Honi Soit Women's Issue

The April 30 edition of Honi Soit is a women's issue.

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Facebook Fines

The Friday, April 25 edition of Varsity reports that Oxford University Proctors are fining students using photographic evidence on facebook:

"Following complaints of antisocial
behaviour amongst students from University staff and members of the public, proctors made
the decision to browse students’ profiles in order to identify those who have breached University
rules. Emails which cite links to incriminating photos on Facebook are then sent to students to impose fines ranging from £80 to £500.
[...]
Whilst the University states that “the fines collected each year go towards a good cause within the University”, the Student Union claims that the amount collected in the last year rose by 465% to £11,065."

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"It's Harvard, Darling..."

Harvard is to receive very large sums of philanthropic support:

David M. Rockefeller ’36, the grandson of the famous oil magnate and a longtime Harvard benefactor, has donated $100 million to the University.
[...]
Seventy percent of the gift will be devoted to international programs, and the remaining portion will be used to fund arts programs, The Times reported. Harvard will not receive the $100 million until Rockefeller's death but will receive $2.5 million per year until then, meaning that the total value of the donation could end up being well over $100 million.

The donation comes as the Committee on University Resources, which is composed of individuals who have given $1 million or more to Harvard, convenes at the Charles Hotel this weekend.

It would be very nice to have an extra $2.5 million per year, with the promise of $100 million bequest. That kind of money could easily save the Faculty of Arts from its future budget deficit. But unfortunately, the extraordinary wealth and fundraising ability of Harvard is not making the implementation of Harvard's new curriculum of General Education, set to replace Rosovsky's Core, much easier.

In fact, members of the Class of 2012 have to choose between the two curricula and many don't know what is going on:

Members of the Class of 2012 may need to decide between these two curricula early in their academic careers. Only 13 courses so far have been approved to “double-count,” or fulfill both Core and Gen Ed requirements. Nine double-counting courses will be offered next academic year.
[...]
OUT OF THE LOOP

The Class of 2012 has received little information—if any—about the transition.

When incoming freshman Roshane B. Campbell of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. was asked about the curriculum change, he said, “I actually don’t know what’s going on.”

The 50-page Admissions Office brochure mailed to prospective students this year mentions Gen Ed once. On page 15, it reads, “The faculty is developing a new and distinctive program of General Education.”

This sounds very familiar. It would be nice though, if someone, somewhere knew how to implement a curriculum review smoothly.

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Academic Appeals, Plagiarism and Closing Ranks

The latest edition of Honi Soit (23/4/08) describes a few interesting controversies over at the University of Sydney. The censorship controversy is still going, just like the University of Melbourne Student Union's censorship controversy regarding Farrago publishing discriminatory content. But more interesting tales are unfolding as well.

According to the President's Report, the University of Sydney is closing ranks around the Dean of the Conservatorium of Music who repetitively suspected of plagiarism. It is, after all, bad press for a Sandstone to have a Dean involved in a plagiarism scandal. But, if they had their wits about them, they would realise that it is even worse press for a Sandstone to be protecting a plagiariser. Sometimes Sandstones don't behave as intelligently as one would expect.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

"THE head of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music has written lecture notes for audiences at a series of talks at the Art Gallery of NSW that contain phrases and sentences identical to those contained in a treatise by two Pulitzer Prize-winning United States historians.The material comes to light just six months after Kim Walker was reinstated as dean of the conservatorium after being stood down while allegations of plagiarism were investigated."

Both the University of Sydney Students' Representative Council and the Sydney University Postgraduate Representative Association are fuming over being sidelined at Academic Board regarding Academic Appeals. New policies were passed that reduced the ability of students to solve problems informally as well as giving students less time to lodge appeals. SRC and SUPRA representatives worked with university bureaucrats to amend the policies, but their amendments were voted down and their university support evaporated.

SUPRA's concerns run along the same line as the SRC's.

"What killed [Academic Board] was the new draconian, mean, inappropriate and short-sighted Academic Appeals Policy that was introduced. This policy is so poor that it is now one of the most anti-student policies in the country. The Academic Board approved this policy when both SUPRA, the SRC and other student members of the Academic Board were opposed to it."

University of Sydney student representatives have their work cut out for them. I just hope that the paths of UoM and USyd don't follow each other too closely. Student newspaper problems are bad, but anti-student policy is worse.

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Corporate Feudalism

Manchester Metropolitan University [wiki, website] has entered into partnership with a supermarket chain to offer a degree to its employees. Student Direct reports:

Degrees in Shelf-Stacking

Angela Wipperman

SUPERMARKET GIANT Tesco will soon offer its own university degree thanks to a new partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University.

The Tesco Foundation Degree, a two-year course taught through the internet, lectures and hands-on work in store, presumably stocking shelves, is the store's latest move beyond the groceries market.

This is not unique. Many other businesses have training programs that have come to rival a university degree in their comprehensiveness, transferability and market value. But supermarkets?

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Servicing Debt

The Age has run a story about a proposal for students to pay off their HECS debt by volunteering. It sounds, more or less, like a form of pseudo-employment. The article raises several reasons why it might not be such a good idea, including students need income support, students need money to pay living expenses etc.

Professor Chapman, who helped design HECS, in the article:

"If you wanted to relieve the burden for students generally, it's got to be about income support while they're studying," he said. "That's far and away more important."

We should also note that students from lower SES backgrounds are more likely to defer HECS. This scheme would be just extracting more from the poor.

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As in Sydney...

I've been looking through different student publications online. I came across 'Honi Soit' and found some all-too-familiar content in the President's report of their 16/4/08 edition.

University of Sydney SRC President Kate Laing:

I personally believe that censorship should not be conducted when it comes to student newspapers, because free speech and diverse debate and opinions should be embraced. Similarly if students can’t be controversial with their ideas in a campus publication written by and for students then where can they be?

But, under the heading sexism, she writes:

Within the constitution of the SRC there are guidelines that restrict what can be censored, and that is anything criminal or discriminatory.

She continues:

What I am disappointed by is how disconnected the editors have made themselves from the organisation that funds their publication, and will publish sexist remarks that openly undermine the good work of collectives and passionate fellow students.

What a coincidence that at the same time, both UMSU and the University of Sydney SRC are having the same problems with their respective newspapers.

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Banner Drop

Today, there was a banner drop: "Arts: Going Cheap (Discounts not applicable to students)". I also have finally managed to figure out the 'peekaboo' code for this weblog in a way that allows for a post to be hidden. After burning the template up a couple of times, I found Web Basics and some working code. Hooray for copy and paste code tutorials.

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Arts, Humanities and Politics

John Wilkins has a discussion on his science blog 'On the decline of the humanities'.

Wilkins begins:

Yesterday I attended a meeting at my university which pretty well aimed to wind up the disciplines of my school (history, philosophy, religion and classics) and present a single school with five majors and no departments.

And mentions:

Yet at the same time as Melbourne is losing one of its star philosophers - Graham Priest - leaving only eight full-time actual (not honorary) staff where once there were over twenty...

This is bad if you're a student in philosophy obviously, but there are a whole lot of different perspectives on whether or not this is a bad thing in society.

Students who go to university from lower SES groups are likely to be more career focussed, since they are all too familiar with the unpleasantness of poverty. In this sense, increasing access would be accompanied by a slight shift as a larger proportion of university students take up subjects on a pragmatic basis.

However, in a two-cycle model, professional graduate Law Schools (based on US experience) are quite fond of the philosophy graduate for their clear thinking and analytical skills. The low-SES student bias against philosophy would then disadvantage them slightly for admission to Law School. This is a paradoxical effect, considering that one of the arguments for the Melbourne Model was that it would allow for elite private schooling to wash out during the undergraduate years, thereby promoting access and equity.

Further down the threat, Wilkins makes the comment:

If funds can't be found elsewhere, then the whole nation is removing the humanities from public universities. One possibly unintended result is that humanities such as ethics, history and so on will tend to be done either by the Catholic university system or by industry. This leaves a gap in secular discourse.

And secular discourse is what feeds progressive political movements on the fronts of race, gender, poverty, globalisation, health and education. Also, it isn't as if the 'breadth' components of the Melbourne Model are holding the humanities afloat since most students are taking breadth subjects that relate to commerce and business. The loss of the humanities from the academy won't be the end of the world, but it certainly doesn't help.

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Arts Forum and the Press

This afternoon the University of Melbourne Student Union and University of Melbourne Postgraduate Association held a forum regarding renewed cuts to the Faculty of Arts. Dean of Arts, Professor Mark Considine was in attendance to answer the questions of undergraduates, postgraduates and many tutors.

Some highlights:
1. Voluntary redundancies - increasing workloads, stressing out staff and making working conditions inhospitable surely make getting rid of people easier.
2. Several casual postgraduate students and tutors related their experiences of not receiving proper training or pay.
3. One student asked if this wasn't violating the university's contract to provide the degree she was enrolled in.

At the beginning of the forum, Considine made a remark about the forum being in-house. This lead to an Age journalist being asked to leave. This shows how eager the university is to control its image and its lack of commitment to transparency. The general public is a stakeholder in the university, which is partly government funded:

1.9 [The university] is accountable to the wider community, particularly in Melbourne and Victoria, but also nationally and internationally, for advancing the economic, social, educational and cultural welfare of society.

The public clearly has the right to know about what goes in the University of Melbourne and its Faculty of Arts, yet this makes it quite clear that Arts and the broader university have no such intention of doing this.

In a similar way, it is accountable to its current students:

1.7 To its current students, the University must account for its responsibility to provide a rich teaching, leaning and research training environment in which support services and infrastructure are of the highest possible quality.

So if the Faculty of Arts is happy to ignore its responsibility to account to the wider public, how can students trust that it is upholding its responsibility to account to students?

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Glossary

University terms.

Types of Australian University
Sandstone - Founded before WW1
Redbrick - Founded before 1950
Gumtree - Founded before 1987
New Universities - Founded after 1987. Perhaps we should be looking for a new name for these. The British call their New Universities Plateglasses.

Important Distinctions
Residential vs. Non-residential or commuter Universities
More or less self-explanatory. Residential universities house most of their students on campus. Australian universities are commuter universities. At the University of Melbourne, only about 7% are housed in colleges. It also reflects an historical power struggle between professors and colleges.

Executive vs. Collegial Decision-making
University decision making has traditionally been collegial, i.e. by consensus. Executive decision making is, however, in ascendancy.

Public, Private for-profit/not-for-profit
Public - State governed and [supposedly] funded. Provides Commonwealth Supported Places.
Private - Not regulated by the State. Charges full fees. Can be for-profit, or not-for-profit.

Links
Australian Universities
Types of Universities
Liberal arts colleges
British Redbricks
Oxbridge
Ivy League

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Welcome

Welcome to Imitation Rituals, a blog of Australian Higher Education from the University of Melbourne. This blog has been started to address the curiosity about the Melbourne Model from students outside the University of Melbourne. It is hopefully useful for students within the university as well.

What is the Melbourne Model?
The Melbourne Model is a transition to a US-Style education structure, based on the Bologna Declaration [see wikipedia] of 1999. The Bologna Declaration, was a response globalisation in higher education and seeks to enhance the transferability of university qualifications through standardisation. The general model of undergraduate general education followed by postgraduate professional training is the same as the US model, but the Melbourne Model follows Bologna insofar as it has multiple undergraduate entry points and provides a three year undergraduate program instead of the US-style four year undergraduate course.

The implementation of New Generation degrees this year is following an incredibly rushed timeline. The Curriculum Commission went from establishment to report production to approval in about 8 months. It is no wonder that the implementation is not going smoothly.

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