The Empiricist

There’s going to be an enquiry into higher education in Australia. Indian student representatives said that this is well overdue, because students don’t have adequate consumer protection.
But the higher education industry in Australia has a range of problems that will not be solved by an enquiry.

* Australian universities’ ability to innovate in revenue strategies has been stifled by government regulation; this has led to a flight to offering high-revenue post-graduate courses and wooing overseas students.

* The universities have been trading on brand rather than the actual quality of courses. Quality across the board is low, and standards of assessment are low. Since paying students are a necesary lifeblood, the institutions can’t afford to be too selective in who they take, or too tough on the ones that they get.

* University degrees in Australian society, as in other western societies, are a “signal of quality” to employers, but with lower tertiary standards and more students going through the system, the effectiveness of this signal is fading.

* This is also a very inefficient signaling system, and comes at great cost to both the student and the government that subsidises their education.

* Degrees indicate a certain level of intelligence, discipline, and training. However, this reputation as a signal of quality relies in part on historical brand. 50 years ago, when 1 percent of the population obtained an undergraduate degree, going to university did indicate a membership of a small elite subclass of society. It indicates no such thing in today’s society.

* The strength of universities today relies on a mythical belief in the value of training over natural ability and informal (or on-the-job) learning.

* The university system in Australia still operates on the teaching/research/community service tryptich model of academia. This notion, while quaint, is unrealistic and unsustainable.