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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| Mugwump wrote: | | ^ a nice post, PTID, but I've no idea what you are proposing - is it that tertiaty education should be freed of any market disciplines ? That we return to a 1970s-style model where the amount of spending, and accountability for performance, was delegated to the providers or bureaucrats? |
Everything still has budgets and standards, so there's your discipline. You can't pretend there are immediate market measures which add anything to an existing system when there are none; that makes things much, much worse than a parliament-disciplined budget.
There is no evidence at all that rigged, corrupt, arbitrary or monopolistic systems are better than public systems. None at all. And that's what you get in systems without immediate market feedback on critical long-term value that try to use the temporal market rather than some other logic as discipline.
In this case, a market system is arbitrary: Pick metrics and pretend they measure even a fraction of the value, or pick metrics distorted by student selection and donations, so poorer institutions and those which serve average Joe students, or focus on good teaching rather than publishing, always look like they're "under-performing".
There are plenty of internal metrics that academics have always used; cross-institutional standards assessments and employer feedback/consultation being effective already. And there's plenty of natural competition between academics and unis without inventing fake, distorting nonsense which does nothing but create massive funding and access gaps.
The bit I don't get is that the criticisms are both dated and contradictory: The pretend market approach has failed *already* across university systems as a whole. You can't test something for twenty years and then turn around and blame the prior system, and at the very same time say the prior system had better standards. I mean, WTF?
The reality is, the criticisms make no sense and have no technical, reasoned basis. The sloppiness and under-servicing in everything at unis from teaching to admin is purely about funding. Propagandist anti-intellectualism and contradictory, nonsensical criticism is used by the usual robber barons as a pretext for de-funding as an extension of tax avoidance.
Schools are a different beast though, and my guess is the issue much harder to fix as being a school teacher has virtually no ego currency. Humans won't accept the status of child minders, parent punching bags, and social lepers while at the same time being charged with a role as difficult and stressful as most roles in the more elite professions.
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Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| stui magpie wrote: | | David wrote: |
Have you ever actually taken a humanities subject? I did political science and philosophy at the ANU (and later sociology, communications, film studies and poetry at Monash), |
so 3 questions.
1. After completing 6 subjects, do you actually have a degree or any form of qualification yet?
2. If not, how far to go and what would it be?
2. What do you do for paid employment as a father and someone who lives in an expensive area of melbourne? |
Good questions. From someone who 'obviously' doesn't appreciate university courses what do those subjects get you?
I remember a post not long ago and you said "as an editor" what are you the editor of?
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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If standards and budgets and bureaucratic oversight by " parliament" made organisations efficient and allocated resources effectively, the Soviet Union would be an economic superpower by now.
I suspect the problem lies in the various purposes that a university serves and the fact that they have very different economic and social goods attached. These are being conflated. One is a pure temple of the mind, dedicated to research and publication. This has almost no need for market discipline, and if kept small enough and governed passably well, the level of economic waste would be tolerable.
The second is a higher teaching establishment and skill accrediting body, which should be largely but not wholly funded by students.
The third, more questionable role is as a seedcorn incubator. In theory this shoild be largely funded by licensing of IP, though some modest funding by government might make sense to the extent that technologies are placed in the public domain.
I don't think it makes much sense to talk of funding and effectiveness models as though all university work is equal and has the same economic line of sight.
As for " rigged, corrupt, arbitrary, monopolistic" etc... There is doubtless some of that out there, but a great deall less, I think, than your demonology seems to assume. Most corporations earn only slightly more than their cost of capital and are prone to disruption in a host of ways. Share prices + dividends return about 2-3% more than inflation, over the long term, on average - a relatively modest return for the risk and bother of economic acrivity. BHP shares, for example, have fallen about 60% in 12 months. If they are a corrupt monopoly, then it is a strange one. I never understand your ventilations on the topic.
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| stui magpie wrote: | | David wrote: |
Have you ever actually taken a humanities subject? I did political science and philosophy at the ANU (and later sociology, communications, film studies and poetry at Monash), |
so 3 questions.
1. After completing 6 subjects, do you actually have a degree or any form of qualification yet?
2. If not, how far to go and what would it be?
2. What do you do for paid employment as a father and someone who lives in an expensive area of melbourne? |
I only have one subject to complete from my Professional Writing and Editing course at RMIT (would have finished it in the semester just gone, but baby Ingmar got in the way). I didn't include it in the list above because I don't think it's technically a field of humanities – more in the realm of vocational studies (indeed it used to be a TAFE subject, but was upgraded to 'Associate Degree' a few years ago, which means that it retains more or less the same content but they get to charge students more money  ).
The program is quite specialised and has been very highly regarded in the industry for a long time – it is the closest thing to a golden ticket if you want to work as an editor or copywriter, or even in some cases to get your novel published. My main purpose in taking on that course is to gain work as an editor, and I'm already looking for work in that field right now. Although it's obviously a disadvantage not to have a degree to your name, I figure that I have hands-on editing experience and have completed all the editing subjects with straight HDs, so it's worth a try.
Here's a link for those who want to know what an editor actually does:
http://theeditorsblog.net/2011/02/01/duties-of-an-editor-how-editors-help-writers/
Otherwise, I currently work at the Arts Centre in customer service and also freelance as an editor and writer. For the last two years I've gained work as a freelancer writing synopses for the Melbourne International Film Festival program guide, which pays very well for a couple of months of the year. I've also taken on little freelance editing jobs and internships as well.
I suspect what you really want to know is, what did the humanities subjects I listed get me? First of all, I think it's important to recognise that there's no direct correlation between most arts subjects and a given job (unless you follow those subjects through to Masters/PhD level and gain work as a tutor or academic). If you believe that the sole purpose of university study is to gain employment, then you will end up more or less with the Japanese model. Thankfully, what most people understand is that education is a benefit in its own right; not just for the individual, but for society as a whole. An educated society is a better society for any number of reasons; certainly at the polling booths, but also in terms of its net intellectual and creative aptitude. An educated society is a more knowledgeable society, in a sense that goes beyond mere functionality.
That's not to say that a given tertiary graduate will necessarily be better at these things than a given person who left school with a year 10 certificate. But, when looking at the population as a whole, the net advantage is pretty clear.
Otherwise, the indirect workplace-related benefits of Arts subjects are things like clarity of written and spoken communication (essays and oral presentations, also tutorials in general), ability to formulate and effectively present an argument, skills in working with other people to achieve mutually beneficial goals (group assignments), ability to work to deadlines (lol) and ability to multitask (the vast majority of students work one or more jobs while at university). These are all skills I've developed over the course of my undergraduate studies and also my current degree, and they have already benefited me (and will continue to benefit me) in my professional life.
If I were to describe benefits and outcomes from each of the undergraduate subjects I mentioned above, they'd be the following:
Poetry: Through studying the work of modern poets and poetic techniques, my own poetry improved considerably. I have since been published, and will continue writing for its own sake.
Film studies: Took my existing passion for cinema and placed it within a critical/technical framework, enabling me to understand and express what mattered to me about the art form. This has already benefited me in my published writing about film and freelance work for the film festival, and may yet lead to a job as a film critic in the future.
Communications: a complementary course to my journalism studies at Monash, this initially focused on a theoretical approach to media production before expanding into analyses of art and even architecture. It helped me treat news media with a more critical eye and understand how it is put together. Something like this should be mandatory for all Australian citizens.
Sociology: An analysis of society and its influence on human behaviour. It was an essential insight into who we are as people and the forces that shape us.
Philosophy: Again, should be mandatory! These are the elementary questions of how things are and why they are, and the two units I took placed these questions within an historical framework, drawing on classical arguments and theories. Very beneficial for logical reasoning and expression, and is guaranteed to make you less dumb.
Political science: A basic understanding of Australian political history and how government works. I only took this for a semester, so it was pretty introductory stuff, but an important insight into the way our society works nonetheless.
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Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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Interesting summation,
One thing though, since the government helps so much with funding, I think it's fair to say the main function of university is to assist in gaining employment, or enabling the provision of essential services such as medicine. If your doing it for your own satisfaction, it should be more self funded. I'd say the majority go to uni to get a leg up, take the short cut to a better paid career,(nothing wrong with that), or get an education you just can't get on the job, such as a doctor or nurse, lawyer., engineer (although that's debatable, I'd prefer a person with some tool skills making structural decisions!) teacher, etc etc All these things build society. I'm not so sure about the educated society being a better one though, take a look at question time, I'm guessing most politicians went to uni, they are hardly a good role model. I'd prefer a more moralistic society to be honest, rather than a smart one that knows how to get away with stuff.
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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nomadjack
Joined: 27 Apr 2006
Location: Essendon
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A few points from someone who works in the system:
Firstly, students now cover over 80% of the cost of their education so can we get away from the myth of it being a massive government handout? The sector these days is a far cry from the 70s 80s and even the 1990s.
Secondly, most students I teach juggle their studies with multiple part-time jobs (ironically usually in the blue collar and service sectors) so can we get away from the bullshit proposition that they have no idea of the 'real world' and that they are bludging off those doing 'real work'?
Thirdly, most staff I've worked with across politics, public policy, sociology and history I would characterize as between centre left and centre right. It's true that genuine conservatives are thin on the ground but so are genuine radical leftists. As an example, I could count the number of Marxists I have come across in twenty years of studying and teaching/research at La Trobe, Melbourne, Monash and Swinburne on one hand. Marxism itself is rarely taught in any depth or detail and there is plenty of room for genuine intellectual diversity and disagreement.
Finally, if you want to talk about intellecual bias in universities I'd suggest you have a closer look at economics business and management disciplines where there is very little room for disagreement with current orthodoxy. |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| David wrote: |
Philosophy: Again, should be mandatory! These are the elementary questions of how things are and why they are, and the two units I took placed these questions within an historical framework, drawing on classical arguments and theories. Very beneficial for logical reasoning and expression, and is guaranteed to make you less dumb. |
All fair answers but I've deliberately picked on this bit as, even though I took it to be meant as a quip, it's symptomatic of my issue with some tertiary educated people.
For the record I have nothing against tertiary education, I think it serves a valuable and necessary purpose and people generally leave with a lot more knowledge than when they went in. My issue is with the people, not all but enough, who seem to believe that having now attended uni and got a degree they are now somehow smarter and better than others. For some it's like a little elitist club that only the smart kids are allowed in.
Going to university doesn't mean you're any smarter than anyone else. You're going there to learn stuff.
Having been educated at uni doesn't mean you're now smarter, in actually fact you are exactly as intelligent or stupid as you were when you started, you have just attained more knowledge in the areas you studied, you didn't attain more intelligence.
Learning philosophy does not make you less dumb, nor do any subjects teach you how to think. If you couldn't think before you started you would have learned nothing.
What you can learn are different skills and techniques for how to approach a problem or issue from a different perspective. How to look for root cause, how to identify the problem from the symptoms. You learn ways to think through issues, not how to think. I've done short courses in problem solving techniques and it's a valuable skill to have, but isn't some freaking mystical power you develop from being at uni,
Someone who has gone to university to study medicine isn't by virtue of that any more or less intelligent than someone who left at year 10 and did an apprenticeship. They have a different level of learned knowledge, much of it considered to be a higher level of complexity so they do need to be reasonably smart to be able to learn it, but just having learned that makes you no smarter than anyone else. I'd no more trust a surgeon to be able to build a pergola than I would a chippie to do a knee reconstruction.
So any condescending kunts want to suggest I have chips on my shoulder against higher education are clear proof that stupid people can get tertiary educations too.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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nomadjack
Joined: 27 Apr 2006
Location: Essendon
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| As for your last point TP, the problem isn't that politicians have degrees it's that voters don't have the knowledge and education (either formal or informal) to hold them accountable. I teach politics at undergrad and postgrad level and the students I teach are much better positioned to understand and critically engage with issues and see through bullshit than most voters. That's one of the many things an Arts degree does. |
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nomadjack
Joined: 27 Apr 2006
Location: Essendon
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| Spot on Stui...Bravo! The knowledge an apprentice builder or sparky picks up in their training is no less complex than what an Arts student learns. Both are important and provide value to the person involved and to society at large. |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| Mugwump wrote: | If standards and budgets and bureaucratic oversight by " parliament" made organisations efficient and allocated resources effectively, the Soviet Union would be an economic superpower by now.
I suspect the problem lies in the various purposes that a university serves and the fact that they have very different economic and social goods attached. These are being conflated. One is a pure temple of the mind, dedicated to research and publication. This has almost no need for market discipline, and if kept small enough and governed passably well, the level of economic waste would be tolerable.
The second is a higher teaching establishment and skill accrediting body, which should be largely but not wholly funded by students.
The third, more questionable role is as a seedcorn incubator. In theory this shoild be largely funded by licensing of IP, though some modest funding by government might make sense to the extent that technologies are placed in the public domain.
I don't think it makes much sense to talk of funding and effectiveness models as though all university work is equal and has the same economic line of sight.
As for " rigged, corrupt, arbitrary, monopolistic" etc... There is doubtless some of that out there, but a great deall less, I think, than your demonology seems to assume. Most corporations earn only slightly more than their cost of capital and are prone to disruption in a host of ways. Share prices + dividends return about 2-3% more than inflation, over the long term, on average - a relatively modest return for the risk and bother of economic acrivity. BHP shares, for example, have fallen about 60% in 12 months. If they are a corrupt monopoly, then it is a strange one. I never understand your ventilations on the topic. |
You and your evangelical Soviet Union homilies 
Actually, I was talking about non-competitive sectors or public goods whose benefit cannot be measured immediately. I'm not sure how such examples as public transport, the Internet and then universities got you onto the open-market trading of bonds, and then a single stock battered by the commodity cycle.
You're only proving my point by juxtaposing those very free markets and their very immediate pricing feedback to very limited markets with long-term benefits that are extremely difficult to price. Conflating the two is a huge category error which leads to all kinds of detached metrics and value loss.
Even worse when this error is being used as a pretext to reduce university funding and increase fees in order to line pockets elsewhere through higher-income tax cuts, higher-income handouts, and unwarranted industry handouts such as those received by the mining industry.
As I say, you can't do your best to wreck something and then claim the prior system of some two-plus decades ago is to blame.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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Morrigu 
Joined: 11 Aug 2001
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| David wrote: | | Philosophy: Again, should be mandatory! These are the elementary questions of how things are and why they are, and the two units I took placed these questions within an historical framework, drawing on classical arguments and theories. Very beneficial for logical reasoning and expression, and is guaranteed to make you less dumb. |
No way Jose - most boring self indulgent load of twaddle I have ever had the misfortune to be subjected to!!
I took it as an elective in my initial undergrad cause I thought it might be interesting - epic fail!!!
Guaranteed to make you less dumb - sorry David but that's the funniest thing I have read for years 
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Morrigu
Joined: 11 Aug 2001
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| stui magpie wrote: | | David wrote: |
Philosophy: Again, should be mandatory! These are the elementary questions of how things are and why they are, and the two units I took placed these questions within an historical framework, drawing on classical arguments and theories. Very beneficial for logical reasoning and expression, and is guaranteed to make you less dumb. |
All fair answers but I've deliberately picked on this bit as, even though I took it to be meant as a quip, it's symptomatic of my issue with some tertiary educated people.
For the record I have nothing against tertiary education, I think it serves a valuable and necessary purpose and people generally leave with a lot more knowledge than when they went in. My issue is with the people, not all but enough, who seem to believe that having now attended uni and got a degree they are now somehow smarter and better than others. For some it's like a little elitist club that only the smart kids are allowed in.
Going to university doesn't mean you're any smarter than anyone else. You're going there to learn stuff.
Having been educated at uni doesn't mean you're now smarter, in actually fact you are exactly as intelligent or stupid as you were when you started, you have just attained more knowledge in the areas you studied, you didn't attain more intelligence.
Learning philosophy does not make you less dumb, nor do any subjects teach you how to think. If you couldn't think before you started you would have learned nothing.
What you can learn are different skills and techniques for how to approach a problem or issue from a different perspective. How to look for root cause, how to identify the problem from the symptoms. You learn ways to think through issues, not how to think. I've done short courses in problem solving techniques and it's a valuable skill to have, but isn't some freaking mystical power you develop from being at uni,
Someone who has gone to university to study medicine isn't by virtue of that any more or less intelligent than someone who left at year 10 and did an apprenticeship. They have a different level of learned knowledge, much of it considered to be a higher level of complexity so they do need to be reasonably smart to be able to learn it, but just having learned that makes you no smarter than anyone else. I'd no more trust a surgeon to be able to build a pergola than I would a chippie to do a knee reconstruction.
So any condescending kunts want to suggest I have chips on my shoulder against higher education are clear proof that stupid people can get tertiary educations too. |
👍 Good post - well said!
I wouldn't trust a surgeon to make a sandwich let alone build a pergola
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“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.†|
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ PTID above....
My comment about BHP related to your standard-issue evidence-free assertion that market-based solutions somehow represent abandonment to forces that are corrupt, rigged monopolistic etc etc. Evidence based on returns to capital in general, and and the bellwether stock of the Australian economy in particular, will probably do nothing to change your mind, but it does explain why I do not see it that way at all. Suffice to say that business is far more prone to disruption than, say, the practice of very well-heeled EU Human Rights lawyers. I spent a pleasant new year's eve two night ago in the London penthouse of one. Lovely company, clever person - clearly great business model.... but i digress..
As for the eye roll at my "homily", well, the Soviet Union - though you could pick almost any other case of centrally planned economic management - is the case study in how remote bureaucracies manage to reduce quality, increase costs and generally impoverish the lives of populations subject to them while enriching the providers. This is true of the Soviet Union, and it was also true of the British economy of 1950-1980. If it is "evangelical" to point out that the planned economy model you advocate for universities was entered into the examination of history, and then howlingly failed, then put me down as Matthew, Mark, Luke et al. Your expressed belief that budgets and parliamentary oversight create discipline and quality is of course central planning's second or third commamndment. It's almost touching, to see beliefs so gamely resilient to powerful evidence.
Now, as for universities, if you read my post at all, i am not sure they should be de-funded. I put forward a model for thinking about universities and their purposes that might well increase funding - applying market-based thinking where it makes sense, and exempting some things from consumer and direct taxpayer choice where the economic line of sight is too obscure. Strangely enough, I suspect we might find much common ground in such a structure.
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| nomadjack wrote: | | Spot on Stui...Bravo! The knowledge an apprentice builder or sparky picks up in their training is no less complex than what an Arts student learns. Both are important and provide value to the person involved and to society at large. |
I agree with the last sentence, and partly with the first, but there is an important difference. I value sparkies and builders hugely, and they contribute more to my life (and the business I manage) than most of the Arts graduates i've met. There is a critical difference, though : when a degree is well-structured and has the right standards, it should accredit people who can learn fast and think abstractly. And that is why we, as a business, will take some Arts graduates. They could be trained to be a panel operator in a chemical plant is ca 6 months. The panel operators cannot (in the main) be trained to write a well-researched and structured paper on a multi-faceted problem. Good graduates have abilities that are intrinsically more scarce, with the economic value which follows from that. So we need both. Some people without degres will surpass many of those with degrees, of course - that's just a game of numbers.
The trouble is that humanities subjects have become relativised and cheapened to the point where you can no longer be sure that you'll get either a good writer-analyst or even someone who could be trained to operate a panel. At the recruitment stage, you too often get someone who writes only passably well, uses abstract terms without deep understanding, and has an attitude. We sIft them out, but that's really what the universities should do.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| Morrigu wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | | David wrote: |
Philosophy: Again, should be mandatory! These are the elementary questions of how things are and why they are, and the two units I took placed these questions within an historical framework, drawing on classical arguments and theories. Very beneficial for logical reasoning and expression, and is guaranteed to make you less dumb. |
All fair answers but I've deliberately picked on this bit as, even though I took it to be meant as a quip, it's symptomatic of my issue with some tertiary educated people.
For the record I have nothing against tertiary education, I think it serves a valuable and necessary purpose and people generally leave with a lot more knowledge than when they went in. My issue is with the people, not all but enough, who seem to believe that having now attended uni and got a degree they are now somehow smarter and better than others. For some it's like a little elitist club that only the smart kids are allowed in.
Going to university doesn't mean you're any smarter than anyone else. You're going there to learn stuff.
Having been educated at uni doesn't mean you're now smarter, in actually fact you are exactly as intelligent or stupid as you were when you started, you have just attained more knowledge in the areas you studied, you didn't attain more intelligence.
Learning philosophy does not make you less dumb, nor do any subjects teach you how to think. If you couldn't think before you started you would have learned nothing.
What you can learn are different skills and techniques for how to approach a problem or issue from a different perspective. How to look for root cause, how to identify the problem from the symptoms. You learn ways to think through issues, not how to think. I've done short courses in problem solving techniques and it's a valuable skill to have, but isn't some freaking mystical power you develop from being at uni,
Someone who has gone to university to study medicine isn't by virtue of that any more or less intelligent than someone who left at year 10 and did an apprenticeship. They have a different level of learned knowledge, much of it considered to be a higher level of complexity so they do need to be reasonably smart to be able to learn it, but just having learned that makes you no smarter than anyone else. I'd no more trust a surgeon to be able to build a pergola than I would a chippie to do a knee reconstruction.
So any condescending kunts want to suggest I have chips on my shoulder against higher education are clear proof that stupid people can get tertiary educations too. |
👍 Good post - well said!
I wouldn't trust a surgeon to make a sandwich let alone build a pergola |
Lol!
Yep brilliantly put Stui
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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