Prior to the pandemic, when the universities were still allowing international students (and I believe they're about to reopen to international students again soon) the anecdotes I was hearing from teachers was appalling. Pressure to pass students despite them being barely able to speak English, let alone know the subject matter.
The universities here in Australia have essentially transitioned to being businesses and failing students is bad for business. The incentives have become completely misaligned and short sighted.
Who I choose to interview and eventually hire now has no relationship to a computer science degree. Instead I'm looking at what you've actually achieved prior to the interview. If you're coming in for an entry level position, show me your group project. Show me you fumbling around in technologies that you don't really understand fully yet but have a genuine interest in. I want to see the homepage you created for your dads panel beating business, that alone tells me that you're curious enough about the industry to actually try (and succeed!) in creating something, even if it looks like a dogs breakfast.
I know others are thinking the same way when hiring and the universities have only themselves to blame for chasing short term profits over long term viability.
Universities in the UK don't seem much better, I hear similar regarding a lot of experiences. It seems like if you have a pulse then you get your piece of paper, even if you missed most of your seminars (which they are meant to kick you out over, but most don't). Education has become less about actually being educated and more paying the piper to get your piece of paper to assumedly stand out against other candidates for job positions, who likely also have the same sheet of paper anyway.
Sure, for some professions, nothing much has changed, but for a lot, it's become a bit of a joke.
Yes. My partner is doing a phd at USYD and teaches undergrad chem & biology. A personal friend is a professor there. Every class has a very sizeable number of foreign students on a spectrum of dont-care-why-should-I to cant-follow-the-basics. This is not all foreign students, but many simply appear to be there for the tick box and residency it affords.
Public universities in Europe might not be high in rankings, but there is no incentive to force student through, because funding primarily goes from government not from student.
Actually the source might not matter. It is criteria of funding and it can be number of graduates or degrees awarded. So it makes sense for university to give out degrees so they can get money from government.
Universities aren't learning institutions anymore, they are businesses. They are not run by academics, but by managers who in the face of criticism spew "hooray statements" about mental-health frameworks instead of improving conditions. They no longer have students, but customers.
And customers, if they don't get what they paid for, complain.
I have this opinion for any private school, be it in Australia, USA or anywhere else.
In Europe, anyone who studied private school of any sort is considered as somebody who has bought his degree, but ultimately knows nothing. CVs with private schools degrees are going into a bin automatically. Only reason why private universities exists in Europe is when your employee (usually government) really demands a Bc. or Ing/Mgr in front of your name from bureaucratic reasons.
Sometimes it is better to have high school diploma from public school, than having university degree from private school.
In the USA our public schools have the same issue. They receive federal funding based in part on the graduation rate. So they have significant motivation to make that as high as they can get away with.
Yes! My partner eventually quit her job university lecturing because she was explicitly told time and time again she was never allowed to fail any of the international "full fee paying" students. If she lodged a fail mark she was raked over the coals and forced to change it as a passing mark.
She was only allowed to give failing marks to Australians who pay approximately a quarter the university fees compared to international students.
The Dean and someone else above her but below the Dean.
She was told several times explicitly to change failure marks to passing grades, be "extra lenient" because they did not have a high-school level of English language ability.
This was a humanities course, not math or science. She failed a few slackers who were native English speakers, nothing happened in those cases (no verbal dressing-down and forced to rescind previous grade).
The final straw was someone who clearly did not know the subject matter and she refused to change the grade herself. She pushed the paper back across the table and told her superior to re-grade that paper himself and she resigned end of that year...
> “If I went through and only passed the students I knew had put in a sincere ongoing effort I might have passed [about 2%].”
The only reason I went to university is so I can apply for entry level jobs that require a university degree. As long as the job market is structured this way it's cruel to fail student for not putting in "sincere ongoing effort". Nothing about university is sincere.
As someone without a degree who ended up as a software engineer at CSIRO, my advice is to just start working. Do interesting stuff. Push yourself. Make a name in the community.
I didn't start out by saying "I'm going to become a software engineer at CSIRO", I'm Canadian, so didn't even know what CSIRO was.
I think one of the strange things about people who think they need to get a degree to get a job, is that they often are trying to get the job they might get after having a degree, but without the degree.
You have to start somewhere, but my thinking is that if you were to take the lowliest job, and just start, you'd be far ahead of those who went and got a degree by the time you spent 4 years in the industry.
Just my 2 cents.
Of course, it depends on what you are trying to do. We're currently hiring for a neuroscientist, and of course, that needs a university degree.
> you'd be far ahead of those who went and got a degree by the time you spent 4 years in the industry.
but you're not competing against someone starting a degree, you're competing against those who graduated today, and is looking for their first job.
All else equal, an employer is going to rank someone with a degree above someone without, given both have no industry/relevant experience to start with. You have to show extraordinary capability somehow. Or have some personal connection which outshine the degree in the eye of the hiring person.
You aren't going for the same job as somebody with a degree. It depends on what industry, but find a foot in the door and work to where you would end up in 4 years.
I didn't just say "I'm going to be a software engineer let me apply at CSIRO".
I applied to work at the IT help desk at a company in my home town. The manager there said "not without a degree", so I worked in customer service, ended up in communications, and built an IT system to improve communications in the company. The help desk manager still said "nope, you can't work here without a degree", but the CTO saw the work I'd done and said, just come work for head office building the systems, why would you want to work at the help desk?
So, in about 2 years, I was working a better job than had I applied through the regular channels after getting a university degree.
There's always a 3rd door. You can't face life head-on, it has more experience at keeping those doors closed to you. But ask yourself - if there is another way in, what is that way.
Try that.
You'll be wrong. Try again, you'll be wrong again. But eventually, you'll be right.
If the Universities bent too far surviving COVID and ongoing tensions with China, they may have slaughtered their golden goose. But the underlying issues have been well known for decades. The existential threat has always been that Australian universities will never be as prestigious as the big name British and American institutions, and what the students are really paying for is prestige. You don't study here if you can afford Oxford or Cambridge or Yale or MIT. And with online learning, those brand names are becoming more affordable.
How does this work these days? Many years ago, international students had to leave the country after they graduated and their visa expired, and apply for PR like any other alien. And any recognized degree as good as another. But I'm a few decades out of date.
I havent followed it recently myself, but immediately after undergrad its a 18-24 month “post study” visa. Then either a grad program or sponsored work visa. And at that point you should have the 3 yrs in australia to qualify for PR. ISTR that during covid the work restrictions were removed from student visas as well, though that doesnt matter much to the subset of students buying multi million dollar properties.
I graduated from an Australian uni in 2006 and have nothing but wonderful things to say about the experience. Heartbreaking to think that my kids might not have access to the same quality of institution.
Twelve years of Coalition government is part of the problem but imo the decline really started earlier, under Howard, with the shift to “user pays”. The rapid expansion of international student intake began shortly thereafter as a response to funding shortfalls.
I think you need to go back farther. The problem was already starting in the mid-90s, and I think likely triggered by the Hawke government with the introduction of HECS (think student loans) and the changes that made to university funding. By the late 90s I recall conversations with academics that pretty much mirror the comments in the article. Relatively serious money was coming in from international and other full-fee paying students, and the departments who could pull in the numbers and/or charge higher fees growing. All the other departments frantically trying to work out how they could follow suit before they were amalgamated or dissolved. Full-fee student marks would often get bumped up to the next grade on appeal. And the casual tutor positions really kicked in, because a job needed to be found for every full-fee paying masters or phd who wanted one. And because the lecturers were being squeezed, delivering lectures to larger and larger groups in shiny new double or triple sized auditoriums, and needing three or four tutors to handle tutorials and student support and grading. And those tutors complained about how many hours they were paid vs. how many hours it took. And how the contracts were all casual, and carefully ensured so to avoid the liability of accidentally making them full-time. And the lecturers, taking more load because they were not as lucky as their peers who disappeared into research groups (also money spinners). I left in 2000, having worked in two faculties supporting about 10 different departments, two of which were leaders in pulling international students with new offshore campuses (offices really).
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 63.1 ms ] threadThe universities here in Australia have essentially transitioned to being businesses and failing students is bad for business. The incentives have become completely misaligned and short sighted.
Who I choose to interview and eventually hire now has no relationship to a computer science degree. Instead I'm looking at what you've actually achieved prior to the interview. If you're coming in for an entry level position, show me your group project. Show me you fumbling around in technologies that you don't really understand fully yet but have a genuine interest in. I want to see the homepage you created for your dads panel beating business, that alone tells me that you're curious enough about the industry to actually try (and succeed!) in creating something, even if it looks like a dogs breakfast.
I know others are thinking the same way when hiring and the universities have only themselves to blame for chasing short term profits over long term viability.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-04/international-student...
Sure, for some professions, nothing much has changed, but for a lot, it's become a bit of a joke.
And customers, if they don't get what they paid for, complain.
In Europe, anyone who studied private school of any sort is considered as somebody who has bought his degree, but ultimately knows nothing. CVs with private schools degrees are going into a bin automatically. Only reason why private universities exists in Europe is when your employee (usually government) really demands a Bc. or Ing/Mgr in front of your name from bureaucratic reasons.
Sometimes it is better to have high school diploma from public school, than having university degree from private school.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2020/...
She was told several times explicitly to change failure marks to passing grades, be "extra lenient" because they did not have a high-school level of English language ability.
This was a humanities course, not math or science. She failed a few slackers who were native English speakers, nothing happened in those cases (no verbal dressing-down and forced to rescind previous grade).
The final straw was someone who clearly did not know the subject matter and she refused to change the grade herself. She pushed the paper back across the table and told her superior to re-grade that paper himself and she resigned end of that year...
The only reason I went to university is so I can apply for entry level jobs that require a university degree. As long as the job market is structured this way it's cruel to fail student for not putting in "sincere ongoing effort". Nothing about university is sincere.
As someone without a degree who ended up as a software engineer at CSIRO, my advice is to just start working. Do interesting stuff. Push yourself. Make a name in the community.
I didn't start out by saying "I'm going to become a software engineer at CSIRO", I'm Canadian, so didn't even know what CSIRO was.
I think one of the strange things about people who think they need to get a degree to get a job, is that they often are trying to get the job they might get after having a degree, but without the degree.
You have to start somewhere, but my thinking is that if you were to take the lowliest job, and just start, you'd be far ahead of those who went and got a degree by the time you spent 4 years in the industry.
Just my 2 cents.
Of course, it depends on what you are trying to do. We're currently hiring for a neuroscientist, and of course, that needs a university degree.
but you're not competing against someone starting a degree, you're competing against those who graduated today, and is looking for their first job.
All else equal, an employer is going to rank someone with a degree above someone without, given both have no industry/relevant experience to start with. You have to show extraordinary capability somehow. Or have some personal connection which outshine the degree in the eye of the hiring person.
You aren't going for the same job as somebody with a degree. It depends on what industry, but find a foot in the door and work to where you would end up in 4 years.
I didn't just say "I'm going to be a software engineer let me apply at CSIRO".
I applied to work at the IT help desk at a company in my home town. The manager there said "not without a degree", so I worked in customer service, ended up in communications, and built an IT system to improve communications in the company. The help desk manager still said "nope, you can't work here without a degree", but the CTO saw the work I'd done and said, just come work for head office building the systems, why would you want to work at the help desk?
So, in about 2 years, I was working a better job than had I applied through the regular channels after getting a university degree.
There's always a 3rd door. You can't face life head-on, it has more experience at keeping those doors closed to you. But ask yourself - if there is another way in, what is that way.
Try that.
You'll be wrong. Try again, you'll be wrong again. But eventually, you'll be right.
what the students are really paying for is a chance at PR in australia.
https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/student-buys-51-million-ho...
Twelve years of Coalition government is part of the problem but imo the decline really started earlier, under Howard, with the shift to “user pays”. The rapid expansion of international student intake began shortly thereafter as a response to funding shortfalls.
https://campusmorningmail.com.au/news/accounting-for-vice-ch...