Ah Harry, I'm feeling nostalgic.

Can it be so long since I watched you on the TV Science School as a youngster? Sumner-Miller was my favourite, but you already knew that:

“He who is not stirred by the beauty of it is already dead!”

* * *

In happier days, I was granted a course at university at the age of 40. We conducted our lab experiments into the night, until we were thrown out by the caretaker.

I came away with a new life, a new future, a whole new way of seeing the world.

Cost = $2000. Benefit = PRICELESS.

* * *

Now the Money Sniffers rule. The brain damage caused by Money Sniffing is worse than glue and petrol sniffing. It has reached plague proportions amongst those of us who cannot find gainful employment in some sort of utilitarian vocation. See them shamble aimlessly around in their suits, looking for their next fix.

Now there's a subject worthy of academic study.

If we are moving to mediocrity in universities, some of the causes might be:

-Full fee paying places for students who would not otherwise gain a place on merit.

-The economic rationalist shift to seeing universities as businesses, rather than educational institutions.

-The push for universities to get sponsorship from industry for research, which skews and distorts the research focus.

-The focus on selling education services to other countries at the expense of educating Australians.

-The demonising of academics - who would want to be an academic if you're frequently berated by politicians and the community.

The sooner we move back to focusing on education for its own sake, in the domestic market, and research for the benefit of Australia rather then narrow private interests, the sooner you will see standards rise again.

Dear Harry,

Your article is short and to the point. I agree with all you've said, and more.

I was a student at high school (in the 60's and 70's). I shunned the football and surfing, that was the ethos at my high school, and spent my summers studying for a Commonwealth Scholarship (so that I could get to University). In fact, one memorable holiday period was spent at your Dept (Physics at the Uni of Sydney)!

I gained that scholarship, only to be utterly disappointed at the lack of employment prospects when I graduated. I trained as an electical engineer and found that most of the work available was as a technician.

Sadly this state of affairs has only deteriorated. I remember that in the mid 1980's we actually designed, and built, in Australia (yes, nearly all of the components too, including the semiconductors) a laptop PC ! As evidence of our deterioration in technology, this would not be possible today.

Why is this? Simply because we do not educate people well enough. Ours is a football/beer/reality TV culture !! The tall poppy syndrome is simply an expression of the churlish envy of those who wish to use their brains to achieve.

Pretty simple, aint it? If we educate the population then we might have a more sustainable economy (when we've dug it all out of the ground)! ... Then McDonalds will have to employ migrant workers (oops they're already doing that aren't they?)

None of your assertions are backed up by any research.

Ironic, isn't it?

My personal experience and observation bears out what Messel is saying. Having taken considerable time over my university career (working in the real world in between) I completed a Bachelor's degree in 1973, Master's in 1984 and Doctorate in 1999; all in science/engineering and all at reputable universities. It is apparent to me in retrospect that the degree which was of greatest value at the time was the first. The immutable law of supply and demand - with degree factories churning out more supply - has led to massive devaluation of degrees. In 1973 I had a guaranteed ticket to a worthwhile job, today even PhDs are driving taxis! Fortunately my experience gained in the 70s and 80s keeps me in demand.

"turning out an ever increasing number of undisciplined, irresponsible, greedy, often near-illiterate, lawless individuals who don't give a tinker's curse for the country, their mates or anyone else."

Gotta love that young people bashing. It's good to see that the policies of yesterday have made people like me turn out like this.

Yeah, I've got to say, I went to a university that was still finding it's feet - it was early days, and the lecturers were keen to help their students into work and prove the worth of their courses. I found full time work in a competitive field while still studying university full time (and putting those two together wasn't easy, let me tell you).

I can't envision getting the level of attention and assistance I received in a larger class. I've since learned that the course I was in is booming and has much larger class sizes.

Sigh.

And skeptic... okay, so there may not be research, but I would argue that more students clearly = less attention for the individual. It is all well and good to be skeptical, but are you agreeing or disagreeing with the thrust of the article?

Oh dear.

Harry, I have had only a few years less than you in higher education, and in the US and the UK as well as Australia. Most of what you say is hyperbolic rubbish. If we put more money into the universities we would have smaller classes. Schools and universities cannot undo bad parenting or nil parenting. They can only deal with what they get. It's a miracle, really, that so many good people come out at the end. Given the veil of ignorance (you don't know who your parents are going to be, etc) would you rather be 21 now or in 1950? Only 2 per cent were going to university in 1950, and the odds are 50 to 1 that you wouldn't have been one of them. The last fifty years have been extraordinaryily good for the great majority, and education has been one of the principal causes. Stop bucketing it, for goodness' sake.

Our education system makes no sense. Quality primary and secondary education for all should be a priority and universities should be unashamedly elitist, from an academic point of view. Scholarships should be available to level the playing field for students who need financial help. As far as I can see many degrees today are of no value as they do not indicated either a high level of ability or achievement. Having met recent teaching graduates you can see the problem clearly - they will tell of ridiculously long assignments and 'research' projects which they were told were not going to be read or marked, but which were course requirements. I cannot see what the benefit of mass tertiary education is, if it is of such poor quality. It is a huge waste of money and puts so many young people heavily into debt. I wonder if any have considered suing for having to pay for a rubbish product?

I'm not an American basher, in fact I've rarely met an American I didn't like. But unfortunately it seems we're going down their educational route: public high school education that is so poor students need a university education just to reach employable levels of literacy. Paying more and more for this education also has the neat effect of creating a billion dollar market, which will be pushed relentlessly and further expanded by 'corporatised' universities.

It's sad that our eductional elite always look to America rather than education systems in Europe and Asia which produce better results for the majority of their population.

As an adherent of general conspiracy theory held by J. M. Keynes and outlined in the closing pages of his book General Theory..., I observe that it is very much in tne favour of private elites that there be mass education so that the same elites refine their methods of power while 99.50 per cent of students believe that power only exists as relatively distributed between the Coalition and the A.L.P. Having spent five years studying political science, history and sociology at one of Australia's best universities, I saw how shallow the teaching was in these areas at the expense of contemporary society's own self knowledge, while the first priority of the men and women in suits - the servants of this nation's private elites - was indeed to stack subject units with 500 to 1000 students and most departmental and faculty offices were at least half-staffed by graduates unable to obtain a placement elsewhere. The most important notion which needs to obtain traction in this country is the general fore-knowledge that the best form of education is the institution of the State Library which has the capability of carrying the self-taught into every realm of learning without the heartbreak of essay deadlines or the temptations of junkfood that most campuses seem to regard as obligatory to student life. After all, in the university situation, what happened to the 'brown paper bag' lunches whence lecturers used to discuss the ramifications of the material espoused in the lecture halls with students on university lawns? In the ignorant generality of contemporary Australian life, both tertiary staff and students have turned into foodie foodies rather than constructive/decontructive thought foodies and university has become an ego trip without real professions at courses ends.

Dear Harry, you can buy and sell me so far as intellect and academic distinction are concerned, but you are missing an important issue. The answer to the problems that beset our sorry world is education. I certainly agree that there is an intellectual elite which should be encouraged to highest endeavour. But below the top 10% of superb intellects are the next 50-70% of ordinary citizens who could profit from higher education. Exposure to literature, languages, theologies, societies, economies, pedagogies, etc, with encouragement to think critically about these are desperately required. I have 4 uni degrees, taught for 17 years at what you would regard as a "second-rung" institution and then 8 years at what you would have to concede is Australia's best, and I still yearn for more wisdom. Okay, let us keep the sharp edge, but let us also give the majority of us a chance to sharpen our wits.

Here's a bit of food for thought... Sydney uni offers a few dozen different art degrees, each one designed to capture a certain market. My one was created three years ago, and will be discontinued next year. Its casualty rate is higher than at the Somme. Not one student in the course pays full fees.

I think full-fee paying students are creating a demand for quality above all else, because those students generally opt into the most difficult courses, and avoid the ones based around selling. All the full-fee paying students I know are doing law or medicine, and are highly driven, well-rounded, and intelligent students who more often than not didn't get into their courses because they did so much co-curricular at school. Such students pick for quality alone, so that must be an improvement.

HECS students, on the other hand, like myself, are more willing to take the rubbish because we're paying less. If I were forking out 16 instead of 4 thousand a year, then I wouldn't take the bureaucracy, shoddy tutors, dodgy 1st year courses and nonesense degree titles.

I like the entry of Notre Dame and Bond into the system. Bond's 3 semester a year, 2 year arts degree is a welcome change to waffly 4 year Ba Arts(enter meaningless qualifier here) that you'll find in Sydney. ND seem to have taken a position between Bond and the Public universities... trying to offer degrees of lower cost, with more emphasis on ethics, yet more direct title. If ND would import their architecture course from their Indiana Campus, generally reknowned as one of the best traditional courses, it would be a welcome change to all the modernist trash that all the other universities get away with. Of the public universities, I find ANU to be the most straight-forward, possibly due to its position as our gateway to Asia.

Everything that AMSADL said was causing the decline of the university system is a step in the right direction. The rot began in 68'.

Well said Harry.I can still remember reading your blue science book in junior high school.We were also blessed with some good teachers then who mastered the art of story telling and had their science classes spellbound,whilst revealing to us the theories and laws of nature.

They stopped using your blue science book in the 70's because it was considered too academic.Apparently the bar needed lowering so people could just step over it.

Could there be too many invertebrates in our Education system who don't want to evolve beyond the comfort zones of their mediocrity?

Jeepers creepers Harry, you wrote -
"Australia must seriously question whether it should continue to spend a couple of thousand million dollars a year on a school system which appears to be turning out an ever increasing number of undisciplined, irresponsible, greedy, often near-illiterate, lawless individuals who don't give a tinker's curse for the country, their mates or anyone else."

sounds like the grumpy old man curse has finally caught up to you..

Remember, professors said similar things about you and you own age group back in your school days..

Rainer,you're following me around a like bad smell.Is there a nagging inferiority complex haunting you,now that you have realised that weak kneed lefty idealism of the last three decades have been an abysmal failure?

We have students with degrees who can't spell or construct sentences properly.I'm from the old school,not too bright,but a product of discipline and perseverance.I seem to have a greater grasp on reality than all than the modern trendy PHDs could muster in a a life time. Where does that leave you rainer on the richter scale of incompetence?

Arjay, anytime you'd like to come in and give my first year students a lecture on how to develop shock-jock perspectives from those 1960's Readers Digests you've read to death or from those old One Nation newsletters from the late 90's you covert as sacred texts- let me know. They need to be exposed to all sorts, even you.

Harry,

the situation is particularly bad in Asia, where I have seen the sweetheart commercial deals between Australian educators and private providers:

As you would know a typical semester course will run 12-14 weeks. In Singapore, students who can't matriculate into local universities go to commercial unicentres and readily gain entry into Australia (UK and some US) degree programmes. Here, there are what are called double-modules, wherein, the students can study say two subjects, say, both Philosophy and Psychology,in the same cass, from two different universities [!], in only ten weeks [NOT 24-26 WEEKS]. The marking is toned-down, to allow these marginal students pass. Skills-based IT subjects, requiring 15:1 student teaching ratios are delivered using ratios of 70:1!

In Hong Kong, I was invited to attend an address by the (past?) President of an Open University. I suggested, at question time, Masters degree should not be achieved by just adding-on extra non-incremental subjects [rather, should be harder real post-grad. sujects],and, that the Higher Education and Continuing Education need be considered together and pointed-out [as has been before]to have have 60% of your population with a university degree, statistically means a large minority of students with an IQ of less than 100 must be able to pass the examinations. Is this really Higher Ed? the HK uni's response? The question time MC (a business dean or VC? of the host university) became agitated and turned the question away to let the guest President of the hook.

Likewise, I wasn't very popular with phooney educators at the WTO in Hong Kong. I only had one friend, a guy, who headed a European professors institute.

Nelson and Dawkins have pretty much ruined how Education system. Nelson didn'e listen and Dawkins didn't understand the difference between a university and a car manufacturer.

Lastly, the universities should be rationalised and its administration centralised, like the Bank. More campuses and centralised record keeping. It would save millions in salaries to VCs and execs, and elmininate unnecessary duplicated adminstrative roles.

Don Aitkin,

1. If more than say twenty percent of the population can handle university curricula, it might be Continuing Education (which is good in itself), but it is not Higher Education.

2. Before we look at full/high fee paying, as a funding option, we need fewer (10 not 40) universities, less clerical administration (centralise it). If universities want to be commercial, these institutions, need to be run efficiently internally on a corporate basis, sor far as infrastructure is concerned. Bear in mind few VCs and deans have real world business experience.

All,

3. On the teaching front academic could do with a short course (six months) on andragogy, delivery and assessment. Some are very poor communicators compared to sat (trained) TAFE teachers.

4. Educators need to look beyond seeing themselves as mere rationers of degrees, and seeing themselves as partners with students and industry in growing knowledge. Theory and practice need to interact. We were better at the latter with the Academies of the 17-18th centuries. Specialisation can be good, but dichotomy arresting.

Harry,

Are you going to engage your audience?

I agree.

By tending to mediocrity in universities, it becomes harder to distinguish the cream from the others.

Thus the cream of talent, unless they are in a heavily regulated industry like say medicine, may enter the workforce and thus never be sorted out. The regard for one's overall commercial value
overwhelms the regards for his/her specialised talents. The specialised talents then are not utilised ot the optimum.