AUQA: Setting and Monitoring Academic Standards for Australian Higher Education. (August 18, 2009)

This past May the Australian Universities Quality Agency released a 20 page Discussion Paper, Setting and Monitoring Academic Standards for Australian Higher Education.

Click here to access a copy of the discussion paper, a short summary of the 54 submissions received between May 31 through July 23, and PDF files of the submissions themselves, i.e. the non-confidential ones.

It is perhaps overly kind to say that the discussion paper has received a mixed response.

Here TFW reprints two of the submissions one from Dr Michael Gallagher (Executive Director) Group of Eight (#43), the other from Professor Alan Robson writing as vice-chancellor of The University of Western Australia (#5) but who is also the current chairman of the Group of Eight.

They bring to mind the song written by Mitch Leigh, and Joe Darion for the 1965 musical Man of La Mancha, "The Impossible Dream".

If Cervantes' Don Quixote mistakenly perceives the windmills as giants to be defeated, it may not be too far fetched to suspect that certain governmental ministers would be out to micromanage the misplaced "heroics".

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