As Luke Slattery observes, a significant number of universities are moving to emulate either the whole of or aspects of the Melbourne Model – generalist undergraduate degrees followed by vocational postgraduate degrees. UWA and Macquarie are the latest off the starting block, with Macquarie VC Stephen Schwartz stating:
Of course we will continue to teach professional skills – accounting students will still learn to keep books – but we will also ensure that each of our students learns how to analyse scholarly papers, criticise research methods, solve problems and integrate information into coherent arguments.
Some universities which are not going down this route are moving to a broader focus on core subjects and workplace learning for undergraduates – in generalist as well as vocational degrees. Sometimes this is driven by a desire to find a point of differentiation – for instance with Griffith’s emphasis on social enterprise as part of its Arts degree – which is, in part, a recognition that QUT and UQ have the vocational and sandstone/comprehensive humanities angles covered in the eyes of many students. Griffith Arts students also do first year courses like “Great Books”, which must gladden the hearts of the educational traditionalists (I don’t know what’s actually on the curriculum, I should add). And at ACU, all students must do “mission” units – particularly in ethics and to expose them to aspects of the Catholic intellectual tradition (as well as fostering social responsibility).
Slattery notes that some of this is driven by the international market – including the 3+2 Bologna Process for standardising tertiary qualifications across the EU where a bachelors degree is followed by a masters degree as a matter of course. There is probably some benefit – aside from considerations of the international export market – in maintaining the standing of Australian higher education, reducing the over proliferation of degree courses (itself driven by now superceded marketing considerations) and in fostering scholarly and critical skills across all disciplines in the academy. But it needs to be noted that far more mundane factors are also important drivers of change.
Making full fee postgraduate degrees a normal expectation has obvious implications for the cost and accessibility of education, and is one way (perversely perhaps) universities are trying to make up revenue which will be lost through the Rudd government’s phasing out of domestic full fee undergraduate degrees. They can do that because of the FEE-HELP program the Howard government introduced which extends a version of Hecs to postgraduate coursework qualifications (and a proliferation of private higher education providers at both undergrad and postgrad level). Student income support, inadequate as it is, certainly hasn’t caught up with a normative expectation of five years at uni.
Similarly, the managerialist attack on disciplinary training and identification is fostered through what goes along with the massification of first and second year undergraduate classes – the culling of small and specialised courses (and often of the academics who teach them). There’s a cost advantage here for universities, as expensive senior academics who aren’t “research intensive” (or in many cases who are) can be replaced by casuals with a few massively overloaded junior academics coordinating. In some instances, UWS for one, huge first year classes are being taught in what is effectively distance ed mode disguised by all sorts of web bells and whistles like podcast lectures which are never actually delivered to any actual class – and this is web often without the 2.0.
Finally, as appears usual with the Australian higher education sector, differentiation seems to last just as long as all the other unis can rush to copy the first movers.
And the Bradley Review will be scrambling to keep up with the implications.
Incidentally, one of the problems with Julia Gillard’s super portfolio is that it’s difficult to identify what her thinking on all of this is – research policy seems to have been outsourced to Kim Carr and the venturousaustralia crew, while the rest of the Higher Ed issues are left for Denise Bradley and her review to sort out. While we can certainly do without some of the day to day ministerial interference which particularly characterised Brendan Nelson’s tenure in the portfolio (and to a lesser but still significant extent Julie Bishop’s), it would be nice to have more than waffle from the Rudd government on what’s happening to the “core university business” of teaching.
Disclosures: I knew Stephen Schwartz in his previous incarnation as President of the Academic Board at UQ when I was an undergrad rep on the board in the early 90s. And I teach at Griffith and ACU, as well as at QUT.
I would hope that universities in the same city can get together to co-ordinate which univerisity will have a huge focus on each field so that no potential student is left out in the cold. I’d really like to see Cross-Institutional study normalised so students can get a better generalised undergraduate degree given that not every uni can have a strong focus in every field. Of course, every uni does things differently in terms of subject loading and the flexible credit point system that USyd uses is mostly incompatible with somewhere like QUT where every unit runs for 13 weeks and is worth the same number of credits.
Things like the AMSI’s Access Grid system will probably also help with the continued running of technical, advanced level subjects where only a few people on each campus are interested but there are enough people around the nation to make up a decent class.
“In some instances, UWS for one, huge first year classes are being taught in what is effectively distance ed mode disguised by all sorts of web bells and whistles like podcast lectures which are never actually delivered to any actual class – and this is web often without the 2.0.”
Yes, this is happening. Units with several hundred students (nearly 1000) taught with a rotating different-day-per-week lecture. So there are multiple lecture slots on different days/times, students choose one slot and when the week comes up where their lecture slot has the lecture, they attend the lecture. Other weeks they listen to the podcast of the lecture. This is actually quite a good system in terms of flexibility, for example, for those that need to travel, the lecture can be listened to while driving or catching public transport.
Something that is happening at most universities is a decrease in the tutorial time and increase in student numbers. One hour tutorials for tutorial cohorts of over 20 students is not enough time. This is a much bigger problem than any podcast lecture system.
There is also a shift towards MA courses at USyd. I think they are trying to attract overseas students.
“There’s a cost advantage here for universities, as expensive senior academics who aren’t “research intensive” (or in many cases who are) can be replaced by casuals with a few massively overloaded junior academics coordinating.”
UWS has introduced their 2015 policy that looks great on the surface, but could easily be used to maintain the situation where university teaching is basically run by young casual academics. See the UWS executive blog about it: http://executivebloguws.typepad.com/uws_executive_blog/2008/08/our-people-2015.html
Interesting, I hadn’t heard of the Bologna model before.
I like some aspects of the Melba Model, at least in theory. The rise of the vocational undergrad degree means that the stats on university education include a large number who are poorly educated beyond a narrow skillset. Lawyers are a perfect example (says while covering up LLB on the wall…).
And degrees like Law and Medicine attract huge numbers of school leavers due to their status, rather than a depth of life experience to draw on in deciding whether they are suitable.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, yes. But I too worry about both declining quality of education (degrees seem to have a changed a lot since I was at uni, probably the last of the ‘old guard’ in this respect, I think) and also declining availability of education – how many people want to sign up for a debt they could be paying back well into thirties?
Ahem. Forties!
patrickg, what declining availability of education? The proportion of university students who are from low socio-economic backgrounds increased following the recent HECS fee hikes. This is what you would expect, since the increases were packaged with more absolute places (IIRC) and even the raised HECS fees are good value when expected future earnings are taken into account. Poorer students figure that out just as well as rich kids. If there is any ‘availability’ issue it is at high school where a child’s likelihood of actually being academically accepted into a university course may be determined.
“…how many people want to sign up for a debt they could be paying back well into thirties?”
No one wants to do that. But a more interesting question is how many people will do so because it’s a great deal? A sh*tload, it seems, including increasing numbers of poor kids (absolutely and proportionally).
BBB
I’m not against the 5 yr 3+ 2yr masters route. Frankly, we’ll never get to teaching anything interesting again if we oppose that.
The premier lesser uni Im about to move to does generalist first year, followed by 2 yr specialising into major streams.
My only gripe with that is that students don’t get 4 or so units to just play around with, and experiment with what interests them. To me, that one element of experimentation and discoivery was what defined the arts degree.
Let me amend my question somewhat BBB. Does this new model represent better value than the old model?
I have to wonder. I can only illustrate w/ my two uni experiences, commerce at QUT, and humanities at ANU.
Commerce sounds like a lot of the newer style degrees described. I was in a lecture of +800 people, and tutorials of +35 (!).
ANU was definitely more old school, even the biggest lectures were only circa 200, and tutes almost never cracked 20 people.
I have to say, the education quality I received was noticeably, and understandably, superior at the ANU, despite the fact that the quirks of HECS meant I was actually paying less for my BA.
Now, I would _much_ rather three years of undergraduate at ANU and no masters, than five years of the incredibly shitty education I was getting at QUT. I’m not trying to tar every uni with that brush, etc. But I worry this move is simply another way for poor, cash-strapped uni’s to maximise the amount of dosh they can get per student, whilst providing the absolute least they can get away with. I mean, have you seen some of the master’s degrees out there now??? They’re absolute (excuse my french) fucking rubbish, not vocational in a proper sense, and coupled with the research/academic standards of a myspace page. And people are paying $15 – $35k for them.
Also I worry that it’s going to increasingly shut people who aren’t suited, don’t want/don’t like the uni experience from a certain class of jobs – jobs that have almost nothing to do with degrees as taught, and that they would be able to do quite well.
My honours thesis on Disney’s Beauty and the Beast has come in very handy in my current job as a PR person, let me tell you (not). The sad thing is, at least I loved doing it, I have seen lots of my colleagues cuss their way through “communications” post grad stuff that has just about as much relevance.
Do you really need a master’s degree to start a graduate job? In my opinion, not in the vast majority of cases, no. So I’m left to wonder who these changes are really for, the majority of students (as opposed to the minorities that would benefit from it), their eventual employers, or the universities themselves.
But will the postgrad vocational degrees be like the present rubbish Masters degrees, patrickg? I doubt it. I mean, you can do an LLM at Melbourne and it’s pointless except for a (very) marginal improvement in your CV (but probably not your mind). The LLM there is mainly for lawyers whose firm offers to pay for some extra education as part of its graduate recruitment policy. On the other hand, the new postgrad law degree has to cover the foundational things you actually need to know to be a lawyer or the basic legal material that will come in use in some other context (ie. a lot of the important stuff in the LLB). That is just one example, though. I don’t know what it is like in other disciplines.
BBB
I guess that’s the question we’re both asking, BBB. But judging by the strength (or lack thereof) of many current under and post grad offerings that are trying to capture areas of the ‘vocational’ market, I’m a bit cynical…
As a current Arts student at USyd I really hope this doesn’t come to us. In the meantime I will continue to go to all the student protests I can in the hope that the Chancellory actually pays attention to us…
BBB: “The proportion of university students who are from low socio-economic backgrounds increased following the recent HECS fee hikes.”
According to this (Pages 4-5) the lowest socio-economic classes remain under-represented at the University level. The children of Labourers only have a 15% attendance rating compared to a 25% total. I believe that would be somewhat (Though not entirely) remedied by not having our extraordinarily high costs of tuition (One of the highest in the OECD nations). I believe the biggest problem with our system is the lack of a solid student income support scheme that can ensure that these students can afford to study full-time. You must be 25 in order to be declared fully independent, which is just bizarre…
Interestingly the article cites a study that shows that the biggest problem with the socio-economic status of people is the relative results of their high-school affecting their entrance scores to get into University.
Note to self: Close tags…
“universities are trying to make up revenue which will be lost through the Rudd government’s phasing out of domestic full fee undergraduate degrees”
Mark, this has basically nothing to do with it — for most universities, there were so few of these guys it hardly made a difference. The are a number of reasons why it’s happening, and they all conspire to make the new model a better option. Here are three of them:
1) any form of decent undergraduate education costs more than the government is willing to give you, and you can’t charge students the extra. So you either do a sloppy job or you get out of it. As is evidentally the case, if you do a sloppy job by having massive subjects with happy multiple-choice assignments, you might at least break-even, and the undergraduate courses are good advertising for your postgraduate ones (especially because Australian students seem to have high levels of loyalty, quite unlike the US)
2) The standard of Year 11 and 12 seems to have dropped over the last decade or so (especially if you consider that many more students now opt for the easy subjects), so even if you wanted to do a good job, it would cost you more as you would need to employ people for remedial English, maths etc. that you didn’t once have to employ.
3) A large proportion of students expect to do essentially nothing for their degrees, yet all expect to be passed (and essentially all will be). This creates a prisoner’s dilemma type situation where courses need to be targeted at this level (lest the students complain), so even if some students wanted to really learn a lot, you can’t tailor courses for them anyway. This appears true whether courses are good or bad — Where I work, for example, we have tute sizes of about 20, and IMHO the tutes are well thought of, well done, and you learn a lot by going to them. But half students don’t turn up after first week anyway. Perhaps 10% of them don’t turn up to any lectures or any tutorials. But they’ll get through anyway.
So all of these conspire to having a new model where you learn the same amount of stuff in two years extra and get to pay for the two extra years. The good thing about it is that at least with the postgraduate courses that really offer good training, there is such high demand that you can basically get rid of the degree-for-doing-nothing students and just not take those that haven’t reached some level of literacy and numeracy. You can then actually teach people something good.
By what measure? I’m not disagreeing with you, necessarily, but the evidence needs to be more than anecdotal. Is it that grade 12 students are getting dumber, or just that more of them (i.e. the dumb ones) are going to university because it’s now the only option for a wide number of careers?
CountArach @ 12 – tags closed.
“By what measure?”
I don’t know of any good data showing this for Year 12 (Most of the big surveys use data from around Year 10, which show literacy is fine but maths is declining). I imagine this data would be hard to get (which is not to say people haven’t got it), since things differ from state to state and year to year, which would make comparisons fun. I think it’s a combination of both dumber students thanks to the larger numbers, somewhat dumber courses (which I don’t have the data for), and students selecting dumber courses. There is data for the last of these which shows that students now choose far easier subjects (which is not that surprising — there is a far broader range of subjects to choose from now) — things like physics and the advanced maths courses have basically gone the way of the dodo, which is why these sorts of requirements have been chopped from many uni courses and hence why there are so many bridging courses now (almost all engineering departments have them). For example, this is from the Australian (which looks biased — but the figures look correct), which suggests that only 11.7% of kids do advanced maths now. (see http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23731219-25192,00.html
)
Even the 1995 figures are not the best baseline — if you go back into the 80s, only the thickest of kids used to do elementary maths (which in Victoria was called Business Maths at the time), so the numbers would look even worse.
Putting upward pressure on academic inflation?
Research policy has not been “outsourced to Kim Carr and the venturousaustralia crew” – it is the responsibility of Kim’s Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research. Note the name. And let me tell you that we’re bloody busy down here …
Clarifying: there’s feverish activity across the Department preparing the Government’s response to Venturous Australia (we hate the name, too). No idea on the details. But there is a separate unit within the Department that’s looking at – and developing – research policy. Research is not within Julia Gillard’s purlieu at all. Yes, this makes some dimensions of higher education policy a little stricky at times (especially when it comes to getting hold of DEST/DEEWR data), but it might surprise some people to know that there’s more to the Australian research landscape than universities.
Guise: Good to see you here, we’d been told that access to LP, amongst other sites, had been blocked for Dept of Innovation bods. Something to do with the Secretary having a particular disdain for internet misuse, as if you professionals couldn’t be trusted . Shocking concept that, an unplugged innovation department.
Nice coinage, it makes sense to me, that would be as in “How long is a piece of strick?” n’est-ce pas?
That’s reassuringly right on the ball for an innovation department, recognising the axiom that things don’t exist unless they can be measured. It’s a brilliant stroke of creativity to cut to the chase and just invent new metrics as an approach to innovation.
What leading light will have their name immortalised as the unit of strickiness in policy analytics? In honor of the famous Noodle Nation diagram, the epitome of modern bureaucratic policy wrangling approaches, might i suggest you declare the Jones to be the unit of strickiness?
LP was blocked, and then unblocked on request. Blame has been sheeted home to the people providing the keyword based checking system, which catergorised LP as “Personal beliefs/Cult”. Such are the fruits of outsourcing, which mean the Department of Innovation regularly loses its access to the outside world, e-mails sometimes take several hours to get from one Outbox to another Inbox, and where electronic record keeping is rudimentary at best.
That’s pretty funny, Guise. “Personal beliefs/Cult” is either hopelessly wrong-headed or razor sharp insight. Yeah, I’m not sure either.
BBB
Excellent, the Department of Innovation has managed to automate comedy. The world needs more funny.
And at such a bargain price too: you can view the departmental CONTRACTS LISTING 2007 CALENDAR YEAR and CONTRACTS LISTING 2007-08 FINANCIAL YEAR to get an idea of how much gets payed out, and too whom.
One of my favourites, showing what a stroke of genius the whole outsourcing phenomenon has been in terms of delivering value to the taxpayer is: $139,662,970 we all hand over to AMP to lease the department’s head office, Industry House, until 2021. How much did it cost AMP to buy the building? $150 mill. So the taxpayer pays off 90% of the purchase price for AMP, and they end up with an asset worth $150 million. Sweet. Maybe they can negatively gear the other 10 million.
Another is the $10,087,500 that “Australian Chamber Alliance Pty Ltd t/a Australian
Chamber Alliance” whoever they are, got as a “Grant to partner organisation to employ business advisors”, start date 16-Jun-08, end date 30-Sep-08.
Over $10 million for 3 1/2 months of business advice? The contract is over next week, maybe we’ll soon get to know what value was delivered by those advisors.