Why the Melbourne Model is failing students

All this contributes to an atmosphere of doubt among students on campus. It is difficult to accept the line that our degrees are being enhanced when, according to our experience, they are being steadily eroded.

Great universities buzz with dynamism and exploration; undergraduates are stimulated, pushed to think independently and critically, or so I have always imagined. I cannot say that my first year at the University of Melbourne has been characterised by dynamism. Instead, things seem to be standing still.

The question is begged: in the cause of delivering a “broad education”, will the University of Melbourne end up specialising in nothing more than mediocre undergraduate degrees?

The Melbourne Model is here to stay and it has to work for the sake of reform of the whole tertiary sector in Australia. But all Australian universities must learn from this experiment that depletion is a road to nowhere.

The Vice Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, Glyn Davis, himself has admitted publicly that there comes a point at which funding is so thin that “the quality of what you can offer students ... begins to suffer”. As students, we have had first hand experience of this frightening trend.

If the Federal government is squeamish about keeping Australian full-fee university places (a key source of funding for universities), then it needs to allocate extra funding to the tertiary sector itself. If it does not, subjects (and staff) will be axed, the paint will peel off lecture room walls, rankings will drop and talent will flee.

No one wants that to happen. We want our universities to be dynamic hubs of research, study and student activity. If there was ever a time for a co-ordinated and well funded education revolution, it is now.