So then what happens for the people who already needed special consideration? Who therefore talked to teachers last year saying, This is what I'm gonna be like next year? Who therefore the teachers already expect not to do as well? The ones where the teacher handed back a decent grade saying that they were very pleasurably surprised by the mark? Teachers who maybe still think of these kids as coasters this year from circumstances outside their control?
This train of thought really is a deep-dive down the rabbit hole of a thought process - any way you can voice your concern a little more clearly? Because as is I have no idea what you're worried about, sorry
I 100% agree. I personally think it's ridiculous to suggest that teachers can move people's ranks around based on their perceived impact of COVID-19 on individual students. It's ironic that every time they introduce something that is supposed to "alleviate the stress" of students or to "ensure that no one will be disadvantaged", it immediately makes me feel more stressed because we are now leaving things up to subjective judgement by teachers rather than consistency across the state. That said, I think one of the reasons why they can present it as a win-win is that, barring a massive turning point in the global vaccine hunt, the COVID-19 situation is going to completely block international students from coming to Australian universities next year, leaving heaps of places for domestic students, as long as they meet minimum entry requirements.
You say that like our state education system already has consistency and we've just removed it
. There is a much bigger problem with the blocking of international students, though - and that's how the universities are going to stay afloat. Right now, they RELY on international students coming in and paying their ridiculous fees to remain profitable - without ANY international students, there's going to be a large strain on the system. Particularly with the stupid new degree costs being introduced by the Morrison government - they're literally asking universities to take more students while being paid less in their most expensive degrees to run. And like, before someone jumps on the whole "you're just a STEM elitist" - it's just a fact that it's cheaper to run tutorials and lectures that at most just require a shared computer lab than it is just to maintain the equipment required for STEM teaching (with one notable exception in mathematics, which tbh costs less than some HESS subjects and is probably on par with their average). Universities will be struggling in the years to come.
TBF, these are concerns you - as potential tertiary students - won't have to worry about short-term, and you'll probably be safe in being able to get the degree you want with just the normal level of concerns anyone doing year 12 has had to deal with. I am interested to see how the clearly-in ATARs are affected by the "carrot and stick" approach the Morrison government is taking with degree costs.
Perhaps the same schools that are more disadvantaged due to poorer online teaching and systems will also have teachers less able to write convincing justifications.
We can only hope that low SES schools, and definitely areas where the NBN hasn't been rolled out (not that the NBN is even good internet lol), will be considered given that those areas are just flat out going to be less prepared for internet-based learning than metropolitan Melbourne. However, I'm unsure about those teachers being able to be less convincing - it doesn't take technical ability to be a convincing person (see Trump), and definitely if any of them can make it clear their own miserable understanding of online systems, that tbh would probably make the Government see the teachers as some who probably adapted poorly, and so try to raise those students scores accordingly.
I know *nothing* about this, but I imagine the number of places in each course are based partly on projected employment needs in different industries. International students may be given extra places because they're more likely to seek employment in other countries and not overburden our workforce (and make things cheaper for the govt as they pay full fee!) But no idea.
So like, my understanding (as someone who as worked with people in admissions) is that the amount of places being offered is literally limited by how many students the university can accept. Sounds like backwards logic, but the point is that they literally take EVERYONE they can - the university doesn't consider things like projected employment in areas, they consider how many students they can physically fit into classes without losing money. And tbf, that's not necesarrily a BAD approach when you consider things like less and less people are getting jobs directly related to their undergraduate degrees (something like only 40% of science graduates at Monash have a job in STEM, with a disproportionate amount of astrophysics majors being hired as accountants). The university has no idea what you'll do with the degree they give you, so why restrict numbers when that has no bearing on what job you may actually end up taking?
You may think that more specialised degrees have a higher retention rate - and AFAIK that's correct, but the different isn't as big as you'd think.
Here's some census data I found from the US, and interestingly it looks like something as little as 33% of students with engineering majors ended up being engineers (note that the US follows a unimelb-like approach - students don't study a Bachelor of Engineering, they'll instead study a Bachelor of Science and major in engineering. While it differs by university, typically in the US you study arts or science, and those are your choices, the major you take being essentially what your degree is in, so that's what you've gotta be looking at). Yes, the fact that this is US data does mean it's not directly comparable to our situation in Australia, but it can still be informative - but I'd love to see a similar graph for Australia if anyone can find it
On another note, everyone is discussing these changes as if what they're going to do is just scale each student, similar as to is already done with study scores. Has there actually been official word that THIS is how they'll handle the situation, or is that just assumption by everyone? It could simply be that all they'll do is grant special consideration for students as required, and most likely the biggest thing that'll happen is a group of students will get extra exam time for example, or some will have individual SAC marks changed (eg, we know Johnny's computer crashed during SAC 2 for further maths, so we're going to instead give him an average score for that SAC), etc., which IMHO wouldn't be that bad a way of handling it, and would definitely account for issues with remote-based learning without discounting students who have managed to do well despite these odds.