It is funny, because the growth in degrees has been sports administration, community hand holding and creative butt wiping.

functional Marxists

As opposed to dysfunctional Marxists?

The Griffith SRC in the “early noughties” was a breath of fresh air comprised of moderate students that were reflective of the true diversity of the students. For some years previously, with a few exceptions, the SRC was controlled by a narrow band of functional Marxists.

The period from 2001 until the introduction of VSU marked a period of real growth in student culture and real services for students due from an reform focused and active organisation. Increased accountability mechanisms also saw students have increased faith in their organisation and the student representatives at the time managed to repair an organisation that had been subjected to years of neglect from an extremist left element on campus.

When I was studying education in the 70s I heard that the requirement for being a garbage man in New York was the successful completion of high school.

The qualification requirement was actually related to peoples ability to get out of bed and show up to work on time, plus the ability to undertake and complete activities that were percieved to be pointless.

I think you are about twenty years out of date. The percentage of Australians who have degrees nowadays is so far above what it was in 1978 it is not funny.

But I think the point Spiros was making is that many of those degrees are programs courses which would have been diploma programs in 1978, whilst many more are in fields for which no higher education of any kind was required in 1978 (e.g. nursing, golf course management, tourism & leisure, etc.).

That said, I think we would find that numbers of students at existing universities (or bits of existing universities) which were universities in 1978 are considerably higher today. Melbourne University had about 16,000 students in 1978, and has over 40,000 enrolled today. La Trobe had about 8000 students in 1978 and has over 26,000 enrolled today. Much of this growth can’t be explained by amalgamations. However a considerable amount may well be explicable in terms of credentials creep in occupations for which degrees weren’t always a prerequisite.

“access to, and take up of, university education has never been as broad as it is in 2007.�

Only because university education has been redefined to include what were formerly CAEs and the like.

Access to, and take up of university education at the best universities is as narrow as ever.

I think you are about twenty years out of date. The percentage of Australians who have degrees nowadays is so far above what it was in 1978 it is not funny.

Of course the cadres have always had a big presence in student organisations. My point is that at one time their influence could be somewhat diluted by the “concerned student citizens”. If Griffith is any guide, the latter vanished some time early in the new millennium.

I heard of a system used at one US university, which if the reports are true solved a lot of the problems.

Elected officebearers could enroll in a subject called “theory and practice of student politics”. They got a lecturer from the politics department as their supervisor and got marked on their performance in office, and this counted towards their degree.

There were multiple benefits. Firstly, the unfortunately common situation of people getting elected and then spending the time either lazing around or doing faction building was greatly reduced - if you wanted a good mark you needed to have something to show for your time.

Secondly, the common pattern of office bearers juggling part time study with their role was greatly reduced, giving them more time to focus on their duties.

Finally, having a supervisor who could provide advice (most had probably supervised many people before and made excellent mentors) would be invaluable to many office bearers, who often spend half their term learning the ropes.

Presumably having a certain level of supervision from academics also cuts down on corruption - if you were doing something really dodgy your supervisor might just turn you in.

The reports I heard suggested that this had been such a success that VSU really wasn’t an issue - the student association provided such a valuable service that no one really questioned paying up. Of course it would take years to get to that level if such a subject was brought in here, but I think it might well repay a university to adopt the idea.

I think the student allowance should be equivalent to the unemployment benefit.

mel, that’s roughly what I had in mind.

The problem i have with VSU is how it was handled, due to good management the Murdoch guild survived the transition into VSU with a surplus. However alot of guilds didn’t, VSU was just dumped on guild with no financial support from the government.

Most students dont care about politics, as sad as it is to hear, many simply do not have the time to focus on political issues when they have to work and study.

A survey conducted by the guild last year showed student poverty is a widespread problem, many students cannot afford to buy food. These are the students guilds can most readily help , however VSU severely hampers there ability to do so.

Universities suffer from huge deficits because the government treats education like a business . Murdoch university has been extremely supportive of the Murdoch guild but finances are stretched.

My point is that while VSU is a good policy which is fair to students, dumping it on student guilds at a time when education is becoming simply a machine used to churn out people with pieces of paper only accelerates the growing student poverty, destroys political empathy and destroys academia.

Not anymore.

“Frankly, however, the problem nowadays is that the ‘consumer empowerment’ of high fee paying students has swung it more the other way - the danger now is declining standards as academics feel pressured to pass no-hoping, cashed up lazy drongos who should be failed right out the front door.”

Mmmm. I did the Social Science (Environment) degree at RMIT in the early 1990s. Some of my fellow students were clearly borderline retarded judging by their comprehension and spelling skills. The cut off scores should be much higher if the humanities and social sciences are to escape the “cabbage patch” stigma.

VSU has thankfully become a dead issue outside the lunatic fringe. Pro-VSU arguments like union subsidised food are absurd. If a student is truly poor, he/she will take home made sandwiches etc. to uni. Uni clubs are also a private thing. I’m not sure why I had to subsidise other students’ private interests.

I think the student allowance should be equivalent to the unemployment benefit. Students from poorer backgrounds shouldn’t have to deal with poverty or excessive time pressures owing to work commitments.

In my experience, most union-run food outlets might be cheap, but the quality of food is terrible compared to the privately-owned outlets.

Of the two clubs. The first died still-born thanks to stuffing around by the university management and union politics - taking four months to approve our request at committee. The second was met with such disinterest from students - this one we largely left the union out of - that it wasn’t worth running. Work commitments was a major reason. The other was university scheduling: classes back to back and no lunch breaks, meaning students generally just came in, went to class and then went home.

University students do need social interaction. Country and international students in particular, but having a bond within a cohort helps too. It is in the interests of the university to facilitate this too, which, I have to say, was recognised by the departmental coordinators. To the extent that VSU reduces the financial burden on students it will probably strengthen clubs - albeit at the expense of the student union. But, from the point of view of someone running a club, the money from compulsory fees wasn’t sufficiently important to make VSU an issue. The problem is finding people with enough time to help organise things.

I’m really relieved VSU is staying. I agree that a number of student services formerly run on compulsory fees require support - childcare services, advocacy and counselling, and on campuses not located in the CBD as mine is, cheap and healthy food. However, there’s got to be a way to pay for those without forcing students to fork over the cash.

Mark’s point about the old system encouraging crap leadership is very, very important. QUT’s student guild conducted themselves like angry children as VSU approached, spending a considerable amount of time (and our money) blatantly attempting to shame the student body into continuing to pay their fees. You can imagine how well that went down. They were completely unable to take any criticism from guild members, to the point where the link on guildonline.net’s homepage to the student guild discussion forum was removed, so that students could no longer find the only public place to debate guild policy unless they already knew the URL. It as since been removed entirely. A pathetic performance, but entirely in keeping with their attitude in general - they’ve never once acceded to requests by members to view the guild budget, so we’ve no idea what they were spending on. Meanwhile, UQ’s guild were conducting themselves far better, calmly making plans to cope under the new system and openly asking for ideas from students about how to streamline their operations. The difference was marked, and rather embarrassing…

I don’t have any recent statistics to hand, but students seem to be spending more and more time at work and less and less time on campus.