There was a small story late last week about the Government trying to roll back the Howard Government's seven year limit on HECS subsidised study. It's a symbolic gesture as much as anything else – at the moment there are only 115 students to whom this applies, or 0.02% of the university population – but the Coalition is, as you might expect, opposing it. The reasons are of the typical welfare bashing variety, fears of 'professional students' avoiding adulthood while living the good life at university and draining the public purse. Fears which anyone who has actually been to university and enjoyed the long years of living off Mi Goreng and cask wine while avoiding medical appointments because you can't afford to see a doctor can probably safely laugh at.
Yet the discussion hints at something a bit deeper in our attitude toward higher education in general: the transformation of university from a site of education to one of vocation – if a university's first and foremost role is to equip you with a profession, then by and large one shouldn't need any more than a few years to skip through it and in to the outside world. I should probably say at the outset that this change is not necessarily all a bad thing. There was a lot not to like about the ivory towers of old: restricted to the privileged, closed off from the broader world, they were at best impractical and at worst the arbiters of a unforgiving class system. Yet the strain of anti-intellectualism that seems to have prevailed in Australia, especially from the Howard years on, does worry me on occasion. We're a country that's a bit too cosy in our reliance upon the continued demand for iron ore.
This turn towards the vocational model of higher education is likely to increase markedly with next year's introduction of uncapped degree numbers at our universities. The Government's stated aim is to have at least 40% of people between the ages of 25 and 34 equipped with a bachelor's degree by 2025. It's a noble aim on paper. The financial benefits of having a university degree are statistically undeniable and in general education is an essential, and often under-acknowledged component of a successful society. But it also begins to change quite considerably the idea of what it means to have a university education. For example, right now it is possible to study arts at the University of Ballarat in Mt Helen with a tertiary admissions rank of 40.75. By that point, you've usually failed at least three Year 12 subjects. While an outlier, both statistically and geographically, there are a suite of scores in the low 50s that will guarantee you entry to more prominent universities. For example, you can become a nurse at Monash with a score of 55.25, or perhaps two fails underneath your belt.
This is not of itself the end of the world. Performance at high school is a notoriously bad indicator of the shape of the rest of one's life and the evidence that people who do averagely in high school can acquit themselves well at university is definitely there. But these scores will conceivably plummet further when admissions open up, because there are going to be tens of thousands of new places and everyone is going to want a slice of the pie. Because more students means more money and more money means more growth and more growth means a better university and a better university means more students. At least in theory.
The US is beginning to grapple with some of these questions. Recently some colleges have even begun exploring the possibility of capping their student numbers so as to ensure the continued quality of both the teaching and the students. As one former administrator said "Everybody can't grow—there aren't that many great students out there." And it will be interesting to see whether this leads to a greater stratification and specialisation of the university system in Australia – I would expect at least a few departmental closures as universities reorient their resources towards the degrees they're doing well with. Hell, it may even lead to a few campus and university closures if some of the bigger institutions really go to town on their expansion plans.
But at the same time, this expansion means that the value of a university degree will inevitably change. The New Yorker had a typically excellent discussion on the matter a couple of issues back, looking at the different ways of seeing a college education and how these have been changing as more and more people head on to higher education. Primary amongst these shifts has been the rise of a 'Ps get degrees' mentality amongst those who are attending college merely to get the relevant professional qualification, that is, vocational students. This has also led, paradoxically, to a diminishment in the difficulty of courses across the board and a concomitant increase in the social aspect of attending college. As the article concludes, "The system appears to be drawing in large numbers of people who have no firm career goals but failing to help them acquire focus... College was supposed to be hard. Its difficulty was a token of its transformational powers."
For sure the differences between American and Australian higher education models are significant. The number of students currently studying at US colleges puts to shame even the most ambitious plans of the Gillard Government. Right now there are some 21 million students enrolled across the college spectrum. Across a population of 300 million, that balances out to 7.67% of all the humans in America, with 68% of high school graduates going on to college. Australia by comparison, enrols 480 000 out of 22.5 million, or just over 2%. While this will increase next year no doubt, it's still a long way from the broad spectrum panacea that the US college experience has become.
But there are still questions to be asked here, and the US experience may prove to be instructive in answering them. Are universities the most efficient mechanisms for providing technical and vocational training? Should we be worried about lesser students getting in to university? Are degrees becoming easier as they become less selective, and is that a bad thing? What are the primary goals of university - education or vocation? In what mixture? I don't purport to have the answers to these questions, but it strikes me that the opening of the admissions floodgates next year could prove to be one of the most dramatic changes to our higher education system in quite some time, and I think the character of our universities could change markedly along with it. As is often the case, there's nothing intrinsically good or bad about such a resolution, but the consequences of such a cultural shift could be significant and unexpected.
Yet the discussion hints at something a bit deeper in our attitude toward higher education in general: the transformation of university from a site of education to one of vocation – if a university's first and foremost role is to equip you with a profession, then by and large one shouldn't need any more than a few years to skip through it and in to the outside world. I should probably say at the outset that this change is not necessarily all a bad thing. There was a lot not to like about the ivory towers of old: restricted to the privileged, closed off from the broader world, they were at best impractical and at worst the arbiters of a unforgiving class system. Yet the strain of anti-intellectualism that seems to have prevailed in Australia, especially from the Howard years on, does worry me on occasion. We're a country that's a bit too cosy in our reliance upon the continued demand for iron ore.
This turn towards the vocational model of higher education is likely to increase markedly with next year's introduction of uncapped degree numbers at our universities. The Government's stated aim is to have at least 40% of people between the ages of 25 and 34 equipped with a bachelor's degree by 2025. It's a noble aim on paper. The financial benefits of having a university degree are statistically undeniable and in general education is an essential, and often under-acknowledged component of a successful society. But it also begins to change quite considerably the idea of what it means to have a university education. For example, right now it is possible to study arts at the University of Ballarat in Mt Helen with a tertiary admissions rank of 40.75. By that point, you've usually failed at least three Year 12 subjects. While an outlier, both statistically and geographically, there are a suite of scores in the low 50s that will guarantee you entry to more prominent universities. For example, you can become a nurse at Monash with a score of 55.25, or perhaps two fails underneath your belt.
This is not of itself the end of the world. Performance at high school is a notoriously bad indicator of the shape of the rest of one's life and the evidence that people who do averagely in high school can acquit themselves well at university is definitely there. But these scores will conceivably plummet further when admissions open up, because there are going to be tens of thousands of new places and everyone is going to want a slice of the pie. Because more students means more money and more money means more growth and more growth means a better university and a better university means more students. At least in theory.
The US is beginning to grapple with some of these questions. Recently some colleges have even begun exploring the possibility of capping their student numbers so as to ensure the continued quality of both the teaching and the students. As one former administrator said "Everybody can't grow—there aren't that many great students out there." And it will be interesting to see whether this leads to a greater stratification and specialisation of the university system in Australia – I would expect at least a few departmental closures as universities reorient their resources towards the degrees they're doing well with. Hell, it may even lead to a few campus and university closures if some of the bigger institutions really go to town on their expansion plans.
But at the same time, this expansion means that the value of a university degree will inevitably change. The New Yorker had a typically excellent discussion on the matter a couple of issues back, looking at the different ways of seeing a college education and how these have been changing as more and more people head on to higher education. Primary amongst these shifts has been the rise of a 'Ps get degrees' mentality amongst those who are attending college merely to get the relevant professional qualification, that is, vocational students. This has also led, paradoxically, to a diminishment in the difficulty of courses across the board and a concomitant increase in the social aspect of attending college. As the article concludes, "The system appears to be drawing in large numbers of people who have no firm career goals but failing to help them acquire focus... College was supposed to be hard. Its difficulty was a token of its transformational powers."
For sure the differences between American and Australian higher education models are significant. The number of students currently studying at US colleges puts to shame even the most ambitious plans of the Gillard Government. Right now there are some 21 million students enrolled across the college spectrum. Across a population of 300 million, that balances out to 7.67% of all the humans in America, with 68% of high school graduates going on to college. Australia by comparison, enrols 480 000 out of 22.5 million, or just over 2%. While this will increase next year no doubt, it's still a long way from the broad spectrum panacea that the US college experience has become.
But there are still questions to be asked here, and the US experience may prove to be instructive in answering them. Are universities the most efficient mechanisms for providing technical and vocational training? Should we be worried about lesser students getting in to university? Are degrees becoming easier as they become less selective, and is that a bad thing? What are the primary goals of university - education or vocation? In what mixture? I don't purport to have the answers to these questions, but it strikes me that the opening of the admissions floodgates next year could prove to be one of the most dramatic changes to our higher education system in quite some time, and I think the character of our universities could change markedly along with it. As is often the case, there's nothing intrinsically good or bad about such a resolution, but the consequences of such a cultural shift could be significant and unexpected.
Source: The Vine
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