By: DT_AUS

DT_AUS
Tue, 29 Jul 2025 00:53:30 +0000

My tertiary professional qualification was obtained from part time study while I worked fulltime in a demanding job. Although assignments had to be completed for each subject, no marks were given for them. They were simply a prerequisite to sit the exam for each subject, which constituted 100% of your assessment – if you did not pass that exam, you failed the subject and had to do it again. There were no posts either – if you were sick, etc on exam day, tough luck.

None of this is a “walked uphill to school in the snow both ways” boast but rather an example of what rigorous education used to look like before everyone was given a participation award to make way for the next year’s crop of high fee-paying foreign students that now keep universities afloat. When you only have one chance to demonstrate you’ve learned something, you bloody well learn it and although the PTSD of doing 5 subjects in the first semester and 6 subjects in the second semester of my final year may never leave me, neither will what I learned.

I appreciate this is all a step beyond the secondary schooling the article is discussing but education should not be easy. It should be difficult and challenging. Effort and intellect should be rewarded, not showing up and expecting a pass. Not everybody should be capable of completing the final two years of high school – some of them should be leaving earlier to start an apprenticeship somewhere or work in a job less mentally taxing – all of whom have my respect. Far less people again should be allowed to enter tertiary study, which should be taught and marked in a way that produces only outstandingly capable graduates.

This is not intellectual snobbery and scholarships for the less fortunate in life should always be available but the visible dumbing down of our society can and should be arrested. There was a time when people were well read and accomplished in a number of areas of knowledge. They do still exist but are becoming relatively rare.