Australian Politics
Universities set low bar to take subpar students
This is grossly irresponsible. Universities are clearly doing anything to get their numbers up. And it is the poorer and less able students who will be penalized. Many will fail but will still have to pay for their courses. Money for nothing.
There was a much more defensible system in my day. Under the Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme, only the top third of high school passes earned government help
Struggling students who left school at the bottom of the class are being accepted into prestigious university degrees including engineering, architecture and psychology.
Universities made offers to students with Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) scores below 50 – the bottom 10 per cent of high school leavers – for 221 different bachelor degrees this year, placing them at higher risk of failure and financial risk.
The revelation of the low bars being set for academic entry comes as the federal government cracked down on cheating by blocking 40 of the most visited academic cheating websites on Friday.
Federation University Australia, the University of Tasmania, and La Trobe University both accepted students with an ATAR in the 30s – the bottom two per cent of school leavers.
Aspiring teachers can access seven different education degrees with ATAR scores 50 and below, sparking protests from the teachers’ union on Friday.
Australian Education Union president Correna Haythorpe warned that students with an ATAR lower than the average of 70 were likely to fail a teaching degree.
“Low university-entry scores for teaching degrees is a growing concern,’’ she said.
“Evidence suggests that students admitted with low ATARs are likely to be less successful at university and are less likely to complete their course.
“The bar must be raised by setting minimum entry requirements and making teaching a two-year postgraduate degree.’’
A Federation University spokeswoman blamed an “administrative error’’ for admitting a student with an ATAR of 37 to a teaching degree this year.
“We have investigated this matter with the Victorian Teaching Institute, and we are both satisfied that the student is doing well and should be allowed to complete the course,’’ she said.
Alarmingly low academic requirements are revealed in ATAR cut-off scores for university admissions this year, published on the federal government’s Course Seeker website using official data from universities and tertiary admission centres. Starting this year, students who fail to pass at least half their subjects will lose taxpayer subsidies and be forced to pay the full cost of their degree, switch to an easier course or drop out of university.
The federal Education Department said it did not yet know how many students were failing, and losing taxpayer funding, as a result of the former Coalition government’s Job-Ready Graduates legislation that will be reviewed by the new Labor government later this year.
If students fail a course and are kicked out, they will still have to repay the student loans they borrowed through the Higher Education Loan Program (HELP), possibly leaving them with a lifelong debt.
“For a bachelor degree the rule applies if a student does not complete or fails more than 50 per cent of at least eight units until the end of the degree,’’ a spokesperson said.
“If this occurs students lose access to Commonwealth Supported Places (government subsidy) and to HELP. They can regain access by changing to another course that, for example, might better suit them.
“If a student has failed or not completed units because of illness, or other unusual stresses or things out of their control in their life, their university can exempt those units from the rule.’’
Federal Education Department data shows that more than 13,000 students with below-50 ATAR scores applied for university last year, with 55 per cent accepted.
Another 30,000 students applied with ATARs between 50 and 70, with three-quarters accepted, while nearly all the 29,000 applicants with an ATAR above 90 enrolled in a degree.
Of the students with low ATAR scores, 11 per cent were from poorer backgrounds while only 2 per cent were from wealthy families.
Among the highest achievers, 38 per cent were wealthy and 17 per cent were from poorer families.
Higher education policy expert Andrew Norton, professor in the practice of higher education policy at the Centre for Social Research and Methods at the Australian National University, warned that students admitted with low academic results were the most likely to drop out of university.
He said half the students with an ATAR below 50 would fail to complete their course.
“Often they are equity students admitted under special arrangements,’’ he said. “Nevertheless, they are coming in with what looks like poor academic preparation. “I am concerned that some students will be expose to financial risk because they have a high chance of not completing their degree.’’
The Course Seeker data shows that the University of Tasmania admitted business graduates with an ATAR of 30 this year, while RMIT University set a low threshold of 48.4 for its Bachelor of Psychology.
While the University of NSW accepted only students with an ATAR over 85 for its civil engineering degree, La Trobe University lowered its cut-off to 50.
For an accounting and finance degree, the Australian Catholic University set a cut-off barely below 50, while the University of Tasmania admitted architecture students with an ATAR of just 44.
Federation University Australia this week scrapped its Bachelor of Arts degree, blaming a drop in student enrolments.
“The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has caused a significant decline in international enrolments, and we are now in our third year of declining student enrolments,’’ acting vice-chancellor Wendy Cross said on Friday.
“We have also seen a drop in domestic student enrolments generally due to online learning fatigue that continues to significantly impact the university’s financial position.”
National Tertiary Education Union Victorian assistant secretary Sarah Roberts said an arts degree was a “bedrock offering for all universities’’. “This is a demoralising day for humanities in Victoria (and) a hammer blow for students who live regionally and want to study arts,” she said.
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Anthony Albanese’s climate politics power play leaves nation in the dark
Anthony Albanese has declared a victory in the decade-old climate change wars with his legislated carbon emissions reduction target but priority is quickly moving from cutting emissions to the other side of the equation: the supply and price of energy.
The political paradigm and reality on climate change has shifted from well-meaning aims to cut carbon emissions to fight global warming to ensuring a reliable and affordable energy supply whether from renewables, coal, gas, oil or nuclear.
The world faces critical fuel shortages and disrupted supply lines because of the Covid-19 pandemic, trade bans, food shortages, economic downturns, Europe’s overly hasty withdrawal from fossil fuels and nuclear energy, an inability of renewable energy to provide reliable power, a fatal over-reliance on Russian gas supplies and Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.
Australia’s abundance of natural resources, geographic advantages, strong economic performance during the pandemic, stable governance, mature transport system and high levels of employment have not prevented the shock of high petrol prices, rocketing inflation, gas and coal shortages, failure of aged coal-fired power stations, electricity brownouts and shutdowns for industry.
Households are “doing it tough” because of these petrol prices, hikes in domestic gas bills and rising electricity charges, and there is little prospect of relief any time soon.
The Prime Minister has repeatedly acknowledged how hard it is for households at a time of high inflation, rising mortgage payments, punishing petrol prices and grocery bills.
Yet the big win for the new Labor government this week was to force the Greens to back off from a more radical agenda of climate change restrictions on industry and gas and coal production, and legislate a target of 43 per cent carbon emissions reductions by 2030. Legislation was not necessary for the target but it provided a political authority and delivered an election promise.
Albanese told parliament: “Passing this legislation sends a great message to the people of Australia that we are taking real action on climate change. That the decade of inaction and denial is over.”
“The Industrial Revolution was based upon fossil fuels. It brought great prosperity. But what we also know is that it is changing our climate.
“What you have is people not quietly, loudly, screaming out for action, saying, ‘Enough is enough’. We need to actually get on with the business of transition, of putting in place structures that will encourage that investment to occur. This is a fulfilment of a core promise that we met at the election of 43 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030, a renewable sector that will grow to 82 per cent of our national energy market by 2030.”
Obviously Albanese was pleased to be able to stare down the Greens and isolate the Coalition on the 43 per cent carbon emissions cut and had a big political win, which led him to claim he’d won the climate change wars.
But not once in the entire speech to parliament did Albanese mention the other side of the climate change equation – the immediate supply of energy and the need for a cut in prices.
Britain, Germany, France, Italy, China and India, as well as a swathe of former eastern bloc European nations are turning back to, or increasing, coal-fired power and reviving stalled nuclear plans to combat the chronic gas and fuel shortages while consciously pausing or simply letting slip restrictions and targets on greenhouse gas emissions.
Even Volodymyr Zelensky directly thanked Australia for its gift of 70,000 tonnes of coal to help war-torn Ukraine’s emergency power generation as the shipment arrived this week via Poland.
What’s more, this week Australia recorded its highest trade surplus in history largely built on coal and gas exports, which could halve the projected $80bn budget deficit.
Albanese was adamant he would not allow the Greens to implement their more radical agenda to ban new coal and gas projects or alter the mechanism by which “Australia’s biggest emitters” will be told how they must reduce their carbon emissions to meet the 43 per cent target.
Yet, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen had to concede there will be changes to the mechanism, which will be subject of a discussion paper “later in August” and which provides an opportunity for the Greens to meddle.
“We’ll be releasing a discussion paper on the detailed design mechanism on the safeguard mechanism in August, probably. That will be up for consultation. The Greens have indicated they will probably have feedback on that,” Bowen said.
It is the treatment of this mechanism, not nearly as clear as Albanese makes out, that is creating deep concern within the resources sector and the 215 industries and entities subject to the rules.
The threat of technicalities about various types and classes of emissions ruling out new gas and coal projects or even nullifying existing projects is real and yet to be addressed as the government revels in its climate change success.
The other practical area being subsumed by the bigger picture of “Australia not being in the naughty corner” on climate change targets is energy prices:
BEFORE the election Labor promised people would get an average $275-a-year cut in their electricity bills, yet bills are forecast to rise;
DELIBERATELY undermined coal-fired power stations continue to fail and cause power shortages;
DOMESTIC gas shortages are driving up prices and forcing market intervention;
THERE are coal shortages as companies scramble to meet record demand at record prices;
STATE governments continue to ban gas exploration and stop new gas production;
MOTORISTS are paying around $2 a litre for petrol and on September 1 the 22c petrol excise cut is scheduled to end.
These are all immediate pressures on household budgets that have not been addressed as Albanese claims to have won the climate wars and a big political battle.
The Prime Minister was further buoyed by being able to isolate the Coalition on climate change and continue to demonise it as being stuck in the past.
While unable to affect the Labor-Green agenda, Peter Dutton has concentrated on the promises Labor made and the practical outcomes and solutions on the energy supply side in the short and long term.
The Opposition Leader, alert to the potential threat in the implementation of the 43 per cent target, declared: “We have to stick to the facts instead of the emotion on this issue and we’re going to lose industry, there are going to be smelters and others close down under this government, the jobs will go offshore, and the emissions will still go into the air.”
Dutton said Bowen is “leading us down what I think is a very dangerous path at the moment”.
But it was cost-of-living nitty gritty and Labor promises that drove the Coalition parliamentary attack this week, constantly demanding Albanese repeat the promise of a $275-a-year cut in electricity bills.
Steering clear of repeating the promise in parliament, Albanese turned down every opportunity thrust at him by the Coalition and instead dug away at the opposition being irrelevant.
Likewise, when asked whether Labor would extend the petrol excise cut beyond September 1, Treasurer Jim Chalmers didn’t completely rule it out but said such support – at a cost of $3bn for six months – could not go on indefinitely.
As for Dutton’s long-term suggestion of Australia investigating nuclear energy – as it spreads around the word with new technology and an enhanced reputation as being climate-friendly – Albanese dismissed it out of hand with the language and scare campaigns of the 1980s.
Albanese’s big win and week in parliament was all about climate change and carbon emissions but sooner or later he, like the rest of the world, will have to address the immediate supply crunch and rising costs of energy.
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Labor-Greens marriage produces forty new bills!
Viv Forbes
There is an ominous buzz in the new Australian Parliament where Albo and the Greens are planning to pass 40 new bills, quick smart.
Each bill will probably need 100 new regulations and 200 new inspectors, auditors, and enforcers plus many new taxes and fees. They will not deliver ‘Net Zero’ – they are ‘Net Negative’ – but they will divert labour and capital from productive activities to bureaucracies and green energy speculators.
Where are the 40 old bills that Green-Albo will repeal to make room for these 40 wordy additions to Australia’s already overflowing legislative sewer?
We need a new political party dedicated solely to the repeal of costly, destructive, or useless legislation.
Australia has thrived for over 200 years without Green-Albo’s 40 new laws. So they can be safely rejected or repealed and followed out the door by most of the legislation introduced under the baleful gaze of the Green Quad – Gillard, Rudd, Turnbull, and Morrison. A safe policy for the new Repeal Party would be ‘Last in, First Out’.
Not only is it imperative to start the domestic repeal movement, Australia also needs to back out of the international agreements swamp. Top priority here is to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.
Probably the worst bill in Green-Albo’s legislative avalanche is the Climate Change Bill.
This dreadful piece of legislation gives the government the ability to ‘ratchet up’ green targets without new parliamentary approval, but makes it difficult for future governments to ratchet back these targets when it all goes horribly wrong. This will clutter rural Australia with imported solar panels and windmills, and destroy forests and grasslands with spider-webs of roads and transmission lines. It will make blackouts more likely and destroy any heavy industry we have left.
Filling our cities with electric cars will stress the electricity grid and add greatly to urban fire risks. And in 15 years (or after every cyclone) we will have an enormous problem trying to dispose of the worn-out, non-degradable wind and solar generator debris.
Wind and solar are almost useless without big battery storage. Then there is Turnbull’s Green Elephant, the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro, which is way behind in time and way ahead in costs.
Australia survived booms and busts, two world wars, and the Great Depression only to see the Builder Generations outvoted by the Spoiled Brat generations – the Teal-tinged Baby Boomers, the Millenniums, Blockade Australia, and the Thunbergs.
Not only have Albo and the Green-Teals captured Australia’s Parliament, they also dominate the school rooms, the education departments, and most of the media. Climate activism is encouraged in schools at the expense of maths, science, and engineering. The Builder Generations are depicted in education propaganda not as wise elders but as ‘Cranky Uncles’.
No wonder we are cranky.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/08/labor-greens-marriage-produces-forty-new-bills/
******************************************************Claims by DNA lab ‘untrue’, inquiry
A new public inquiry investigating alleged negligence in testing at the Queensland government’s DNA lab is flagging bombshell findings that lab scientists have been making “untrue” statements to courts, prosecutors and victims of crime since 2018.
The forensic lab, a major focus in The Australian’s Shandee’s Story investigative podcast series about the unsolved 2013 murder of a young woman, has been put on notice by the royal commission-style inquiry that very serious interim findings are looming.
Stakeholders in Queensland’s criminal justice system have been sent a confidential document and asked to reply to the inquiry in one week ahead of possible interim findings about what is shaping as a disaster in forensic science and crime-sample testing.
The document from DNA inquiry head Walter Sofronoff QC revolves around expert witness statements by lab scientists of “insufficient DNA for analysis” and “insufficient DNA for further processing” in relation to thousands of crime samples.
The DNA inquiry, which was set up by Annastacia Palaszczuk in June after months of revelations by The Australian, asked renowned scientist Linzi Wilson-Wilde to report on whether “it is true or untrue” that an evidence sample within a specified range would not yield DNA.
The upper end of the range was 22 human cells which is the detection limit set by the lab to justify further processing. However, fewer than 10 cells can often produce a DNA profile, while the NSW crime lab has a detection limit of 11 cells.
According to the document distributed by the inquiry, Professor Wilson-Wilde stated a full DNA or partial DNA profile could be achieved in the range specified, meaning the statements routinely produced by the lab are “untrue”.
Senior Queensland justice framework stakeholders are now being asked by the inquiry to comment on the possible next steps.
The inquiry faces the challenge of how to deal with thousands of major crimes which may have gone unsolved due to “untrue” lab statements and DNA crime scene samples going untested.
Mr Sofronoff, the newly retired president of Queensland’s Supreme Court of Appeal, also asked key parties to comment on “whether the commission ought to make a recommendation to the effect that the statements of witnesses issued since 2018” (relating to the claims about insufficient DNA) should “be withdrawn”.
In this scenario, there would be a clamour for the re-testing of thousands of DNA samples which the Queensland Health-run lab had not fully tested. Police and prosecutors would be under pressure to try to re-run an unknown number of cases and to run DNA-linked cases for the first time.
In early 2018, the DNA laboratory downgraded its procedures for testing samples from major crime such as murders, rapes, attempted murders and serious assaults, resulting in numerous samples not being fully tested and DNA going undetected.
The reasons for the downgrading are unknown. However, DNA scientist Kirsty Wright has told The Australian she suspected the change was linked to the lab wanting to achieve targets for funding and processing times. Their targets could be achieved by putting fewer samples forward to be fully tested, despite the obvious repercussion that probative evidence would go undetected when many samples were untested.
Dr Wright identified a litany of serious errors and misses in 2021 in the lab’s forensic files connected to testing for offender DNA after the frenzied stabbing murder in Mackay of Shandee Blackburn, who was just 23. After studying hundreds of documents and witness statements, Dr Wright told The Australian’s podcast, Shandee’s Story, that the lab’s performance was so poor it should be immediately “shut down” to stop it failing more victims of crime, the courts and the police.
However, it took a further six months for the Premier and her Health Minister Yvette D’Ath to set up the commission of inquiry.
The inquiry has the power to compel witnesses to give evidence under oath and to subpoena documents from the government lab and other parties. Public hearings are expected to be held in the coming months.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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