Read it and weep:

10 Responses to Read it and weep:

1. Ronbo says:

   October 16, 2015 at 22:31

   Bring back an old Anglo-Saxon cultural tradition: Hang, Draw and Quarter the traitors!
2. Wombat says:

   October 16, 2015 at 23:06

   Ha! They approved my link to Fred Reed’s work on page 6 of the comments.
3. MacDoctor says:

   October 16, 2015 at 23:54

   This is almost certainly the reason for the notable decline in position of most NZ universities in the world league tables. You can’t keep passing people who barely know how to read English and expect to maintain any sort of reputation.
4. Wombat says:

   October 17, 2015 at 00:10

   I can’t speak to the training of doctors, but I know this is the case in nursing.

   My wife graduated with many fellow students who had never so much as drawn blood with a needle.
5. Darin says:

   October 17, 2015 at 01:43

   It’s not just foreign students either.I have had many encounters with papered idiots over the years and this is why.
6. Gregoryno6 says:

   October 17, 2015 at 03:25

   When I was younger and nearly at the end of my secondary education family and friends assumed by friends and relatives that I would go to university. I had other ideas. University just looked like a continuation of school, and I wanted to be a grown up. So it was, to the horror of all, that I landed a job in a warehouse loading trucks at Brockhoff’s Biscuits.
   After reading this piece, I’ve changed my opinion of tertiary education.
   It’s not a continuation of school – it’s a continuation of kindergarten.
   • Wombat says:

     October 17, 2015 at 13:52

     Safe spaces.

     
7. Flashman says:

   October 17, 2015 at 06:46

   There’s nothing new here and every single point in the article nails it.

   I can’t comment on NZ universities but NZ polytechnics and their private training competitors are locked in a race to the bottom as far as foreign students are concerned. Academic standards be damned, FS’s are high-paying cash-cows that prop them up and nothing must done to disturb the cashflow. Academic standards in this context translates into “The rock-bottom minimum standard we can get away with if we cover up what we’re doing and discourage questions.” Of course, be assured, we’ll also run smoke and mirrors cosmetic distractions with “strict” examination supervision processes and using (easily fooled) paper tiger in the form of computer programs that check for plagiarism.

   FS’s are routinely admitted who are functionally illiterate in all aspects of the English language. Worse, they are placed on second and third year programs on the basis of ostensibly having passed first year prerequisites in their own country – which, if they have, isn’t evident. By far the most bird-flip to academic standards was the NZ polytech that allows FS’s into degree programs and condones them taking first, second and third year courses in the major *simultaneously*…unbelievable!

   And of course the NZ govt’s polytech management quango does sweet jack-shit about it because FS fees subvent its member organizations which now desperately rely on overseas students’ cash as cargo cult jungle primitives or junkies nodding out looking at waterstains on the ceiling.
   • KG says:

     October 17, 2015 at 08:27

     Nailed it.
8. KG says:

   October 17, 2015 at 08:31

   From this morning’s NZ Stuff “news”:
   ‘ All Blacks’ captain says infamous loss to French has spurned them on ever since.’