Hi all - its official according to the latest Good Universities guide! Macquarie Uni has the highest student-staff ration of any university in the country! which confirms our suspicisions all along that club mac is nothing more than a degree factory churining out squillions of overpriced degrees to north shore yuppies and overseas students who didnt have the marks to make it to UNSW, Sydney or UTS!!!!
Read here:
Degrees pass the $200,000 mark
Harriet Alexander Higher Education Reporter
August 16, 2006
UNIVERSITY students are paying more than $200,000 for university degrees, seven years after the Prime Minister told Parliament there would be no $100,000 university degrees under his government.
Five degrees cost more than $200,000 and 96 degrees cost more than $100,000 for full-fee paying students, according to the Good Universities Guide 2007, released today.
Last year 60 courses cost more than $100,000. Nearly half the courses costing over $100,000 were offered by NSW universities and more than a quarter were at the University of NSW. The University of Sydney and the University of Technology, Sydney each had seven.
Most were combined degrees in medicine, engineering, science and law, but among the high-priced courses were a combined bachelor of music and law degree at the University of Melbourne for $119,000, a bachelor of dentistry at Sydney University for $113,472 and a bachelor of industrial design/bachelor of arts (international studies) at UTS for $107,640.
A spokesman for John Howard said the Prime Minister's promise in 1999 that the Government would not introduce $100,000 degrees, common in the US, referred only to Commonwealth-funded places. "The US [universities] are all funded by students with very small government subsidies. Australia is the reverse," the spokesman said.
A higher education academic, Professor Bruce Chapman, who designed the HECS system, said universities charging full fees would be making "considerable sums of money" from students. "Some institutions will be much better off because they will be charging full fees to students … some are not and those are the ones that will be in particular trouble. "The cost of a full-fee law degree is probably higher than the cost of teaching it," he said. "Why is this? It's because people are prepared to pay for it."
The limit to what universities were able to charge depended on the amount students were able to borrow, with the loan limit now $80,000, he said.
Labor's education spokeswoman, Jenny Macklin, said the cost of degrees were now equivalent to the average mortgage in NSW. But Judy Brookman, a spokeswoman for UNSW, said it was difficult to compare universities because they did not offer the same degrees.
Sydney University, for example, did not offer an undergraduate degree in medicine, which cost students $237,000 at UNSW, making a bachelor of medicine/bachelor of arts the most expensive university course in the country.
"Of course there are very, very small numbers doing full-fee paying [courses]," Ms Brookman said. "The average Australian student doesn't have to pay anything like this."
Only nine of the 1331 students studying undergraduate medicine at UNSW were full-fee paying, she said.
The guide reveals that graduates of Macquarie University, UTS, UNSW and Wollongong will have the highest starting salaries while Southern Cross graduates are likely to have the lowest.
Wollongong graduates were also the most likely to find employment, while Newcastle, the University of New England and the University of Western Sydney had the lowest job prospects.
And while Sydney University and UNSW had the lowest student-staff ratios, Macquarie University had the highest.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/...407810477.html
degree factory alert!
Read here:
Degrees pass the $200,000 mark
Harriet Alexander Higher Education Reporter
August 16, 2006
UNIVERSITY students are paying more than $200,000 for university degrees, seven years after the Prime Minister told Parliament there would be no $100,000 university degrees under his government.
Five degrees cost more than $200,000 and 96 degrees cost more than $100,000 for full-fee paying students, according to the Good Universities Guide 2007, released today.
Last year 60 courses cost more than $100,000. Nearly half the courses costing over $100,000 were offered by NSW universities and more than a quarter were at the University of NSW. The University of Sydney and the University of Technology, Sydney each had seven.
Most were combined degrees in medicine, engineering, science and law, but among the high-priced courses were a combined bachelor of music and law degree at the University of Melbourne for $119,000, a bachelor of dentistry at Sydney University for $113,472 and a bachelor of industrial design/bachelor of arts (international studies) at UTS for $107,640.
A spokesman for John Howard said the Prime Minister's promise in 1999 that the Government would not introduce $100,000 degrees, common in the US, referred only to Commonwealth-funded places. "The US [universities] are all funded by students with very small government subsidies. Australia is the reverse," the spokesman said.
A higher education academic, Professor Bruce Chapman, who designed the HECS system, said universities charging full fees would be making "considerable sums of money" from students. "Some institutions will be much better off because they will be charging full fees to students … some are not and those are the ones that will be in particular trouble. "The cost of a full-fee law degree is probably higher than the cost of teaching it," he said. "Why is this? It's because people are prepared to pay for it."
The limit to what universities were able to charge depended on the amount students were able to borrow, with the loan limit now $80,000, he said.
Labor's education spokeswoman, Jenny Macklin, said the cost of degrees were now equivalent to the average mortgage in NSW. But Judy Brookman, a spokeswoman for UNSW, said it was difficult to compare universities because they did not offer the same degrees.
Sydney University, for example, did not offer an undergraduate degree in medicine, which cost students $237,000 at UNSW, making a bachelor of medicine/bachelor of arts the most expensive university course in the country.
"Of course there are very, very small numbers doing full-fee paying [courses]," Ms Brookman said. "The average Australian student doesn't have to pay anything like this."
Only nine of the 1331 students studying undergraduate medicine at UNSW were full-fee paying, she said.
The guide reveals that graduates of Macquarie University, UTS, UNSW and Wollongong will have the highest starting salaries while Southern Cross graduates are likely to have the lowest.
Wollongong graduates were also the most likely to find employment, while Newcastle, the University of New England and the University of Western Sydney had the lowest job prospects.
And while Sydney University and UNSW had the lowest student-staff ratios, Macquarie University had the highest.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/...407810477.html
degree factory alert!