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!