One of the University's 'Back for Seconds' bloggers, Suzanne, has an excellent post up comparing New Generation and Heritage/Continuing degrees. Her analysis is balanced and fair, pointing out both the advantages and disadvantages faced by students under both models.
The only point that causes me some confusion is her reference to scholarship money. The National Scholarship has, for a long time, funded both HECS and provided an allowance ($5000 for Victorians and $10,000 for interstate students). The maintenance of such an excellent scholarship program in the face of economic downturn and fickle governance and regulation is to be applauded.
Her last point was also quite amusing:
"Student centres! Whose brilliant idea was it to make Music share a student centre with Arts, and to put the whole thing ages away in Old Arts, replacing the perfectly functional administrative centre at the front office inside the Music building?"The merger between Music and Arts Faculty Offices/Student Centres looks to be both a cost-cutting measure and a bureaucratic cleaning job. Considering how underresourced the Student Centre is, imagine if the same resources were split over two faculties?
Sometimes I wish I was a few years older or younger, so I could have done my degree(s) and gotten out before all of this or come in after the dust has settled.
2 comments:
Hi.. Suzanne here. Actually, they expanded the national scholarship program. It's been going since before the Melbourne Model, but they've become significantly easier to get now, because before you had to have the ENTER score to qualify, and then pass a round of resume assessments, recommendations, and interviews; now you just need the score. That's a great thing for high achieving prospective students. Not so great if you narrowly missed out under the old system, only to realise that if you'd waited a year you'd definitely have gotten one. It's a personal gripe, not a judgment on the system.
The expanded scholarship provision is pretty cool, but it is unfortunate that you missed out.
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