AUSTRALIA: Teaching quality under pressure

Spiralling class sizes, overcrowding, tutorials replaced by seminars, few avenues for feedback and interaction, a shift to online and peer-assessment as a cost saving measure - the dire state of teaching in Australian universities emerges from just a cursory glance at submissions to the base funding review, writes Julie Hare for The Australian.

Among a litany of complaints, submissions reveal a continuing blowout in staff-to-student ratios, edicts not to overuse photocopiers or work phones, pressure on personal lives and research careers and reductions in continuing and fixed-term staff against a backdrop of increasing enrolments.

"Staff levels are at a crisis point,"' notes a submission from the National Tertiary Education Union's University of South Australia branch. The same submission also raises concerns about pressure to 'soft mark'.
Full report on The Australian site: