Jarod Alper and others at the Australian National University have created a "University Degree Comparison Calculator", to allow the cost of a university degree under current legislation to be compared with that proposed. The assumptions used in the calculations can be changed. What will be most informative for users is the graph showing the large proportion which interest makes of a student loan repayment. Perhaps this should by included in the Government's MyUniversity website.
One thing the authors of the calculator might like to do is extend the calculation to shorter qualifications: Certificate (six months) and Diploma (one year). Students might be better off starting with a much shorter (and cheaper) qualification, just enough to get the into a industry and then study for a degree part-time. Many young students have little idea of what they want to do and so it would be better to invest six months or a year of their time and money in studying in a filed, rather than three or four years, before finding out if it is what they want to do. Also I find student who have work experience are much more motivated, ready to learn and easier to teach. It may even be possible to offer such students lower course fees, as it will take less resources to teach them (and they can even help teach the beginners).
Showing posts with label MyUniversity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MyUniversity. Show all posts
Friday, June 13, 2014
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Computer Science Degrees by Distance Education from Australian Universities
I was looking for a list of Computer Science degrees offered by Distance Education by Australian universities. I tried the My University website and could select distance education, but seemed to end up with a lot of unrelated degrees when searching for "computer science". Of the 259 programs listed, only a small fraction seem to be computer science. Doing a manual cull of the list I came up with, for Bachelors (with or without honours):
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Government Rating Universities Not a Good Idea
The US Government is reported to be planning to rate colleges and using this to apportion funding ("Obama’s Plan Aims to Lower Cost of College", by
TAMAR LEWIN, New York Times, August 22, 2013). If government is funding colleges, then it is reasonable there is a government mandated minimum standard. But a government rating one college as better than another is more problematic. Apart from the problem of having a reliable system, it has to be asked what is the purpose of the government rating and if it will be effective.
Australia has the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), which is a government agency, but relatively free of political interference, with academics setting the standards.
The Australian Government provides the "MyUniversity" website with details of all Australian institutions. This details the qualifications of the staff and how many have awards for teaching, which is relatively uncontroversial.
More at issue are student survey results for each subject area. I have recently undertaken tertiary teacher training and so am comfortable with the idea of being rated by the students and have designed a course which rates highly. But some of my colleagues have difficulty with the concept and practice of designing courses which meet external standards and are popular with students.
There is the risk of a race to the bottom, with courses which just meet minimum standards and are designed to be easy and therefore popular. But I find that students value a course which challenges them. Also while meeting external standards is a useful discipline for the course designer.
While the New York Times article mentions MOOCs as a way to reduce costs. However, someone has to pay for the development of MOOCs. Without correcting flaws in the US education policy, MOOCs will accentuate problems. It is likely there will be new startup educational institutions offering MOOC based programs of questionable value, temping established institutions to follow the same path to compete. This is likely to lead to a collapse of institutions, much as happened at the turn of the last century with the DOT.Com crash of companies offering free web products with no underlying business case.
Australia has the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), which is a government agency, but relatively free of political interference, with academics setting the standards.
The Australian Government provides the "MyUniversity" website with details of all Australian institutions. This details the qualifications of the staff and how many have awards for teaching, which is relatively uncontroversial.
More at issue are student survey results for each subject area. I have recently undertaken tertiary teacher training and so am comfortable with the idea of being rated by the students and have designed a course which rates highly. But some of my colleagues have difficulty with the concept and practice of designing courses which meet external standards and are popular with students.
There is the risk of a race to the bottom, with courses which just meet minimum standards and are designed to be easy and therefore popular. But I find that students value a course which challenges them. Also while meeting external standards is a useful discipline for the course designer.
Problems with US Higher Education
The US Government plans to rate colleges are reported to be related to a number of perceived problems with US higher education: low completion rates of students, and defaults on student loans. Some solutions proposed are already in routine use in Australia, such as competency-based assessment, used in the Australian vocational system, where the emphasis is on demonstrating the required skills, not the length of study. The Australian system of student loans is tied to the income of the student, lessening the hardship for the student (but not reducing the need for policy to encourage vocationally relevant courses).While the New York Times article mentions MOOCs as a way to reduce costs. However, someone has to pay for the development of MOOCs. Without correcting flaws in the US education policy, MOOCs will accentuate problems. It is likely there will be new startup educational institutions offering MOOC based programs of questionable value, temping established institutions to follow the same path to compete. This is likely to lead to a collapse of institutions, much as happened at the turn of the last century with the DOT.Com crash of companies offering free web products with no underlying business case.
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