Stuck in a Paddling Pool: Course Changes at the University of Adelaide

(STUDENT LIFE / OPINION)

- Words, Hannah Mattner. Photograph, Hannah Davis.

Change can be hard to deal with. The flipside: change can also make life better. The course structure changes facing Adelaide University students (implemented in one fell swoop at the beginning of 2009) have been hard to deal with, and have improved nothing whatsoever. The shift from a myriad of subject-appropriate unit structures scattered across schools and disciplines, to a uniform rank of three unit courses (shared by all faculties), has left students angry. Soon, hopefully, they’ll pick up the pitchforks.

By the time I heard about proposed changes to course structure in second year from legendary politics tutor David Olney, the uni’s policy was as solid and immovable as the statue outside Elder Hall: all undergraduate subjects in almost all disciplines (I think the professions are still wandering along in their own special world) would adopt a three-units-per-subject structure, replacing the existing model, which varied the number of units to allow for increasing depth of learning.

In the Humanities, under the older model, we waded in a multitude of four-course-per-semester first year paddling pools, developing the skills we would require to eventually dive into the two-course-per-semester lake of third year. There was a sense of progression – a sense that we were being prepared for a final, satisfying swim in the vast ocean of postgrad study. We would work our way up from ridiculous first year attempts to write a thousand words of coherent argument to locking ourselves in the library for three weeks to research and understand the nuance of a single topic. We’d still not do, or know, very much compared to ‘real academics’ – but we were learning to write bigger and better and deeper.

The new model doesn’t work: second- and third-years are now forced into ‘advanced’ courses – because one year of study apparently gets you to the pinnacle of undergrad expectations – which are each worth three units. So-called ‘advanced’ students now have four classes in each semester, rather than the two more immersive classes. Essays are two thousand words – which is simple, boring and is never going to motivate anybody to think deeply about the text or topic in question. After the jump from first to second year, it’s possible to totter along, rarely having to think beyond the obvious, with no scope to explore or extrapolate on an interesting idea. One can’t fit much into two thousand words.

This is not what anybody expects from a university degree. Fortunately, I’ll get away, having suffered only a semester of this flawed new system. The rest of you in the Humanities will endure up to three years of wandering through a multitude of paddling pools, knowing that you could’ve had great lakes to use for your experimentation and discovery.

Note: The changes at Adelaide are far from over, with the university currently conducting a review of its course structures with a view to changing them. Again. The SRC wishes to present a submission of student concerns to the committee in charge of it all. To tell the SRC what you think, fill out the form on the SRC website.