// essays //
September 2014
Debating the Degree:
A Look at Liberal Arts (or Lack Thereof) in Australia
LeeLee Borzak
“What are the two countries in South America that have no coastline?” The seven other people sitting around me looked at me expectantly. As the only American at a table of Australians, I was tacitly designated to know all things Americas. Blessedly, I had known the questions about my home country thus far (Detroit is the only city in the US where you travel south to reach Canada, and the Salem Witch Trials took place in Massachusetts). But here, I was stumped. “You guys know North America and South America are two entirely separate continents, right?” I asked my teammates. But as the only non-vegemite eating member of my trivia team, I unknowingly represented not only the Land of Liberty, but also the entire Northern Hemisphere. And that wasn’t even the most unusual part of me. Beyond being the only American, I had one other major stigmatizing identifier: I was studying liberal arts.
By the fourth day of Orientation Week, (or O-Week, as they say there) at my new Australian public university, I had already mastered my monologue: “I’m here on exchange for the semester from the United States—I’m from Florida, but I go to university in New York. At home I study philosophy, but here I’m taking different Arts courses.”
I first encountered the alien non-liberal-arts university curriculum of Australia when registering for classes last fall. I sat a table in my Barnard apartment with a friend who was hard at work on her “Post 1965 Jazz” paper. I scoured this foreign course catalog, and instinctively scrolled down to “Philosophy,” only to find the “Public Health and Community Medicine” department immediately after “Pharmacology.” I scrolled down some more and reached “Naval Architecture,” and realized that I was enrolled in a school with an entire department devoted to the design of ships (Or so I concluded, without ever actually squeezing “Intro to Naval Architecture” into my schedule). I continued my search and found more types of engineering that I ever knew existed, commerce, criminology, optometry, and marketing. It all seemed so… practical. Humanities classes, for the most part, were grouped in one department sweepingly labeled as “Arts.”
The US and Australia, as seen through their distinctive university systems, diverge in far more than just their dramatically different geographic locations. Universities in Australia are not ranked, but are instead classified by what degrees are offered. This style of characterization has a large impact on the attitude toward tertiary education in general: from the very beginning, the emphasis is on a student’s area of study. While Arts degrees do exist, Australia is known for its Vocational Education and Training model (VET), which emphasizes education geared toward acquiring a job and that requires students to choose a career path at a young age. According to MyQual International Education Consulting, “Australia is one of just a few countries that has a vocational education sector where a trainee is assessed by his or her acquisition of practical competencies, and focuses on the development of skills relevant to a trade or field of skilled specialization. In fact, Australia's VET sector is internationally recognized as providing world's best practice in vocational training, and qualifications from Australian VET institutions are recognized worldwide.” Not exactly Columbia University-esque.
Down the coast of Australia, recent changes have been made to this style curriculum. In 2008, Glyn Davis, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, introduced the “Melbourne Model,” which was designed to parallel the American university system. The University’s website briefly explains this new-style degree: “You begin with an undergraduate degree (sometimes called a bachelors degree), which usually takes three years to complete. You will develop a deep understanding of a particular study area (your 'major'), while gaining a breadth of knowledge that will set you apart from your competitors. After completing your degree you can move straight into the workforce, or continue on to further study.”
Following the implementation of the Melbourne Model, the university’s ninety-six undergraduate curriculums were reduced to six undergraduate degrees. The motivation behind this systematic shift was to enable Australian students to compete internationally. “If this [bologna] becomes a global norm but Australia continues to prepare its professionals through undergraduate programs,” a discussion paper of the University of Melbourne writes, “in the longer term our graduates may no longer be seen as globally competitive.” In an age of globalization, it seems that Australia’s geographic distance from the rest of the Western world is becoming less of a barrier: this increase in international integration has inspired Australians to “keep up.”
This dramatic shift toward the liberal arts has been met with various responses, most of which are critical of the change. The Age National, an Australian publication, reported that “One year since launching the US-style degree program, university chiefs have conceded some subjects are too ‘content heavy’, others too broad, and several are in need of a rethink.” Many point to the subsequent decline in graduate job hiring as an indication of its failures. I only learned about the Melbourne Model when I visited the city during my mid-semester break in April, when I explained to someone that I was pursuing a liberal arts degree and he responded with slight amusement, “Oh right, now they do that here too.”
It is worth noting that in 2012-2013, four years after the implementation of the new model, the University of Melbourne was impressively ranked 28th in the world in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and 36th in the world in the QS World University Rankings. Nevertheless, none of the other major universities in Australia have indicated any intention of reforming their undergraduate system as Melbourne did, and the fact that I only ever heard about this academic milestone three months into my time down under speaks to the prevailing Australian attitude about collegiate education as a vocational endeavor.
While it may have raised controversy, the “Melbourne Plan” seems to be highly preliminary and extremely isolated. Back in Sydney, I still felt like a lone soldier, appointed by Homer and Albert Einstein themselves. While I found myself answering fewer obnoxious-eye-brow-raised “so what are you going to do with a degree in Philosophy?” questions than I do in America, (Australians really are very nice), every now and then I found myself at lunch tables with friends, unintentionally delivering a brief soliloquy about the merits of a liberal arts education. My logic was that I was building an educational foundation that would surely equip me for any and every professional field. Critical thinking! Academic range! Writing skills! Other buzzwords! The liberal arts have it all. I tried to explain that while Philosophy is my major, my curriculum required me to take classes in a wide array of departments. Defending an entire academic system grew tiring.
It’s possible (and, in fact, probable) that I took my self-appointed role of Liberal Arts Disciple of Oceania too seriously, but in early March I was solicited formally to be a delegate on the topic. The USA Consulate Education had a fair at a local high school for students interested in studying abroad in the US for a semester. Barnard had a table, so I, with two other Barnard classmates in Sydney for the semester, managed the Barnard station. The first part of the evening took place in a giant auditorium, where a few qualified professionals explained to a few hundred high school students and their parents about a liberal arts education through a nifty PowerPoint presentation.
After going through the basics (bullets points outlining that it was “a four year degree,” “after high school,” and “contrasts with technical, vocational, and professional education”), the presenter explained that the liberal arts education “spends considerable time on development of intellectual and written literacy, morality and ethics, debate and argumentation, reasoning, critical analysis of self and historical events, scientific understanding, active participation in democratic life.” I looked at my friend, a religion major at Barnard, and laughed. This single slide managed to define liberal arts in a way that was almost impressively both reductionist and self-aggrandizing. “I’m so ethical because my university requires I take math and history,” I texted her immediately. “And I read really old books, so now I’m obviously a participant in democratic life!” she replied.
Following the presentation, high school students and their parents went around to tables representing various American universities to learn more. One student came up to our table and told me that she had never in her life heard of this “liberal…what was it again?” thing. Standing behind a table with glossy Barnard brochures and wearing a Columbia University t-shirt, I personified New York City, women’s colleges, and this renegade concept “liberal arts.” As I found myself answering their questions (no, there are no merit scholarships--welcome to the Ivy League), I wondered to the point of slight panic what made me eligible to do this. Yes, I’m majoring in Philosophy and like to fancy myself a critical thinker and no, I am not quite sure where I’m headed professionally, but I wanted to tell them that I’m not necessarily an accurate representation of what the liberal arts is all about. I don’t know if I am more equipped to “take an active part in civil life”, as Wikipedia’s definition of “liberal arts” tells me I should. Maybe I should just study naval architecture?
A few weeks into my semester, I sat in my professor’s office, sweaty because it was both 75 degrees outside (in February!) and I because I had wandered around the massive (read: average university size) campus for far too long until I found the correct building. “So what are you studying back home?” the history professor asked me. “Philosophy,” I answered, with the slightly apologetic tone I regretfully and unintentionally had adopted since declaring my major. “Oh!” she said, with (what I thought was) a glimmer in her eye. “Kind of like history. An academic. You’re one of us.” Had I, without knowing it, limited myself to a lifelong profession in academia?
Fortunately or unfortunately, these answers remain to be seen. Either way, being surrounded by such non-like minded peers and entrenched in such a different academic outlook has allowed me to assess both models of higher education. It is impossible to conclude whether the liberal arts model is effective, as I am only living in it now, fully immersed in my pursuit of the Humanities. I cannot be certain whether my intellectual development will make me more marketable in the job force, but as they say down under, I reckon it will. Perhaps we, Americans and Australians alike, need to change our standards of success. My still-developing critical thinking skills lead me to believe that if success is measured by employment rates and entry-level salaries, every university is setting itself up for failure and doing a disservice to its students of all majors. I cannot tell you whether a Humanities curriculum like Columbia’s will ever succeed in Australia, I can only ponder what Plato – on a hypothetical journey to Australia with Aristotle dutifully dragging his wheelie duffels – might think.
// LEELEE BORZAK is a senior at Barnard studying Philosophy. She studied abroad at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia during Spring 2014. She can be reached at [email protected]. Photo by Flickr user Kezn Teh.
By the fourth day of Orientation Week, (or O-Week, as they say there) at my new Australian public university, I had already mastered my monologue: “I’m here on exchange for the semester from the United States—I’m from Florida, but I go to university in New York. At home I study philosophy, but here I’m taking different Arts courses.”
I first encountered the alien non-liberal-arts university curriculum of Australia when registering for classes last fall. I sat a table in my Barnard apartment with a friend who was hard at work on her “Post 1965 Jazz” paper. I scoured this foreign course catalog, and instinctively scrolled down to “Philosophy,” only to find the “Public Health and Community Medicine” department immediately after “Pharmacology.” I scrolled down some more and reached “Naval Architecture,” and realized that I was enrolled in a school with an entire department devoted to the design of ships (Or so I concluded, without ever actually squeezing “Intro to Naval Architecture” into my schedule). I continued my search and found more types of engineering that I ever knew existed, commerce, criminology, optometry, and marketing. It all seemed so… practical. Humanities classes, for the most part, were grouped in one department sweepingly labeled as “Arts.”
The US and Australia, as seen through their distinctive university systems, diverge in far more than just their dramatically different geographic locations. Universities in Australia are not ranked, but are instead classified by what degrees are offered. This style of characterization has a large impact on the attitude toward tertiary education in general: from the very beginning, the emphasis is on a student’s area of study. While Arts degrees do exist, Australia is known for its Vocational Education and Training model (VET), which emphasizes education geared toward acquiring a job and that requires students to choose a career path at a young age. According to MyQual International Education Consulting, “Australia is one of just a few countries that has a vocational education sector where a trainee is assessed by his or her acquisition of practical competencies, and focuses on the development of skills relevant to a trade or field of skilled specialization. In fact, Australia's VET sector is internationally recognized as providing world's best practice in vocational training, and qualifications from Australian VET institutions are recognized worldwide.” Not exactly Columbia University-esque.
Down the coast of Australia, recent changes have been made to this style curriculum. In 2008, Glyn Davis, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, introduced the “Melbourne Model,” which was designed to parallel the American university system. The University’s website briefly explains this new-style degree: “You begin with an undergraduate degree (sometimes called a bachelors degree), which usually takes three years to complete. You will develop a deep understanding of a particular study area (your 'major'), while gaining a breadth of knowledge that will set you apart from your competitors. After completing your degree you can move straight into the workforce, or continue on to further study.”
Following the implementation of the Melbourne Model, the university’s ninety-six undergraduate curriculums were reduced to six undergraduate degrees. The motivation behind this systematic shift was to enable Australian students to compete internationally. “If this [bologna] becomes a global norm but Australia continues to prepare its professionals through undergraduate programs,” a discussion paper of the University of Melbourne writes, “in the longer term our graduates may no longer be seen as globally competitive.” In an age of globalization, it seems that Australia’s geographic distance from the rest of the Western world is becoming less of a barrier: this increase in international integration has inspired Australians to “keep up.”
This dramatic shift toward the liberal arts has been met with various responses, most of which are critical of the change. The Age National, an Australian publication, reported that “One year since launching the US-style degree program, university chiefs have conceded some subjects are too ‘content heavy’, others too broad, and several are in need of a rethink.” Many point to the subsequent decline in graduate job hiring as an indication of its failures. I only learned about the Melbourne Model when I visited the city during my mid-semester break in April, when I explained to someone that I was pursuing a liberal arts degree and he responded with slight amusement, “Oh right, now they do that here too.”
It is worth noting that in 2012-2013, four years after the implementation of the new model, the University of Melbourne was impressively ranked 28th in the world in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and 36th in the world in the QS World University Rankings. Nevertheless, none of the other major universities in Australia have indicated any intention of reforming their undergraduate system as Melbourne did, and the fact that I only ever heard about this academic milestone three months into my time down under speaks to the prevailing Australian attitude about collegiate education as a vocational endeavor.
While it may have raised controversy, the “Melbourne Plan” seems to be highly preliminary and extremely isolated. Back in Sydney, I still felt like a lone soldier, appointed by Homer and Albert Einstein themselves. While I found myself answering fewer obnoxious-eye-brow-raised “so what are you going to do with a degree in Philosophy?” questions than I do in America, (Australians really are very nice), every now and then I found myself at lunch tables with friends, unintentionally delivering a brief soliloquy about the merits of a liberal arts education. My logic was that I was building an educational foundation that would surely equip me for any and every professional field. Critical thinking! Academic range! Writing skills! Other buzzwords! The liberal arts have it all. I tried to explain that while Philosophy is my major, my curriculum required me to take classes in a wide array of departments. Defending an entire academic system grew tiring.
It’s possible (and, in fact, probable) that I took my self-appointed role of Liberal Arts Disciple of Oceania too seriously, but in early March I was solicited formally to be a delegate on the topic. The USA Consulate Education had a fair at a local high school for students interested in studying abroad in the US for a semester. Barnard had a table, so I, with two other Barnard classmates in Sydney for the semester, managed the Barnard station. The first part of the evening took place in a giant auditorium, where a few qualified professionals explained to a few hundred high school students and their parents about a liberal arts education through a nifty PowerPoint presentation.
After going through the basics (bullets points outlining that it was “a four year degree,” “after high school,” and “contrasts with technical, vocational, and professional education”), the presenter explained that the liberal arts education “spends considerable time on development of intellectual and written literacy, morality and ethics, debate and argumentation, reasoning, critical analysis of self and historical events, scientific understanding, active participation in democratic life.” I looked at my friend, a religion major at Barnard, and laughed. This single slide managed to define liberal arts in a way that was almost impressively both reductionist and self-aggrandizing. “I’m so ethical because my university requires I take math and history,” I texted her immediately. “And I read really old books, so now I’m obviously a participant in democratic life!” she replied.
Following the presentation, high school students and their parents went around to tables representing various American universities to learn more. One student came up to our table and told me that she had never in her life heard of this “liberal…what was it again?” thing. Standing behind a table with glossy Barnard brochures and wearing a Columbia University t-shirt, I personified New York City, women’s colleges, and this renegade concept “liberal arts.” As I found myself answering their questions (no, there are no merit scholarships--welcome to the Ivy League), I wondered to the point of slight panic what made me eligible to do this. Yes, I’m majoring in Philosophy and like to fancy myself a critical thinker and no, I am not quite sure where I’m headed professionally, but I wanted to tell them that I’m not necessarily an accurate representation of what the liberal arts is all about. I don’t know if I am more equipped to “take an active part in civil life”, as Wikipedia’s definition of “liberal arts” tells me I should. Maybe I should just study naval architecture?
A few weeks into my semester, I sat in my professor’s office, sweaty because it was both 75 degrees outside (in February!) and I because I had wandered around the massive (read: average university size) campus for far too long until I found the correct building. “So what are you studying back home?” the history professor asked me. “Philosophy,” I answered, with the slightly apologetic tone I regretfully and unintentionally had adopted since declaring my major. “Oh!” she said, with (what I thought was) a glimmer in her eye. “Kind of like history. An academic. You’re one of us.” Had I, without knowing it, limited myself to a lifelong profession in academia?
Fortunately or unfortunately, these answers remain to be seen. Either way, being surrounded by such non-like minded peers and entrenched in such a different academic outlook has allowed me to assess both models of higher education. It is impossible to conclude whether the liberal arts model is effective, as I am only living in it now, fully immersed in my pursuit of the Humanities. I cannot be certain whether my intellectual development will make me more marketable in the job force, but as they say down under, I reckon it will. Perhaps we, Americans and Australians alike, need to change our standards of success. My still-developing critical thinking skills lead me to believe that if success is measured by employment rates and entry-level salaries, every university is setting itself up for failure and doing a disservice to its students of all majors. I cannot tell you whether a Humanities curriculum like Columbia’s will ever succeed in Australia, I can only ponder what Plato – on a hypothetical journey to Australia with Aristotle dutifully dragging his wheelie duffels – might think.
// LEELEE BORZAK is a senior at Barnard studying Philosophy. She studied abroad at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia during Spring 2014. She can be reached at [email protected]. Photo by Flickr user Kezn Teh.