Just as the Corporate cowboys of the 1970s destroyed the
reputation of the corporations they headed, and engaged in grand scale self
indulgence at corporate expense, now Australia is in the era of the campus
cowboy (and female counterpart). They too overstate the performance of their
product and corporation, and indulge in grand scale self indulgence, despite
their claims of academic excellence and projecting a holier than holy
image. Academics are put under various pressures to drop the
standard of university education so that more students are retained through to
graduation, thereby maximizing the revenue collected by governments of both
persuasions and the more revenue handed back to the universities to fund the
outrageous perquisites of senior management at those institutions.
Australian universities artificially boost student numbers by accepting
many Australians who should not be allowed within 100 kilometers of a university
on the grounds of their intellectual rigor and/or lack of diligence and by
actively recruiting full fee paying overseas students. Despite increased HECS
fees, lecturers have been instructed to neglect their teaching in favor of
research which generates further university revenue. Both
tactics by Australian universities have resulted in a dumbing down of Australian
tertiary(高等的)education. Sure the courses look good on paper, but how they are
administered results in the massive abandonment of educational standards. For
example, in some cases, students can pass a subject having scored only 30% on
the final exam. In some instances, the English of the overseas students is
limited and lecturers have trouble understanding what students are trying to
say. They are under pressure to pass the student in order to retain them as cash
cows. Lecturers are under so much pressure from their university managers that
they employ tactics such as giving the students the exam questions and answers
before the exam giving ’mock’ exams and answers that are the same as the ’real’
exam and setting only the simplest of questions (which are similar to questions
students have already done in tutorials. Why aren’t various
parties doing something about the situation Students don’t complain because
they get their qualification and higher grades with less work. Lecturers
complain but how to the pressure imposed on them because they have mortgages to
pay, families to feed and a career investment in tertiary education.
Universities win because lower standards and easier success means more
students will come back to do higher degrees—a win-win situation Professions
which employ large groups of graduates don’t complain because the system
produces more ’qualified’ graduates for employers to choose from, thus forcing
down salaries and generating more revenue for the profession’s administrators
from increased numbers of people undertaking postgraduate professional exams
necessary for admittance to the relevant profession. Accomplishment of courses appears good in paper, because they are the manipulated results from ______ of educational standard.