"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.

I love a self made man Maximus - and you certainly sound like one - but like babies I could never eat a whole one.

where does the anti university nonesense come from that seems to infect a while bunch of posters?. I would not discount that which you do not understand - although maybe your 4 weeks was enough

what was the subject by the way? - and no doubt your leaving certainly taught them a thing or two I dare say. I can see your fellow students now turning around in bewilderment and talking to each other sotto voce' "where's Maximus?" they would say "has he really gone?" - "he knew so much"

I have spent 10 years in post secondary education in a variety of institutions - I bought some of the education - most of it was good, useful and it was instrumental in turning the sneekeman into the kind of person you see before you today! -

but it makes me no better than anyone else - equally not going to university does not make an individual any better than one who did.

Education ought not be a commodity - but like everything else it has been turned into one - health, looks, babies, freedom in some instances; It does not matter much where one gets it - as long as one does

G'day sneeky,

Education mate. I work on contract education programs in aviation. I'm not allowed to say any more.

And as for engineers, yeah, self taught there too. Just a hobby. I don't build big stuff like bridges or buildings, but I do get into a bit of R&D and pretty sophisticated stuff at that - I've built the odd racing car here and there over the years, with another one coming together right now. With a bit of tweaking, it should be a championship winning car in 2008.

You can't learn stuff like that at universities or TAFEs. The blokes who know, don't tell anybody else, they keep it all a closely guarded secret. You have to find out for yourself. And we're not talking pennies here either, these are both multi-billion dollar industries.

Contracts? What are is she thinking?

One of the great things about University is there is no pressure on you to do anything. No one checks if you turn up to lectures. No one comments if you don't submit an assignment. Tutorials are strictly optional. Some exams are open book, and others are on a "only counts if they improve your mark" basis. Your parents don't have a clue as to what you should be doing. The temptations are everywhere - free sporting facilities, lots of young bodies who are looking, and plenty of pubs and clubs to meet them in.

There are only two types that survive the journey to a tertiary degree - those find the subject matter more interesting than the temptations, and those with strong self discipline. An employer is guaranteed a successful graduate will have at least one of those attributes, if he is lucky both.

Ms Brabazon appears to think the most important thing a person comes out of Uni with is the knowledge of how to do the job. The reality is a graduate engineer is no more qualified to do engineering than a 'P' plate driver is qualified to drive. What you can be reasonably sure of is that unlike their peers that didn't make the distance, they do have the interest, drive and aptitude to complete the journey. Pity we don't have a test like that for driving.

Deep inside the candy-floss language and twee metaphor there is a serious subject scratching at the cat-flap.

The author states it with some confidence. "[The graduate] is not a consumer. No student - none of us - can buy knowledge"

The rebuttal to this has already been made, that universities offer only the opportunity to acquire knowledge, and for this opportunity they ask for cash. So the student is indeed the consumer, just as I can consume golf lessons, or kung-fu classes. The fact that I don't turn into Tiger Woods or Bruce Lee is not the fault of the product.

We have decided, as a society, that education needs to be paid for. Whether this is a good or a bad thing only history will tell (I think it is a disaster, by the way), but it is a fact of life.

As rache points out, one of the results of commercializing education is that the product belongs entirely to the purchaser; if it had been provided by the taxpayer, there would be at least a moral argument for the product to be used within the community.

Commercialization has also had the effect of increasing supply, as more "providers" look for revenue from the degree market. This has given rise to degrees in media studies, cultural studies, even "General Studies", for which, it would appear, people are prepared to pay simply to achieve Bachelor status.

But in a society with the economic challenges that we presently face, the value of such confections will inevitably decline, until it becomes obvious that they will never generate a return on investment.

The author regrets that "there are few spaces in the Australian or British media for an informed and careful discussion about the role, function, expectations and hopes of higher education", but then declines to offer any herself, informed, careful or otherwise.

Poking fun at the Poms Ashes aspirations, then droning on about difficulties in preparing a lecture, doth not an argument make.

And another opportunity to explore the issues meanders off into the distance.

"The author regrets that "there are few spaces in the Australian or British media for an informed and careful discussion about the role, function, expectations and hopes of higher education", but then declines to offer any herself, informed, careful or otherwise."

What are we doing here then, Pericles? We appear to be having a discussion (sometimes informed and mostly careful) about the aspects of higher education mentioned. Are we not media after a fashion? According to Helen Coonan we are, and she must know, being a minister and all.

Truth be told I'd rather hear a Pericles comment or any of the commenters here, even the ones I don't agree with, over what passes for media debate on just about anything these days.

So far the majority of commenters seem to value tertiary education which is heartening. It may not suit everyone and some degrees may be more symbolic than useful in themselves, but it is true that those who complete their degrees have demonstrated several abilities which should be important to employers.

I'd like my grandkids to have the opportunity one day and for that opportunity to be available to them regardless of bank account size, even if it does mean they have to go overseas for their contribution to be appreciated.

rstuart, You really are an exploiter of knoledge arn't you, these studentrs have put 6 years of their lives into study, and you try to degrade them by the "P"plate analogy, you shouyld be ashamed of yourself, I know you won't be so I am embarrased for for you. You are just another greedy employer, shame on you nyou parisite.

Some things I've noticed as a person doing uni the first time after a decade or more in the workforce:

Like Maximus, for those first few weeks, I too felt it was all a waste of time and hopeless and I knew so much more etc. In fact, I felt that way for most of the first two years. But slowly, gradually, a few things started to fall into place, and I can honestly say now I'm glad I've done it. But...

...I'm glad I did it after a decade-plus in the workforce. It would've been a complete waste of time to have done it straight after my HSC, and I think that statement can apply to quite a lot of people.

I also experienced frustration, early on, with what some here have called "candy-floss" language etc. It's not candy-floss, it's just that the requirements of academic writing are totally different to that of the business world. I was used to business-writing which of necessity must be cut-and-dried, to-the-point, closed-ended and with a definite conclusion and set of recommendations and action points (although it falls victim to useless mangerial jargon too often).

Conversely, academic writing meanders all over the place, explores nooks and crannies, goes up blind alleys, dead-ends and occasionally, just occasionally, comes up with something you couldn't find by any other means.

It took some time for my business brain to adjust to this open-ended, inconclusive, tentative form of writing; and not before I'd hurled a few books across the room in frustration.

But in the end, with some time to learn more of the style, putting the two together: the business and the academic, has been tremendously rewarding and enlightening for me.

Based on my exprience, uni entry requirements should be adjusted to a minimum five-years experience in the workforce for all courses, except in the case of mathematical and physics genii and others who benefit from very young and rapid advancement in higher education.

...continued:

As for the consumer side: I agree with the author that consumerism has no place in higher education. What the author, and many others, fail to appreciate about this is that the mass-market degree-mill is the inadvertent product of the idealism that said higher education is always A Good Thing For Everybody, which is patent nonsense, but attractive patent nonsense.

Opponents of consumerism in higher education should reflect that it follows that universities might be better off going back to being what they were a couple of generations ago: very restricted places of true academic excellence, not the vast open-to-all degree factories they have become. But that's a whole other debate.

University education is not like grocery shopping, everyone can grocery shop, however increasing universityies are becoming increasing the domain of the wealthy only, much like they were in the 1960's.

The benefits of teaching not only the aristocracy, but all of the population who qualify should be self explanitory to anyone who has common sense.

I offer as an example in North Quuensland this year we had 1,100 students with an OP score who qualified to do a medical degree. However the federal government only provided 70 places, the balance if they can afford to would perhaps have gotten good jobs, however the Australian community had misssed the opportunity of an exra 1,000 doctors.

At a time where then there exists a world shortage of doctors and nurses, and a federal government with $10 billion in the bank, how does this make sense?

Legally, a University can be held accountable under the Trade Practices Act, as offering course is deemed trade and commerce by the Commission. Beyond this hard fact there are several considerations:

1. Universities now confuse higher education with continuing education by making it possible for persons below the 80th percentile access. Access should be based on merit and the bar must be high.

2. Many academics have not been employed in practice. This leads to preservation of falsehoods in some disciplines. Constructs pass peer review by the uniformed, and become come creed. Academics have knowledge but often not well grounded knowledge.

3. There are too many universities. These need to rationalised. Moreover, why have an expensive administration at each. Why not centralise processing and save millions in labour costs. Why should it be easier for someone in an HR department to increase their FTE than it is for a PhD student to receive funding for data collection?
Managerialism, perhaps? True mission lost?

4. At TAFE teachers must undertake a teaching course. Unis should do the same for tenured staff. Perhaps, a short course, say 200 hours, over a year. Visiting lecturers/profs. would need to exempted.

Shonga, there may be any number of reasons why only 70 places are available, and even more reasons why the bar is set that allows 1,100 to "qualify".

But underlying all of this is still the basic issue: what exactly do we believe the government's role in education should be? Because if it isn't part of their mandate to govern, they will not put a single dollar towards it, will they?

Relying upon private enterprise to grow the next batch of doctors will only ensure that they gravitate towards the lucrative end of the market in order to recoup their investment, so we can expect a significant increase in the number of providers in the elective field, such as cosmetic surgery, where the demand is matched by the ability to pay.

And who can blame them? Once you relinquish responsibility to the market, it is the market that will dictate the end result. Like cross-city tunnels, or airports - the concept of "public services" has gone completely out of the window.

It has been my experience that all lecturers are Marxologists.

And not only that, they reserve the right to engage in class warfare. But the only way you can do that is with authorisation from the Left. And you cant get that without being in the Education Unions. And you cant get that without being part of the education system, which is overlorded by the education unions. and the education Unions are overseen by the Autocratic Council of Totalitarian Underdogs. So, the only way to get into university is as an undergrad, After that, it is all Left.

I just had the oppurtunity to browse through the marked papers of a number of undergrads. And what i saw shocked me.

Some papers were just bad, and had good marks. Others were OK, but with bad errors in referencing systems and bibliography. The content was leftist, and one was written in the first person, it had an HD.

So, if you think that academialand is all good, and that intellectualism prevails at Uni; then you had all better have another good think, because it is not true.

Class warfare is alive and well!

Yes, students are not treated respectfully as customers in the universities that I've had the 'privilege' of attending, but as fodder for leftist indoctrination. Case in point, as a post-graduate student at Sydney University we were told by a self-proclaimed 'unreconstructed Marxist' lecturer in a class on the sociology of health care, that Marx and Lenin were outstanding figures in health-care! If only we were treated as customers, then there might be some real customer care.

Hi all,

Having completed my degree with many "all nighters" and alcoholic beverages (thats right the bar isn't there for decoration) I can honestly say that they were the best years of my life. I can also say that generalising students based on whether they choose to enjoy their uni years or not is rather silly. I knew people that studied 24 / 7 yet they were absolutely hopeless when it came to demonstrating knowledge. I also know people of the opposite extreme. The most important skill that one learns in university is learning how to learn. Learning how to research and be resourceful with next to no help from anyone else.

I don't believe we should have to pay for a university education, however, I don't feel uni is a waste of time or money. It really bridges the gap between being spoon fed (high school) and becoming completely independant and able to aquire knowledge on your accord (work force). Some people need this more than others, I just feel that alot of people don't apprecaite that side of uni which in my opinion is far more important (in alot of cases, not ALL) than the total amount of knowledge you acquire in your given field.

Now of course the obvious rebutal would be to point out those that are sucessful without attending university. Uni is not and has never been a contract for sucess! It is an institution to educate students and prepare them somewhat for the real world and in some degrees provide them with essential knowledge they need to perform their chosen career paths. Either way, the best part about university is that it is optional to those who think it is a waste of time.