Replying to Avatar StackSats.IO

I reckon the whole University system needs to be torched, not just the funding model, but the way it’s used to import cheap labour and provide pathways for rich Chinese to get citizenship, whilst exacerbating the housing Ponzi and making rent unaffordable for young people.

The nonsense degrees is just a byproduct of wanting as many students through the door as possible and Unis having zero accountability for student outcomes beyond graduation.

It’s particularly acute in Victoria, “The Education State”.
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phil 1y ago

Agreed, the issues definitely go beyond just HECS funding, and the overemphasis on churning out international students with degrees is a problem. I think there is still a place for some sort of University-like formal higher education, at least in some subject areas, but it needs to operate very differently to the way it does now.

I actually do sometimes wonder whether I really got any value out of my own degree or if my career path would have been pretty much the same without it. I didn’t start my career through a graduate program and none of the jobs I’ve had specifically needed a degree so maybe I could have been further ahead without it. On the other hand I probably did pick up some useful skills and knowledge from it that have helped me..

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StackSats.IO 1y ago

Personally I learned absolutely nothing from my major, but I had mandatory units in law and accounting which I thought annoying at the time but have proved extremely helpful in my later career.

I’ve done some mentoring of Uni students in recent times and it seems they’re even less prepared for the workplace than I was on graduating - they’re not learning anything that will be useful and they’ve not had practical experiences to give them a grounding that employers would expect.

It’s a shame that it’s gone this way because we do actually need to educate people in some really complex things nowadays but the system is so captured and broken as to be largely useless in this form.