Honours revisited
Written by Steven Schwartz on September 25th, 2007
The responses to my complaint about degree classifications have reminded me how difficult it is to reform any educational marking system.
SB is quite correct, for most courses in the Australian higher education system, honours classifications apply only to additional work while the GPA covers performance over an entire degree. But is this a good thing?
As […]
A fair go for all students
Written by Steven Schwartz on September 20th, 2007
One of my concerns as a vice-chancellor is fairness in university admissions.
I’ve made the point before - many people liken our tertiary admissions system to a footrace.
The fastest - those with the highest entrance scores - gain entry to the most popular courses at the top universities; the slower ones get to study less popular […]
Why hons are off …
Written by Steven Schwartz on September 13th, 2007
Graduation ceremonies should become what we really want them to be: celebrations of everyone’s performance.
That’s why I think it is time we got rid of the current classification system, which ranks graduates as 1st, second, or third class.
As I wrote in an article in The Australian recently, anyone trying to scrap the classification system soon […]
What makes a great university?
Written by Steven Schwartz on September 5th, 2007
You would think that this question would be easy to answer. But you would be wrong. Not wanting to make value judgements, we who work in universities have been reluctant to even discuss the issue of quality. We have left this to outsiders to decide. And not surprisingly, they […]