填空题

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 bow 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.
The standard of university education is downgraded to keep more students on campus and thus ______ for the government and universities officials.