25 January 2011

ANU leading all fields of human endeavour?

| johnboy
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As part of his ongoing victory lap the ANU’s outgoing Vice-Chancellor Ian Chubb has typed out his last forward to the ANU Reporter which has just gone online.

In it he makes this claim which bears thinking about:

Our alumni are well represented amongst the leadership and emerging leadership of almost all fields of human endeavour.

Thoughts Rioters?

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“If you don’t know what to do, go to ANU!”

We definitely need good primary education. I believe each primary teacher should only have up to ten students, because this is such an important phase. De Bono called this the “Why?” phase.

Secondary education is problematic – students are dealing with puberty, and are not really attending to anything else. Students are testing everything. This, and tertiary, De Bono called the “Why not?” phase.

Tertiary education is similar. But, like boxing, I believe students who are fit but hungry do well.

In our working lives, we assimilate huge volumes of stuff. Most of the time we just need to judge the stuff – good or bad, useful or not – for which the web is a very useful sounding board. De Bono called this the “Because” phase. This suggests to me that we resist learning as we get older.

The cat did it4:50 pm 27 Jan 11

He’s got to crow about external intangibles like that. Internally, it’s another story. Some parts of the Uni, like Humanities, are being starved so they die slowly. Administrative efficiency comes next to last- it’s hard to tell whether many staff are hopelessly overworked or just clueless, And most teaching academic staff don’t care as long as nothing gets in the way off their own research. ANU reputation is living on momentum gained decades ago.

LSWCHP said :

matt31221 said :

Don’t have a year 12 but a more valuable trade certificate? – you can feck off cause the ANU don’t want you in their courses. Bunch of elitist discriminating w@#&@$s. At least MOST of the other Uni’s in Aus value a trade cert for entry.

Trade skills and qualifications are valuable for the work they’re targeted at, but I’m not sure that the training required for a trade would provide the academic background necessary to get through the courses. It’s not necessarily a statement about a person’s level of intelligence or ability, it’s more that the person is not likely to have the prerequisite knowledge that is assumed at the start of the course.

When I went through, a lot of people floundered who supposedly did have the prerequiste quals.

I’m talking electricians certificate. The TAFE load is math heavy and fairly acedemic. Alot of aprentices drop out of it or have to repeat due to it’s difficulty. There is emphisis on interpretation of the AS3000 electrical wiring rules which is like a complicated legal document that can be read many ways. I didn’t finish year 12 but I finished my electrical certificate with great grades and the electrical cert was extremely more difficult than year 12 (when I was doing year 12 like most kids I didn’t grasp the importance of it).

matt31221 said :

Don’t have a year 12 but a more valuable trade certificate? – you can feck off cause the ANU don’t want you in their courses. Bunch of elitist discriminating w@#&@$s. At least MOST of the other Uni’s in Aus value a trade cert for entry.

Trade skills and qualifications are valuable for the work they’re targeted at, but I’m not sure that the training required for a trade would provide the academic background necessary to get through the courses. It’s not necessarily a statement about a person’s level of intelligence or ability, it’s more that the person is not likely to have the prerequisite knowledge that is assumed at the start of the course.

When I went through, a lot of people floundered who supposedly did have the prerequiste quals.

Don’t have a year 12 but a more valuable trade certificate? – you can feck off cause the ANU don’t want you in their courses. Bunch of elitist discriminating w@#&@$s. At least MOST of the other Uni’s in Aus value a trade cert for entry.

Well I’m an alumni of the ANU and I has no real interest in being represented in most fields of human endeavour. And anyway, I would have thought that if I was supposed to be represented in all fields of human endeavour, the representatives should be contacting me about my views, or at the very least, I should be permitted to participate in an election of my representatives… not that I would bother, mind you…

LSWCHP said :

Anyway, FWIW…I would like some information about the ANU Alumni, if any, who are represented in the “Porn Star” field of human endeavour.

Based on behavioural traits witnessed, I reckon a dodgy ex-girlfriend of mine from ANU probably went on to something just as you have described 😉

Ahhh…he’s certainly drawing a long bow there, and I’m an ANU graduate from prehistoric times.. But note that he’s craftily given himself a “get out of jail free” by qualifying his claim with a wishy-washy “almost” which considerably weakens the claim. At least he didn’t use “arguably”.

Anyway, FWIW…I would like some information about the ANU Alumni, if any, who are represented in the “Porn Star” field of human endeavour.

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