the 46th patricia chomley memorial oration 2012 - Royal College of ...

The underlying reasons identified for this dispiriting response are multiple. We all know what theyare: rapidly increasing numbers of students with widely varying scholastic abilities and Englishlanguage skills, ever tightening university budgets leaving less and less money at the teaching level,the privileging of research over teaching, concertinaed curriculum content, decreasing availability ofclinical placements, overstretched clinicians with little if any time to support student learning, rapidlydecreasing attractiveness of academic positions, etc., etc., etc. We are not alone among the disciplinesto be experiencing these negative impacts. One example is the fraught issue of entry standards. Arecent study by the Australian Council of Educational Research 12 published last month found thatnearly every applicant (96%) for university entry in NSW and the ACT was offered a place, no matterhow low their school leaving score. And before those in the audience from WA and Victoria startlooking smug, your states weren’t all that far behind – in the high to mid 80%. Only in South Australiaand the Northern Territory were the figures in the high 70%. However, very low entry scores impacton some disciplines and not others, and some but not all nursing courses.I would think all here tonight would agree with Professor Simon Marginson’s comment on the study’sfindings: “... with such an influx of students, unless more money is provided for teaching and learning,quality will suffer as surely as night follows day”. 12, p.6 In line with the national government’s push forenrolling more students from the lower socio-economic category, the social class equity initiativeas it is termed, 13 some additional funding has been provided to universities, but how much of thatwill trickle down to the teaching coal-face through the multilayered levels of university budgetallocation? In all likelihood very little, if anything. At one university where nursing is part of a medicalfaculty the discipline has calculated that it receives a mere 18 cents in the dollar from the fundinggenerated by nursing enrolments. How can anyone be expected to do the job required on thatpittance?There have been a variety of responses, both actual and recommended, to these problems. Theserange from abandoning universities altogether and setting up degrees in the technical and furthereducation sector, to creative ways of learning and teaching, to much bemoaning and wringing ofhands, to ignoring the problem altogether and/or just getting on with earning research points. Myassessment from my reading and observation is that in general we have been very light on effectiveaction. And I am far from the first person to say that in recent times but I suspect my assessment willprobably have as little effect as theirs obviously have had.I have no intention of using up what time I have remaining in this oration to make suggestions as towhat might remedy the situation. I would need all that time and a lot more. I will however place onrecord that I am strongly opposed to forsaking the university system, for all sorts of reasons. We needto actively and quickly seek solutions to either fix the system or work around it to achieve the visionour leaders had five decades ago.6 RCNA The 46th Patricia Chomley Memorial Oration 2012