimulating articles Brian.

Brian,

I'd say the problem is not so much 'credentialism' as the type of credentials educational institutions provide. Australia has long been poor in that middle level technical education that for example the Germans and other Europeans, provide so effectively. Those are the kind of credentials that the nation really needs.
I can also remember the CAEs, which provided that middle level technical training, their elimination or 'promotion' to university status was one of the most inept 'reforms' implemented in this country.

Australia has a very low productivity growth rate and consequently a low increase in per capita income, so all this increased emphasis on credentials appears to be misdirected.

Some years ago I can remember hearing a satirical reference -- 'What's next? A Master's Degree in Golf Course Management', Well, yes.

So true Brian, but it has been going on for a long time now.

I'm an engineer, but I became an expert in plastics moulding, shoving molten plastic into a die, or through a tool. This was because I was interested, & no one had done in it yet. There was no school.

I learnt a little from the raw material manufacturers chemists, a lot more from tool makers, & quite a bit from the lowly process worker, working the injection machines in factories. However most was by trial & error, in customers factories, where as the expert, I knew just a little more than they did.

Aspley it might be better if they had to acquire a trade before starting a degree. They at least would have some practical experience, hopefully some understanding, & something to fall back on.

I remember having a bear with dad, & a couple of his mates, about 40 years ago. One of them was a bit upset. He was a plumber, who had worked up to factory manager at Gilbarco, the large petrol pump manufacturer, incidental established by a couple of smart tradies many years before.

He had been called back to work, for the third time in 9 months, after retiring, to sort out a problem. As with loyal old timers he had cancelled his trip to the UK to help.

The 2 youngish graduate engineers, hired to replace him, had still not come fully to grips with the factory, the manufacturing process, or the product, even after a 3 month training process, & 9 months supposedly doing the job.

He was complaining about how little some graduates knew, & how poorly prepared they were to learn what they needed to know, out in the real world. Air conditioned engineers he called them, OK in the office, but should never be let out into a hot dirty factory, they were so impractical.

Continued

Continued

His other complaint was about personnel managers with no idea of assessing the value of technical personnel. He was not allowed to advance highly competent, but not degree qualified, existing staff, but had wasted months trying to train qualified engineers, who disappeared quickly once they found the job beyond them.

I had similar problems with the production programmers at some customers. Unless they had actually worked an injection machine they really did not understand how critical to production is colour & material changes, & the order in which they are done. Do it wrong, & you have hours of wasted down time, stripping & cleaning machinery.

spot on Brian; our society seems obsessed with the proper paperwork, but seems to ignore the value of TAFEs and on-the-job training. But Ivan Illich said it all more than 25 years ago in Deschooling Society.

Perhaps we need all those institutes of higher learning to keep the kids off the streets for as long as possible hoping they can pick up something of value.

I myself am a uni dropout and never bothered to complete it or many other things in my life, but I reckon the best education I've had has been from leading hands, managers, mentors and on-the-job workmates who taught me what i really needed to know. And that's how my dad got by, too - an unlearned uneducated man who could barely read or write but had enough nous to ask his mates where he could find some work, and they always lent him a helping hand. A degree well-earned is a rarity, but the university of hard knocks offers what unis can't and don't - experience.

WE must be all about Holden them back to INCREASE OUR CHANCES!

The LORD gave US dominion over the land, the waters, the skies and all that's in them.

How dare young people believe they can escape our divine caveat.

Get hair cuts and REAL jobs! The CAPRICE & BULLYING of the workplace will teach them ALL THEY NEED TO KNOW & give US a better standard of living. Then OUR mindless IMMIGRATION program can replace them all with DEGREES and cultural assets that other countries have paid for.

Think of the BULK SAVINGS.

NEAT Huh!

And don't worry about Australia's fragile environment. Immigrants exploring their new domains here, 4 wheel driving there, soon there won't be anything left to worry about & what's gone is SOON forgotten. THEN we can Singapore style DEVELOP the coasts and make squillions.

That's Labor's NATION BUILDING in a NUTshell! Zeich Heil!

We loves ya Julia & Ya lamb chops!

...“Past working man” had skills honed by multi-skilling, innovation, initiative, dedication and loyalty. All these ingredients produced a useful finished product.

-:-

...“New working man” is defiled by Commodification, modulising, conformity and blind obedience, unreasonable expectation produced by over-education; all qualities from which will be viewed with suspicion by the above group, as unreliable.

I think Houllie makes a valid point, we are educating them in the
wrong courses. Australians seem to like things like womens studies
and philosophy. Meantime around here there are doctors from Nigeria
and Bangaladesh, as not enough Australians are trained in medicine.

Open the papers in WA. They are screaming for accountants, dentists,
doctors, engineers, geologists, welders, electricians, plumbers etc.

Too many of our kids decide that flipping burgers is all they need
to learn, well sorry, but those days are over

Germany is a high skill/high productivity economy par excellence. They do it because they only put the brightest on the path to university and produce engineers not womens studies graduates.
The majority of kids (who are not academic) go through one of the best vocational training regimes in the world.
An ALP full of, at best mediocre apparatchiks, pushes credentionalism because
a) they have no understanding of how a capitalist economy creates job(spending their lives sucking from the union or public teat)
b) because they have no answer to part (a) they mindlesslessly repeat the slogan that what we need is more university places
c) are beholden to provider capture at the universities
d) know that university gratuates, having spent three/four years being brainwashed in an all ALP environment will take much longer to come to their senses, grow up and start voting for adults
e) the economy is unimportant to them so long as they transform society to one which fits their ideological world view.

*The majority of kids (who are not academic) go through one of the best vocational training regimes in the world.*

You are quite correct there, Dane. Its why the Swiss and German
economies are doing so well. Those workers at Roche and similar
companies, did not qualify in arts degrees, when they design new
and expensive anti cancer drugs, for instance.

The above reflects around the world, when you see who is doing the
qualified work, from running hotels to complicated construction sites.
Commonly Swiss or Germans, they get paid accordingly.

Our vocational training system is a bit of a shambles and just
throwing more Tafe money at it, is not going to fix it.

Yabby.

...TAFE's were de-funded by three percent PA under the Howard regime; in real terms that is a de-funding of 30% over that period. The purpose? to force privatization! This innovation forced Tafe's to introduce a fee system and a raft of "Mickey Mouse" courses, and directed the institution away from its primary goal of vocational education.

Credentialism high
Brian Holden,
This is what the silent majority has been saying for decades. It's past high time that this gets the exposure needed. If these people were to create their own support it wouldn't matter but because they're 95% taxpayer funded & contribute hardly anything is what makes them parasitical by default. Now that is a harsh term but is there an alternative one for one who does not contribute ?

DD, I think our whole vocational training system needs examination
and an overhaul. The number of kids dropping out of apprenticeships,
is quite startling, for instance. Teenagers who attend Tafe courses,
tell me a huge amount of time is wasted and courses could be
dramatically improved.

Perhaps we need to examine why systems in countries like Germany
and Switzerland have worked so well and start learning from them.

Its very difficult to expect a 17 year old to clearly know what they
want to spend the rest of their life doing. At that age, most of
us had very different thoughts on our minds, I certainly did.
Perhaps more effort should be placed on finding out what each kid
has a natural aptitude for and enjoys doing. Lets face it, if we
enjoy what we do, life is far easier, yet its pretty easy to get
stuck in the wrong career path at that age.

Part of Swiss vocational training is showing kids what the various
options are, not just shoving them into the next apprenticeship
that comes along, whatever it may be.

Yabby,

It used to be the case in Europe (perhaps it still is in some countries) that somebody finishing secondary school could not go straight on to university, but had to do two years on a farm, or in a factory, or in the armed forces, or voluntary work. The philosopher Karl Popper, for instance, worked and trained as a cabinet-maker - in fact, he made and repaired his own furniture all his life. And his wife's too.

So young people got something of a taste of real-life work, of what most people had to put up with all their working lives, before they tripped off to uni, at a more mature age.

As you say, most of us don't have a clear idea at seventeen of what we would like to do. But getting a clearer idea of what some people HAVE to do all their lives probably concentrates the mind a little. The problem these days is that the sorts of employment that this apprenticeship would require are not as readily available, except perhaps in the mining industry. But even there, the great majority of workers need high levels of skills.

Maybe two compulsory years of flipping burgers and cleaning tables might be the only sorts of options: they would surely focus attention on alternatives.

I couldn't agree more with the article. Indeed there was a time when successful academics were more like skilled tradespersons, but these master-crafts men and women are increasingly swamped by the "lettered unlettered". It's rare these days to find a brilliant and regularly published academic who's actually teaching, whereas once it was his bread and butter; this is more and more carried out by half-arsed underlings with little or no grasp of the concepts that roll so easily off their tongues. Academia is no longer a workplace with limited vacancies, it's a marketplace with sinecures and unlimited places for those who want increasingly worthless degrees.
And this is my only demur against Mr Holden's position; our universities are an expression of late, or decadent, capitalism, the hybrid product of free-market ideology and government intervention/assistance/incentives, calculated to mask real unemployment rates, though rationalised as supplying voracious demand. That "demand" is obviously cultivated rather than genuine or developmental in any positivist sense, driven as it is both by consumer manipulation (government and private advertising) and labour attrition.
Universities are becoming more like Big Mac chains, and the whole phenomenon is predicated on projected demand. It has nothing to do with learning for its own sake.

Thanks for your link, Houellebecq. Interestingly, EU statistics suggest that Germany and Switzerland have a comparably high percentage of students doing these 'soft' degrees - perhaps even in women's studies.

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php?title=File:Students_in_tertiary_education,_2009_%281%29.png&filetimestamp=20111117133441

As it happens, I have such a 'soft' degree. I am an English and history teacher and, in keeping with the demand that teachers have deep knowledge of their subject areas, I have both undergrad and postgrad qualifications in my fields. I also don't object to learning for the sake of learning - I think that collective knowledge in a wide variety of fields enriches our country.

I will say, though, that the notion that university education is an essential component of success needs to be put to rest. My dad, who has successfully managed - and even turned around - companies for the past 25 years, is now undertaking undergrad studies because his experience and know-how no longer open doors for him. He can rise close to the top of a company, but usually sits below some clown who calls the shots without really knowing what he is doing. My mum is in a similar position in her field. Despite being at the top of her game for many years, she sits alongside smug and condescending uni graduates who make more mistakes, do a sloppier job but have a firmer career path because they have more letters after their names.

I think many of our degrees are 'broken', too. A teaching degree is a four-year qualification and, having undertaken that course, I'm of a firm belief that it's only four years to ensure a suitable age gap between graduates and the students they will teach. I did an entire subject revolving around the question of 'what is a school?', and another that explained how to use students as unwitting guinea pigs in educational research. Neither has helped me in my work, and both seem to be part of the 'padding' to justify the degree's duration.

Just some thoughts there.

In my organisation very capable managers have been ousted & replaced by gonad devoid degree waving bureaucrats. The organisation now costs ten times more to run & achieves half of what was achieved before.
Yet our leaders are telling us what great progress is being made. That is the frightening scenario.
Decent, capable people have to forfeit their jobs to make space for degree carrying space-wasters.

Indy,

Hasbeen has said before he is a scientist, and now an engineer. Yet you infer he's a space-waster because of his 'degrees'?

For what it's worth, there are far more capable and credentialled people doing TAFE courses than going to university to wave degrees on graduation like Hasbeen.

bonmot,
If you digest Hasbeen's post properly you'll find that he has pragmatism & that puts him in a league on its own. Stop throwing all eggs into the same basket just because it's an easy way of arguing. It's too academic. Don't forget Academics aren't scientists or managers etc, people who used academia to improve their potential are those who contribute to society via the use of taxpayers funding rather than simply depleting it.

Scientists and engineers are pragmatic - they have to be.

Academics who teach the scientists and engineers have to be scientists and engineers first.

bonmot,
Academics are people who convey knowledge to people who desire to go on to learn more than what they have been taught. Academics are learned people who don't have their own knowledge base so to speak. Simply put they're like teachers, like repeaters in the communication system. They only convey what they had been provided with, they do not build upon & enhance their knowledge. That is being done by those who think.

>> They only convey what they had been provided with, they do not build upon & enhance their knowledge. That is being done by those who think. <<

In other words, academics don't think.

Individual, you need a defrag.

bonmot,
you're missing the point again & again. think !

Bonmot you really are the pits aren't you?

Just for you, I am a B Sc Mech Eng.

However I was lucky enough to meet an amateur motor racing mechanic. He was an accountant from back when you worked all day & got qualified at night. He taught me everything he could about practical engineering.

We built the most successful F2 motor racing engine Oz had seen. It finished only 2Nd in its first race, but won every one for the next 18 months after that.

When I ran into my favourite professor I started telling him what we had done, how, & why. When he cut me short, telling me I was wrong, & it would never work, I did not bother correcting him with the fact that it already had. I just lost interest.

He had shown me why most academics are a waste of space. Too many tickets, blowing off, & getting in their eyes & ears.

That opinion was reinforced when I came back from the Pacific with a great deal of knowledge about coral I had learned from the locals, & my observation building low tech jetties into the stuff, & found the AIMS, GBR marine park authority, & most of James Cook "scientists" only played in bathtubs in the lab, rather than actually go out to sea.

Nothing I have seen since has done anything but lower that opinion even further. Reading articles here, & listening to the ABC confirms that either academics are idiots, or they believe we all are. I suppose mixing with many other academics would lead to forming that opinion. The garbage sprouted by each new crop of obviously academic global warming supporters on here doesn't' help much either.

Tell me, are you rostered, & have to take your turn on grant support, or does it just come naturally.

individual, you were going well until your bizarre assertion that academics don't have a knowledge base and don't build knowledge - that they just convey it. The majority of academics (specifically, those who develop and run courses, rather than simply tutors who help students understand their readings and lectures) have the title of "doctor" or "professor" in front of their name. That means a PhD which, according to the University of New South Wales, "requires completion of a piece of research that demonstrates a significant and original contribution to knowledge in the field of study."

http://research.unsw.edu.au/doctor-philosophy-phd

That's contributing to, or creating, a knowledge base. They have the knowledge because they developed it.

Of course, this doesn't mean that they can convey it effectively. Nowhere does it say that lecturers and professors have to be skilled communicators or educators. I think that's one of the bigger problems in our universities. We have a lot of knowledge stored up, just waiting to be shared. Sadly, those who have it are often the least capable of sharing it.

Not missing the point at all, I agree with Brian Holden (and otokonoko).

Hasbeen, yes you are and you obviously have a big chip on your shoulder.

In answer to your questions - none of the above (and for your sailor mate's benefit ... I do).

Hasbeen,
as one of the more reactionary and negative posters on OLO I'm surprised to learn you have any degrees at all, as they usually bespeak a degree of open-mindedness. Even economists are capable of lateral thinking (though not of imagining any other system). Might I suggest you get an Humanities degree--Philosophy, History, Anthropology, English Lit; these are all contested schools of thought and so much more humble in their expecttaions than the so-called hard sciences, which lack rigour merely by virtue of their empirical naivity and blind political alliances.
The Arts on the other hand are fighting for their very intellectual survival in a world of philistines. The Humanities have suffered successive waves of Copernican revolutions, such that the hard sciences are yet to experience, or I acknowledge.

But back to Mr Holden's article; I failed to comment above on his more salient point about artisanship and practical learning. It's perfectly true that we've intellectualised and professionalised once noble vocations (this word is obsolete); putting degrees before practicalities, when practical experience is worth ten times as much. I verily believe an intelligent person could be taught brain or open heart surgery in a few short weeks in an operating theatre, whereas theory is lost as quickly as it's apprehended--the brain is neither accustomed nor proficient in abstract knowledge, which ultimately always proves synonymous with ignorance--since it is as ideological as it is empirical. Even putting aside hubris, to learn with the hands is at the very least on par with learning with the mind. Neither is complete without the other, yet the mind these days is flabby, and the hands are clumsy.

*Might I suggest you get an Humanities degree--Philosophy, History, Anthropology, English Lit; these are all contested schools of thought and so much more humble in their expecttaions than the so-called hard sciences,*

Yup, then float away with the fairies, all the way bankrolled by
the hardworking people of this country. Ain't life grand for some.

Dear Yabby,
you appear to fail to take into account my other criticism. I've already acknowledged that tertiary education has been commodified. This doesn't mean there's nothing to be gained from an education in the Humanities (once the very raison d'etre of the academy), only that human accomplishment is no longer appreciated; it's redundant in fact and rare as hens' teeth in any case.
I agree that public funding of the arts should be withdrawn, but then so should subsidies and public funding of manufacturing and farming and sundry business ventures. Indeed why are so many tax-payers' dollars being squandered on scientific speculation--sorry, "innovation"? One mustn't forget the euphemisms. It's because of course dollar values are projected as by-product. Creative destruction is a wasteful process, but acknowledgement of the waste is evaded and rationalised, cosmetic benefits go unscrutinised, and short-term profit is lapped-up--short-term.
Neither science nor the arts is respectable any more, yet the former is lauded out of all proportion, while the latter is demeaned out of all proportion.
But like I say, philistines--not even hard-working philistines.

*only that human accomplishment is no longer appreciated*

No Squeers, its about priorities. If I want to go to a doctor and
have to choose between one stolen from either South Africa,
Nigeria or Bangaladesh, then clearly we have a problem.

Perhaps universities should start to spend their resources on what
we actually need as a community, rather then on those who want to gaze
at their navels and pretend that its a justified living, out of
touch with the rest of the country.

Thank you Mitchel for the advice, it won't be taken. Self deception is something that brings disaster when practiced by people with real disciplines.

Much of my attitudes come from being at uni in Sydney at the time of the Vietnam moratorium rubbish. From what I saw of the entire arts/humanities communities at that time, I'll take used car salesman's ethics over theirs any time.

I'll have to stop now, & go wash my face I'm afraid, I've got those tickets of yours all over my face, & they blind me, just as they do their owners.

the adamic nature certainly flows through the academic world as well.

Yabby,
while I'm flattered to be confused with that incomparable intellect and font of wisdom--Squeers--I'm but a humble disciple.

"Perhaps universities should start to spend their resources on what
we actually need as a community, rather then on those who want to gaze
at their navels and pretend that its a justified living, out of
touch with the rest of the country".

You seem to imagine Yabby that universities dictate to aspirants what courses they shall enrol in. As I've been saying, universities are fallen institutions, devoted to market demand and the bottom line. If Australia, withal its university places in the modern era, cannot supply sufficient doctors or other professionals, and the trades cannot attract apprentices, this is a symptom of the decadence I mention above and hardly the fault of universities. If Australia is bent on becoming a nation of basket weavers, then it's incumbent upon the tertiary sector to make a buck out of it and design courses in basket construction, history and theory. We import doctors for the same reason that we import fruit-pickers; Australians dislike working harder than they have to and are fond of contemplating their navels. Australians in fact have a proud tradition of only working as hard as they have to--and they don't have to.
In any event, you might be interested to learn that the arts, in its various manifestations, now contributes a sizeable percentage of GDP, as well as sewing creative thinkers among a chronically laconic and intellectually challenged demographic: http://tinyurl.com/6vndw29
You're the one "out of touch with the rest of the country" old chap.

*cannot supply sufficient doctors or other professionals, and the trades cannot attract apprentices, this is a symptom of the decadence I mention above and hardly the fault of universities*

Hang on there, Squeers/Mitchell. AFAIK the lack of doctors has
nothing to do with the lack of student applicants wanting to be
doctors. Fact is that our education system is provided with mega
billions of taxpayer dollars and its not producing the sorts
of qualifications that our society needs. Meantime everyone within
the system is making a pretty penny. I gather that heads of
universities earn 700k$ plus, so money is clearly not the problem.

So those who lead and run our education system are clearly failing.

*Australians dislike working harder than they have to and are fond of contemplating their navels. Australians in fact have a proud tradition of only working as hard as they have to--and they don't have to.*

Not quite correct, Squeers. Some Australians work very hard and
productively. A whole lot of others, which you mention, simply
sponge off the system because they can. So we have two working
speeds in Australia.

Thank you Mitchell, your last post highlights what is wrong with our higher education sector.

You must be favoured by councils as well, or you would be put out of business by the littering fines.

All those tickets you have on yourself obviously makes you totally blind to real life, & must cause a litter problem in some suburbs.

@ "Self deception is something that brings disaster when practiced by people with real disciplines."

and

@ "All those tickets (e.g. B Sc Mech Eng.) you have on yourself ..."

Hasbeen, there is a term for this ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

Quite intriguing actually, no university in Sydney (during the "Vietnam moratorium rubbish" sic) offered such a degree. They offered degrees in Science, or degrees in Mechanical Engineering, but no bachelor degree in Science Mechanical Engineering. Perhaps the Sydney Technical College?

Yabby,
Sorry for the delay replying; I've been busy hard-working.
It's a free country and no university is stopping people enrolling in courses; enrolments (demand) dictate direction and content, and for all the griping about the arts it's business and engineering faculties that overwhelmingly dominate my university--and produce the most useless research.
I'm down on universities for commodifying higher learning, for reducing the humanities and enlightenment, both individual and social, to economics and pragmatism. You don't seem to realise that universities, as an institution, are no longer dedicated to learning, only to supply. And since you've long been a staunch defender of free markets it's a bit rich complaining about lucrative high-end salaries--though I agree that the unproductive upper echelons in every sector are vastly overpaid. But this is surely a complaint about the system and not alleged anomalies within it? University elites are renumerated at the same obscene level as other elites and frankly you're being a bloody hypocrite for singling them out for that.
As for the dollars universities attract, that's more about governments minimising apparent unemployment and subsidising the skills base we're told we so desperately need to service growth; dubious for sure but that's government rather than tertiary machination. I've sat in on enough meetings to know that the government of the day calls the shots, and universities are necessarily opportunistic--it's called "competition".

Finally Yabs, my comments about Australians not working any harder than they have to hark back to convict days; Australia was built on exploited labour and the workforce adapted accordingly. The literature of the new nation rings with the discourse of advantage and resentment that still reverberates today. Though that resentment has always taken the form of selfishness and intolerance, then and now.

Hasbeen, sorry! All that talk about tickets tells me a lot about you too. I'd say you're second or third generation Irish Catholic, brought up on or in close familial contact with dairy farmers or beef producers. Temperate or abstinent, but bad tempered and apt to lash out against upstarts. Not a lover of animals, except dogs, and I doubt you have a degree--maybe a certificate in agriculture..?
That's all I'm getting.

*University elites are renumerated at the same obscene level as other elites and frankly you're being a bloody hypocrite for singling them out for that.*

Not so Squeers, for they are quite different. If a private company,
lets say Google for instance, decides to pay extra, to find the
talent that they require, then frankly it is none of my business.
I own no shares in Google and have never sent then a dollar.

If a university, or the tax office, or some other Govt dept, pays
ridiculous salaries, then as a taxpayer and a voter, it certainly is
my business. If that same university is then unable to fullfill its
role, of educating enough doctors to service our communities, yet
they are all paid huge money, I have every reason to be outraged.

Now in the past there was a kind of unwritten rule, that people worked for
Govt it they wanted security for life, its nearly impossible to fire them,
they also did not do that much as they were
not in the real world of the open and competitive market. Now it
seems, they want the salaries that go with performance and risk,
but you still can't sack them, just check the Public Services Act.

Sounds like all trotters in the trough to me

Over the past couple of days, this thread has had me thinking. Alas, I've had difficulty putting my thoughts into words, and will probably fail dismally in that endeavour now. Still, I'll try.

The part that's had me thinking is the common (in this thread and elsewhere) denigration of the humble arts degree. The fact that universities in Australia turn out humanities graduates has been used as evidence of the failing of our system; arts graduates of all disciplines seem to be tarred with the brush of halfwits and idiots. Sadly, this is often the case.

From experience, I'd say an arts degree can be a very useful thing. Obviously, as an English teacher, it's been useful for me professionally; however, I think there are wider applications. An arts degree offers training in critical thinking, reasoning and problem-solving - skills that can certainly be picked up elsewhere, but aren't necessarily offered in too many other degrees. I found my studies in biotechnology intellectually stifling: there was no space for thinking or reasoning - it was merely rote learning of facts and a series of constant reminders that I was inferior to the people who knew better than me. My studies in arts presented the opposite.

The trouble is, it takes an intelligent person to apply these skills outside the university context. To compound this problem, so many places are offered in arts degrees (due to the commercialism so rightly condemned by Mitchell) that halfwits can quite easily gain access, scrape through on the mantra that 'Ps get degrees' and achieve nothing. The right person can do the right thing with the right degree. Unfortunately, our universities do little (and can do little, with centralised admissions centres) to find the right people. The wrong person with the wrong degree is an enormous waste of taxes.

Mitchell that's a fail old boy, couldn't be more wrong actually.

My grandfather on my fathers side came out as aide-d-camp with a governor general.

My mad aunt traced mums lineage back to a naval officer at Trafalgar, but then she did write fantasy, so I'll take that with a grain of salt. However, it is straight English, all the way, not that I consider that any recommendation.

Straight protestant, until the last couple of generations, where any type of religion was simply ignored. I have never been able to see how anyone could believe any of it.

Pillar of society, wore the kings uniform with pride once, but retirement, time to research, & the net has opened my eyes.

Unfortunately I found folk with unjustifiable egos like you, & I'll bet you are a warmest.

From personal experience, I think the major problem with creeping credentialism is one of focus.
I have been doing external courses for several decades now, in various fields from IT, business studies, accountancy, horticulture, 'advanced' (hands on) engineering, etc. Once the the attitude was “you're here to learn something. If you do, you'll get a certificate to prove it”.
In the last few years the attitude appears to have changed to: “you're here to get a certificate. Who knows, you might learn something while you're doing it.”
RTO's appear to be the worst offenders. As private corporations contracting to the gummint, they are totally focussed on pumping out as many graduates as possible, for obvious reasons.
Vibrant Capitalism relies almost as much on failure, as it does competition. It is after all, 'the fish so and so rejects...”
When PC extends to the point where no one fails, or success depends on merely showing up, we may as well call a spade a bloody great shovel.
We don't have an education system. We have a certificate system.

Thing is Mitch, what's not said/responded speaks volumes - a clayton's admission (cue for once gone before).

Like that infallible hunk of meat once sang, 2 out of 3 ain't bad :)

Oto and Grim - well said!

Yabby,
so are you saying you want Australia's universities privatised? I don't approve of high salaries either but universities have to compete with the rest of the world for high-profile academics--it's not an Australian problem--and the salaries are nothing to the private sector, which lacks the kudos--and by the way philosophy departments in the UK have been targeted for a few years now and are dying by attrition. There's no longer anything to think about it seems; either it makes money or it's out. Do you really want a world dedicated to the bottom line and indifferent to culture, philosophy and politics? As if politics was answerable to nothing more than the exchequer. Politics is properly based on philosophy, not populism. The problem for me at the moment is that universities have been popularised; we're a wealthy country and university is open to anyone who wants a ticket, or diversion, almost regardless of merit, based on the improvement and employability and even faux-equality of the lowest common denominator. There was a time when higher learning was elitist and only open to the well-to-do, regardless of merit, whereas now it's open to everyone regardless of merit--the only rationale for the country being the international stakes, and the long-shot that if you throw enough money at a problem it will make money; the more insidious agenda being that the masses thereby make a psychosocial investment in the status quo.
I agree with your comments, Otokonoko; it's such a shame that the Arts are the soft-option for idlers--I suspect because the assessment is so subjective, or qualitative as they say--all part of the postmodern syndrome.
Hasbeen,
I don't pretend to have a crystal ball; you just remind me of my father-in-law and it was him I was describing.
Grim, astute as always.
I think we all agree there are huge problems with life-long learning and idle hands. For what it's worth, I still keep my hand in with various practical skills. A good book to read is Richard Sennett's "The New Culture of Capitalism".

*but universities have to compete with the rest of the world for high-profile academics*

Err hang on there. Before worrying about "high profile", what say
universities start with the basics, like training enough doctors,
dentists, engineers and all the rest, for society's requirements.

My point again, if we have to steal them from Nigeria and Bangaladesh,
our education system is clearly flawed and hardly doing its job.

There are far more applications to study medicine then are ever
accepted, so clearly not just anyone can apply.

Perhaps that is the case with philosophy, but then philosophy is
hardly important in comparison to things like medicine or dentistry
etc.

Much as that might upset you, country towns can survive quite well
without hiring philosophers, but don't do so well, without a doctor.

These days, even the tiniest hick towns have computers.
Bertrand Russell and A.N. White both classed themselves as philosophers. Without their work on logic, computer science could not have happened -at least, not in the form it has.
Maybe the majority of philosophy students are just place holders, but that could be said of the vast majority of us, in every pursuit.

Reading through Brian's article and the majority of the comment posts it is clear to me that the BIGGER part of the problem is not the universities but AUSTRALIAN EMPLOYERS.

Australian workplaces are bad at training and worse at team-building. Our industries scream about being badly serviced by education while shoving their heads deeper down in the sand, shirking both cost and responsibility.

Universities and schools have never been there to provide workers as "simply plug-in and go" modules. Their purpose, and this is increasingly under threat, has been to create an interest in the range of knowledge fields our societies and people require to thrive. Universities *should* go even further in training those whose strengths are academic and who will generate new knowledge. That role is also under threat.

To keep universities focused on knowledge we need to move all the vocational stuff (accounting, medicine, nursing, IT, etc.) to institutes. They should also be funded differently and have a different fee structure. That is the model they have in The Netherlands etc., but the prestige that word "university" has here means it won't happen. But then, as that word looses its prestige through massification, an anti-intellectual Australia couldn't give a stuff.

They dance on the ashes that portend their own doom,
while everywhere else knowledge economies dawn.