Generalist degrees broaden young minds

THE Go8 universities should all embrace the undergraduate model pioneered by Melbourne.

NEXT year the University of Western Australia moves to a new model of education.

It is similar to the American model, which requires students to complete a generalist undergraduate degree before specialising with a postgraduate degree in fields such as medicine, law and engineering.

The University of Melbourne pioneered this model in Australia and I can only hope that other Group of Eight universities will follow. The benefits are broad and significant.

Pedagogically it makes sense. It provides students with more time at the tender age of 17 to decide their career futures while simultaneously broadening their minds.

As governments drive to put more Australians through the university system, quality education is pressing up against the vocational needs of a nation suffering from skills shortages.

The results are more people graduating from specialised degrees, albeit with less academic thinking skills to go with their proudly framed degrees.

One of the key benefits of a university education is learning how to think. (That said, some academics with ideological agendas need to understand that their job is to teach students how to think, not what to think.)

Instead of embracing this development process, universities push thousands of students through highly specialised programs before they have a chance even to come to terms with what world view they might have, much less what they want to do career-wise with the rest of their lives.

The idea that a 17-year-old should be expected to choose which vocationally focused degree they do is nothing short of ridiculous. At that age, it turns into as much a choice by the parents as the child, because at 17 a child is what many people are.

It's a recipe for a mid-life crisis, or too often a one-way path to becoming a university drop-out.

The opportunity to spend three years studying a broad range of topic areas, some of which may feed into future study, others which simply promote new thinking, is what getting a degree should be about. It makes students better able to decide what vocational interests are more likely to stimulate them throughout a working life.

And the grading system of who qualifies for which postgraduate study path is far more useful after three years of undergraduate study compared with assessing Year 12 results.

The University of Melbourne, like the University of Western Australia, offers direct admission to specialised degrees for a small number of "the best and brightest", a necessary if unfortunate part of such a radical transformation. High-scoring school leavers should be ideal candidates to study philosophy and pure ethics before learning the ins and outs of our legal system. It may even make them better lawyers.

For students in a hurry and prepared to forgo higher learning (sigh), non-Go8 universities could continue to offer a boutique set of vocational degrees the likes of which naturally include a large component of liberal arts subjects anyway, such as educational degrees.

That would help address skills shortages, continue to insulate the top institutions from the contamination of early entry to specialised study, and give struggling non- Go8 institutions a comparative advantage to attract students in the emerging deregulated environment.

Let's hope other Go8 universities have the courage to follow the leads out of Perth and Melbourne. If they don't, a change of culture in Australia to support studying interstate will be needed if Sydneysiders as well as students living in other parts of the country want the best education available.

Peter van Onselen is a Winthrop Professor at the University of Western Australia.