Joe, Reader's Comment, Fee-paying uni students bully academics for good marks, Tracey Spicer, The Punch, 9 March 2010: http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/fee-paying-uni-students-bully-academics-for-good-marks/ Historical link preserved from the original page.
Australian university students may threaten lecturers with negative evaluations. Historical link preserved from the original page.
The corporatisation of Australian universities has led to an increase in students bullying their lecturers for better marks. Historical link preserved from the original page.
One lecturer in the arts and social sciences faculty at the ANU admits bumping up one student’s Credit to a Distinction, because he stalked and harassed her daily via social media.
He threatened to get all his friends to return negative questionnaires about me and, frankly, I couldn’t afford to lose my job.
The problem stems from student evaluation forms, which are used to assess the assessors.
A lecturer who doesn’t mark highly enough could get negative feedback, jeopardising their chances of promotion.
“If you’re too demanding, you get bad student evaluations,” says one lecturer in the science faculty at the University of Queensland.
Fee-paying uni students bully academics for good marks, Tracey Spicer, The Punch, 9 March 2010: http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/fee-paying-uni-students-bully-academics-for-good-marks/ Historical link preserved from the original page.
Increasingly, students' parents come in demanding a breakdown of why their child got a credit on an assignment instead of a distinction.
I finished my PhD about 6 years ago and now work in academia. I teach undergraduates. I am a good teacher and passionate about my area of expertise (I receive positive feedback from my students), but I would have to say that the general level of education is falling. Trying to enthuse these students to think independently or even study at all is increasingly difficult.
I find that the first year students have only very basic writing skills entering university (Science), even getting them to understanding that their work should be handed in on time, and in proper English is a struggle.
They seem to resist actual learning as much as possible in case they are (god forbid) noticed as being the smart student!
Not to mention dealing with parents who come in demanding to know what their kids need to do the pass the course - because their kid won't come and ask or attend an actual lecture. Increasingly parents demand a breakdown of why their child got a credit on an assignment instead of a distinction. I realise that they have paid a great deal to get their child to this point and want results, nor do I condone a falling standard of university teaching, but they fail to realise that they are hindering their child’s ability to learn. They hover and their child (my student) never has an opportunity to grow and learn for themselves.
University should be a place of personal growth as well as intellectual growth, but I am seeing little evidence of that in our current students as well. They take the easy way always and we are letting them. It doesn’t bode well for the future.
My take is that about 70% of students are not genuinely capable of university education on leaving high school. I think increasingly a university degree is bought and not deserved.