Oh Odyseus, I missed 'dummed' down. How dumb of me.

Now for the content of your message: standards are falling because you say so (and demonstrate it). Can you provide some hard evidence as disticnt from your personal feelings? In the good old days, my university teachers demanded I base all my claims on public evidence. Was that not the case with your PhD supervisors too? So let's have the evidence.

Compare the 1939 Honours papers at UQ with those now.... in all subjects. I have a set at home. Apply a stats analysis and get a high p value....we need evidence...
Examine and teach medical students for 25 years.... experience does not always have a p value. However, patients are happy to pay more to see a more experienced practitioner.
The bar has been lowered. Ask any academic.
This is a forum. Not an inquisition.
Even evidence-based medicine has definite blind spots too. Negative studies are rare and many university studies are sponsored with drug company money...but I am getting off the point.

The standard has fallen...The overseas student market will reflect this as it discussed on 4 Corners.

This statement from PROF. ALLAN LUKE within the 4Corners program was interesting:

"Many of the Asian universities are cashing up and building their infrastructure so that within 10 to 15 years they'll in effect be able to place themselves in the top tier of world-class universities. Singapore has never made any kind of international secret about this. Tsinghua, Fudan in China and some of the Japanese universities are also positioning themselves, busy repositioning and redefining themselves. I mean, right now it may appear to government and others that it's salad days, because of the multi billion dollars of revenue that's coming in from the overseas student market. If you lose the core business, and the heart of the operation, in that process, ultimately you're going to go into decline and you're going to be supplanted by universities with better infrastructure and who have a stronger and more clear intellectual visions."
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2005/s1401933.htm

The writing is on the wall. In other words, we may regain some ground with standards but at the end of the day the market will determine standards, not spelling, not traditional western notions of academic rigor. In 10 to 15 years many of our own domestic students will be looking at non-Australian universities. Theses universities will have the fiscal capacity to provide the teaching and learning environments and intellectual vision that promises to deliver the types of careers our own students aspire to acquire. These programs will be delivered by the best academics from all around the world. They will be attracted by higher wages and a less managerialist approach to teaching and learning, research and innovation. The death of our own universities will be because we will simply invest too little too late.