I gather the news in Victoria has been full of stories about the disaster that the Melbourne model is turning into. We dont get to hear much of that here in Brisbane, but I gather the first-preferences for Melbourne are down; Monash and RMIT are picking up a lot of good students who otherwise would have gone to Melbourne, and that there are indeed internal efforts to undo a lot of the model. Uni Western Australia, which was thinking of adopting the model, had now apparently put this on hold because of the bad experience of Uni Melbourne. Perhaps I should ask Joshua Gans to tell me whether he wishes to reconsider his opinion above?

Nor insiders either. Where I work, they are completely defensive and secretive about everything to do with this, so all you end up with is numbers for your subjects and overall means, with things like SDs calculated incorrectly. When I questioned whether anybody had actually bothered to see if the factors still came out (the CEQ questions are basically used for single subjects), obviously they didn’t actually know what factors are, and nor were they willing to give out the decontextualised data so other people could check it themselves (including well trained statisticians, who might be able to give them quite reasonable advice on how to fix it so that it actually might be useful). I only stumbled across the subject means via what must have been an accidental leak, and surprise surprise, the factors don’t come out. More embarrassing was that the overall mean difficulty was around 2.2 out of 5 on a likert scale if I remember correctly (with 1 being very easy and 5 being very hard), but I’ve never heard a single student complain about courses being too easy. That’s why I was surprised by the quote in the paper from the student union.

thanks. Yes, the result is as I predicted, but the mechanism not quite what I had in mind. However, the article you kindly link to only relates to the new subjects put up. It doesnt talk much about the existing courses that are now open to side-streamers. I dont know what the source of the article is though and course quality is not something universities are eager to allow outsiders to scrutinise, so it’s tough for me to find out what has actually happened to the level of courses in Melbourne. I can only guess based on what I hear from colleagues there, and that would be hearsay. I did hear though that the VC in Melbourne said in a general email that all the performace criteria of the model were met. I am cynically inclined to then believe the outcome must have been really bad.

It is clear though that some faculties have been more successful at resisting the impact of the Melbourne model than others. Commerce, probably the most profitable group in Melbourne, seems to have done quite well in keeping the model away, partially by having minimum math requirements of any outsiders doing their courses. Long may they hold out!

http://www.theage.com.au/national/rethink-on-melbourne-uni-model-20081214-6yad.html

Read the last paragraph of this:
. I think this must be the first time I’ve ever heard students complaining of courses being too easy, despite many lots of courses being very easy.

you and I agree on this. The commercialisation of university is od though if you look at the legal structure of universities in Australia: with only few exceptions, they are non-profit and exist via acts of law. You can deduct who now runs universities from where the excess profits have gone to….

Tel_,

I agree with much of your comment 29, see my comment 18: the pick-and-mix variety can indeed already be said to have done its damage in many places.
We disagree about the reality of learning though (your comment 31). In an ideal situation you are right, in reality I think you are wrong. The level of self-motivation you ask for does not quite fit their prior education. I agree with you that greater self-sufficiency would be good though.

Just think of how much you have to dumb-down to let a marketing student pass a third year engineering course

If it’s a third year course in recognising the social impact of technology that was stuffed in there to keep the smiley-stamp do-gooders happy, I’d put the engineers and the marketing students on about a par with one another.

To be honest, I’m against the whole idea of linear structured learning. Everyone should be sent out to work at year 10 high school, then short-courses should be provided for people to enroll in to pick up individual skills that they feel they need, as they feel they need those skills. The courses should be as self contained as possible but if someone can’t handle it then they drop out, try again later.

The whole sausage factory design to education just gets good results on paper — lots of students go through the motions of learning, get grades and a certificate. None of that means much in terms of real world performance. Having genuinely motivated students with some practical context to what they are learning produces vastly better results.

The trouble is that the universities want something tangible to sell. They don’t feel comfortable selling vague and poorly-defined educational services to the rest of the economy, they want to sell degrees, or accreditations, or some object that looks shiny and shrink-wrapped packaged as a product. Worse yet, managers want packaged products to buy. They don’t want to evaluate their employees as individuals with multidimensional interests and skills, they want a standard item to fit a standard role. With low-level grunt work, yes the simplistic approach works. With high level brain work, no it doesn’t work.

For what it’s worth, I’m also against ANY use of a lecture theatre whatsoever. If people can’t read an article on a subject then they aren’t interested enough to learn the subject. The only live face-to-face component of any education should be tutorials (as in question and answer sessions with a group working through an example problem) and laboratory work (i.e. essentially just a tutorial plus fire extinguishers).

Todays Australian announced that the University of Melbourne is going to copy the American liberal-arts style university system. They intend to do away with all specialisations and have 6 broad faculties. Students can pick and mix the courses they like most. Students only fan out into specialisations after the first 3 years, which allows the Uni to scrap a lot of the specialist courses in the first 3 years.

Many universities in around Sydney already did this (quite a while back). For example, UTS merged all strands of Engineering into one big Faculty of Engineering but they still support specialisation within that faculty. It makes a bit of sense from the point of view or reducing admin, and also there’s a lot of math that is shared between different types of engineering (previously they were teaching math for Electrical Engineers and then different math for Mechanical Engineers, etc). Further, if an Electrical Engineer wants to pull electives from the Mechanical subjects, why not?

The University of Melbourne and now the University of Western Australia, are just following government policy, which encourages profit maximization through product differentiation strategies designed to trick people into spending more of their own money than necessary.

Have a good read of Michael E Porters marketing strategies for large firms, this is where these ideas come from, and they have nothing to do with education.

http://newmatilda.com/2007/06/06/university-inc

They are making the courses better – not easier. Also reducing sizes in classes, and increasing teacher accessibility.

It is a bit ridiculous to note my loyalty to my uni – I would have been as excoriating as you if I thought the plan was a bad one. But I don’t. Your criticisms really do smack of very little thought, let alone actual understanding of what is happening.

Kinda like Homer’s effort at andrewleigh.com

Bring Back CL’s blog Says:

April 19th, 2007 at 11:58 am
how is this different from any other producer informing consumers they know better than them what is good for them?

Bring Back CL’s blog Says:

April 19th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
I have just leant that in fact market research was undertaken so I take back what I said.

They have done what Macquarie did in 1982. Reacted to consumer tastes

The commerce and arts degrees will still be commerce and arts degrees.
Those who want to pursue highly specialised study of economics, to take up your example will still be able to do so.

It’s true that Melbourne may no longer attract the very bright students who want to study medicine or law as undergraduates. Presumably they will go to Monash – although the prospect of spending years in the suburban wastelands of Clayton, compared to infinitely more attractive student life in Carlton, may induce some of them to stick to Melbourne and do their law or medicine degrees later.

The one drawback of the Melbourne model for the study of medicine is for the small number of students who will want to go on and become specialists. As it is, they often don’t complete their studies until they are well into their 30s. If they start 3 years later, they’ll be nearly 40 by the time they are fully qualified.

I can’t see how, under the Melbourne Model (Dreamlarge Inc), there is any increased likelihood that a student with ‘no aptitude for law’ will be enrolled in a law degree in 2008 than would be the case in 2006

Patrick,
your loyalty to your uni is noted. Your words about students coming to fruition in the first 3 years of broad education are the same as those on the promotion advertisements! I am indeed not basing myself on any observable internal dissent now, but forgive me for not believing your story about a united happy campus that will keep singing the same song forever more. Just wait till the demolition ball starts rolling for cracks in the unity to appear. When the pressure is applied to ‘enable’ students with no aptitude for law to pass your exams and you’ll hence be asked to dumb down, I think you’ll see the resistance building. But that’s just a prediction. We’ll see.

Also, the University can set any fee it likes and the market will pay for the full-fee places in the graduate schools. Only Commonwealth-supported places have price control.

So, appropriately, they will experience uni life and uni study models, and gain much more exposure to their preferred field, and hopefully several others, before making a informed and motivated choice as to where they will go.

Where Melbourne will be the real winner will be in other Unis’ recent grads looking to further their studies with a Melbourne post-grad degree.

And I will repeat, the ‘resistance’ part is just ignorant crap. I find it hard to believe you have based that on anything but your prejudices. Certainly in the law school, all the academic leadership group are committed to and personally invested in the change and the broader academic group are, at worst, broadly positive about the likely improved teaching and research conditions associated with graduate study.

Anthony and Andrew N,
This whole drive is to increase mixing so I suppose I buy the official line on this that more mixing will take place. Also, the 100 scrapped courses they announced are ni these 3 years so there

Ah, not at the higher end they don’t. Many US private schools and those public schools in wealthy areas produce high school graduates that are equivalent of the higher end of other OECD countries. (Real) liberal arts degrees are most commonly found in higher end institutions. The vast majority of these institutions need little remedial assistance, and certainly need no more assistance than what Australian high school graduates need.

Melbourne (unlike most other Australian ‘universities’) will do just fine with these changes. Australian students and broader Australian society will gain from the decoupling of undergraduate and professional education. The quality of the graduates will be better. Staged entry to the professions will open up professions to a wider range of individuals and help to minimize those that do professional degrees because their 16 year old selves (or their parents) thought they sounded good. The discussion about increased costs is a furphy.

I’m far from expert on US higher education statistics, but in both the Australian and US cases it will be true that more people start university than finish university. I doubt that Paul’s 50% figure is correct (especially not for ‘university’ alone, but if community colleges are counted it could well be heading in that direction), but the going on to uni/college figure will be higher than the educational attaintment number.

And bear in mind that in America, about 50% of the population goes to uni, compared to some 35% here.

According to the NCES, the share of the graduate-age population with BAs is 33.2% in the US, and 36.3% in Australia.