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Damn VSU 18-Mar-2005 At 7:07:35 PM LittleJames

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On 18/03/2005 anthonyk wrote:

>so we get to have fees raised by 25% to often above $12,000 for a single
>year, quality of services at all levels of teaching slashed (i believe
>some courses have no labs or tutorials, but you get to send emails to ask
>questions, have "classes" online, or watch a lab on video..), disgustingly
>low wages for the people that do take classes (slashed by 50% for some
>labs at sydney uni i believe? can check on that), and no money left for
>the services that make university a nice place to be.

For most of my computing science courses at the ANU, we're doing well to get a one-hour lab with an actual tutor once every two weeks. For courses that generally require a lot of practical learning, that's not very good. Ever watched a bunch of first-year non-IT-students (who have to take computing courses because it'll be "good for their professional development as accountants" or whatever) try and teach themselves to program out of a textbook without help from a tutor who knows what's going on? It's not pretty, and frankly, given the amount of HECS dollars each course costs, it's totally unacceptable.

>basically by raising the course fees indiscriminantly it makes $$ an issue
>for people, so when they turn around and say they'll save you 50c by removing
>all these union services, people are supposed to sympathise and take the
>bait because its supposedly addressing the cost issue. either that or
>just remove unions because it doesn't agree with their political leanings,
>and completely disregard anyone who thinks otherwise.

This is actually a really interesting point. The general public has suddenly been faced with a crew of students complaining about paying *less* fees - which, on the face of it, seems like a pretty dumb thing for a punch of poor jobless hippies to be doing. Regardless, this is a total no-brainer for the pollies - all we need is a few more public-outrage-style single-mum-studying-nursing-and-paying-for-the-hippies'-dope comments, and most people will actively side with VSU, based on a totally misunderstood view of the whole issue.

>there's no debate about political issues anymore, people don't have the
>attention span or don't care. all they see is a confident grin and a know-it-all
>tone of voice and a few fragments of a totally incoherent argument, and
>get behind them because they seem to know what they're doing.

Witness the Tasmanian logging unions who sided for Howard last election. Hello? Kids? He's a Liberal - that means he is definitionally dedicated to destroying your unions. Sometimes I despair for the world. :S (Only part joking.)