Sunday, March 18, 2007
Creative Arts Students Unable to Complete Majors
Creative arts is being closed down, but the university promised a ‘teach out’ of current students and even took in first years this year without informing them that their subject choices would be severely limited. In fact, there is no choice at all for first years with only 8 subjects being offered this year. Other students are unable to complete their majors due to subject cuts and some students are rocking up to lectures only to realize the lecture no longer exists.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
As part of my Creative Arts degree I enrolled in a Visual Arts subject. Over the Summer break the lecturer who teaches the subject got offered a better job in Sydney. Instead of finding a replacement for him the lecture component of the subject was simply cut and the subject is being taught by the studio technician. Students were not informed of these major changes to the structure of the subject until they arrived at their first class.
I am only studying part time this year so that I can be the Arts Officer for the Student Union, something which I thought would be a good experience to have if I intend to work in the arts industry in the future. I am very worried that when I go back to full time study there will no longer be enough subjects for me to complete a major with subjects I actually want to do.
I am displeased with Melbourne University’s action in cutting SCA, and in doing so have already cut important subjects. I am currently in my 2/3 rd year and this year I found it virtually impossible to choose subjects, as most of the creative writing and Media subjects have already been cut. I was heading for a double major in writing and Media Arts and now I have been forced to find other subjects. This I feel is unfair, and wrong, as there is a very high expectation for entering Melbourne University, and an education of high esteem is guaranteed, however, now we are just doing a course which doesn’t stand for a good outcome, as it will no longer exist, further more we are just doing any old subject we can, with little reverence to our passions. I wanted to go to Melbourne University and the SCA because it offered everything I was passionate about, and up and till last year it had, but now subjects have been dropped, brilliant lecturers are to be dropped and the subjects I feel we were promised have gone too. Hence being forced to take subjects that are irrelevant to our major, or of any interest. If I had known what was to become of SCA today I would have not considered it as my number one
choice.
In 2004 The School of Creative Arts advertised that the subjects listed would be subject to “modification or replacement”. By 2007 nearly half those subjects have been cancelled with no adequate replacement. Further several groups of subjects have been amalgamated into a singular general (but much less comprehensive) subject which result in students graduating to the next year level without very necessary prerequisite skills as well as obvious difficulties with teaching subjects that are so general and have such poorly defined outcomes. Outlines are too general to teach any new information to third year students and too vague for students to know what to submit. Many of these subjects have less contact hours then the subjects they replaced.
4 First Year subjects have been cancelled and only 1 more general subject has replaced it (N. B. this leaves only 6 subjects available at a First Year Level forcing students to enrol in no less than 2 interdisciplinary subjects. As 8 subjects are required to complete First Year and exactly 8 subjects are offered it is false and misleading to describe these subjects as “electives”).
In order to provide a sufficient number of subjects to each year level, the School of Creative Arts has simply made the same subject available to more year levels. A subject which may have previously been offered only at third year level is now being offered at second, third, honours and post graduate level. So where a subject has been cut from a particular year level it has been replaced with admission into a subject from a different year level. However this means that students find themselves ineligible for a large number of subjects in later years which they have completed earlier.
Of the subjects offered at third year level many require prerequisite second year units and although these subjects are available to third year students they are not able to take them. When they chose not to enrol in the second year prerequisite subjects many more third year subjects were available. As a result many students have found that not even the bare minimum of four subjects are available for them to complete their major once subjects taken in previous years or subjects for which they did not complete the prerequisites (due to the understanding that a complete range of subjects would be offered) are taken into account. Therefore students are left no choice but to enrol in interdisciplinary subjects in order to complete their major, despite their non-specific nature and subsequent inadequacy to prepare a student for their chosen field of speciality.
This is a really appalling situation! It certainly reveals the hollowness of the Universities rhetoric around Growing Esteem.
Its bad enough when currently enrolled students aren't able to complete their majors in a specialised field, but I think the really reprehensible part of this is that a new intake of first year students was allowed to enrol for 2007. If the university can't or won't offer the same selection, quality and diversity of subjects which were available in previous years to these students then it simply shouldn't have taken new enrolments.
Limiting the available subjects to a bare minimum, throwing out the rules about which points count towards which major and not replacing staff who leave isn't "teaching out" a degree, its offering a sub-standard generalised education to students who enrolled in a highly specialised, high-quality course. Its an absolute disgrace!
It should also serve as a warning to current and future students in all schools and faculties about the quality of education which will be available, both during the transition to, and under the 'growing esteem' system. This isn't just about Creative Arts - its relevant to all students, so I'd encourage everyone to get involved in the campaign!
i recently dropped out after my second year of creative arts because there were no longer enough subjects for me to take up that were even remotely related to what i had wanted to do....
Post a Comment