Tamon Pietsch How Do We Value Universities Analysis

Meritocracy, the system where each person's progression is due to their achievements, is seen constantly throughout society and it is suggested to be in Australian higher education. This essay will argue that rural students who attend or plan on attending university challenge this suggestion of meritocracy in Australian universities, as rural students are unequal compared to urban students. This essay will show that universities are not based on merit alone, as rural students are disadvantaged in areas such as distance, family & community values, course availability and university availability.

In 1852 when John Henry Newman wrote his essay, “The Idea of a University,” he wanted to convey that a University’s purpose was to be able to educate first-rate members of the social order. Newman’s theory, although over a hundred years old, still applies to today’s college students; many are seeking higher educations to not only lead to successful careers, but to also become an improved person in society.

In today’s world, young people think that if they continue their tertiary education, they can access a better job, no matter which subject they take. This situation indirectly causes a huge enrollment of students into universities and colleges, which may drop off the quality of education. As the author says, “quantity trumps quality” (pg. 168) which certify that the environment is skipped from education to jobs; meanwhile, the knowledge part is ignored by the students. In detail, they do not expect to learn something but just to get a degree which acts as “a passport to consideration for a job”. (pg. 164) This condition gradually turns credentialing into the norm. Everyone only cares about the degree that they will receive rather than concerning about what they will learn and develop through their subject’s material.

Before one can move forward with their education one must understand where it all started. When researching the history of higher education there is a common theme in every aspect of my research. I would find the word “college” and the word “university”. Throughout the 19th century there would be some confusion between the two words. In colleges the primary role is teaching where as in the university research and scholarships are the primary role (Lucas,2006). Also, current universities offer post- baccalaureate or graduate instruction whereas colleges do not. However, this was not always the case before the 19th century.

College, a universal, fundamental concept that the globe utilizes. Through a wide array of variations, countries across the world have developed their own meaning of what higher education is. However, the underlying tone of it all is the same, furthering one’s knowledge. With a vast number of schools from a broad range of locations trying to pull the population in, colleges compete with different tactics ranging from education relevance to evaluation. Consequently, problems have arisen from these approaches, addressed along the lines in an article called “A New Course” by Magdalena Kay, an associate professor of English at the University of Victoria and an educational film, “Ivory Tower” by Andrew Rossi, a graduate of Harvard and Yale University and a filmmaker. Furthermore, these problems change the meaning of college itself, no longer seen as an education, but as a commodity.

In their essay, “The Uses and Abuses of University,” history professors Ken Coates and Bill Morrison explore the heightening disconnect between the concept of supply and demand. In their examination of university degree output versus realistic economic need, the notion explicated is that the Canadian post-secondary education system is burdening students and the economy with tremendous failure. Furthermore, by addressing the imminent strain to attain career relevant positions post graduation, the realized result of overqualified intellects accepting low-income jobs or facing unemployment is portrayed. Geared towards institutions, parents, and those with a passion for education, the candid discourse aims to guide the collective educational wheel back to where it originated. Coates and Morrison employ the use of a personal narrative, credible statistics, and a thoughtful then versus now contrast in order to make the point that the current university system is essentially failing students.

In the essay, “The Uses and Abuses of University,” history professors Ken Coats and Bill Morrison approach the heightening disconnect between the concept of supply and demand in their exploration of university degree output versus realistic economic need. Geared towards institutions, parents, and those with a passion for education, Coats and Morrison’s discourse aims to guide the collective educational wheel back to where it originated. Through the use of a personable narrative, a plethora of credible statistics, and a thorough then verses now comparison, the narrators effectively place a necessity upon a revision of the system.

The article ‘How Do We Value Universities?’ by Tamson Pietsch’s is trying to question us if higher education would affect the economic and individual value to the people and the world. Economically, Universities is seen to be good for students and they’re more likely to get a job and earn more than non graduates according to research by Adelaide University. It’s also proven by Australians that higher educations will always be valued by others especially employers or the public since it has economic benefits. Pietsch also mentions the uncertainty of finding a job in the future and taking student loans could be difficult as graduates can’t pay back after their studies. Since jobs are changing and if they picked the wrong choice they might not be able to find a

This, in conjunction with several other factors such as severe underfunding from both national and state governments, has forced post-secondary educational institutions to find funding from alternative sources. The largest of these alternative sources are corporations, driving one of the most radical changes in the operation and function of the American university in its entire history. This corporatization of higher education takes away the empowerment of students by being literate in multiple intellectual traditions and replaces it with the allocation of a very narrow skill-set. “Part of the corporatization . . . is imposing a business model which measures success in extremely narrow, commercial terms. What’s good for simply gaining material wealth, contributing to profits and so on” (Chomsky). Giroux writes that “higher education is defaulting on its obligations to offer young people a quality and broad-based education. This is true in part because the liberal arts and humanities have fallen out of favor in a culture that equates education with training.”

The article, “Are there institutional differences in the earnings of Australian higher education graduates?”, was published in September 2016 by Paul Koshy, Richard Seymour and Mike Dockery. It talks about the possible relationships between the qualities of Australian universities and the earning outcomes of Australian graduates. The data used in this article is extracted from the “Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA).” The authors of this article discuss how institutional differences along with other variables affect the earnings of Australian graduates with respect to their universities.

Pietsch (2015) touches base on the education that students receive (supported by the government), helps the public by being long term key assets to the community such as doctors, lawyers and teachers. Determining the value of attending university a few years down the track, may not be due to the content in classes but the time spent with peers

This research essay will use Rebecca Mead’s media article, “Learning by Degrees” (Mead), to reflect on the assets and deficits of American colleges in search of the true values of education. In the cited article, Mead compares colleges according to their hiring rate and wages earned when graduates are employed. Mead acknowledges that the advertised expectations about finding a satisfying job differ significantly from the outcome which college graduates happen to find. The debate about the quality of college education engages economic, political, technological, pedagogical and moral arguments.

“There is no divide in American life that hurts more than the one between those we consider well educated and those who are poorly or inadequately schooled” (Spayde 60). According to John Spayde, author of “Learning in the Key of Life," a university education is a defining role in the well-being and success of people in today’s society. Similarly, John Henry Newman, in his essay, “The Idea of a University,” believes too that education gives “man the clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and force in urging them” (49), thus making him a well rounded human being. In fact, many people today agree with the ideas of these two writers, that a university

Such effects are evident in the recently “enhanced” course guides at the London School of Economics (LSE). The LSE is a private university that specializes in the social sciences and ranks third in the university league tables for the UK. The university’s new course guides include ‘skills’-sets that lecturers have to tick off as they incorporate them into their lessons. Such an approach propounds an entrepreneurial attitude over the goals previously associated with the social sciences. As sociologist Stephen Ball claims, in such institutions students as commodities transforms education into a “big business” rather than education for education’s sake.

For decades , university education reflected beautiful meanings for revolution generation such as national pride, self esteem, achievement and upward mobility .(Elsadda 9-13 feb 2008)