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Inappropriate style of education
by Dr. Alan Ryan
Snr. Lecturer, History & Politics
University of Notre Dame. W.A.(This article appeared in the Australian Aug 16 1996 )
Reviewed by David Hughes-Jones
“The problems of the Unified National System are as much the result of the delusion that all school leavers can benefit from a traditional university education as they are of the inadequate resources allocated to that task.”)
Dr Ryan abserves that people are entitled to be philistines, but it hardly seems sensible for the taxpayer to continue to foot the bill for providing an inappropriate style of education to a cohort of students who will derive little benefit from it. He applauds Robert Manne for his trenchant appreciation of the crisis facing tertiary education.(University Debate Is Ignoring Quality Control, Opinion, 12/8/96).
He comments that in the space of a generation, Australian higher education has experienced a decline in standards that reflects a confusion about the role played by universities in our society.Universities provide a rigorous learning environment which promotes academic excellence. If they do not, the consequences for the rest of us will be disastrous.
He claims that Australian stock of social capital will be diminished if our universities produce lawyers who cannot write, bureaucrats who cannot reason, teachers who cannot spell nor "do" arithmetic.
His opinion is that Universities need to foster the best of society's intellectual potential not seek to satisfy a shallow credentialsism with mediocre vocational courses. The Post Dawkins Universities he believes have too many courses that ape traditional lecturing and tutorial methods to teach skills that would best taught in a proper vocational enviroment.
Unfortunately he now says that we are now saddled with polyglot institutions created by artificial amalgamations in the name of administrative efficiency, which neither provide us with an ability to achieve excellence nor even produce a halfway decent educated mass of students.
He asks the question “Is it too late to revisit the excellent Western European models which seek to integrate individuals into the workforce at a leval appropriate to their capacities & desires?”
Dr Ryan hopes for all our sakes our lords & masters take note of Dr Manne's warnings and do not let the funding issue obscure more significant issue of the social functions which need to be served by our system of higher education.
Dr. Alan Ryan
Snr. Lecturer, History & Politics
University of Notre Dame. W.A.
(The Australian Aug 16 1996)
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