The latest fortnightly result from Roy Morgan finds Labor improving from an unusually weak result last time, their primary vote up two points to 38% with the Coalition down two to 38.5%. The Greens and Palmer United are both down half a point, to 12% and a new low of 1% respectively. However, the respondent-allocated two-party result is steady at 53-47, the preference flow evidently being less favourable to Labor compared with a fortnight ago, and the shift on 2013 preference flows is also rather modest, from 53-47 to 54-46. As usual, the poll was conducted over two weekends by face-to-face and SMS, the sample on this occasion being 3314. I believe this and the regular Essential poll are the only federal polling we’ll be seeing this week.
UPDATE (Essential Research): The only change in Essential Research’s voting intention numbers this week are a one point gain for the Greens to 11% and a one point drop for Palmer United to 1%, leaving Labor on 39%, the Coalition on 41% and Labor’s two-party lead at 52-48. Further questions have been framed with the looming budget in mind, the most striking finding being that 56% believe the Coalition’s policies favour the rich over the “average Australian” (20%), with Labor scoring a fairly balanced response over the available options. Relatedly, it is anticipated that the budget will be good for the well off (49% good, 9% bad) and business (32% good, 17% bad), but very bad for everybody else and for the economy overall (19% good, 33% bad). Eighty-two per cent of respondents signed on to the proposition that “some companies” and “some wealthy people” didn’t pay their fair share of tax. Out of seven listed economic issues, the cost of living rated highest as an issue of concern (87%) with the national debt and budget deficit tied for last place (63%). Opinion on the latest Iraq commitment is fairly evenly balanced, with 40% approval and 44% disapproval.
MB
[One one hand I think its a good thing for Australian Universities being able to attract these students but some of them are a real nightmare to do group assignments with.]
I disagree. It is bad for them, and bad for the university. What are those disengaged students learning? Nothing. They are wasting their time and money. They really would be better off going back and doing a few years of a proper high school to get their basic english and maths up to scratch.
BTW Paul Fritjers, one of the academics on the Four. Corners show, is a top economist, who was Young Economist of the Year a few years ago. These complaints are not sour grapes. They are serious problems described by serious people. See
http://blogs.abc.net.au/queensland/2010/03/paul-frijters-young-economist-of-the-year-in-2009.html?site=westqld&program=612_evenings
mexicanbeemer@95
I had similar experiences with fellow Australians who could speak English but had done no preparation.
The whole system is corrupted.
And you are wrong.
We need to go back to exams with anonymous markers. End of story. Assignments are an open invitation to cheating.
Sure a student whose assignments get significantly better grades than the exam should be able to get a reassessment of some kind – eg an oral test, or a second exam, but at the end of the day an anonymous exam is the only way to be fair.
Zoidy
Depending on the subject, a well done assignment can demonstrate knowledge and understanding, which can help to bridge the experience gap.
As DTT wrote above there is nothing more frustrating than having one student slacken off, I accept that not every subject will be of interest.
mexicanbeemer@96
And you are wrong to do so.
The problem with Education system is the system is so far out of date, it’s not funny, when applying for jobs.
The education system is meant to prepare you for work, but it actively does not prepare you for work at all.
@MB/104
A well done assignment can only be good if it is useful in the workforce can be applied 10 years down the track.
A well done assignment can also only be good if the teacher who designed the assignment applies the job sector in mind, meaning the information is from the job sector.
Otherwise, for this reason, the assignments and homework are useless.
Especially when and if a company goes for a restructure, and your fighting for a job.
[72
TrueBlueAussie]
The simple reality is that Australia is an envoy for the US, which now believes it needs the Persians to help quell revolution among the Arabs. Having mounted an illegal invasion of Iraq and supported a now-uncontrolled insurrection in Syria, the US knows it has created chaos.
The trouble is that Iran is an exporter of its own revolutionary ideals. We are becoming an accomplice in an Islamic War at the behest of a dangerously incompetent hegemon.
bemused
Yes, well the two worst group assignments I’ve been personally been in involved two local Aussie born kids, the first I put down to the student being distracted by the student life and I kinda think he will turn out okay if he can find a good mentor, the other kid just had a shocking attitude.
Both were right wing
zoidlord@106
So which employers requirements should your course have been tailored around?
Don’t fall for that. It is the bleat of employers who now refuse to do any on the job training to bridge the gap between tertiary courses and their specific requirements. That’s the problem.
108
We’re not the only ones courting Iran. The Greeks are in there to.
Bemused 110
I agree again. It has always been the case that even good students need some initial on the job training after graduation to learn how to apply their knowledge. That has always been the employer’s responsibility. Nobody says we should stop doctors interning before we let them loose on patients. It was true when I started as an engineer more than thirty years ago, and still is.
I suppose if we still have a belief in social justice we can only hope that some day in the near future a sick ex-education minister will have a nurse or other para-medical standing over their bedside who was trained in an Australian university as a foreign student. Maybe then they will car about standards? Evening all.
University does do a very good job of introducing students to various concepts, as difference workplaces within any one industry follow different procedures and processes, it is thus a difficult thing to ask the degree to prepare a student for the workplace.
My own comment in the past is a reflection on my bias.
Before my son is allowed to submit an assigment to his University, he must first put it through a program which compares it to anything similar on the internet, and which gives him a ‘plagiarism’ score. (I assume that if the score is too high, then it would need to be redone).
He must provide evidence that he has done this before he can submit the work.
Public transport vs Roads debate on QandA
4 Corners. Kudos to the academics who spoke out. Crystalised by the nurse academic who challenged the elephant in the room.. Is education an industry or not? And if there are problems in the unis, triple the size of similar problems in TAFE
Not sure if the plagiarism software was around when I was in uni, but I can say I lost marks all on my own accord 😛
zoomster@115
That is a welcome innovation and it should take the cheats at least 6 months to work out ways around it.
So universities have to keep introducing new means of catching out the cheats.
[118
Raaraa
Not sure if the plagiarism software was around when I was in uni, but I can say I lost marks all on my own accord]
I just stuff up all the time.
That is an impressive program, a lecturer showed me how it works and how it highlights all the questionable quotes in different colors depending on the suggested source.
As I understand it, if an assignment has too many copied sections then it needs to be editor or if can be accepted but the student will lose marks.
lol
…make stuff up…
Connected to post 108 and others.
Most people misunderstand the US involvement in the Middle East.
It is not about the economics of oil, or of Israel or on behalf of defence contractors or because it is at war with Islam.
It is for geopolitical control of the area as an integral part of containing a rising China. Modern war machines cannot succeed without oil supplies and with the US military in position Chinese access to the oil they would need to successfully mount military adventures is contained. US control of the middle east equals the absolute impossibility of China matching the US militarily. In the last century China has invaded Tibet, Vietnam & India and today threatens many more of its nearest neighbours – right or wrong the US is in the Middle East because of China, the other reasons are secondary.
bemused
it’s not hard to check this stuff.
I read a letter to the editor in the local paper a few months ago that sounded a little odd. I typed a few sentences of it into google and it came up with an Andrew Bolt article.
Anyone correcting work could easily do that with each student’s work – it only takes a minute or so.
mexicanbeemer@121
Sounds like people just need to clean up their citations. 😛
Bemused
The program, I saw appeared to confirm the source of the citation.
Based on what I saw, the citations even those done correctly were counted towards the threshold
121
If an assignment has copied sections then it is reported to an internal panel within said Uni. They decide on what action to take. A plagiarism recording against a student can follow them so it is not just given out lightly. It is also a lot of work for the lecturer. OH has plenty each semester. Even on one occasion was alerted to all the students doing the exam together via Facebook. The plagiarism program had a field day on that exam. After tonight’s 4 corners the lunch time chit chat willbe interesting at most unis.
“A Four Corners investigation has unearthed alarming new evidence of a decline in academic standards at institutions around the country”.
Corrupt practices, lower standards, plagiarism, dangerously under-qualified graduates.
Simple corollary of lower public funding.
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2015/04/20/4217741.htm
As a first year out teacher, I was given ‘the’ assignment for a certain novel, which the school had used for years.
I didn’t like some of the questions, so I reworded some and eliminated others. When I’d finished, there were fifty questions instead of the original sixty plus.
To my surprise, around half of the completed assignments included answers to the questions I’d eliminated!
I recently (2013) completed a Masters at Deakin University. Worked on group assignment with a Chinese girl who could not even manage conversational English – she plagiarised her entire section (as picked up by the software the university runs).
When brought to the Lecturers attention prior to hand-in we were ‘invited’ to redo her section ourselves so that ‘our’ assignment was not sullied with a plagiarism claim. We got a high distinction – so did she despite completing none of the assignment and no action was taken by the University towards her. She ended up graduating with a very high mark – it is also very easy to cheat in exams (e.g. secret notes, judicious toilet breaks and obtaining copies of the exam before you sit it – often facilitated by the university).
I know for a fact from attending that Deakin facilitates outright cheating by students to ensure that they pass.
Luke Hulm@131
Based on my similar experiences at another university, I am not in the least surprised.
It is also entirely possible to complete most Masters programs at Australian universities (at least Deakin & RMIT from experience) without sitting a single exam by selecting units specifically based on whether they have exams or not.
In this way if you are paying a service to complete assignments for you (without plagiarising) you can earn your qualification without attending a single class or reading a single journal or text book and without consulting any notes. Basically you can earn many qualifications without knowing or trying to know anything about it.
It might cost you $10,000 to do it but when the degree already costs $36k+ whats an extra $10k?
It is also entirely possible to complete most Masters programs at Australian universities (at least Deakin & RMIT from experience) without sitting a single exam by selecting units specifically based on whether they have exams or not.
In this way if you are paying a service to complete assignments for you (without plagiarising) you can earn your qualification without attending a single class or reading a single journal or text book and without consulting any notes. Basically you can earn many qualifications without knowing or trying to know anything about it.
It might cost you $10,000 to do it but when the degree already costs $36k+ whats an extra $10k?
I work at a Victorian university, and Im frankly concerned that with the growth of online education will see a bunch of ‘graduates’ with no real skills other than googling a blancmange of bullshit.
The better ones will be adept at concealing their plagiarism.
Its a joke. Online ed is the reality TV of education. Everyone has to do some of it because the production costs are so low.
lefty e – I agree with what you say and that’s why it flummoxes me why a university eduction is not getting cheaper.
Many of my units had no in class option and even those that did the ratio of students completing online vs attending class was around 9 to 1.
So instead of needing to run a dozen classes the university could run 1.
It is obvious the pricing of units/education is done without any relation to the cost of providing the unit.
A unit that costs $100 per student to run will be priced the same as a unit that costs thousands.
I also know lecturers and university professors (I used to work for one) that earn up to and over $100,000 p.a. for less than 6 hours of work per week.
If university education was priced with a 30% profit margin above what it costs to deliver a degree should cost around $10,000. The fact that is not the case is a result of gold plated university administration costs and upper management salaries, inability to ensure productivity of teaching staff and the use of student funds to cross-subsidise non teaching activities.
Students are royally ripped off by universities and so is the government and the tax-payer.
Maybe one way to catch out those that cheat, include part of the assignment question in the exam, this way those who studied really well in the assignment may be able to provide a good answer whilst those who cheated on the assignment will be found wanting
[We might have discussed this previously but how would you improve degree programs, I personally would prefer more assignments but I’m bias against exams.]
That I can understand.
Do the maths, 300 students, 1 teacher (using old notes that have not been rewritten for the current year), 1 exam and 1 assignment per student.
Teachers time teaching (10 x 2.5 hrs) = 25hrs
Teachers time marking exams (300 x 15mins) = 75hrs
Teachers time marking assignments (300 x 20mins) = 100hrs
Total teacher time 200 hrs (@$100 per hr) = $20,000
Market Cost of teachers desk & classroom (variable) say $10,000
Reasonable administrative fee (@$100 per student) = $30,000
Income from 300 students (@$3000 per student) = $300,000
University profit $240,000+
Markup on cost around 400%
But the universities need more funding…
Some great comments on University.
Some years ago a Korean lady with whom I worked of mine successfully completed a Law degree. None of us could understand just how she did it, as her English ability was fairly rudimentary.
In the intervening years, this and other problems with tertiary education have just got worse.
Sorry I wrote $300,000 in student fees (brain fart)- those numbers give $900,000 in fees – a 1500% markup!
I’ve been around one of the Group of 8 universities in one capacity or another across a period of nearly 40 years. I didn’t see the Four Corners program tonight, but it sounds sadly consistent with the way in which the cancer of creeping managerialism has damaged some fine institutions.
That having been said, it would be a great pity if overseas students become the next target of the growing xenophobia in this country. I’ve come to known some of them very well over the years, and without exception they’ve been honest, and have worked their backsides off to get their degrees. The temptation to stereotype needs to be resisted.
Universities…omit ‘of mine’…time for bed!
[The fact that is not the case is a result of gold plated university administration costs and upper management salaries, inability to ensure productivity of teaching staff and the use of student funds to cross-subsidise non teaching activities.]
The first part is spot on, but the staff are getting screwed too, trust me. Sessionals delivering 50%+ of teaching, growing class sizes, long working hours, you name it. Yes, they want people to go online, but revenue from the government is dropping, so any gains from online are eaten up.
Theres no escaping this: if we want quality, non-corrupt education we have to pay for it.
That said, swingeing cuts to uni management numbers (and wages) would be a better plan that what is happening: giving students an increasingly crap education and sweating academics to the bone.
[123
Luke Hulm
US control of the middle east equals the absolute impossibility of China matching the US militarily … right or wrong the US is in the Middle East because of China, the other reasons are secondary.]
This observation serves to illustrate the utter incompetence of the US.
Knowing the importance of stability in the Gulf and the Levant, why did the US invade Iraq in 2003? Why did they risk this when they had a settled supremacy in the Gulf? Why did they succumb to the lure? Was it simply vanity?
Knowing the turmoil this caused – nay, knowing they had brought about the dismemberment of the Iraqi State, its effective internal partition and their own exclusion from power – why did they then offer tacit, even explicit, support for the uprising in Syria?
How can it be that having sponsored a civil war against Iran’s client, Assad, the US has now been reduced to turning to Iran for military assistance?
How can it be that the US has exposed its ally, Turkey, to the instability of war across the border in Syria and the risk of internal conflict with its Kurdish population? How can it be that US bungling has strengthened the military and political position of Turkey’s local rival and historic enemy, Iran?
The US may think it’s building a bulwark against China. But the reality is very different. They are in the process of ceding political and strategic dominance to Iran in territories that will reach from Pakistan to the Mediterranean and from the Caspian Sea to the Gulf of Aden.
In the 19th century, purportedly to curb Russian influence, Britain never tired of war-making in Eastern and Central Asia. They lost in every possible sense. The US is repeating the gambit and will likely cause even more trouble than the British in the process.
So a single PhD student is teaching this class of 300 in order to get their scholarship funds.
I think we have found why there’s a decline in standards.
Proof that the education sector operates at huge profit margins is the surge in private enterprises entering the sector – they are attracted by the potential profits, delivering courses that cost bugger all to run but attract high fees.
About the only entity that performed well from a cost to run/student fees/outcomes provided basis was TAFE in my opinion – the very entity that got royally shafted and broken by the last couple years of ‘reform’ and enabled the massive shift towards the private sector and the voting that has ensued.
lefty e @ 144: When I was an undergraduate in the 70s, there were so few administrators that they were damn near invisible, which is as it should be. Now, I gather, there’s a disproportionate number of power-hungry types around, to the consternation of those who just want to teach or research. It seems to be a world-wide trend (except, perhaps, in the USA, where I hear that some of the top academics are prepared to tell the administrators to take a running jump.)
voting should be rorting in prior post (changed by overzealous (US) spellcheck)
[If university education was priced with a 30% profit margin above what it costs to deliver a degree should cost around $10,000.]
Depends what degree. Who pays for the lab equipment to train engineers, scientists, and doctors? Who pays for the libraries and database subscriptions for the lawyers, psychologists and social scientists?