Australian Universities are degree mills

I knew it all the time.

Actually, I think that Australian universities have an excellent international reputation. That's one reason why they are so popular with students in Asia.

There are 200+ countries in the world, so that's not necessarily a bad showing.

I think that ANU would have to be in the international 'top tier'. It is world famous in anthropology, a major player in astronomy and has what is probably one of the top ten (analytical) philosophy departments on the planet.

Sydney and Melbourne wouldn't be embarassed in Berkeley's company either. That's three right there.

One problem that Australian universities might have is their egalitarianism. I get the impression that most higher education institutions in Oz offer doctorates and follow the research university model. (The British and Canadian systems look similar.) So perhaps research funding gets spread out more thinly than it should.

In the US there are only 200 or so research universities, representing a fraction of total 4-year-plus higher education institutions. So funding is more focused on fewer programs, making it easier to fund them well. That makes "big science" easier, with its expensive facilities and big staffs. It also helps us to attract prominent individuals from around the world. (The Canadians are always moaning about how their best and brightest researchers leave to work in the US.) And that kind of guarantees that the United States is going to field some programs that are international leaders.

Ah! The real issues emerge. The "degree mill" stuff is really a Trojan horse, filled with gripes about Australian university funding and creeping capitalism.

Of course, prominent 'top-tier' American universities charge astronomical tuitions without compromising their standards. Many of those universities offer their graduate students full financial aid packages though, essentially offering them free educations, by assigning them as low-paid high-skill labor to labs doing cutting-edge work, as a part of their educational program.

Probably because they can't afford to fund their graduate students like the University of California does, so they have to be less selective, attracting rich but dumb Asian kids able to pay big-bucks, instead of the foreign genuises that populate UCLA.

If you disregard the apocalyptic tone, which probably comes either from the journalist or from the university faculty labor unions, it looks as if this Dr. Nelson sees things much as I outlined above.

Australian university funding is probably spread too thinly at the expensive high-investment graduate-research level. So it might make good sense to manouver "key resources – like prestige-loaded research funding – into selected centres of excellence".

Perhaps only the top 25% of Australian universities should be offering a full array of doctoral programs across the board. These univerities should model themselves on places the University of California and they should be similarly funded. Many of the remaining schools should only offer a handful of better-funded doctoral programs in specialty subjects where the schools are particularly strong, like agriculture at Charles Sturt perhaps. And probably some Australian universities shouldn't be offering doctoral programs at all.

I mean, California has 36 million people (Australia has 19 million), but the state government only funds 10 UC campuses. It shouldn't be surprising to anyone that they are awash in money by Australian standards. And the facilities and staffs that money buys in turn attract federal and private research grants, compounding the advantage even further.

 

(referring to the original posting)
I think that this is something of a problem around the world. While I do not for a minute believe that Australian universities are in any way "millish," I think it's generally a good thing that people are paying some attention to quality issues.
Jack

 

Well.......actually they way the dept's drag the process out you are correct but there are certainly people far younger than me with doctorates. I am in the starting era of Gen Xers and getting ready to turn 40. I am ready for my mid life crisis now. Apollo Hair Club here I come.

North

 

Re: Re: Australian Universities are degree mills

Over here, we find a university that cannot offer doctoral programs to be "rather odd", to say the least. A university that cannot offer doctoral degrees is not really a university. Besides, how would you determine the top 25%, choose the "Group of Eight" and one or two more only?

One possible answer to the too many "doctoral awarding institutions" is to strip all of the "new" universities (<15 years as a university) of their university status. Return them to being Colleges of Advanced Education. Blame the labour government of the day for the creation of so many full universities.

Actually, the number of publically funded doctoral awarding universities in california is set to increase, with the "California State" system being able to award some doctoral degrees (but not PhDs.)

How many of the doctorates soon to be produced by those institutions will be from centres of research excellence?

 

It is up to Australian universities to vindicate themselves of practices that are questionable especially with the handling of Asian students onshore and offshore. To be able to handle the needs of their students and not to leave it to their agents that they have if they have franchise agreements, to rectify situations that seem unsolvable. To justly and fairly award those degrees that are justifiably so to students who deserve the title after many years of hard work and perserverance and not to deny them that priviledge.