Commerce Student Subject Choice Drops 18.6%

A comparison of the subjects offered to Commerce students in 2007 and 2009 reveals that Commerce students have lost 40 of the 140 subjects offered in 2007. This accompanies the creation of just 14 new subjects leaving a net loss of 26 subjects. The worst hit areas are Economics, which had a net loss of 8 subjects and Management and Marketing which had a net loss of 9 subjects. Business Law is no longer offered to Commerce students, resulting in a loss of 4 subjects.

To suffer a net loss of 26 subjects, represents a reduction in student subject choice of 18.6%, which means that students in 2009 have had their subject choice reduced by nearly one fifth. It is rather sad that the Commerce, which has the highest proportion of full fee international students, has made such drastic cuts to its offerings. The education of the University of Melbourne's Commerce students has clearly been compromised.

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Update:
See comments, a commerce student points out the flaws in the comparison which bring the net loss of subjects much lower.
Update 2: Of 117 subjects in 2007, 9 were lost, a decrease of 7.7%.

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Faculty of Arts Handbook Analysis

In The Age today there is a discussion of the financial cost of the government's cuts to domestic undergraduate full fees.

Let's take a moment to look at the difference between the 2007 and 2009 subject offerings in the Faculty of Arts and take.

Arts Majors in the 2007 Handbook that have not be listed as available to B. Arts students in the 2009 Handbook:
American Studies,
Ancient Greek,
Archaeology,
Architectural History,
Astronomy,
Biology and Botany,
Business Law,
Catalan, Chemistry,
Classical Studies and Archaeology,
Computer applications in the Social Sciences and Humanities,
Computer Science,
Development Studies,
Earth Sciences,
English as a Second Language,
English Language Studies,
Communication Skills,
Environmental Studies,
European Studies,
Gender Studies,
Global Issues,
Management,
Mathematics and Statistics,
Modern Greek,
Music History,
Physics,
Planning and Design,
Portuguese,
Social Work subjects, Social Work,
Socio-Legal Studies,
Theology,
Media and Communications,
Creative Arts,
Public Policy and Management (Honours).

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Culture?

So it has been a month since I last posted anything here. A lot has happened.

There was this interesting piece in The Cambridge Student where a member of the drinking society goes to a 'fresher swap' and explains how selection for the swap works:

"During the lull in proceedings just before the curry arrived, they began to press me for answers as to their selection, and encouraged by their responses to some of my anecdotes, along with the effects of several pints, I leant forwards and confided (with a knowing smile and a wink) that they had in fact been picked straight from the fresher's facebook group, by virtue of their aesthetic qualities and whether or not they looked "fun" (translate: easy).
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Cambridge gets away with a lot under the pretence of tradition, and perhaps we could all do without this bizarre and laughable need of some people to set themselves apart as the social elite within an already elite university."

This is an interesting comment on student culture in higher education institutions. What do we really mean when we talk about student culture? Is this the kind of thing we are referring to? Is student culture for the most part just free sausages, beer, chlamydia share-parties with the occasional theatre production (complete with almost nude actresses) to give it that icing of dignity?

In other news, the York University Student Union is to lobby for a 24-hour library. This is the kind of thing that would probably only work at a residential university. Can you imagine a student taking the 1030 train on to campus to hang out in the library until at least 6 am before they can return home?

Marc Bousquet also writes some excellent commentary about the higher education quality cult and the problem of what seems to be the US-equivalent of a hyper-casualised academic workforce.

The second article is particularly relevant to the University of Melbourne. The university is happy to cut permanent staff and rehire them as casuals, essentially forcing people off real contracts and on to dodgy ones. It undermines their rights as workers and tells them how much the university really cares about the teaching and research they do (not a lot). The student unions and associations are more or less powerless to stop the trend since the university will just claim that it is an HR issue and refuse to talk any further. Bousquet argues that it is only when the untenurable reach positions of leadership that the situation will change. It is only through autonomous action that the casual staff of UniMelb can win decent conditions. They soon will be, if they aren't already, in the majority. All they need to do is realise it.

It is a little depressing really. How on earth do these people expect students to get a reasonable education and to engage with the campus if the only staff we encounter are casuals or sessionals? Casual staff means casual engagement and it is rather hypocritical of the educationalists and executives to casualise their academic workforce on the one hand and then whinge about the casualisation of student engagement.

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