STOP YOUR FUCKING WHINGING: The Melbourne Model

The VCE is one of the best high school certificates in the world, based on esteem, subsequent university grades and rigor. In fact it is so good (remembering the V is for Victorian) that is being adopted by other countries, including Hong Kong and the UAE.

Why is the VCE so good, and yet our universities rank significantly below those of other countries. Firstly, there is funding. It costs 12x as much to study at Harvard than at Melbourne, Monash or ANU.

Secondly it is structure: consider Finland's educational system. PISA (who rank educational systems based on student intelligence rather than grades) rank Finlands system 1st and 2nd in all four of its categories: Maths, Literacy, Science and Problem Solving. It's up there with Hong Kong and South Korea (whos national median IQ is 107, while Australia's is 98).

Finland has prep then 9 years of primary/secondary and 3 years of upper secondary (not dissimilar to prep then 6+4 primary/seconday +2 VCE). So what is different about Finland?

• Education, including tertiary study, is free.
  Smart, poor kids in Australia are forced into uneducated work while stupid, rich kids pave their golden path over the top of our educational system.



• Meals are provided in schools, for free.
  Australia complains about our kids getting fat then makes them pay for coke and burgers at the canteen. What the fuck is that? We have ads for how important breakfast is, then expect 5 year olds (and 18 year olds) to do it themselves.



• There are no private schools
  Face it: private schooling is stupid. Schools like MacRob and MHS accept only the smart kids then train them specifically for VCE exams to optimize their ENTERs. What happens when they go to university? They are underprepared philosophically and personally and have to rely on their natural intelligence instead of their schooling.



• Finland has trade schools
  Why go to a university to study to be a mechanic? Universities should specialize in either higher education or trades. Specialised universities produce better graduates.



• Finland has a 3-4 year bachelor course, followed by a 2-3 year masters course
  Sound familiar? The Melbourne Model has a 3 year bachelor degree followed by a 2 year masters. This gives bachelors the option to change fields, which is very important if they get three years into a Medicine degree and decide they want to do Vetinary Science. In the old system, they would have to start from scratch.

Australians come 5th in Science and 4th in Literacy (on the PISA graph). Our national median IQ is 98, but hey - that's higher than the USA's (owner of several of the top 10 universities) and Finland's. There is no reason why we can't top the PISA graphs, and the university ranking charts.

The Melbourne Model is great for the students of University of Melbourne and for Australia as a whole. So many people claim that it is a ploy to make students pay for an extra year. Yes, you will be there an extra year. But you will have a internationally recognised master's degree, and for every year the quality of your education will be better. So fuck all you people who want to go in and out of university just so you can have some paper to hang on your wall. We don't want you anyway, we want people who want to learn. Who want to expand their mind, their intelligence.

The changes to the Arts faculty were long overdue. Arts students agree, there were many duplicate subjects and subjects that were a waste of time. And cutting those redundant subjects means laying off the lecturers and tutors who taught them. You can't shut down a subject and keep the staff, that doesn't make sense. As for increased workloads, I invite those staff members to take a look at the workloads of some of the Science and Engineering professors before complaining about no longer getting friday off.

In short: free school is good, free food is good, trade schools are good, private schools are bad, cuts to arts were necessary, Melbourne Model is good so STOP YOUR FUCKING WHINGING!