I think this topic has just about run its course, but I'd like to quote from a piece by Elizabeth Farrelly in the SMH News Review this weekend headed "UTS lowers the bar for higher education". It concerned UTS' announcement that the ATAR entry for women entering Engineering would be lowered by 10 points, which she considers "misconceived, unintelligent and profoundly sexist".
Here are three quotes. ----- Set against a broader higher-education background of falling entry standards, pressure to pass students, sub-literate postgrads, casualised staff, million-dollar managerialists and billion-dollar buildings, it makes you wonder whether either of those two magic words -higher education- still apply." ----- "Dawkins'reforms, drawn from Friedrich Hayek's monetarism, presumed that the market was the universal model and any type of service provision other than "user pays" amounted to communism. Such was the "new left" weirdness that this was sold as a blow for eglitarianism. Everyone, they argued, had a right to a degree. But no equality has resulted. Rather, we have simply replaced an educationally appropriate hierarchy (of intellectual attainment) with an inappropriate hierarchy of wealth." ----- "This is the point. Higher education isn't about your rights. It is a service and yes, it does benefit the individual. But it is, above all, a service to civilisation. We should pick the minds that can benefit, with or without ovaries attached, and nurture them intensively for the good of us all. That's not elitism, and it's not communism. It is simple common sense." ----- The Sydney Weekend Herald is almost worth buying just for Elizabeth Farrelly IMHO. David L. _______________________________________________ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
