December 14, 2005
Special Guest Tirade
My brother is in China. In my time overseas, his bitter rants and flowery descriptions of football games kept me going. Good to see his patriotic rage is undimmed even though he lives abroad. I received this email the other day. It's pretty much verbatim (I added paragraphs and punctuation - capitals can bugger off, I don't have the time).
been reading about this student union thing jeez howard is a fuckin prick, some cockhead lib senator (scroll down) said if students need student unionism they will pay for it themselves voluntarily. well you're first year scraping every last penny for booze you're hardly gonna cough up 200 bucks for unionism. but someone needs to give the unions money and god knows lord fuckpants and his idiot follower costello (typical of howard to completely fuck over his longest loyal supporter, - sums the bloke up really) aint gonna.
aus universities are a disgrace. i learnt next to nothing in that 3 years except how to do as little as possible and still get reasonable marks. sure, we dont want unis to become 'job skills workshops' but if you are studying business perhaps some sort of practical knowledge/experience may be handy. then you can relate your degree to the world outside. and a challenge? not once was my brain challenged in that time, (sport and the law with sam cusumano the notable exception) except to rote learn a shitload of info the week before exams.
i suggest that all hs grads be strenuously encouraged to take at least one year (i suggest 3) to work/travel/booze/sleep before going to uni. the overworked bgs line that if u don't go straight away you may never go at all is a massive mistruth of WMD proportions. "the masses will believe a lie, if you make it big enough". then the work hating first years, more mature/less naive/more driven, can be challenged and educated by inspired teachers (steve james) and a demanding curriculum and everyone benefits.
Filed under Vitriol
Comments
Excellent. I can't believe he has managed to find the time while overseas to comment on such meaningful things, and to muster some kind of decent argument. Much better than the usual, 'And then can you believe it we missed the bus had to spend another night in Arcachon!!' etc that people inflict on one another while they are overseas.
'Lord Fuckpants.' I love it. Good to see the talent for an endlessly entertaining vernacular runs in the family.
(And I couldn't agree more with his final point re. uni!)
Posted by: jellyfish at December 14, 2005 11:31 PM
Let's hope our Glyn gets his grand plan of generalist undergraduate leading to professional postgraduate degrees off the ground. Someone's got to do something about tertiary education in this country and it sure as fuck won't be J Ho and his band of loyal...patriots.
Posted by: Tom at December 15, 2005 08:21 AM
I appreciate the thinking behind Glyn's plan. I agree that it's appalling that people get through vocational degrees without a more general curiosity about the world /science/ literature/ politics.
the big worry is who's paying for it. I'm not a Centrestink expert, but I doubt they'd start paying people to do graduate study all of a sudden. as someone doing a masters that is a basic qualification for my field I reckon I'm in a pretty good position to see the problems. I worry that 6 years+ of uni is a long time to rely financially on your parents or partner. and it's a really hard slog for people who don't have that support. particularly in fields where you're never going to earn a lot of money. I'm thinking this plan will only make the "Melbourne Uni kids come from private schools" scenario more entrenched.
Posted by: kate at December 16, 2005 09:54 AM
Undergraduate degrees will still be largely funded by the Federal Government and while I can see why people are concerned about the costs of postgraduate study, there aren't many more options. When Government funding has dropped to 25% of University income (or thereabouts), the money has to come from somewhere.
Everybody wants smaller class sizes, better teaching resources, higher quality research capabilities, world class standards across the board, but it can't be done without the funds. With International student numbers starting to fall, the Alan Gilbert cash cow is starting to dry up - and however much I think the Government should pay for higher education, I simply can't see it happening in the next 10 years at least.
I agree that this has the potential to create an even greater disparity between private schools and public schools, but what other option do Universities have? The money has to come from somewhere.
The saving grace is that tied into this plan is a big push to increase philanthropic and corporate support for the University to try and fill the hole. The aim is to have far more scholarships for postgrads.
I don't know. The uber-lefty in me is outraged that the government is intent on bringing Universities to heel. But (maybe as a result) I can't help but think the days of free education are essentially over and that it's time people started thinking of how best to extricate Universities from the degree factory model they have become.
It's not the best of all worlds, but I think it's the most interesting and potentially exciting thing that has happened to tertiary education since Gough was in power.
Posted by: Tom at December 16, 2005 02:22 PM
I'm not even worried about the fees and the debt anymore. I've given up. What gets to me is that postgrads are expected to live on air.
So what we have is a whole lot of postgrads working part-time to subsidise the research that happens in this country. It also really bugs me that we reward the best and brightest with the opportunity to work really hard on original research for less than the minimum wage.
I also wish our universities would stop pandering to morons by spending money on stupid vocational courses in fields that can only really be learned on the job.
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