QUT: Australian university going moronic

beatriz

QUT: Australian university going moronic

…The Vice Chancellor, Peter Coaldrake, is leading the push to scrap QUT's basic Arts and Social Science degrees in favour of ...

The symptoms are there and as the pockets become deeper, the brain shrinks--not only for QUT, but for any university focusing on business and not on knowledge.

Looking around Carlton area (Melbourne)—a district now filled with student apartments, belonging to the main universities in the area—I wonder whether universities should change their names to ‘University: a real state agency for people like you!’ –with education serving as the hook, of course.

QUT’s pending decision to cease teaching humanities, may be just the culmination of a path taken a long time ago. A business approach to education, in which universities are not longer to serve the knowledge needs of a “humanist” starved society. Whether the drive comes from what the Vice Chancellor calls “student market”, or a financial form of coercion from the government, lack of integrity or lots of avarice…it makes no difference. Humanities can’t compete with the thousands ready to buy their way through the educational supermarket, with 'customers' too busy working to purchase a degree, uninterested or unable to question the system.

What are the implications for the future of planning and humanities in architecture—will we have even more emphasis on ‘sexy’ pictures?

…The Vice Chancellor, Peter Coaldrake, is leading the push to scrap QUT's basic Arts and Social Science degrees in favour of concentrating on its more successful applied courses, such as IT, media, journalism, design and dance.
(…)
A number of academics oppose Peter Coaldrake's position, including Human Rights and Ethics lecturer Ross Daniels. He also wears several other hats. As a member of the University Council he will ultimately cast a vote on the proposal and he's recently become the Labor candidate for the federal seat of Ryan.

ROSS DANIELS: What we're talking about here is preserving the integrity of the QUT program in ensuring that students who come to QUT expecting not only an education which enables them to gain occupation but also an education which gives them the capacity for critical reflective thinking and for that broader based education.

Source: ABC “Vice-Chancellor leads push to scrap QUT humanities degrees”, Wednesday, 16 May , 2007, http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2007/s1924240.htm

…National Union of Students president Michael Nguyen says the change will make university less equitable.
"Students are very angry that the Government is trying to move towards a two-tiered university system, Americanise our university system so only wealthy students will be able to pay their way into some university courses that in the future could become 100 per cent full-fee-entry places," he said.
The biggest rally is at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, which is considering shutting its humanities school….
More: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200705/s1924653.htm

Anonymous

I just found this quote from John Ralston Soul's book, "The Unconscious Civilization".:

"If the universities cannot teach the humanist tradition as central part of the narrowest specializations, then they have indeed sunk back into the worst of medieval scholasticism" p.70

simon seasons

Presumably the Vice Chancellor at QUT has gathered some allies in the push to relinquish humanities from the academic workload. Presumably the pressure to perform finacially amongst this coterie has superceded the need to inculcate the ethical standards inherent in the teaching of humanities. Be warned Vice Chancellor. Fiscal canniness without the unmentionable humanities, (unmentionable perhaps because it goes without saying that it so deeply underpins all coherent and well balanced societies however small or large) is a sure path to the disaster of economic stagnation. Poverty is not exclusive to balance books as the dawn of the industrial revolution so graphically illustrated and can be read about on the pages of Dickens. Is it something that really needs to be reaffirmed, again?
That something goes without saying for a lot of people and evn that many may 'not get it' doesn't mean that it need not be taught, as if it were not actually a core aspect of being human. If a Vice chancellor feels it it not necessarily applicable to a technical understanding of a subject shouldn't that really be left up to the student to decide if they want to ditch such fundamentals. Surely a vice chancellor should be the last person to encourage the dissolving of philosopical resolve. What next?, Bakery schools that teach you how to open a packet of Arnotts!

peter

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