The great education slippery-dip

The media is really ramping up the coverage of sub-standard university graduates. The SMH places the blame on university administrators, Sky News follow suit, and I had to go all the way to the Korean Times to find someone who would even think of mentioning the real reason behind the decline in education standards.

But is it any great wonder that these asian students (yes, it is only asian students, not all foreign students, who struggle) cannot speak the language? In my beloved undergraduate degree, population 50, there were about 20-30 international (asian) students in each class. Most of them were quiet, studious types, so they tended to keep to themselves and in general had no need to converse with the boorish, drunken local engineering students. Groupwork was a problem, but they usually solved that by plaguarising entire assignments from such reputable and well-researched sources as Wikipedia, and relied on the poor bastard of a group leader who had to edit their work so it was up to scratch before handing it in.

I copped this job several times in the first couple of years of my course, and the students in question passed every time. So, when I was placed in a group consisting of me and four chinese students who didn’t speak a word of English, I tried the same trick on them - dumping the group leader with a whole pile of irrelevant garbage the day before the assignment was due. Needless to say, I failed the course.

Some media outlets have been suggesting that being unable to speak English is a major disadvantage when it comes to lectures, however, I couldn’t disagree more. The percentage of lectures in my degree who had a decent grasp of the English language was about one quarter. Some were so bad, it actually took a couple of minutes to translate their quiz questions from chinglish and work out what the hell I was supposed to be answering.

Virginia Trioli, in all her wisdom, suggested recently on her morning show that perhaps speaking English wasn’t a real big requirement of the courses that are popular with international students - computer science, engineering and architecture. I can’t speak for the other two degrees, but there is a hell of a lot of report writing in engineering, and without proper communication skills, little things like OH&S can easily get passed over.

It’s about time for this government to step up and reinvest in our education system. Recent ABC headlines say it all about the government’s attitude:

Rudd promises education overhaul

Versus:

Govt rejects Rudd’s ‘education revolution’

Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop is deluded if she thinks that our education system is anywhere near world standards. Maybe third world standards, Ms Bishop. Last time I checked, Harvard Business School wasn’t in Australia.

Mr Rudd has it right this time. Stop politicising our future.