Online learning fuels student anger over uni course quality

“It’s considered completely acceptable for you to pay $3000 for a subject and have to sit in a Zoom class with 40 other kids.’’ Why university students are growing unhappy with their degrees.

Students’ biggest gripes involved online course delivery and the inadequacy of universities’ complaints handling process.

University cost-cutting is driving dissatisfaction among students as staff shedding and the shift to online teaching compromise academic achievement.

Students paying to study a degree have little recourse if they’re unhappy with the calibre of their education. Car buyers have more consumer rights than the students who fork out tens of thousands of dollars in tuition fees to institutions that effectively make and adjudicate their own rules.

National Union of Students president Georgie Beatty laments that many universities have failed to reinstate the face-to-face lessons that were standard before the Covid-19 pandemic forced courses online.

“The quality of education has gotten to the stage where it’s considered completely acceptable for you to pay $3000 for a subject and have to sit in a Zoom class with 40 other kids,” Beatty told Inquirer.

“We’re hearing so many stories of academic quality going down across the board. But there is no quality control and no protection or complaints mechanism in place, so we have to deal with a crap education. We are helpless in the face of these mighty vice-chancellors.”

Australian car buyers have consumer rights entitling them to a repair, replacement or refund if a new car is faulty. But what can students do if the university degree they’re paying for falls short of the quality or experience that was promised?

Beatty is concerned that the federal government’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency has not held a meeting of its student advisory board since April last year. “TEQSA says they care about students but their student advisory board hasn’t met for nearly a year and a half,” she says.

“They’re meant to keep universities accountable but they’re not doing it.”

As the agency that registers higher education providers and approves their courses, TEQSA fobs off most student complaints. “If you are unhappy about aspects of your experience with a higher education provider, you should access the policies and procedures they have established to resolve complaints,” its website states.

University students lodged just more than half the 289 complaints with TEQSA last year. The biggest issues involved online course delivery during the pandemic, the inadequacy of universities’ complaints handling processes and a failure to follow published admission policies.

“TEQSA is not a complaints resolution body and typically does not have a role in addressing individual complainants’ requests or grievances,’’ a TEQSA spokesman told Inquirer.

“Academic quality and student wellbeing and safety continue to be compliance priorities for TEQSA, and we will take action where we consider there are systemic issues or failures. This action may include informal resolutions, warning letters, enforceable undertakings, conditions on registration, revocation of registration or civil or criminal sanctions.”

TEQSA’s latest compliance report reveals it finalised only one investigation and 43 compliance assessments last year while imposing conditions on 47 course providers and negotiating 19 voluntary undertakings. “The most common Covid-19 related concern was in relation to … teaching and courses, including quality of online delivery,” the report states. For half of those complaints, “we decided it was approp­riate to bring the concern to the providers’ attention to inform their internal quality assurance and make improvements where appropriate”.

A four-year cycle of complaints at Central Queensland University relating to its sonography degree highlights the difficulties faced by students who were dismissed as “disgruntled”. CQU offers the nation’s only degree in sonography, costing students $8017 in the first year alone. It has 601 students in Brisbane, Mackay, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth who must complete 2000 hours of clinical placement during the four-year degree.

CQU began fielding gripes about the course in 2017, when 34 students signed a complaint sent to the university’s student ombudsman. However, it took three more years for CQU to acknowledge this as a formal complaint. In the meantime, one of the students complained about an assessment to the Queensland Ombudsman, which liaised with CQU and arranged for her to re-sit an exam in 2018.

Queensland’s Office of Fair Trading fielded a complaint from the same student last year, seeking a refund of her course fees. The OFT tried to conciliate. “Unfortunately, they weren’t willing to give you a refund,” an official wrote to the student. “The OFT cannot force a trader to give you a refund. Unfortunately, this means I am unable to assist you any further and your complaint will be closed.”

A former student complained to Fair Trading NSW that the course “has extremely high and unacceptable failure rates that show the service they provide is completely inadequate”. She was told university degrees were “not its jurisdiction”.

CQU waited until last year to launch an internal investigation, after what it described as a “spiral” in complaints from students ranging from fail rates and assessment issues to staff communication and industry placement problems.

The investigation was conducted by the school of health, medical and applied sciences, which CQU told Inquirer was “independent from the medical sonography academic team”.

The review report contains extracts of complaints by students. “We are self-taught by watching a video and then figuring it out in person in the labs without any proper teaching,” one stated.

Another student said that when concerns were raised, they were told “the course is very difficult, maybe we need to rethink whether we are capable to continue, to contact the university counselling service for help. This is not good enough. We feel tossed out to sea with no lifeline and it appears that no one actually cares.”

Some students told the review that communications with staff had made them “feel belittled and too scared to ask questions and seek clarification on issues”.

“There is evidence that indicates instances where the communication has been inappropriate and sub-optimal,” the review concluded. “This is not to say that there is evidence of staff being malicious in their communications but there are certainly examples of a lack of awareness of the impact or the inappropriateness of comments made by staff. It is apparent that there remains a breakdown between staff and some students.”

The review conceded there had been problems finding enough industry placements for students, who could be required to travel interstate at their own expense.

“It is evident that since the inception of the sonography course, there have been times when placements have been in short supply,” it concluded. “All health disciplines face the challenging task of securing enough quality placements to meet the need of their student cohorts and sonography is no different.”

It also acknowledged that in one scanning assessment, some students were given technical instructions that were “unachievable in the allocated time frame”. “This error may have caused additional stress to the students who received that question and is regrettable,” it stated. The review also noted problems with online learning was a source of discontent. Despite the criticisms, the internal review concluded “the sonography course is fit for purpose”.

A CQU spokeswoman told Inquirer that despite “challenges” in securing industry placements, “there has never been a sonography student who has not graduated due to a lack of clinical placements”. She said the sonography staff had attended a workshop on curriculum design and were being given professional development in interpersonal and communication skills. But CQU still has not appointed student representative, as recommended by the review.

The NUS is concerned that students cannot seek finan­cial compensation for flawed courses, given the high cost of degrees.

“Most of our parents got their university degrees for free,” Beatty says. “We’re getting into debt; $40,000 is a down payment for apartment. That’s a lot of money.”