Unfortunately declining academic standards have been the norm since education bureaucracies started experimenting with Outcomes Based approaches to education in schools. In WA the drift away from a strict knowledge based approach commenced in the 1970's and slowly developed until Outcomes Based Education (OBE) became commonplace in the early 1990's and formally adopted in Legislation in 1997.

Because OBE renames objectives as "outcomes" and in doing so adds social and behavioural characteristics to the traditional academic emphasis, it is possible to get a high "outcome score" without having achieved anything much in the way of academic knowledge and performance. By removing a syllabus and permitting teachers themselves to design what knowledge, skill and understandings they use as the basis of their curriculum OBE basically guarantees that academic standards will decline over time.

What Peter Abelson has reported is simply what could have been prepicted had we fully understood what OBE was at the time it was introduced in Australia. In WA we now have students in High School who have had all of their educational experience through OBE. And now the Government is committed to the introduction of OBE in years 11 & 12.

Until parents fully appreciate the harm OBE is causing and push for a return to a syllabus knowledge based approach to education, we will continue to see a decline in stands in our schools and universities.

Peter, your comments echo those from university teaching friends over several years, as to the lack of commitment and effort among many students and a failure to grasp what was required of them. In some cases students who had entered university through "equity" programs for the disadvantaged were just unable to cope, their experience set them back rather than helping them.

Conversely, my children have all done/are doing well at leading unis (Melbourne and Queensland), as are their peer groups. The problem seems to be the emphasis on expansion of student numbers to a point where many are not able to benefit from a university education. It's not surprising that enrolments have begun to fall, particularly in second tier universities, as marginal students realise that they will not benefit from tertiary education.

The ALP's Craig Emerson promotes further expansion of tertiary student numbers as a prerequisite for growth in an innovative "knowledge-based" economy. That's not correct, it's the top students/researchers/engineers etc who drive innovation, extending numbers of middle-rankers will just increase the number of people not making use of their formal education.

People want to study so they can earn a decent wage, people deserve a decent wage. You and your 'standards' can sod off.

Faustino, Have you considered the standard of teaching at McQuarie may be the problem and Peter may be part of that, if your children are doing well in other uni's perhaps it is a standards problem with teaching staff, or shouldn't we consider that option?

Shonga, I've heard similar tales from staff at UQ, QUT & Griffith - I think it's widespread. Strayan, I think that many people will find/have found that they reach a point of diminshing returns, that they'd be better off financially both in the short term and over their working life without four years tertiary study. It's not just in Australia, in a number of countries it's been found that when a small proportion of the population went to university, they gained a significant financial advantage. As the proportion expands, the rewards for a degree fall, employers learn the value of different degrees from different universities, unless you're really interested and likely to do well, it may not be worthwhile. How much benefit are the repeatedly-failing students mentioned by Philip getting from being at uni?

Shonga / Faustino,

I do agree that these are worrying trends. They are very widespread, and I personlly feel that these statistics demonstrate the underlying cause of the declining standards in the professions. Students are being assessed at a lower overall rate than they used to be assessed, because universities wish to retain and attract higher numbers of students. Students that fail their first year DO NOT return, therefore failure costs the Universities.

perhaps this is the result of continued financial pressure on Universities to be self-funding?

The other major cause of failure would obviously be connected to the declining standards of literacy and numeracy in our primary and secondary education system. People have been able to advance to tertiary education, despite being borderline illiterate / innumerate, because schools are assessed upon pass rates. These students could not be expected to competently read, understand and utilise the advanced concepts they are learning if they struggle to maintain secondary school levels of competence.

However, until the business orientated Universities and Schools are assessed upon something other than their ability to churn out huge numbers of purportedly qualified graduates, the decline will not be arrested. Universities and Schools should be assessed (KPI) oly upon the quality of the education they provide, not the quanitity of people they supposedly educate.

I would suggest Peter's comments earn an emphasis in the primary and secondary sectors of the education spectrum in addition to tertiary.

I query whether people actually require a journalism degree or any degree for that matter, in order to be a journalist for reasons pertaining to standards and relevance.

I undertook an education degree and with a weekly class quota of eight hours class time per week spent 75% of my time waiting to qualify. I could have had a career in half that time and cost with TAFE or private college.

I witnessed an overwhelming lack of language skills in class, eventually providing my own proofreading service which did really well.

I found the content of my degree had very little or absolutely no application in the classroom when I ended up there. In addition, I found that the syllabus had changed vastly since I was at primary school and for the worse. No phonics, no aural dictation, reading was expected to be done at home - language subjects garnered a massive three hours per week maximum. Crap. And it showed in the students' mid year exam results. Yes, year 5s have exams now. Ugh.

The above reasons are short and may appear flippant but hopefully will convey the idea that uni for me was expensive, undeservedly time consuming, scholastically painful and ultimately pointless.

I want to write. The premise that I attend a university to get a journalism degree has been pressed upon me but with very little justification. Approaching several media organisations, I have spoken to editors who have, on the whole, expressed their disdain for university courses and prefer those who have no journalism background at all. I have found two colleges that have impressed me immensely and, in truth, I would probably attend one of those as opposed to a university. But I can't help but have the feeling as to whether such attendance is really necessary.

So I ask this burning question. In light of the comments expressed in this article, is there any reason why a journalist should attend university at all?

Zealot, I studied economics but was a journalist for a while (UK newspapers, Canadian commercial radio). I left the field because I found it too dishonest.

One of my daughters is interested in journalism, I strongly advised her against doing a journo degree, she opted for dual degree arts/science with some journalism courses. She's dropping journo after one year - not because of lack of interest, but because the content is so weak compared to her other courses, she's not interested in doing Mickey Mouse courses along with serious courses.

So, no, you don't need a degree for journalism, unless you want to specialise as, say, a science writer and take a science degree.

I have to agree with Peter, standards are declining. In hospitality and tourist, we hire a lot of part time workers. Most of those over our summer tourist season, so they are mainly uni and tafe students.

As can be see on this forum, literacy is very bad. Most of the kids we hire can't add up or spell very well. Without a calculator they are hopeless and it is very dificult to read their orders or reports. This has resulted in us last year not hiring anyone that couldn't pass a simple addition and spelling test. Over a 3 week period of hiring, where we interviewed 126 people for 7 jobs, only 9 were able to pass our test. Of those 9, 6 had no tertiary education.

We had one young lady doing law who tried to take us to the anti discrimination board for making her take the test. Upon being asked, we supplied our test to the board, as well as her results. We never heard another thing.

This year we had only 5 positions to fill for the season and unlike other times where we just asked people to ring up and make an appointment, we asked for hand written applications. Of the 50 or so that we recieved, less than 10 were readable. The rest made no sense. Of those 10, we subsequently discovered that 6 had been written by others, the other 4 were from those with no qualifications nor much education and they were hired.

It won't be long before this society will stop, because the vast majority of people with uni qualificatiosn will be illiterate. Not a nice thought, but a growing reality

Zealot,

I had the same experience while doing a Bachelor of Teaching 4 years ago. Every lecture was just some sort of broken record repeating the latest educational buzz words over and over - 'child-centred', 'constructivist', 'student-directed' etc, etc.

They basically just said to us - let the children teach themselves. The good thing about that theory, for them, was it meant they didn't have to teach us anything (because the kids were going to teach themselves anyway, so teachers didn't need to know how to teach).

And teachers wonder why the status of the profession is in deline.

Let's not forget the other buzzword "pedagogy"!

My undergrad course was a little more structured, just took too long to do. Like nursing, I fail to see where a three/four year degree gets you other than your registration. I don't understand why teaching was yanked from teachers' college and I fail to fathom why nursing was wrenched from the hospital. Friggin' beaurocrats aligning elitist thoughts with professions they don't understand.

Teachers don't wonder why the status of their profession ranks poorly, only the universities do. Don't get me wrong: I had a ball in the classroom. I presented my mediocre overview at the start of the year then did my own thing which meant a language and numeracy rich programme for the year. A staunch non believer when it comes to ADD/ADHD, my highlight in my years as a govt waged teacher was weaning kids off prescription drugs, giving them an education and watching their success.

In the end, I just got tired of fighting with do-gooders, the politically correct and uptight parents, particularly the hardline religious who wanted their children taught in "God's way". Don't get me started on that one....

In recent times I have been co-ordinating homeschooling programmes and teach English to those who come to Australia seeking a better life. But in my search for avenues to get into journalism I'm fast realising that I'm better off where I started: with a year 10 education ;)

The Alchemist - normally I would restrain my pedantic instincts but since you complain about declining standards I'll bring up a few (and I do acknowledge that they are quite minor) mistakes of your own:
- "hospitality and tourism" not "hospitality and tourist";
- "be seen on this forum" not "be see on this forum";
- "anyone who" not "anyone that";
- "qualifications" not "qualificatiosn";
- "received" not "recieved"; and
- "difficult" not "dificult".

Would you employ someone who made 6 mistakes in 5 paragraphs? Now you seem like a person with much common sense - I'd employ you even with these errors.

I do agree that literacy and numeracy standards appear to be declining, but contrast this with the very low standards a few hundred years ago when a great many people could not read or write at all.

Peter, perhaps one of the reasons that your students are failing (and not spending enough time studying) is that they are working 30 or 40 hours a week in part time jobs in order to eat and pay rent (oh yes, and perhaps buy textbooks and photocopying cards etc and a very few might even be paying their HECS fees in advance). In the Netherlands (Holland) my cousins as students were paid a reasonable amount by the government to study for up to 5 years but if they failed a subject they had to pay the money back (concentrates the mind wonderfully!).

Our Government does not, in my opinion, sufficiently support students to study.