A very interesting opinion piece form The Age looking at how universities are changing in the modern era in Australia.
University has often been portrayed as an immersive and life-changing few years. For some it became a lifetime, which was possible because it was free. These were teaching institutions, dedicated to cultivation of the mind. There were hurdles to be leapt, but money wasn’t one of them.
Now, bloated by a 20-year addiction to immense cash flow, glamorous buildings, corporate values, industry partnerships and a teaching model that is threadbare at best, universities flap about like overstuffed geese on a deflating life raft. No one knows the future. Can these gross creatures even swim? Perhaps now is the moment for revolution.
Last year, UNSW responded to falling enrolments with a proposal to lower entry requirements. With an estimated 80 per cent of teaching now from casual contractors, academics have become itinerant workers. Students have become customers. Teachers report widespread pressure to pass low-grade students but cannot speak of it, fearing reprisal. This too is indicative, since the whole point of tenure was to guarantee free speech.
As soon as the stuff goes online, meanwhile, the academics sign their content over to university ownership. Then, because the lectures can be rerun endlessly, for nothing, the creative mind itself becomes dispensable – casualised or dumped.
Casualisation means your law tutor or biomed lecturer, who’s spent perhaps 10 years earning a doctorate, is appointed for 10 or 13 weeks at a time, usually with just a few days’ notice. They get maybe $120 to deliver a lecture that could take three or four days to prepare. They receive half the super payments of proper staff, no holiday or sick pay. And if, for any reason, enrolment falls the course is summarily axed.
A very thought provoking article that highlights a trend that has been sped up by the effects of the Corona virus.
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.