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Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Student's Newspaper. Volume 31, Number 10 May 28 1968

All this ... ...for this — Drop-outs cost Australia millions

page 2

All this ... ...for this

Drop-outs cost Australia millions

"Australia's annual cost of training university students who fail is about $10 million. Out of a total of about 96,000 students only two-thirds graduate."

Mr D. S. Anderson of the Education Research unit Australian National University. Canberra, said that today there is a growing willingness of fund-providers to patronise such research studies.

"Behind this is the growth of universities, increasing public investment in higher education, and persistence of high failure rates," he told the recent AUT Seminar on aspects of tertiary education.

He was giving a speech on "Recent Developments in studies of University Academic Performance in Australia".

This research was classified into three categories.

The first was academic and social bookkeeping, which he suggested "should not be dignified by the term research".

This assembly uses statistics of examinations, rates of academic progress, and so on, and has an important role in providing basic information.

The second, prediction of performance approach, tries to explain future success or failure in terms of characteristics of the incoming student—IQ, school results, social class, sex, and so on.

Isolation of the important factors could help in selection of applicants and imposition of quotas. In Victoria, for instance, about 3,000 qualified applicants were not admitted to any university.

Concluding that this approach is inadequate, Mr Anderson said:

"At present, it would be desirable to halt further studies of prediction and examine more carefully what goes on inside universities."

This approach is that of interactive studies. "The theory that all the indicators of future university performance are incapsulated in the first-year student, is inadequate in accounting for what happens later" he said.

"Students meet a variety of circumstances which influence their learning."

"The outcome of this interaction is the learning behaviour which is sampled by the examination."

"Greater competition for places in Australian universities will inevitably lead to more studies of selection.

"Associated with more stringent selection, pass rates will probably increase, not only at the rate consistent with the correlation, but also because the knowledge that there has been tough selection, changes attitudes both of staff and students."

"Interactive studies will increase our understanding of the process of education.

"We will see more clearly the differences in values and orientations of staff and students and learn more of the variety of students characteristics and the way these interact with different educational settings."

"A prior step, which would contribute immeasurably to the quality of empirical evaluation of teaching, is greater clarification of criteria," he said.

"In allowing such a clarification, it may turn out that the usual criteria, examination marks, are irrelevant."

Two obstacles to greater knowledge of the educational process leading to better teaching and learning are cost and staff conservatism.

"Some staff are apathetic and a few hostile to teaching innovations," said Anderson.

"One academic has asserted, in print, that teaching has nothing to do with the academic results of students".