In "Uncapped university" Andee Jones (8 July 2013) writes:"Last year I enrolled in Masters-level courses ... academic equivalent of a chockers London Underground lift...". But which university and which masters course was this? My recent experience as a masters student was not like that, with small face-to-face classes and good on-line programs: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/08/tertiary-teaching-for-research-led.html

Universities, at least the ones I have attended recently (ANU and USQ) and the institutions I teach at (ANU and ACS CPEP), are very sensitive to comments from students. Students can complain to the university and government regulators. If you are unhappy with your course, then raise it with the internal university feedback processes, complain to the government regulator, and/or blog it.

If classrooms are grossly overcrowded, this may be a fire hazard which is a matter for local government authorities, who can order the building, or the whole campus, closed. When I have raised safety problems at a university, these have been quickly addressed. It helps if the VC's staff are reading your blog. ;-).

Another avenue for complaint is professional associations which accredit university courses. Universities are very keen to retain accreditation.

Also if you are unhappy with Australian universities, you can take your business elsewhere. There are other forms of education in Australia, such as Registered Training Organizations (RTOs). The RTOs have expanded beyond traditional trade courses. Recently I went through the certification process to teach in RTOs.

In addition there are smaller boutique programs connected to universities. I teach a course in the Australian Computer Society Computer Professional Education Program (ACS CPEP). The classes typically have twelve to twenty four students and the program is articulated to some university masters programs: http://www.acs.org.au/professional-development/cpe-program

Ultimately, if you are not happy with Australian education, there are on-line university programs available from around the world. At the moment I am looking at doing the Masters in Learning Innovation by Distance Learning at University of Leicester : http://www2.le.ac.uk/study/postgrad/distance/education/innovation

I am amazed ... I was right!! Philosophy IS being devalued in universities (some anyway). About 12 years ago, I noticed a lot of the 'thinking' units were being discontinued, and Philosophy was one. However, because Philosophy is still required in some degrees (Legal springs to mind) certain units were left in the course (Philosophy of the Enlightenment). I was 'outsourced' from my university to OpenLearning university and consequently I am finishing my degree On-line through Macquarie University.

If you want to control people, do not teach them to think. I can still study some Philosophers, but my learning is limited. It's like having a huge box of toys but only being allowed to play with certain toys. I love to learn, and I have just learned there are more ways than one to skin a cat :)

The notion of physically fronting up in an 'airless closet' -- or anywhere else -- so that you can snap up the pearls of wisdom issuing from a lecturer's lips is very twentieth-century. An increasing number of universities are moving their courses on to the web, and an increasing number of students are finding that they can do most or all of their work from home. One day your grandchildren may marvel at the fact that you were actually expected to leave your bedroom in order to get an education.

I find it really funny that the tertiary educated caste who are supposed to be oh, so rooly, rooly smart, and who are the prime advocates for Socialism, and letting anybody who can find a boat just walk into Australia with their hand out, are now screaming because their government is short of funds.

Instead of whining about class sizes, ask themselves why there are so many foreign students taking up space in Australian universities? It may have made sense from a foreign aid point of view, fifty years ago, for Australia to get brownie points from their still broke but economically growing Asian neighbours, to allow some Asian students to study in Australia. But all of these countries are now wealthy enough to have their own universities, and they do have them. Why are these people now flocking into our country and displacing our own?

It seems odd that we now allow so many Asians into Australian universities so that the Asians can continue to become more educated than Australians and eventually lead us scientifically.

Stop the boats. The fantastic amount of money that we are squandering on illegal immigrants, and legal immigrants from dysfunctional cultures, can be better spent on educating our own people.

Educated people in Australia should be able to understand cause and effect. If we waste our money on foreigners and we screw our productive class to buy the votes of the unproductive class (too many of whom were born overseas) then sooner or later, we go broke. And if the sundry "Philosophy" departments can't figure that out, then they are useless and should be abolished.

Jon J. I can remember having a conversation with one of my lecturers about modernity and globalisation and he told me that one day not in the too far future, we, the students, would all be listening to our lectures over the internet, and all the students (in whatever country they were) of each unit would hear the same words. Gone would be individuality of lecturers. Now I am listening to my lectures over the Internet and my tutorials are also on the internet. There is no personal interaction. Sometimes the tutorial seems dull and boring for there is nothing personal happening. It is very easy to get side tracked and take the other students with you.

I hate to think of studying to think and understand but know that everyone else is seeing/hearing exactly the same thoughts and words. I am different and want to keep my difference.

tomw's puff reads like a PR handout, and are certainly not the views of ANU staff. Andee Jones is much closer to the truth, which, in fact is even worse. Just to cite a couple of other ways in which universities have been destroyed: most business courses do not include accounting, accounting courses often have no mathematics, some science degrees have no physics, and so on. Articles in history journals are usually pop sociology. And corrupting all is the not-to be- mentioned requirement to pass full fee paying foreign students with inadequate English.

Just how many more clapped out old buggers, [retirees] are there sucking the air out of these airless closet meant for kids, not hasbeens.

Comes a time Andee when you are supposed to get out of the way of the kids.

You have highlighted a real problem of course. Too many funded students, & too many academics, full or casual.

A further cut of 25% in university funding would get rid of this excess of mostly incompetent, clearing enough teaching space for the more useful subjects & students.

I suggest you all be very quiet or people might wake up, & demand some semblance of order be applied to a sector run way beyond anything of use to the nation.

Hasbeen how can you say learning (by retirees) is of no use to the nation? My parents couldn't afford to send me to university (in the 1960's)but now I can further my education. I have been in tutorials with young people who have been amazed that I actually saw Sputnik going across the sky or that I was able to dispute a lecturer's reasoning that oral sex dis-empowers women (I cited the Lorraine Bobbett story of years ago). That tutorial lasted many weeks and I was seen as a legend for being able to correct the lecturer/tutor. My age is of no consequence to the young people in fact I was accepted as one of them. The elderly have lived and see things in a different way, thus ensuring healthy and robust discussions. Online lectures and tutorials have taken away the humanness of the interaction.

Also, I was of the opinion that a certain amount of places are set aside for the mature aged and the disabled students. If this quota is not filled then the place is not funded. I also think it is healthy that o/seas students are allowed to study with us as, again, they have a lot to contribute. I am not sure but I think you are saying that education should only be for the Australian elite. Do you consider Philosophy a "useful subject" ? Are you having a lend of me or are your criticisms serious

One minute we are all being told that 'lifelong learning' is the way to go, the next that older students should shove off. Tertiary education is now regarded as essential for most jobs, but it has been dumbed down to the point of stupidity in some fields. If you enroll in Latin at Sydney University and actually did Latin for your HSC, you don't need to study or even attend classes for the first semester while the other students try to catch up - but you do have to pay to have your HSC Latin re-assessed as a university subject.

Universities seem so desperate to attract students and their dollars that standards have been abandoned. Tertiary education is getting more and more expensive yet look at the way doctors object when the government proposes a $2000 pa cap for taxpayer contribution to their ongoing training while they are earning high incomes, much of that also provided by the taxpayer via medicare.

As for the dud Masters course referred to in the article, there may be scope for pursuing the university for misrepresenting the course or failing to provide a course to an appropriate standard. I think this was done successfully with an MBA offered by a Melbourne university some years ago

Regrettably the authors of both the article and most of the comments are entirely missing the elephant in the lounge room. Looking at the 65 years since the immediate postwar period, university standards have collapsed while the cost has skyrocketed, a collapse and cost blowout which has accelerated since the John Dawkins “reforms” in the mid-seventies. Here are the main causes of the collapse and the huge cost increase:

1. The managerial revolution. Universities have taken on a massive, wasteful management superstructure. The proportion of the education budget dollar devoted to teaching and research (the actual function of universities) has slumped since the war from 92% to around 30-35%. About 8% is genuinely required for necessary administration. If 35% is spent on teaching and research (a generous estimate) that leaves nearly 60% wasted on management. Worse than wasted, because it’s counter-productive as the managers disrupt the real work. For how, read scientist Donald Meyers’ detailed description in his book Australian Universities: A Portrait of Decline, which can be downloaded buckshee at http://www.australianuniversities.id.au/ .

2. The corporate grab. The purpose of teaching and research is to create and pass on knowledge. Knowledge makes the difference between on the one hand an enlightened nation and world and on the other hand a collection of victims. Under corporate expectations this purpose has morphed into one of staff training and R&D, both the responsibility of the businesses that use staff and research products.

3. Fads. Dr Meyers presents an excellent discussion of the role of “educationalists” and pop sociologists, joined at the hip to managers and state education bureaucracies, in shirking person-to-person education and recognition of the responsibility of the learner to work at learning, resulting in grade inflation – a marker of university decline.

What contributes nothing is blaming hobbyhorses like the refugees, “socialism”, philosophy departments, old students, Asian students, etc. etc. and blah blah blah. They’re not part of the elephant.

Correction: The Dawkins attack on university education and research was not in the mid-seventies but in the late eighties during the reign on Hswke and Keating which saw a major attack on Australia's public sector which led its foreign beneficiaries to call Keating the world's greatest treasurer. The consequent blowout in university costs and collapse of educational standards is only a microcosm of the general sacrifice of public wealth and national economic sovereignty which on a world scale culminated in the Global Financial Heist.

Oh Worthy Emperor, your words ring true. Universities are largely vocational training institutions under the control of Corporations.

The powers that be don't want educated people. They are a threat to the capitalist system and the right of a few to have most of the wealth.

Better to have artisans who ply their trades rather than thinkers. The Rulers of the Universe want people to think philosophers are people who put petrol in their 4W drives!

Leslie, I recently undertook PR training for academic staff and so am delighted you think my comments read like "a PR handout". ;-)

More seriously, I feel under no pressure to pass full fee paying foreign students, or anyone else. I give students small writing tasks early in a course, so those with writing problems can be referred to a special unit at the university. This is very effective at improving the writing of both students who have English as a second language and also computer science students, who tend to be better at wiring code than prose.

You can read more about how I teach students in my new blog "The Higher Education Whisperer": http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/