Physics Professor Emeritus Harry Messel Has a Bit of a Rant. (September 26, 2006)

    In 1952 at the age of 29, Harry Messel was appointed to the University of Sydney as Professor of Physics and head of the Department. Now 84 Professor Messel has just had published a short opinion piece in The Sydney Morning Herald worthy of the most articulate of GOM (grumpy old men). "Beware universities' quest for mediocrity"

But make no mistake he speaks some significant truths.

[In Australia there is an accepted truth that] a university that does not have, and never will have, large numbers of students, 10 deputy vice-chancellors and 20 pro-vice-chancellors, lecture halls to hold 1000 disenchanted students and so on, must be a second-rate institution. The opposite is usually the case.

 

...we see many educational practitioners... extolling the virtues of almost free mass tertiary education for all, with its lower standards and paying lip-service to excellence. Their motto seems to be equal opportunity for all to be mediocre rather than equal opportunity for all to strive for excellence.

 

...enormous pressure [is placed] upon educational institutions to provide university entrance for all qualified secondary school students, which almost automatically ensured a significant decrease in standards, while increasing dramatically the number of students completing secondary education. This, too, was often achieved at the expense of quality.

Professor Messel follows this with the splendid rant, "Australia must seriously question whether it should continue to spend a couple of thousand million dollars a year on a school system which appears to be turning out an ever increasing number of undisciplined, irresponsible, greedy, often near-illiterate, lawless individuals who don't give a tinker's curse for the country, their mates or anyone else."

But he then get to the nub of his assessment:

It appears that Australia is on the road to turning its school system into poor-quality child minding... One outcome is that universities now often have to teach what was formerly taught at the senior school level. The value of a bachelor's degree from many institutions has been devalued...

 

Education must be deregulated and strong diversity among institutions encouraged. Students must be provided with a wide choice and at varying levels. As an opener, cut the management staff of universities by 50 per cent or more. This would slow - but not stop - the paper war which is going on at present. It should also put an end to all this nonsense about total quality management, quality assessment and various other time-wasting "processes". Let us get back to what universities are best at doing, namely teaching and research.