"Childs is not a consumer. No student - none of us - can buy knowledge"

Ahh, but the student is a consumer but he is not buying knowledge - he is buying the exposure to knowledge and it is up to the student to insure the knowledge is firmly implanted in his brain.

A penetrating, timely and moving article, Tara. Many thanks.

You can't buy knowledge eh?

No, you can't. But you can buy a piece of paper that says you had the patience to attend, complied with the directives of academics and thereby received the appropriate ticks in the boxes to be accepted into a profession.

I went to university once, for three whole weeks of a 4 year course. What a joke! It was just like the way this woman writes - all flowers and fluff and touchy-feely nonsense. I should have been lecturing to them. I certainly knew more about the subject than they did.

If someone is truly seeking knowledge, they shouldn't waste their time in universities, they can just go out and learn for themselves. Then go off and get the job done as I did and have never looked back.

"Getting a university education is not like grocery shopping" - WTF! - see what I mean? I could have wasted 4 years of my life learning to come up with little gems just like that. Thank goodness I didn't.

I lived in "the real world" for 46 years and got a good education in life. I have been full-time at uni for the last 6 years and have now an extended education, one that has benefitted hugely from my previous education.

There is a place for all kinds of education. I am glad that I have had the opportunity to gain a university education that was not even considered when I was young. Coming from a working class background, university was considered to be about as possible as it was to touch the stars.

Of course a person who has been to university for 4 weeks is a complete authority on universities.

Where do you think our engineers, scientists, researchers come from? Where do you think much of Australia's cutting edge research is done? (Certainly not in private industry which has the one of the lowest rates of R & D in OECD).

No wonder our best and brightest are going overseas, with hordes of idiots ready to piss all over their effort,profession and education.

I recall a radio interview a few years ago with the then-Minister Brendan Nelson when a caller asked Nelson why the caller's 18 year old son should go to University.

The caller's suggestion was that his son would come out of University with a $40,000 HECS debt. He may meet a girl at Uni and marry her, resulting in a combined HECS debt of about $80,000.

When, he asked, will his son ever be able to save enough for a house deposit or start a family with a debt like that, particularly when he could end up on the unemployment scrap-heap at 45 like he (the caller) was.
Nelson could offer no convincing argument to the caller beyond the usual platitudes.

The next caller - an employer - suggested that his son complete his course and take his qualifications overseas.

His argument was that since the country was not prepared to invest in educating it's own youth and because fees were paid to obtain this education, the result of the education was the sole property of the student and not the community.

Thus there was NO MORAL OBLIGATION for a qualified student to invest his-or-her skills back into the country.

Education - particularly higher education - is now a saleable commodity to be traded on the open market.

Just as the "skills crisis" is providing jobs here for overseas workers there are opportunities to export our talents overseas.

We should not be surprised that it's a 2-way street.

When China starts enrolling overseas students in their proposed super-Universities, it will be at the expense of our own Universities. No doubt the locals will be expected to bear the ever-increasing cost of the shortfall in available funds. One day it may be cheaper for Australians to travel overseas for their higher education needs.