Angry academics demand more rigour in university degrees

Hundreds of university professors and lecturers have blown the whistle on falling academic standards and cheating, in alarming evidence to a rushed Senate inquiry into university governance.

Academics have marked down the calibre of some university degrees. Picture: supplied

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“Soft marking” to pass students struggling at university is a risk to public safety and “dumbing down’’ the nation, upset academics have warned.

Hundreds of university professors and lecturers have blown the whistle on falling academic standards and cheating, in alarming evidence to a rushed Senate inquiry into university governance.

Public Universities Australia – a group of more than 200 old-school academics including eminent professors of science and medicine – criticised the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) for failing to monitor the standard of university degrees.

“There is ongoing slippage of academic standards with failure by TESQA to contain that slide,’’ they state in a scathing submission to the Senate education committee.

“There is degraded assessment … (and) increased risk from artificial intelligence.

“Universities … tend to pass and graduate most students irrespective of the level of education actually achieved.

“There are manifestly worsening gaps in graduates’ basic knowledge and skills.

“This is nothing less than a dumbing down of the entire country.’’

The academics accused universities of enrolling international students who struggle to speak English, and blasted schools for failing to prepare high school graduates for university.

Warning of a “high incidence of plagiarism and use of AI’’, they called for oral or supervised written exams “to determine what a student does in fact know and can do’’.

The academics have called on TEQSA to enforce minimum academic standards so that every student is taught and assessed on a predetermined body of knowledge – including the same core content for degrees in each field across all universities.

The failure to mandate the content of degrees places public safety at risk, they warned, as university qualifications are not as robust as they were before the Hawke-era education minister John Dawkins introduced student loans and opened the door to mass enrolments in the late 1980s.

“This means no medical graduate from any Australian university today is as well-educated and trained as they were pre-Dawkins, and that doctors’ competence is less reliable as a result,’’ the submission states.

“No schoolteacher is as well qualified as we expect, and often will not have ever studied some of the content they are then expected to be able to teach.

“No clinical psychologist is now adequately educated and trained … no law graduate, no engineering graduate, no historian or anybody else is as well educated by our universities as they ought to be.

“This puts Australians’ lives at risk when we depend upon the quality of their education.’’

Some academics are demanding a return to supervised exams to avoid AI cheating. Picture: iStock

The bollocking was rebuffed by Universities Australia chief executive Luke Sheehy, who said universities uphold high academic standards and are globally recognised for their quality.

“We reject claims that students are ‘soft marked’ or that graduates are less competent than in the past,’’ he said.

“All students, including international students, must meet entry requirements, including English proficiency.

“Universities have clear policies to maintain academic integrity and student success.’’

Universities Australia chief executive Luke Sheehy says Australian tertiary education is world-class. Picture: Supplied

Australian Medical Association president Dr Danielle McMullan said that “Australian doctors are among the best trained in the world with a rigorous system of medical education and training that is underpinned by standards set by the Australian Medical Council.’’

Public Universities Australia was co-founded by the president of the University of Sydney Association of Professors, brain researcher Professor Manuel Graeber, who is suing the university over his sacking in 2023.

Among its supporters, it lists Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne, Bernadette McSherry; Melbourne University constitutional lawyer, Laureate Professor Adrienne Stone; and Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University of Tasmania, Haydn Walters.

Individual academics have also warned the Senate inquiry that short-staffing and underqualified lecturers are affecting teaching quality.

Griffith University criminology professor Molly Dragiewicz, who has taught in universities for 24 years and won more than $2m in research grants and contracts, raised her concerns about the “rapid degradation of the quality of Australian university education I have observed since I emigrated to Australia (from the United States) in 2012’’.

She revealed that some universities are outsourcing online courses, without telling students.

The courses are presented as “X university online’’ courses, and integrated into university websites, she said.

“However the phone number and university email address provided goes to a sales call centre rather than the university,’’ Professor Dragiewicz states in her submission.

“Students pay the same course fees as university students … but the majority of funds are diverted to the for-profit corporation without their knowledge.

“Students are not aware that the course they enrolled in does not include any actual teaching, and is not run by the university advertising it and awarding the degree.’’

A Griffith University spokeswoman said it did not outsource online teaching to third-party providers.

Universities Australia said that “some institutions partner with third-party providers, but universities set the curriculum, assessments and academic standards’’.

National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) president Dr Alison Barnes said that “we have concerns over the quality of these courses … (that) fly under the radar of regulators’’.

Dr Barnes blamed a “hiring-firing yo-yo’’ for undermining world-class teaching and research.

“While it’s hard to say if marking pressure specifically is a widespread issue, the fact that two-thirds of all staff in public universities are employed insecurely means people are under the pump every day to act in ways that will guarantee the next contract,’’ she said.

National Tertiary Education Union president Dr Alison Barnes. Picture: Twitter

The NTEU’s University of Technology Sydney (UTS) branch has told the Senate inquiry that UTS used artificial intelligence to rewrite course material through the CourseLoop curriculum management platform introduced last year.

It said the university provided “AI generated texts to replace the old text … however in many cases, the AI generated text changed the meaning of the original text and/or was misleading and could not be used.’’

A UTS spokeswoman said that UTS “does not use AI to rewrite curriculum’’.

“The initial phase of reviewing some data was completed using (generative) AI, with complete oversight from relevant faculty staff,’’ she said.

Dr George Morgan, adjunct associate professor at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University, told senators that students are unlikely to complain about lower standards.

“An undergraduate student who buys a ticket for a Taylor Swift concert will be upset if the singer performs for less than an hour,’’ he said.

“They will probably be less bothered if their university cuts class times, makes assessment less rigorous, or appoints casuals rather than full-time staff to run their course, as they do frequently.’’

Dr Morgan said most of his colleagues felt that students “need more care and attention today than in the past, particularly since Covid’’.

“Many arrive lacking basic life and literacy skills, the ability to concentrate and avoid digital distraction, and are shockingly unaware of current affairs and politics,’’ he said.

Dr Morgan said many universities had been “bewitched by digital fads and spent vast sums on edu-tech’’.

“In my experience students need more face-to-face time, more bespoke comments on their work rather than rubrics and ticked boxes,’’ he wrote.