Mediocrity and laziness in our universities

I ask that academics in Australia embrace a regulation of research. Asking academics to produce four quality articles and books in a five-year period is not excessive. It allows us to assess ourselves against international standards. If we are found wanting, then we learn from the assessment and lift ourselves personally and as a scholarly community.

The final issue I ask of academics is even more ostracised and ignored, but probably more important. A research assessment exercise confirms whether an academic is producing research outcomes of value. The confirmation of teaching quality is yet to be addressed.

My last challenge to Australian university scholars is that we possess teaching qualifications. It does not make sense that we require those who teach 6-year-olds or 16-year-olds to have verifiable education degrees and diplomas, but not those who teach adults.

We have never had a more diverse cohort of students at our universities. The institutions in which most of us gained our degrees are dead. We were taught by magnificent scholars who changed our lives. They did so without teaching qualifications. But think of our fellow students at that time: they were white, middle class, young and from university-educated families.

Our education environment has changed. In some Australian universities, nearly 50 per cent of students are derived from non-school leaving populations. More students are attending our universities now than at any point in our history. Courses and classrooms are overflowing. Assumptions about motivation, levels of reading, writing and comprehension and intrinsic desire for knowledge can no longer be made.

We can nostalgically impose “good old days” logic on our current system or we could admit that our current students are different, and their demands of us are different. These changes do not mean our standards decline, but that methods to maintain these standards improve.

The easiest way to avoid a problem is to ignore it. It is easy to put poor materials online and blame students for their lack of motivation. It is far more unpopular to ask if staff recognise the changes to our workplace and alter our abilities and skills in response.

The disrespect of first year university teaching and learning remains the great problem of our system. On too many occasions in my teaching career through Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, colleagues have confidently proclaimed that as long as they read two weeks ahead of the first years then that is sufficient. It is not.

Actually, the most important teaching is conducted at entry levels of the system. Pre-primary and the first years of primary and high school and university require motivated and qualified educators who write rigorous and evocative curricula. Mediocrity and laziness from teachers of first year students oxidizes Australian education.

Universities are the embodiment of the best and most difficult knowledge, taught by internationally recognised scholars, to the brightest of the generation. This is our goal. This is our project. This is our challenge. But I do understand why academics no longer believe in the expansive and passionate trajectories of education.

Twenty years ago Dick Hebdige predicted these changes. He realised that, “with the public sector, education, the welfare state - all the big, ‘safe’ institutions - up against the wall, there’s nothing good or clever or heroic about going under. When all is said and done, why bother to think ‘deeply’ when you’re not being paid to think deeply?”

The answer to Hebdige’s question is that if we do not think deeply - if we do not do more than that for which we are paid - then our universities will not function. It is difficult to teach this group of students from diverse backgrounds. Such a context requires that our strategies and methods for teaching and learning improve.