Education in the 21st Century

In 1972 the Whitlam government declared that education should be free. With that announcement it changed the way in which education was provided in Australia. Governments in the past had provided funding for tertiary education in this country and wealthy patrons had subsidised education through grants, bursaries, scholarships and other means. But never before in the history of this country had government taken the step of enabling people from every strata of society to have equal access to education.

In 1975 with the dismissal of the Whitlam government, all the innovation which had commenced in 1972 faced extinction.

In 2005 we have, it seems come more than full circle. Government funding largely withdrawn from tertiary education. Students are required to invest in their education to the extent that they become indebted to the state for many years after their graduation trying to repay their education debts. Those elements that made tertiary education truly a global learning experience, student unions, sports unions and the facilities that they provide are no longer funded as a default, the facilities that used to be available to students to round out their education have almost completely disappeared.

It was a shock to come back to the University in the late 1990s and find that instead of a refectory in which one could spend time eating and chatting most students snatched a meal from a dispenser and then disappeared back into the library to cram some more knowledge into the their heads. Their behaviour regulated almost like the workers in a factory. Standard hours, standard ways of learning and standard approaches to ascertaining what had been learned. Welcome to the era of competency based learning.

Today we have managed to 'learn' from the failure of our governments to provide public services and have spread the business ethic to education as well. Instead of concentrating on the provision of education, our learning institutions have become yet another arm of the corporatisation of this country – a corporatisation that has reduced the standards and quality of education, that has released graduates into the economy with so little understanding of what it is that they are expected to do with their education that they end up trying to become an economic success rather than good at what they do. They have to do this because of the debts they have incurred, the cost of everything including the basics of food, housing, clothing, transportation and any other basic element of life.

Their goals in life is to succeed and to make money and whether this is at the expense of other human beings or not seems to be becoming irrelevant, whether it is at the risk of demolishing existing social systems seems to be irrelevant, and whether there is an overall reduction in the quality of life for most others is also largely irrelevant.

In one small town in Northern NSW there is currently a game afoot to demolish the a whole Department – probably because it is not making money for the institution. When a department is not 'profitable' it needs to be pruned or cut completely. To hell with the fact that it provides world class education and to hell with the people who have helped that institution become recognised around the world as a place where such learning is to be found. It's no longer profitable so it has to go.

The lives of the people and the lives of the students seem to be irrelevant to those who have their management hats on. What is education coming to in the 21st century?