And all the while, the students from the socio-economically disadvantaged families have had their technical schools closed down and they are expected to become academics. These are the tradespeople who we need to build our houses and service our carsand our washing machines. We need them to do the hands on work which will be required to put together all the infrastructure that we so desperately need to get us out of the economic catastrophy into which we are entering.

There are too many ill equipped students entering our universities. How many of them fail to complete even the first year of aa degree course. A few years ago I went back to study for a science degree. In the elementary maths class at the beginning it was standing room only. By mid year we had about half the class and by the end only a quarter were left.

Too much money is being spent on the top end of education and not enough in the beginning. It is too late too introduce people to trades and vocational education after they have left high school. It must be done earlier, otherwise the teachers in these places have impossible jobs to perform.

David

One of the problems that you people who have successfully completed university degrees don't understand is that unless you have an IQ better than 120, your chances of doing so are very remote. You generally don't find these people amongst those with diadvantaged backgrounds. That is why their parents are there and why they are there. Those few who are smarter can generally find the ways and means to get themselves up and running. We can do our best to encourage those few, but the rest are probably a lost cause as far as universities are concerned. There is no point in wasting resources on pushing them toward failure.

In fact I would suggest that at present, it is too easy for someone to gain entry into a university. The standards of literacy and numeracy to qualify for entry need to be lifted. It shouldn't just be assesed on the score obtained in year 12 in what are in many cases, "Mickey Mouse" subjects.

Perhaps this may lead to a reduced need to import brains from other countries, and return some to their less developed homelands where thay can be of better use to their disadvantaged brethren.

David

David raises a good point which may be misunderstood by some readers.
Not all students are alike, and there is a real need to provide for the genuine "elite" students as they learn differently than most. This used to be what universities were. Alas, the value of "elite student" is too high for market forces to ignore and so now "wealthy" is equivilent to "elite" for admittance purposes. There is also an education "industry" now, so growth is more paramount than quality. (hence the political emphasis on quantity of students and the complete avoidance of quality.)
So long as the elite is based on academic performance there is nothing wrong with a select few being steered into areas that only the best and brightest can achieve in.
Try and cut down science or maths so that anyone can do it and you are left with a weak distortion of the true potentials of the subjects. This is why the West is falling behind in technical areas. We have tried to shape the subject for political reasons rather than accepting that some subjects are *very* hard and the few students capable of excelling need support...not dumbing down the subject so the best are on a "level playing field" with mediocre minds.
Sorry to all the Joe Averages out there, but the best and brightest should not be wasted like they are currently being in Australia. We are currently better at training "cunning" (ie. marginally legal) businessmen and career politicians than we are at fostering science or engineering. Uni's would rather sell "wine science" and "forensic science" courses to the hopeful but naive students than foster any true educational progress.
The mediocracy needn't worry that geniuses are being spoiled: The rest of society punishes the clever in too many ways to mention. The least they, and the country deserve is to at least educate them to their potential, even if this will never be utilised in the bureaucratic nightmare called "career".

What is the truth about universities. The truth is that Australian universities are non-economic, non-viable and non-sustainable, and they are now operating against the interests of Australian industry and the Australian public.

The vice-chancellor describes university graduates as generally earning more income, but fails to mention the national HECS debt which is estimated to be at about $13 billion. In simple terms, this national HECS debt has built up over time because universities have not generated sufficient wealth inside the country to pay for the universities.

To pay for the universities, the universities are now relying more and more on foreign students. In simple terms, the universities are now relying more and more on the wealth that has been generated in another country.

By training so many foreign students, the universities are now training the opposition. Many of these students will go back to their own countries and work in companies that are exporters. Australian companies then have to compete against these companies on the world market. However, these companies often pay their employees lower wages, they provide a lower standard of working conditions, and they have minimal interests in such things as environmental protection.

In simple terms, the universities are now working against the interests of Australian companies and Australian industry.

The vice chancellor describes universities in the past as being “mostly male”, but fails to mention that the education system is now mostly female. Unfortunately, 2 out of 5 female university graduates (almost 50%) do not pay off their HECS fees in their lifetime. So the universities are now relying more on male graduates to fund the universities, but male enrollment numbers in universities have dropped to near 40%, male student retention rates are declining nationally, and male trainee teacher numbers are now below 25%.

One of the reasons for this is the highly feminist and anti-male nature of the education system, that eventually forces so many males out of the system. So as the education system becomes more feminist and anti-male, and forces more and more males out of the system, the education system becomes less economic and less viable to operate

One of the last things someone will find in a school or university is a “Made in Australia” sticker, with schools and universities now importing almost everything they purchase. This then trains the students to use imported products only, and it makes it even more difficult for Australian companies to operate. It also trains the students to not even think of producing something inside this country, and the almost exclusive use of imported products by the schools and universities has done incalculable damage to Australian manufacturing and Australian industry.

Overall, there is not much that universities are doing right. They are uneconomic and non-sustainable, and they are now doing almost irreparable damage to Australian industry and eventually the Australian economy.

Vanna, you are spot on.

You forgot to mention that the education system is absolutely soaking in Marxism. The economic core of this deluded belief system was refuted in the 1890s, and utterly exploded by Mises in his 1922 book Socialism.

No socialist has *ever* been able to refute his devastating critique which showed that socialism is not only impossible in practice, but also impossible in theory. In short, it is a destructive delusion.

Yet this utterly discredited and failed belief system, having caused untold human suffering and injustice, is alive and well in its last bastion - humanities in western academe - where it just happens to be - surprise surprise - government-funded.

Its theory that modern society is nothing but exploitation writ large was carried on by the Frankfurt school of critical theory, which in turn went on to form the basis of much of the current state-worshipping orthodoxy of the left wing in academia - cultural studies, gender studies, racial studies, social control (policy), social work, deconstructionism and on and on.

The graduates, with few skills that anyone would actually pay for, go on to become the armies of welfare state parasites endlessly expanding their empires - on flex time to boot. This is based on illegalising and regulating every aspect of ordinary human behaviour. These vested interests then use the planned chaos, and destruction of society that they themselves spawn, as a pretext for growing - and all with the fake moral superiority they learnt at uni.

The higher the education is, the more it redounds to the benefit of the individual, and the less excuse there is for government funding.

Government funding of higher education should be completely abolished.

There may be something in what you say, Wing, although I still cherish some remnants of affection for the promises of socialism. Pity about the delivery.

Your last note: yes, the more education, the more power people have to break away from dependence on welfare parasite organisations. Up to the end of last year, 24,000 (twenty four thousand) Indigenous people had graduated from universities across Australia. Commencements, enrolments and graduations are at record levels. In 2007, the last year of figures, 1068 Indigenous women graduated from universities, or the equivalent of about 30 % of the Indigenous female graduate median age-group. Partly to support your thesis, currently, Indigenous women are participating in higher education at higher rates than non-Indigenous men, and at twice the rate of Indigenous men.

100 or 1,000 Indigenous graduates would be an elite. 24,000 is a bit too big to be an elite - it represents about one in every ten Indigenous adults (one in every seven Indigenous women, one in every five urban Indigenous women). Check out the data on DEEWR's website: 'DEST Statistical Collections'. It's all there.

By the end of 2010, there will be nearly 27,000 Indigenous graduates, and because of the huge increase in the birth-rate after about 1985, there could easily be fifty thousand (50,000) Indigenous graduates by 2020. Goodbye, elite !

And fifty thousand not on welfare, not dependent on parasite organisations, but working and living in the mainstream, as they choose to (it's called 'agency'). Goodbye, parasites !

Joe

Loudmouth,
Out of all the indigeneous graduates, how many get a job that will enable them to repay the costs of their education?.

If there are a large number of indigenous female graduates as compared to males, then this is a concern, as 2 out of 5 female graduates do not work sufficient years to repay their HECS fees. If these female graduates become social workers (likely), then they will probably be employed by government, who get the money from the taxpayer. So the taxpayer still has to pay for it.

This is becoming the most important factor for universities. If universities continue to churn out graduates who don’t repay their HECS fees, then who is going to pay off those HECS fees. Asking the federal government to pay for it is basically asking the taxpayer to pay for it. If the public have to pay for it all, then is there sufficient wealth in the country for the public to pay for the universities.

Considering the HECS debt and also the national debt, I don’t think there is sufficient wealth in the country to pay for the universities, which means that the universities are non-economic and non-sustainable.

While the universities have been good at producing social workers and arts students, good at employing feminists and denigrating males, good at training overseas students for overseas companies who then compete against Australian companies, and good at importing everything they can possibly purchase with taxpayer funding, the universities have not been very good at generating sufficient wealth inside the country to even run the universities.

Somewhere my previous post went astray.

When you are talking about aboriginies, you need to also take into account that a goodly proportion have either one white parent or three white grandparents or seven great grand parents, etc., and can still claim to be aboriginals. If you look at the past census figures for Oz and do a rough calculation based on the rate of increase in the number of people who claim to be aboriginals, by the end of this century, all Australians will be aboriginals. There are certain financial incentives/advantages, particularly in education, to being classified as an aboriginal, that are denied to poor whites.

David

From an earlier discussion on this topic;

The dramatic inequities that skew students chances at publicly funded university places are a source of growing frustration and anger within the public school community who see the whole situation as a massive rort.

These inequities were boosted through funding arrangements of the Howard government which saw top end private schools receive millions of dollars extra per year. One of the most expensive private schools in my area that benefited from this largesse boasted an ENTER score of 90 plus for almost one third of its students. A school of comparable size in a rural township had not a single student achieve a 90 plus result thus precluding them from high-end university places.

There is no doubt that there are many other ways of addressing the imbalance. Some of those suggested have included; broadening the selection critera past the basic score, differential funding for universities that accept students from lower SES and ability bands and fixing Commonwealth funding imbalances that allow private schools to have a monopoly over high-end places.

However the attitude taken by the Rudd government has given little hope for any substantial changes. It locked in the Howard government funding arrangements and has taken a head in the sand approach to the issue.

It would now appear that the only timely and equitable solution is to proportionally allocate university places by sector; public, catholic, and independent. Let the public school students who make up approximately 65% of the total have access to the same proportion of publicly funded university places in each course.

Naturally I will be accused of ‘dumbing down’ universities by giving places to those without what is deemed the appropriate merit, but in many cases those students haven’t had assess to the resources available to students in wealthier schools.

Let the ‘spendocracy’ compete in its own sector and let all of us strive for fairer access for all Australian students to our universities.

Where students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds are handicapped is high school. These students are not aptly guided in the process of achieving high tertiary ranks. In contrast, in the top private schools, the students are taken through subject primers and drilled using past examination papers.

The outcome for the underclass students is being ill-prepared to take the HSC – even those with high IQs. Alternatively, those students, who are from “good schools”, come to universities with high tertiary ranks, yet often lack the ability to act with autonomy and expect an “A” for a very ordinary assignment. Neither situation is desirable.

What is required is either, a greater emphasis in Year Twelve on that Year being a foundation year for university or, as in the United States, the first year of a four year university programme serves the same purpose. I would prefer the latter solution, because (a) some students will wish to terminate in Year Twelve and (b) moderately able high school teachers will often have graduated from courses among the lower tertiary rank entry (60-70).

WAL,

"The graduates, with few skills that anyone would actually pay for, go on to become the armies of welfare state parasites endlessly expanding their empires - on flex time to boot." - WAL

The market will pay for MBAs and Quantitative PhDs: not for Arts or Philosophy graduates. I assume you are a LLB Ec (or similar), somewhere in the middle.