top 10 p.c.

In the first case it is undeniably true that Victoria has a chronic shortage of staff, but it is equally true that we are not using the available staff efficiently.

The second argument is utterly vacuous; but I have even heard it used to justify the high attrition rate of students. "Of course," I was told by one professor, "our standards are too high for 40 per cent of the class — but then they shouldn't be here, they're not intelligent enough." Considering that university students generally come from the top 10 per cent of their age group, this argument proves only that the speaker is intellectually arrogant or a poor teacher or both.

There is only one way to raise the standard of the students academic performance, and that is to improve the quality of his education. The raw material available to the universities is much the same everywhere; the worth of the finished product depends therefore on the "value added" by his teachers. As T. H. Huxley once said, "Students work to pass, not to know; and outraged Science takes her revenge. They do pass, and they don't know."

References:

Dressel, Paul L. (ed.) Evalution in Higher Education (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961).

Harrison, Noel. In The Transition from School to University. edited by P. J. Blizard (N.Z.U.S.A., 1965).

Parkyn, G. W. Success and Failure at the University, Vol. II. "The Problem of Failure" (Wellington: N.Z.C.E.R., 1967).