Oddbean

#AUStriches reach another milestone on the way to peak fiat. The new amalgamated University of Adelaide is scrapping face-to-face lectures in favour of “rich digital learning activities” - ie. online courses only. Our only “export” that isn’t digging shit out of the ground to sell to China, Edumacation, is on its last legs. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/sep/13/adelaide-university-dumps-face-to-face-lectures nostr:note1ddzuh7lthfv7d9pjcmr4glgemedekh6vdrr4zwlafu8mnuhvagnqmxe99l

Have you been to a public lecture lately? Last one I went to at a high profile uni had several slides praising Stalin, Mao and Xi Jinping. Met with applause in a large theatre. Australian Universities are already dead.

Nothing will change on the visa/PR front, just now international students will be able “study” for their fake degrees whilst delivering UberEats. Think of the productivity gains! Genius really.

man...I thinking here. My parents could not conceive the idea of his son not going to the uni. I end up graduating in business and post graduating in corporate finance, M&A and Equity. they were both pretty decent and taught me good lessons. It was not the shit most of them became. But even looking to the old decent one, I don't give a fuck if my kid goes or not the university. What I care is that he is curious and willing to learn.

Kids today don’t need a University to learn. The same as I didn’t need a music publisher to get the albums I wanted 20 years ago, nor a distribution house to get the movies I wanted 15 years ago. The Internet is providing solutions that the old Institutions refuse to adapt to. Music and Video had to. Education refuses to because they think the credentials they have a monopoly on issuing are still meaningful when in reality some industries are already screening *against* them and more will follow.

This is sad to see as I studied there and back then it was a pretty vibrant campus. I think the Uni system in Australia has been in decline for a while though and basically is just focused on churning out mediocre degrees for international students.. I think now for a lot of careers people are better off looking at other paths than taking on the huge HECS debt to study at Uni here.

Completely agree. I studied there too. The merger was just a cash grab for Uni SA’s land. Bet their course fees don’t drop by a third. Meanwhile the board and chancellor’s pay still goes up. Exceptionally disappointing.

Matt Barrie in his keynote mentions that 20 years ago we got a lot of US students and they’ve pretty much completely disappeared: nostr:note1rv4ttr9tjzjlkkyyl8nmdd0ycgzkdcxmujsx2trqhz0vvef8pl9q2z9slr In fact I know 3 kids in the US now on college scholarships - the trend seems to have reversed. The Unis have been rolling in cash building amazing facilities but the quality of education has fallen off a cliff. Very few courses worth Uni nowadays, none worth the HECS debt imho.