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A couple of items in this morning's SMH show just how much students have
changed in a few years.<br><br>
Dion Giles<br>
-------------------------------------<br><br>
Scholars for dollars <br>
<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Scholars-for-dollars/2005/02/25/1109180111995.html">http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Scholars-for-dollars/2005/02/25/1109180111995.html</a><br>
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SMH February 26, 2005<br>
<br>
Forget about peace marches, poetry and poverty. Today's students pay
their fees and work hard. That's all part of being the customer, write
Andrew Stevenson and Matthew Thompson.<br>
<br>
With his lip ring, and head crowned with knotty blond dread-locks, Steve
Russell looks for all the world like the archetypal university student.
But don't expect to see the 18-year-old IT student storming the
barricades. Instead of protesting, he'd rather "chill" with his
mates. Not so long ago HECS fees were a declaration of war on the right
to a free education; now they're "an investment" in Russell's
future.<br>
<br>
Enlivened with ambition, a new generation of university students - driven
by their passion for a solid career - spend more time scanning the
obligatory tables of graduate starting salaries than they do thinking
about Australia's troop commitment in Iraq.<br>
<br>
The '70s are long gone. Australia's university students work harder than
ever. But assignments, essays and exams are only part of a complex juggle
performed each week, as part-time jobs - vital to cover the ubiquitous
mobile phone, living and entertainment costs - eat into their available
time.<br>
<br>
Thirty years ago, almost two-thirds of university and teaching college
students received government assistance payments or scholarships. The
minister for education, Kim Beazley snr, told Parliament why:
"Students should be going through a period of life when they have
the leisure to think as well as the need to study." <br>
<br>
The times, they have changed. Fewer than a third of tertiary students
received the Youth Allowance or Austudy in the financial year ending June
2003, according to data supplied by the office of Democrats senator
Natasha Stott Despoja. The means test begins to cut benefits when the
family income of a student hits $28,850 a year.<br>
<br>
So now, when students burn the oil, it's vegetable rather than the
midnight variety. "Uni isn't what uni was: it's a case now of going
to lectures and tutorials and buggering off to MacDonald's to cook
chips," says Ian Dobson, senior research fellow at the Centre for
Population and Urban Research at Monash University.<br>
<br>
Most students leave the existential angst for someone else.
"Everyone's usually smiling, having fun," says Kevin Lee, a
third-year biomedical science student at the University of Technology.
They have part-time jobs - Lee works at David Jones - but a clear focus
on the main game.<br>
<br>
"I'm trying to do something with my life rather than getting an
average job; I guess it's [a time] to set myself up for the future. The
aim for everyone is to make the most money they can in the future - they
all want to be rich but you have to enjoy your job as well," he
says.<br>
<br>
Three quarters of full-time students work during the semester and those
with jobs work an average of 14.5 hours, according to Paying Their Way, a
report commissioned by the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee in
2001. The report's co-author, Professor Martin Hayden, of Southern Cross
University, says the impact has been marked. Nearly 40 per cent of
students with jobs frequently or sometimes missed classes because of
work. Anecdotal evidence suggests part-time work has become more
prevalent. Concurrently, face-to-face teaching hours have been cut.<br>
<br>
"Students don't have time for engaging with a great many student
activities. They're often working at times when, traditionally, students
would socialise and they're putting increased pressure on universities to
arrange timetables in ways that allow them flexibility," Hayden
says. Between 1984 and 2000, the number of students in paid work
increased by 50 per cent; the average hours worked tripled.<br>
<br>
At the same time, the doors of entrance to university have been thrown
open. Now there are more than 200,000 overseas students, while, between
1991 and 2001, the number of Australian men aged 25 to 34 who had a
degree grew from 22 per cent to 29 per cent. For women, the rate leapt
from 24 per cent to 38 per cent, according to a report by the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.<br>
<br>
Changes that take effect this year will encourage greater competition
between universities after the federal Minister for Education, Brendan
Nelson, deregulated their funding. Universities are now encouraged to
enrol more full-fee-paying local and foreign students.<br>
<br>
At the same time, what it means to be a student is rapidly changing.
Studying at university is something young people fit into their lives -
rather than defining their identity and experience - for anything from
three to, in more legendary cases, 15 years.<br>
<br>
Rose Jackson, the president of Sydney University's Student Representative
Council, says: "Students simply don't have the time any more to
commit to political activism as they have done in the past. We'd love it
if they were skipping lectures and tutorials to get involved in things on
campus [but] they're not even doing that - they're going to
work."<br>
<br>
Some even fit full-time study around full-time work. Roshanak
Sahebekhtiari, 21, a University of NSW criminology student, admits it's
difficult to do both but she studies full-time "because I wanted to
get it done as quickly as possible". She tries to push study into
the early mornings or evenings to leave the rest of the day free for her
job with Uniique Mortgage Solutions.<br>
<br>
Occasionally, there's time for sleep. Lectures, however, come last on the
list. Attending them, she says, is not necessary. "Firstly, what you
can do in a lecture you can get online. So going there is useless if you
can do 'self-study'. Secondly, it doesn't go toward attendance, so it's
not a component of the course. Thirdly, the tutorials cover what's in the
lectures anyway." <br>
<br>
The internet is both fuelling and supporting the changing relationship
between student and university. More and more, essential course
materials, including lecture tapes, slides and notes, are available
online as part of a flexible educational package. Consequently, skipping
classes is easier.<br>
<br>
"Now students are committed to paid work and they can get material
online, they're faced with more decisions about whether to go to uni or
not. In that sort of environment it's important to give them good reasons
to go to class," says Dr Kerri-Lee Krause, of the Centre for the
Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne.<br>
<br>
"That's really what academics are grappling with at the moment: do
we simply bow to the pressures of students wanting everything online; do
we give them all the notes and say see you at the end of the semester for
the exam?" In 1997, Dr Shamim Khan, of the Department of Information
Technology at Murdoch University, found that as few as 30 per cent of
students in the department came to classes with large enrolments.<br>
<br>
If anything, attendance has got worse - not that academics are any more
willing to confront, or even study, the issue, Khan observes. "When
I began audio-streaming and recording my lectures last year, I noticed a
significant drop in lecture attendance as a result." The vocational
focus typical of most students in 2005 is captured clearly by the
University of NSW's Faculty of Commerce and Economics, with its
philosophy of "serious fun".<br>
<br>
"They work hard, play hard ... it's like the world most of them want
to enter," explains Jane Westbrook, director, external relations for
the faculty. "They come in for lectures and tutorials but they're
not hanging around on campus the way they [students] used to. They can
access the library online, and their lecture notes, so technology has
allowed them to be much more flexible about their learning
experience." <br>
<br>
Even the social activities that work best have a vocational feel, she
says. "A lot of our students get involved in business competitions;
they'll pull a team together and work on a business case."<br>
<br>
Both the luxury of skipping classes - and the choice to stay and
play - depends on the course. Jill Stofberg, 18, started nursing this
week, having watched her brother, an arts/law student, enjoy having only
10 hours of face-to-face classes a week.<br>
<br>
"I expected it would be the same," says Stofberg, who has a
nine-hour Monday, a six-hour Wednesday, and classes from 8am to 1pm on
Thursdays and Fridays.<br>
<br>
Stofberg, from the Blue Mountains, studies at the Australian Catholic
University's North Sydney campus, and spends four hours a day on the
train. As for the "leisure to think", that must be fitted
around her job as a "check-out chick" on her three days
off.<br>
<br>
Nevertheless, she says she is looking forward to new friends and
activities. "The lifestyle seems really good." The former
student radical - and now conservative critic - Keith Windschuttle still
thinks fondly of a lifestyle full of student magazines, classes and
anti-Vietnam War protests. For him, the '60s stand out as "a golden
age", with greater student involvement producing a
"richer" educational experience.<br>
<br>
Then, the sandstone walls divided a university from its city. Those on
the inside lived "more of a fantasy life that was cut off and we
regarded ourselves as quite different to everyone else in town; certainly
thinking differently," he recalls. "Nowadays, the difference in
ideas between what's in the university and what's in the wider community
is not so great." <br>
<br>
In fact, university culture has since so imbued society at large that
students have less need to find their fun on campus, says Gavin Moodie,
who studied arts and law at the University of Melbourne from 1970 to
1984.<br>
<br>
Students plotting revolution and debating the meaning of life over coffee
and folk music still exist but, since the massive expansion of university
enrolments from the late 1980s, the beret wearers have become lost among
those with other priorities, says Moodie, a principal policy adviser at
Griffith University.<br>
<br>
Back when universities released far fewer graduates into what was a more
secure job market for professionals, students could afford a more
carefree attitude towards hanging around campus, he says. "[But]
would that be a good preparation for the current world? And, even if it
would be, is that what current students want?" <br>
<br>
There still are students broadly engaged with university life - just
fewer of them - says Frank Stilwell, a University of Sydney academic for
30 years. "But they stand out in tutorial discussions. They're not
just there as clients or consumers, but as participants in a much more
fulfilling education process." <br>
<br>
The C-word is anathema to many lecturers, but the idea of students as
consumers is implicit in the thinking of many in the managerial class
that now runs most universities. But not all.<br>
<br>
Malcolm Gillies, the deputy vice-chancellor (education) at the Australian
National University, believes universities are diverging. "Some are
closer to being course providers - some of them of very high quality -
but that's different to the idea of an educationally rich and diverse
experience," he says. "The word provider is the key element:
you provide to a customer; you engage a student." In contrast with
the narrow vocational focus of many students, Gillies still believes
"finding yourself" to be "probably the most important
function of a university". "Whether it's finding out you're a
great linguist or finding out you don't want to be a lawyer - whether
it's positive or negative - it's all part of that discovery of what you
feel most comfortable doing and I think universities are the places, par
excellence, still, for doing that." <br>
<br>
Additional research by Lisa Carapiet<br>
<br>
[See also Empty lecture halls in the online campus, by Andrew Stevenson,
<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Empty-lecture-halls-in-the-online-campus/2005/02/25/1109180113568.html">http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Empty-lecture-halls-in-the-online-campus/2005/02/25/1109180113568.html</a>
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