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Universities have been accused of soft marking and enrolling international students without English language skills, in a submi…
HIGHER EDUCATION
Angry academics demand more rigour in
university degrees
By NATASHA BITA
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10:00pm March 18, 2025. Updated 3:00pm March 19, 2025
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“Soft marking” to pass students struggling at university is a risk to public safety and
“dumbing down’’ the nation, upset academics have warned.
Hundreds of university professors and lecturers have blown the whistle on falling
academic standards and cheating, in alarming evidence to a rushed Senate inquiry
into university governance.
Public Universities Australia – a group of more than 200 old-school academics
including eminent professors of science and medicine – criticised the Tertiary
Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) for failing to monitor the standard
of university degrees.
“There is ongoing slippage of academic standards with failure by TESQA to contain
that slide,’’ they state in a scathing submission to the Senate education committee.
“There is degraded assessment … (and) increased risk from artificial intelligence.
“Universities … tend to pass and graduate most students irrespective of the level of
education actually achieved.
“There are manifestly worsening gaps in graduates’ basic knowledge and skills.
“This is nothing less than a dumbing down of the entire country.’’
The academics accused universities of enrolling international students who struggle
to speak English, and blasted schools for failing to prepare high school graduates for
university.
Warning of a “high incidence of plagiarism and use of AI’’, they called for oral or
supervised written exams “to determine what a student does in fact know and can
do’’.
The academics have called on TEQSA to enforce minimum academic standards so
that every student is taught and assessed on a predetermined body of knowledge –
including the same core content for degrees in each field across all universities.
The failure to mandate the content of degrees places public safety at risk, they
warned, as university qualifications are not as robust as they were before the Hawkeera education minister John Dawkins introduced student loans and opened the door
to mass enrolments in the late 1980s.
“This means no medical graduate from any Australian university today is as welleducated and trained as they were pre-Dawkins, and that doctors’ competence is less
reliable as a result,’’ the submission states.
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“No schoolteacher is as well qualified as we expect, and often will not have ever
studied some of the content they are then expected to be able to teach.
“No clinical psychologist is now adequately educated and trained … no law graduate,
no engineering graduate, no historian or anybody else is as well educated by our
universities as they ought to be.
“This puts Australians’ lives at risk when we depend upon the quality of their
education.’’
The bollocking was rebuffed by Universities Australia chief executive Luke Sheehy,
who said universities uphold high academic standards and are globally recognised for
their quality.
“We reject claims that students are ‘soft marked’ or that graduates are less competent
than in the past,’’ he said.
“All students, including international students, must meet entry requirements,
including English proficiency.
“Universities have clear policies to maintain academic integrity and student success.’’
Australian Medical Association president Dr Danielle McMullan said that “Australian
doctors are among the best trained in the world with a rigorous system of medical
education and training that is underpinned by standards set by the Australian
Medical Council.’’
Public Universities Australia was co-founded by the president of the University of
Sydney Association of Professors, brain researcher Professor Manuel Graeber, who is
suing the university over his sacking in 2023.
Among its supporters, it lists Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of
Melbourne, Bernadette McSherry; Melbourne University constitutional lawyer,
Laureate Professor Adrienne Stone; and Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the
University of Tasmania, Haydn Walters.
Individual academics have also warned the Senate inquiry that short-staffing and
underqualified lecturers are affecting teaching quality.
Griffith University criminology professor Molly Dragiewicz, who has taught in
universities for 24 years and won more than $2m in research grants and contracts,
raised her concerns about the “rapid degradation of the quality of Australian
university education I have observed since I emigrated to Australia (from the United
States) in 2012’’.
She revealed that some universities are outsourcing online courses, without telling
students.
The courses are presented as “X university online’’ courses, and integrated into
university websites, she said.
“However the phone number and university email address provided goes to a sales
call centre rather than the university,’’ Professor Dragiewicz states in her submission.
“Students pay the same course fees as university students … but the majority of funds
are diverted to the for-profit corporation without their knowledge.
“Students are not aware that the course they enrolled in does not include any actual
teaching, and is not run by the university advertising it and awarding the degree.’’
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A Griffith University spokeswoman said it did not outsource online teaching to thirdparty providers.
Universities Australia said that “some institutions partner with third-party providers,
but universities set the curriculum, assessments and academic standards’’.
National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) president Dr Alison Barnes said that “we
have concerns over the quality of these courses … (that) fly under the radar of
regulators’’.
Dr Barnes blamed a “hiring-firing yo-yo’’ for undermining world-class teaching and
research.
“While it’s hard to say if marking pressure specifically is a widespread issue, the fact
that two-thirds of all staff in public universities are employed insecurely means
people are under the pump every day to act in ways that will guarantee the next
contract,’’ she said.
The NTEU’s University of Technology Sydney (UTS) branch has told the Senate
inquiry that UTS used artificial intelligence to rewrite course material through the
CourseLoop curriculum management platform introduced last year.
It said the university provided “AI generated texts to replace the old text … however
in many cases, the AI generated text changed the meaning of the original text and/or
was misleading and could not be used.’’
A UTS spokeswoman said that UTS “does not use AI to rewrite curriculum’’.
“The initial phase of reviewing some data was completed using (generative) AI, with
complete oversight from relevant faculty staff,’’ she said.
Dr George Morgan, adjunct associate professor at the Institute for Culture and
Society at Western Sydney University, told senators that students are unlikely to
complain about lower standards.
“An undergraduate student who buys a ticket for a Taylor Swift concert will be upset
if the singer performs for less than an hour,’’ he said.
“They will probably be less bothered if their university cuts class times, makes
assessment less rigorous, or appoints casuals rather than full-time staff to run their
course, as they do frequently.’’
Dr Morgan said most of his colleagues felt that students “need more care and
attention today than in the past, particularly since Covid’’.
“Many arrive lacking basic life and literacy skills, the ability to concentrate and avoid
digital distraction, and are shockingly unaware of current affairs and politics,’’ he said.
Dr Morgan said many universities had been “bewitched by digital fads and spent vast
sums on edu-tech’’.
“In my experience students need more face-to-face time, more bespoke comments on
their work rather than rubrics and ticked boxes,’’ he wrote.
MORE ON THIS STORY
Students wary of AI but rush to put it to work
By NATASHA BITA
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/angry-academics-demand-more-rigour-in-university-degrees/news-story/592bdae404c612baef…
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‘Degree-factory unis fail the best, carry the worst’
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