Adelaide Student Politics

Adapted from an Article by Lavinia Emmett-Grey. As printed in the SRC Counter-Guide, p 8

The Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) is an independent agency that promotes, audits and reports on the quality of Australian higher education. Every five years, they complete an audit of providers. Their last audit of the University of Adelaide (UoA) was completed in November 2008.

Two main themes emerged from this audit. One was the internationalization of education, the other related to the way curriculum and assessment was handled.

The primary concern in regard to internationalisation of the sector is that since universities are increasingly reliant on international student fees, their necessity to recruit and boost international student numbers is greater than their ability to provide adequate support services to these students. One of the recommendations marked as ‘urgent’ in the audit stressed that the UoA ‘more actively promote the value of social and cultural inclusivity and implement activities and programs to ensure effective two-way interaction between domestic and international students’. In the University of Adelaide International Student Barometer report, 63.3% of respondents were unsatisfied with the ability of making friends in Australia and 53.4% with meeting students from Australia. Perhaps this should come as no suprise: when most international students work, when is this interaction supposed to take place? International students often choose to study overseas to experience a different culture from their own and, in slightly fewer cases, to improve their English speaking skills, but instead they often fall into their own cultural grouping on campus.

The main recommendation with regards to curriculum and assessment dealt with post-graduate students (higher degree by research- HDR). The audit recommended that ‘the UoA review the implementation of its policies to support HDR students, paying particular attention to the provision of minimum resources and the ways in which students are able to confidentially express any concerns and have them addressed.’ Most undergraduates think of postgrads as old and a little bit mad. When you consider that the research PhD students spend at least 3 years doing nothing but their project with only an insufficient Commonwealth Scholarship to live off, it’s understable where the mad bit comes from. The AUQA report suggests that many postgraduates are not receiving the same facilities and support across differect faculties. Also, the latter part of the reccomendation alludes to a far greater problem. Many post graduates work with a supervisor who oversees their project. The student experience becomes almost entirely reliant on the quality of the relationship with the academic staff member. When problems in this relationship occur, not only their project is put in jeopardy, but also their future careers.

The last recommendation dealt with the IT services at the UoA, outlining a number of complaints heart by the panel relating to, among other things, insufficient computers, a lack of responsiveness to complaints and concerns with insufficient internet and printing quotas.

The UoA also recieved a number of commendations, although these more often applied to individual faculties and academics rather than applying to the whole university.