Great stuff by The Australian:
Australian university lecturers are being cowed into lowering their academic standards by “highly organised” networks of international students making co-ordinated attacks against any staff members whose assignments and examinations prove too difficult to pass.
…Academics are concerned the lowering of standards for overseas students means Australian students’ education is also suffering.
…One professor, who teaches at a respected Group of Eight university in Sydney, said the complaints were taken so seriously by university management that they had the potential to derail careers.
…Another professor at a Group of Eight university said…“It is absolutely corrupt. It’s a disgraceful system — disgraceful,” she said. “I don’t know what passes for language training in China but most of the students I see from there haven’t even the most basic English skills and can’t construct a single, clear, grammatical sentence. And these are the masters (degree) candidates.”
She said the situation had also resulted in a dramatic surge in instances of cheating, and that complaints to university management were routinely ignored.
…The programs are set to be one of the issues raised in the NSW government’s parliamentary inquiry into the future development of the state’s tertiary education system, which will sit for the first time on August 12.
NSW One Nation leader Mark Latham said the inquiry would look closely at the universities’ reliance on foreign funding.
“They dumb down their academic standards and basically tell overseas students, ‘If you can pay the money, you’ll end up with a piece of paper from our degree factory’,” Mr Latham said.
All universities approached by The Australian — including the Group of Eight institutions — denied there was a problem when it comes to international students who cannot understand what they are being taught.
Then there is this:
The social media posts quoted Elaine Pearson, the Australia director of Human Rights Watch, who warned it was time to bring attention to the rapidly deteriorating situation in Hong Kong, where new national security laws punish dissent with sentences of up to life in prison.
Ms Pearson on Tuesday accused the university of baulking under pressure.
“My recent experience suggests that the university might be more interested in damage control than an open marketplace of ideas,” she said.
She said she was shocked at the ferocity of the response from pro-Chinese Communist Party students and disappointed at the university’s feeble response.
Ms Pearson, who is also an adjunct professor at UNSW, said a 23-year-old UNSW law student from China recently told Human Rights Watch that students in their law classes were afraid to express any pro-democracy sentiment in Australia.
“If you protest against the CCP abroad, they will find people you love and hurt you to make you pay,” the student said.
“This fear is real,” said Ms Pearson.
And this:
Meet Gabii Starr – after working directly for UQ and Høj, she was
selected by senior admin to run as a UQ Senator against me.
She ran a secret pro-China social media campaign to paint me as a violent, racist “Hong Kong troublemaker.” UQ have replaced me with her undemocratically pic.twitter.com/euz7ouiB1U— Drew Pavlou 柏乐志 (@DrewPavlou) August 4, 2020
And this:
EMBATTLED student activist Drew Pavlou has taken his fight against the University of Queensland to the Queensland Human Rights Commission, claiming his rights have been violated.
The 21-year-old suspended student has submitted a complaint claiming his rights have been breached by the university.
‘It’s an ambush’: Pavlou claims China court interference
Australian universities jumped the shark on foreign, especially Chinese, students. The universities entire role in our society is now under intense attack. We need a royal commission to burn this poison out. The universities have:
- collaborated on military and surveillance technologies that aid and abet CCP power and persecution;
- consistently put dollars ahead of lives during pandemic lobbying;
- crashed pedagogical standards for foreign kids;
- distorted policy and recruited policymakers in a classic case of regulatory capture, and
- persecuted whistleblowers.
These institutions have been all but ruined in terms of their values, reason for being, and licence to operate.
