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!