Taking time to find the right fit

FOR the University of Western Australia, the start to the academic year will be more interesting than most.

IN less than two weeks the new academic year begins. For the University of Western Australia, the start to the year will be more interesting than most.

It has shifted to a US-style, broad-based undergraduate program followed by professional specialised postgraduate study options. In doing so it joins Melbourne University as the only mainstream Australian universities to operate this way.

Broad-based undergraduate studies ensure all students who get letters after their names from the university have a width of educational understanding society should expect from people with a higher education.

It also gives students more time to consider what they want to specialise in.

Instead of caving in to parental and peer group pressure or school careers counsellors, students make their choice after getting a taste of what university is really like and what the various subjects on offer mean to them.

As far as I can see, the only downside to the US model is that it can add time to one's period of study, which admittedly may also make the experience slightly more expensive.

But who is really going to sit down at 50 years of age, when they are a law partner in a major corporate firm, and think: "If only I had studied under the old system I'd have got to where I am at 49"?

Compare that with what I suspect is a much larger number of individuals walking the corridors of the legal profession (or, indeed, any other profession - I shouldn't really pick on lawyers) wondering what life would have been like if they hadn't been pushed, prodded and shoved into studying law straight out of high school, simply because they had the marks to do so.

It's not just a case of slowing down the narrowness of what students study by exposing them to philosophy, English literature or economic history.

The narrowness of forced undergraduate specialisation means that our society is more likely to be filled with doctors who should be lawyers, lawyers who would be better at engineering and engineers who would be happier working as dentists.

By slowing the path to study specialisation, universities give young minds the time they need to know what it is they really want to do; a way of reducing the rate of mid-life crises, if you like.

But there are other important benefits to wider exposure to broad-based undergraduate study. Students are increasingly viewing university studies as akin to consuming fast food. Get in, get out, satisfy your hunger even if the quality of what you just consumed isn't first rate.

It's all about getting the qualification to acquire a job and get your career started. But university studies are supposed to be about acquiring knowledge, not just a qualification.

The US model is a risky venture, but it is a direction I'd like to see more Australian universities consider heading - for the betterment of our higher education system as a whole.

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