The Melbourne Model

[Mao]

lucky me then cos im in BE instead of BSc i guess i made the right decisions

But i don't think they look at your ENTER for masters but more about your academic results in uni.

no which means ur now on a different level of competition i.e. against all the other supersaiyan UoM people....

GL GL

[ninwa]

But i don't think they look at your ENTER for masters but more about your academic results in uni.

Yea, they don't. I meant that people who get 99.90+ are guaranteed entry into the masters program, whereas the rest of the people have to prove that they're good enough by way of reaching the academic standards required in your bachelor degree.

[nak]

So this makes it seem as though the real Melbourne Model Scheme is to lure people into it thinking that there are many pathways so they can be $$$$$$$$$$. While many people complete their Bachelors thinking of continuing into something like engineering but can't because of the competitiveness then have to pay full fee for their masters or worst just hold a bachelor degree which doesn't qualify them as an engineer.

[brendan]

 -----------      
The Melbourne Model Debate
Public Lecture
Tuesday 11 March 2008 @ 12:00 pm - 01:00 pm
Laby Theatre, David Caro Building (School of Physics, bldg 192), Parkville


Professor Glyn Davis
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne

Libby Buckingham
President of the University of Melbourne Student Union

Melanie Lazarow
Education Activist

Speaker: Professor Glyn Davis
Enquiries:
Max Kaiser
+61 3 8344 4808
welfare@ union.unimelb.edu.au
http://union.unimelb.edu.au/welfare/

[excal]

I daresay, it would've been good to have Richard Larkins (Monash Vice-Chancellor) there too ;p

I wonder what the opinion of the MU Student Union is...I assume it's anti-Melbourne Model?

[bturville]

haha, it would be funny if they both were pro melb model. some debate that would be!
 

[excal]

Heh, I'm all for it.

If people want to specialise early - they have a choice. If they want generalist degrees, they have a choice.

[Eriny]

I think I'd personally want to choose to generalise then specialise, so I didn't care a great deal about the Melbourne Model when it came in. Although it ended up not affecting me anyway because I'm at ANU now. But regardless, because I want to go overseas to do a graduate/post-graduate degree, it makes more sense for me to generalise anyway so then my education is more compatible with America not so much with the UK though I don't think. But yeah, to echo Excalibur, the point is that I have a choice.

[aidansteele]

I was never a real fan of the Melbourne Model as I didn't understand the rationale behind it. In the old system, those who didn't know what they wanted to do could do the generalist degrees and those who knew what they wanted to do could immediately embark on their chosen path. Now, even if you know what you want to do you still have to wade through a lot of rubbish to get there - it is almost as if the uni is treating its students like little kids who are unable to decide their own future for themselves.

[enter99.9]

it seems that they want to make melb uni an Australian Ivy League.and many people say that they(melb uni) just want to make more money(i agree).many students don't buy it and go to other schools.what do you guys think about it?do you still think melb uni is a good choice?

[bturville]

i'm worried about the lack of post grad HECS places, but it lets me study a language alongside my science degree, which i dig.

[Eriny]

The things I've heard have generally been negative.

[AppleXY]

it seems that they want to make melb uni an Australian Ivy League.and many people say that they(melb uni) just want to make more money(i agree).many students don't buy it and go to other schools.what do you guys think about it?do you still think melb uni is a good choice?

pfft -__-. UoM reputation still stands very high.

[humph]

it seems that they want to make melb uni an Australian Ivy League.and many people say that they(melb uni) just want to make more money(i agree).many students don't buy it and go to other schools.what do you guys think about it?do you still think melb uni is a good choice?

pfft -__-. UoM reputation still stands very high.

It's only been a year... We'll see how things change in the next few years; the system won't be completely in place til 2011, I think. Melbourne can change its structure so massively because its prestige allows it to allure students regardless. But it'll be interesting to see its effect in the long term, in terms of the prestige and reputation of UMelb, as well as the success of the new degrees in the workplace.

[costargh]

http://www.theage.com.au/national/model-of-a-modern-major-uni-20081212-6xkp.html?page=-1

Model of a modern major uni

WHEN Madeleine Schultz arrived at Melbourne University's open day last year she was greeted by a student protester with a megaphone, delivering a bargain basement spiel on the alleged cost of some degrees under the new Melbourne Model.

"Roll up, roll up, only $100,000 a pop," he cried as fellow protesters handed out petitions and stood in front of a cardboard gravestone scrawled with the words: "RIP a quality education".

Back then, as a year 12 student at Methodist Ladies College, Schultz was exactly the sort of person Melbourne University wanted to attract: smart, articulate, ambitious. Her plan was to do a double degree in science and law at the elite Parkville institution. But under the new Melbourne Model, double degrees had been abolished. To get into law, she would have to spend three years in a general science degree, and then hope to win a place in the new graduate law school, spending another three years — and even more money — completing a professional program in law.

The Melbourne Model is a US-style teaching system where students do a broad undergraduate degree, followed by a more specialised graduate course.

Schultz's other choice was Melbourne's cross-town rival, Monash: a science-law degree in a little more than five years, or an undergraduate bachelor of laws in four.

Torn between the two institutions, she had come to the open day to get a feel for the university. "The only life I could see on campus was students walking around and protesting the Melbourne Model, whereas at Monash everyone was quite friendly," she says.

To be fair, it wasn't the only reason Schultz ultimately chose another institution. Unlike many of her contemporaries, the 18-year-old always knew which career path she wanted to follow — the law and then a spell in politics.

Part of the Melbourne Model's strength is that students, at the age of 17 or 18, don't always know what they want to do with their lives. By opting for a general degree first, and specialising later, they have more time to make that decision.

But more than one year since the university launched the most audacious transformation in its history, the question of whether the model is working, attracting enough students, and whether it's been worth it, is a moot point.

The vision was always an impressive one: give students a wide-ranging undergraduate education followed by specialised postgraduate studies. If all goes according to plan, they will graduate with an edge — enhanced research skills and a globally recognised qualification that may one day rival the great universities of the world: Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge.

But while student demand has increased in arts, science and commerce, first-preference applications have fallen overall from 10,580 applications last year, to 9771 this year, partly because popular courses such as medicine no longer exist for first-year students.

Students complain that the interdisciplinary "breadth" subjects — ones they must take outside their main area of study to broaden their academic experience — are often either overloaded or lack depth.

Meanwhile, about 65 jobs have been lost from the university's embattled arts faculty, and other faculties such as engineering, and microbiology and biology, have shed staff or sought to reorganise their operations.

On the international scene, Melbourne University has slipped to 38th according to the Times Higher Education world university rankings, placing it outside the top 35 for the first time in years.

Melbourne vice-chancellor Glyn Davis has heard much of this before, and knows there will be even more challenges as the Melbourne Model is fully phased in over the next three years.

But despite the "stresses and strains", the shift has been worth it, he says.

"It's a change that no one has ever tried before, so the whole thing has been a challenge," says Davis. "But I was just delighted that there was a whole cohort of students who wanted to give this a go. They came in this year, knew they were choosing something different — and they stayed.

"Staff at the university were also willing to give it a go, and people have put in a huge amount of effort to make it work. It was not without its stresses and strains, but we end the year feeling that what we're trying to do is really important to us, and important to others."

Repositioning Melbourne University on a European/American model that focuses on a high-quality postgraduate education was never going to be easy. Over the next four years, 96 undergraduate degrees will be abolished and replaced with six broad-brush choices: arts, science, commerce, environments, music and biomedicine.

Sought-after programs such as law, medicine, education, engineering and nursing have been redeveloped as graduate courses — usually master's degrees and sometimes as doctorates — for those who complete one of the six "new generation" degrees first.

And new interdisciplinary "breadth" subjects — some with elaborate names such as "Generating the Wealth of Nations" and "Poetics of the Body" — have been invented to allow students to foray into areas outside their main degree.

But university lecturer Ted Clark says that, while the model provides educational advances and broader choices for students, the university has attempted the biggest curriculum overhaul of any first-tier institution — without the necessary resources. Teachers are being asked to teach completely new programs while "teaching out" others. Workload is increasing, and job cuts had an impact on the overall "good will" of staff.

"I think people are finding the reality of the model much more difficult than how it was initially portrayed," says Clark, the university's National Tertiary Education Union president.

"Workload intensification is the major problem, and it seems to be the case across the universities that all faculties are looking at ways of reducing their staffing profiles for 2009 and 2010 because of the lack of funds to carry on these programs and to teach these things.

"It's still playing out, but it doesn't seem to be completely straightforward to everyone as to how this is going to work."

THE FACT that the jury is still out hasn't stopped at least one Australian university from following suit. From across the Nullarbor, University of Western Australia vice-chancellor Alan Robson has watched the evolution of the Melbourne Model with keen interest.

In 2006, his own university, which joins Melbourne as one of the elite Group of Eight research-intensive institutions (Monash is another), began considering its own two-tier degree system.

Like the Melbourne Model, the new system, which Robson expects to implement by 2012, will abolish the existing 70-odd undergraduate degrees and replace them with five broad choices, in this case commerce, arts, science, design and health.

Back in Melbourne, about 20 kilometres south-east of Parkville, Monash University has gone down the opposite path. The new so-called "Monash Passport" places greater emphasis on double degrees. Honours programs will also be overhauled, cutting out some smaller courses and allowing high-performing students to enter into research as early as their undergraduate year.

In a higher education sector where diversity is encouraged, the change is a deliberate attempt to differentiate Monash from its main rival.

"The Monash Passport reflects the fact that some students are ready to take on professional degrees right away, and some are very keen to see the cross-disciplinary aspects of combined degrees right away," says deputy vice-chancellor Adam Shoemaker. "We offer that from day one — why hold people back if they're ready?"

The question of whether they're ready or not is something thousands of VCE graduates will ponder on Monday, when they finally receive their university ENTER scores and find out which courses they are eligible to apply for.

Evan Wallace recalls the nervous wait as though it happened yesterday. But when the former Mount Waverley Secondary College student graduated at the end of last year, he was torn between a double degree at Monash or a "new generation" arts degree at Melbourne University. With no fixed career in mind, he chose the latter, attracted to Melbourne's strong arts faculty and politics department.

"You're a very rare person if you know exactly what you want to do at year 12 for the rest of your life," he says. "I was one of those people who wasn't quite sure, but I did know that I wanted to study politics and engage with ideas in a way that is just not possible in high school."

One year in, Wallace's first-year experience has been largely positive — stimulating subjects and plenty of time spent with new friends at the pub.

The 18-year-old also approves of a new requirement that undergraduate students do a minimum of six "breadth" subjects outside their area of study. For first-year students, this must be 25 per cent of the total load. This has allowed him to study chemistry as part of his arts degree and "use the other side of my brain".

But not everyone is happy with the breadth subjects. Some complain certain subjects are too content-heavy, while other subjects are so shallow that it's like being back in high school.

For some students, it's also an easy option, says Evans.

"There are purists who are doing real second-rate breadth subjects, like African drumming, or poetics of the body, or dancing and prancing 101, as a means of avoiding a more full-on subject outside the faculty," he says.

Arts student Michelle Cheng is so dissatisfied with the breadth requirement that she plans to leave Melbourne University next year, and has applied, instead, for an arts-law double degree at Monash or journalism at RMIT.

Rather than the broad, open-ended degree she had hoped for, Cheng found breadth subjects made it tough to decide on a potential major.

It's a problem the university is aware of — and hoping to iron out when students resume classes next year. Professor Peter McPhee, the man often cited as the "architect" of the Melbourne Model, admits parts of the new curriculum are "too crowded with detail". He has ruled out cutting out any interdisciplinary subjects, but says existing programs will be fine-tuned, and some eventually added to the mix.

McPhee also rejects criticism that the model — which forces students to study longer, and therefore pay more — is a revenue grab underpinned by a decade of federal underfunding.

But when asked about the past 12 months, he too admits it hasn't always been easy.

The university was not prepared, for instance, for the dramatic influx of students who decided to take on a language subject under the new curriculum — a trend that placed even greater pressure on already overworked staff. There was also a concerning lack of interest in agriculture-based graduate programs, while more should be done to better market the model to students overseas, he says.

But overall, student demand has been encouraging: 2009 first preference applications into the master's of teaching for instance, have increased by about 20 per cent compared with this time last year. The Melbourne School of Design has had a 10% increase, while the number of students doing a juris doctor in law is expected to rise modestly from 70 students this year to more than 100 next year.

"After a very big year, the quality of the courses and the student demand for them is something we're very pleased with," says McPhee. "But that doesn't mean to say that there aren't things we could do better."