Australian Universities to Lower Their Standards Further — No One Can Fail! By Steven Schwartz.
Over the past 20 years, government policy has encouraged the number of students studying in Australian universities to explode. The highest-ranked institutions have swept up the best-prepared applicants, forcing the less prestigious universities to lower their entry standards.
Not surprisingly, many of these poorly prepared students are finding themselves unable to complete their courses. Dropout rates have climbed to record levels.
Under the rules governing accreditation, Australian universities have a legal requirement to ensure that the students they admit have the educational background and teaching support to complete their courses. It appears that universities have flaunted this requirement, so the government has stepped in.
In a daring display of its unshakeable commitment to the academic success of its constituents, the federal government has introduced legislation that could revolutionize, or perhaps obliterate, the way we understand the concept of failure. …
The Australian government is mandating that university students who score less than 50 percent in their exams will be entitled to a slew of educational life-savers. University-funded tutoring, counselling, examination do-overs, special exams, and extended deadlines are all on the table.
With these bountiful resources at their disposal, no students will ever face the sting of failure again. …
A hefty fine of $18,780 per student will be introduced for those institutions that fail to help their students rise above the 50 percent benchmark. …
But will it work?
Failures give students the opportunity to “pick themselves up, dust themselves off and start all over again.” …
Expertise takes a long time to acquire because, outside universities, 50 percent is not nearly good enough. The real world has much higher standards. …
Tenaciousness, resilience, drive, perseverance, and the ability to delay gratification while working toward a distant goal are just as crucial in achieving success as is intelligence. Psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth calls this combination of character traits “grit.” It comes from confronting failure and overcoming it. Without failure, progress is impossible.
It may sound cynical, but universities, faced with high costs and potential fines, may be tempted to take the easy way forward and pass every single student.
Will a university degree retain its lustre when passing becomes an expected, almost mundane occurrence rather than a reward for hard work, grit, and resilience? If everyone is a winner, is anyone winning anything at all?
Politicians…
[Our politicians] look forward to offering voters a world where failure ceases to exist and success requires no effort. A world in which every student gets a degree just for showing up.
It’s an idyllic vision that might catch on across the globe. Imagine a future in which everyone gets a shot at the American Dream, even if their exam scores are below 50 percent; a time in which the “School of Hard Knocks” has shut its doors forever. …
But this trend is not just in Australia. The philosophy of keeping students happy by eliminating failure is also spreading across the United States. Grade-inflation has become more and more pronounced, with “A” grades now the average in many schools, and grades of “D” and “F” almost nonexistent. …
Both in the U.S. and Australia, it’s easy for many students to coast through to their degrees without much effort and never experiencing failure. This approach is pleasant for the faculty and profitable for the institutions, but it leaves students fragile when they face a world unlike the cocoon of education. …
Of course, we want our students to succeed, but passing every student will ensure just the opposite. By preventing students from experiencing failure, we will keep them from gaining the self-confidence that comes from overcoming it.
Midwits rule. And what do midwits want? A system so easy that they come (equal) first.
