UNIVERSITIES: MONEY OVER MERIT The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, January 24th 2001. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au> Subscription rates on request. ****************************** Universities: Money over merit The education of Australia's youth is being sacrificed as universities scramble to attract private funding. Students with academic merit but no cash are increasingly being pushed aside as universities give priority to students who can afford to pay large up-front fees. by Jules Andrews As the Howard Government has drastically cut funding, tertiary institutions have increasingly been relying on upfront "full fee" places being sold to both Australian and overseas students to raise revenue. Mounting evidence suggests that to attract and retain those rich students, the universities are prepared to hand out degrees to full fee-paying students who do not meet course requirements, and sell first-year places for cash to students who do not have the required entry marks. One report, "Academic Freedom and Commercialisation of Australian Universities", from the Australia Institute, was compiled from 1000 survey forms sent out to academics all over Australia. Once its findings were released in the <MI>Sydney Morning Herald", many more academics and students went public with details. Examples of how our education system is being "dumbed down" include: * A lecturer being told to reduce lecture content to "high school level" to improve the rates of students passing his course. * Where "fail" marks had been overridden to grant students Honours degrees. * Where marks as low as 25 per cent were considered passes. * Lecturers were forced to relax rules on plagiarism so that students who were not capable of writing essays would be allowed to cheat. Meanwhile, students who achieve degrees on academic merit (and still have pay up to $8000 per year of study through HECS after their studies are completed) will find them devalued, as they are no longer taught to be competent in their field of study, and Australia loses its international reputation for quality education. When the scandal broke, the universities ducked for cover, with the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee refusing to hold an official inquiry. The executive director, Mr Stuart Hamilton, said such matters were the responsibility of individual institutions. There has also been a predictably arrogant response from the Federal Government, with an Education spokesperson saying that the allegations made so far had not stood up to scrutiny. Education Minister Dr Kemp has tried to side-step the issue by saying that any concerns raised by academics would be investigated by the yet-to-be-formed Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA). National Tertiary Education Union President Carolyn Allport said that AUQA was a toothless tiger with no power to investigate, and that it would continue to be left up to universities to investigate themselves. In the Federal Government's Higher Education Report for the 2001- 2003 triennium, it clearly says "The Agency will not have responsibility for investigating complaints about institutions or accrediting agencies". NSW Greens MLC Lee Rhiannon says, "It's a terrible reflection on where education is". Speaking to "The Guardian" Ms Rhiannon said, "Ironically, if we are looking at it from a `money-making' perspective, after a while your university becomes less attractive". "Obviously, where the profit motive rules with no constraints, it becomes grubby and it backfires. Education certainly loses out." Ms Rhiannon also pointed out that the scandalous state of the education system is the inevitable result of "the whole privatisation thrust we've had since Labor". It was Minister John Dawkins' Education White Paper in 1987 that laid the groundwork for the destruction of our public universities. He argued that "budgetary constraints" meant that the Commonwealth Government would refuse to indefinitely increase spending on tertiary education. He said that Australian public needed to change its attitude towards a free higher education, and following overseas examples, universities would have to seek funding from individual students and corporations. In 1988 the Hawke Government re-introduced student fees, which successive Labor and Liberal Governments have increased, while steadily backing away from their responsibility to educate our nation's children. As a result, universities, once fully funded by government, now rely on student fees and other private sources for 54 per cent of their funding. The argument of "budgetary constraints" does not hold water -- education should remain a national priority. Free tertiary education in fully-funded, quality institutions must again be placed on the agenda as a right for all Australian youth. ************************ Money over merit How "full-fee placements" allow John Howard to lock working class youth out of universities: A university might set an HSC (NSW High School Certificate) cut- off score of 95 for a first-year place in a science degree. Jane comes from a working-class family and scores 94.5, and so misses out on a place. John comes from a wealthy family, he only scores 91, but his parents pay the full fee and buy him a place in the course. Once Rich John has completed first-year, he can then enter second year in a government subsidised place, which should belong to Working Class Jane on academic merit. -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
