Quality education — if you can pay for it

By Marina Cameron

After the federal government cut $2.3 billion from university operating grants last year, university administrations have been scrabbling to make up costs by cutting staff, courses, libraries and services and charging more student fees.

While students and staff have resisted these attacks, vice-chancellors and university management bodies have taken on the government's dirty work of cutting education.

A recent example of this is a guide sent out to all staff by the Academic Development Unit at La Trobe University. After having cut a quarter of its staff, La Trobe is now forcing existing staff to cope with larger class sizes and a bigger assessment load.

Suggestions in the guide include: using class time for assessment through oral presentations; using class time to provide feedback to the whole class, instead of individual feedback; using multiple choice tests which can be marked by computers; reducing the choice in essay questions; setting group work assignments so that only one report is marked; using self- and peer-assessment; setting fewer assessment tasks by using short answer formats or assessment of different stages of one piece of work (e.g. a proposal, a literature review, the final essay).

These sorts of changes can only lead to a decline in education quality and do not deal with the extra load on staff. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald on June 16 reported that the national average is around 15.5 students per academic staff member, compared with 12.1 a decade ago.

Student-staff ratios in the bigger, elite universities are much better than those in the smaller, regional and rural institutions. The University of Sydney has a ratio of 11.8 to one , while Charles Sturt University's is 20.4 to one.

Inequalities between universities will widen with the first domestic fee-paying undergraduates being allowed into at least three universities next year (Sydney, NSW and Melbourne). The elite universities will be more able to take advantage of this private funding source to make up for the cuts.

The government is arguing that more competition will produce more quality. On June 21, education minister Amanda Vanstone claimed that the government's policy of putting more of the cost of education onto students allowed students themselves to demand that universities be more responsive to their needs! The onus is back on students, apparently, to demand better quality education.

However, it is obvious already that some universities, students and prospective students will be able to take advantage of the new situation, while others will lose out badly.

The message is clear: quality costs money. Universities will increasingly be run to attract and keep fee-paying students, to provide quality through extra facilities and attention — for the right price.

From GLW issue 280