The Melbourne model is looking rather anorexic

[costargh]

The Melbourne model is looking rather anorexic
    * Editorial
    * July 22, 2009

Slashing traditional subjects won't bring the academic goals closer.

'HARVARD by the Yarra" was the dismissive tag favoured by sceptics when University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Glyn Davis proposed a radical restructuring of the city's oldest institution of higher education. Under the so-called Melbourne model, which began in 2008, students are first required to complete a general degree in arts or sciences before proceeding to postgraduate study in preparation for medicine, law, engineering or other professions. It is a transition from the English models that inspired Australian universities to an American one.

When the change was mooted, The Age's response was that Harvard by the Yarra was a goal worth striving for, whatever the sneering sceptics might think. That is still this newspaper's view. The implementation of the model, however has raised questions of whether the goal is being realised, or whether it is in fact receding.

Implicit in the model, at least if the practice of Harvard, Princeton and other leading US universities is indeed the guide, is the importance of maintaining a high standard of undergraduate teaching across a range of traditional disciplines in the humanities and sciences. Moreover, the disciplines offered at undergraduate level by institutions such as Harvard are intended to foster intellectual inquiry and broad cultural literacy; they do not have to justify their place in the university by demonstrating immediate commercial application or mass enrolment. On the contrary, it is accepted that, just because the progress of knowledge is not easily predictable, disinterested inquiry is more likely to prove of practical benefit.

If that measure is applied to recent experience at the University of Melbourne, the outcome does not seem very Harvard-like. In July 2007, even before the model officially began, the university's arts faculty - then ranked seventh in the world in a survey by The Times - announced a three-year plan to cut its staff budget by 12 per cent, to combat a $12 million deficit. At the time, The Age asked whether saving money in this way would prove to be a false economy. Since then, the shedding of staff, and consequent decline in the university's ability to provide the range of options it once did, has continued.

Earlier this month, the philosopher, Peter Singer, was reported as saying that the cuts in 2007 had undermined the Melbourne model's professed aim of providing a broad undergraduate education. Not surprisingly, he was speaking chiefly of his own discipline: the university's former philosophy department, now merged into the school of philosophy, anthropology and social inquiry, has lost six of the 13 academics it had in 2007, through voluntary redundancy or early retirement.

The school's standing in international rankings has declined in the same period. As an Australasian Association of Philosophy statement noted, the Melbourne department has dropped out of the international top 50 listed by the peer-endorsed, if facetiously named, Philosophy Gourmet Report. Its status is now "marginal", compared with the "adequate or better" rankings of the ANU, the University of Sydney and Monash University. As Professor Singer commented, "Melbourne wishes to be a great international university, but I don't know any great international universities that don't have philosophy departments that are able to cover the major areas of philosophy well."

Philosophy, of course, has never attracted big enrolments. Not so, however, with history, yet this week The Age reported that the university's school of historical studies faces a one-third cut in its staff budget. The university has long had a high reputation in all areas of historical study, not least Australian history: it was the training ground for scholars such as Manning Clark and Geoffrey Blainey, who have achieved fame beyond the confines of academe, as interpreters of the nation to itself. It may fairly be asked whether the depleted school of historical studies envisaged by this funding proposal will be as well placed to form public intellectuals of similar stature.

The financial pressures on universities are well known, and, despite talk of education revolutions, there is little evidence that either side of politics has the will to substantially increase existing levels of public subsidy. A project such as the Melbourne model, however, will not attain its aims if its foundations in undergraduate teaching wither through the steady withdrawal of resources.

[ninwa]

Moreover, the disciplines offered at undergraduate level by institutions such as Harvard are intended to foster intellectual inquiry and broad cultural literacy; they do not have to justify their place in the university by demonstrating immediate commercial application or mass enrolment.

I wish more people thought like Harvard.

[Fyrefly]

Moreover, the disciplines offered at undergraduate level by institutions such as Harvard are intended to foster intellectual inquiry and broad cultural literacy; they do not have to justify their place in the university by demonstrating immediate commercial application or mass enrolment.

I wish more people thought like Harvard.

Education for the sake of education... it's quite idealistic, isn't it?
It makes for a challenging and worthy goal.

[ninwa]

It really is. It's sad how people who look down on liberal arts degrees because they're "useless" cannot see the joy of learning for its own sake. I love how that single sentence has summarised every single argument I've ever gotten into about the validity of an arts degree

[dcc]

I like learning for the sake of learning, however when I explain that to people they go :|

I think its because people equate learning with work, which isn't necessarily true.

[enwiabe]

Sadly, in this increasingly globalised world, the value of education is being misappropriated as something which must explicitly benefit society and increase one's personal material wealth or else it is a waste. Wealth of knowledge and personal satisfaction are being discarded in this compromised pursuit of knowledge.

This is a most unfortunate occurrence, and love of learning is falling by the wayside as more people choose degrees which get them more $$ while sacrificing personal enjoyment. Sad but true

[Collin Li]

This is a most unfortunate occurrence, and love of learning is falling by the wayside as more people choose degrees which get them more $$ while sacrificing personal enjoyment. Sad but true

Can you prove this claim?

[darlok]

What a load of romanticised bullshit, people don't go to Harvard for learning for the sake of learning... Do you think someone that gets a 2300 on the SAT learns a fucking 3000 list of words for the love of vocabulary. The fact is they can afford to run these extra classes because they have an endowment of $29 billion and charge $33,000 per student.

[enwiabe]

This is a most unfortunate occurrence, and love of learning is falling by the wayside as more people choose degrees which get them more $$ while sacrificing personal enjoyment. Sad but true

Can you prove this claim?

Anecdotally, yes, there are many stories (even on this forum!) of people weighing up career options over personal satisfaction.

[ninwa]

What a load of romanticised bullshit, people don't go to Harvard for learning for the sake of learning

Can you prove this claim?

[lacoste]

What a load of romanticised bullshit, people don't go to Harvard for learning for the sake of learning

Can you prove this claim?

This is a most unfortunate occurrence, and love of learning is falling by the wayside as more people choose degrees which get them more $$ while sacrificing personal enjoyment. Sad but true

Can you prove this claim?

Anecdotally, yes, there are many stories (even on this forum!) of people weighing up career options over personal satisfaction.

Now can you prove this claim?




...... joking.


But yes, its true, its all about satisfaction.

[enwiabe]

Oh, and, because Coblin will at least want some sort of proof:

I took Commerce as part of my double degree with no idea what it had in store for me. It was meant to be a "practical" aside just to help broaden the number of career options available to me.

I've told this story a million times and the board frequents are going to roll their eyes when they read it again, but when I took first year economics, I absolutely fell in love with it. My expectations were low and I was surprised. Economics changed the way I saw the world, and gave my thoughts a structure that was desperately needed to organise them.

That first sentence is, to the letter, what I was talking about. What if you hadn't enjoyed commerce? You took a gamble on it based on its perceived value as a career-enhancer. If you didn't fall in love with it, or draw enjoyment from it, you wouldn't be learning for love of learning. You'd be learning for the salary boost. As many people do who do commerce and end up hating it and only stick with it because it gets them a nicer job.

Thanks for proving my point with your own post.

[Collin Li]

No need to try to be clever or defensive. I'm asking a curious question. Perhaps a better question would have been "why do you believe this?"

If you read your own original post, you would have realised that you said more people are "falling wayside" to practical considerations rather than the love of learning - not merely that "some people do this" (i.e.: me, and not particularly ashamed of it).

If anything, the opposite is true. The growing standards of living and accessibility of education mean that people are more free to pursue things independent of financial stability. In the past (and still for many today), people would have to consider their financial stability (which is really a measure of how much freedom they can afford) over choosing a course for the love of learning. For some, these values do not work in tandem with each other, and so some will choose a course that provides better financial security (an investment) over one that would offer them more of a "consumer good".

As an aside, I believe universities don't post degrees for the "love of teaching", as darlok suggested, (which wasn't what we were talking about) but whether you decide your course based on the "love of learning" is up to you, and most likely heavily depends on your financial situation (freedom) too.

[enwiabe]

Education bears an enormous cost now as opposed to in our parents' day when for about 80% of people it was actually free. No HECS debt. No nothing. The entire bill footed by the gov't. And in 1973, Whitlam even made it free for all!

So, no, accessibility to education has been getting more expensive in recent times. It hit a peak in the howard days, for sure, and the Rudd gov't has certainly taken away some of the burden, but ask anyone who went through the uni system decades ago and they'll tell you that their only money issues in terms of education were for textbooks. Because of enormous HECS debt, people want to see monetary gains at the end of their degrees so they can pay off their debt. I reject this argument of decreased cost, which appears to be the premise of your post.

[Collin Li]

In general (not just focusing on 3-4 decades ago to now), the real price of education is lower, as people are earning more on average now.

Ignoring the Whitlam blip, education is becoming more accessible.

Leftists these days will always have you believe that things are harder these days than they were before. Definitely not, it doesn't make much sense that we'd be going backwards without any reason for it. Market growth and innovation is an evolutionary process, it has a general positive trend, as positive actions are reinforced by the marketplace (and negative ones punished).