Talk:Tertiary education in Australia

Prejudice
I would like to recommend that editors check the following statement, about the presence of international students in Australian universities, for correction and credible sources: "Therefore, they are willing to accept such students with weak academic and English-language skills.[28]" I did not see any research backing the statement, which seems quite xenophobic in my opinion. Abueno97 (talk) 17:05, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

NPOV
There's a great deal of opinion sprinkled throughout this otherwise very informative article. Could you please re-write it to try to give it more of a neutral Point Of View? Thanks, Clicketyclack 11:14, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Free univeristy education "did not greatly change the socio-economic backgrounds of students"
Prior to my edit, this article read as follows:

"During the early 1970s, there was a significant push to make tertiary education in Australia more accessible to working and middle class Australians. In 1973, the Whitlam Labor Government abolished university fees. This decision did not greatly change the socio-economic backgrounds of students attending universities because only 20 to 25 percent of students paid fees as most had Commonwealth scholarships. Another reason for the lack of change was because low high school retention rates had resulted in many young people from disadvantaged backgrounds not completing secondary education and therefore never having the opportunity to choose to attend university. Nevertheless there was an increase in the university participation rate."

I have amended it to read:

"During the early 1970s, there was a significant push to make tertiary education in Australia more accessible to working and middle class Australians. In 1973, the Whitlam Labor Government abolished university fees. This increased the university participation rate."

I did this because the original draft really needs a citation for the claim that free university education didn't change the socio-economic backgrounds of students attending universities. I should add that it (a) seems extremely unlikely; and (b) is directly at odds with all anecdotal evidence I've heard from people who attended university in that era. But, as I don't have any sources for what the result of the policy actually was, I felt the best solution was simply to delete the passage that I considered needed a citation and allow someone armed with the actual facts to insert information (and a source) if needed.

202.59.243.30 (talk) 22:14, 8 July 2013 (UTC) iiago

Caps in headings
Please don't capitalize all the words in the section headings, apart from proper nouns. Have a look at the Manual of Style (headings) for more info.

NPOV cont'd
Also, please have a read of Neutral point of view, as there is still a great deal of POV in the article, for example:
 * would everyone agree that "the method by which fees were re-introduced proved to be a fair and equitable system"?
 * does no-one disagree that the unified system was introduced "Largely as a result of political pressure (particularly from various institutes of technology who perceived their position to be second-tier) and Government expediency..."?
 * "All universities are degree factories," one university chief admits to Four Corners. "One way or another, they’re a degree mill." The uni chief asserts that to a mainstream news program: that's interesting, and may be true, but doesn't constitute proof of the POV.
 * the Melbourne study made a recommendation, and it's being asserted here as fact: "The Melbourne Institute Study highlights the fact (emphasis mine) that a number of the current universities are simply too small to perform at an international level and do not have critical mass to support more than a few disciplines." Is that view of the facts universally held? It may well be a valid POV, but it's a POV nonetheless.
 * etc...

The article is good, but it's not a WP article yet- it's more of a magazine article, so I've restored the NPOV tag for now. Thanks, Clicketyclack 12:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Still tons of POV in here, and much of what appears to be original research, with very many unreferenced assertions: please have a read of No original research, and Citing sources. I've added citation tags for the ones I've noticed, and restoring the NPOV tag at the top.
 * Since this is a general article about the Aus. Uni. system, rather than a history or a critique, I'm making the history parts into sub-sections of History. Also attempted to move the criticism into its own section, though there's still a great deal of criticism throughout the article: NPOV re-writes might help address that. Thanks, Clicketyclack 10:16, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/story/2008/12/17/radical-uni-reforms-to-cost-govt-65b/. Infringing material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. MER-C 04:14, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Out of date & lack of information
This article is getting out of date. For example, UWA will be implementing a kind of "Melbourne model" from 2012. The article is clearly too verbose which contributes to its non-NPOV. Finally I came here to have some information on the economics of the tertiary sector i.e. contribution to GDP etc. No information! I thought this was the 3rd or 4th largest sector in the economy? User:dylan.jayatilaka

HE/VET content balance
This article is about all tertiary education but the balance between vocational and higher education has been heavily tilted towards higher ed. I’ve changed the intro and added some parts to reflect the whole tertiary system but there’s still a lot more HE than VET content. If people have an interest in VET I’d strongly encourage you to fill out those parts of this article. SableCarpenter (talk) 02:29, 21 June 2021 (UTC)