BF2S Forums Tuition Fees - Standardised? Privatised?

FEOS wrote:

Nor did mine. I had to get scholarships and loans to pay for my own. As did my sister. At a public university.

Individual/family responsibility to educate beyond secondary school, not the state's.

Spark wrote:

JohnG@lt wrote:

Spark wrote:

Yeah that's a bit weird. last I heard your graduation rate was higher than ours.

Perhaps we just have more stringent academic standards due to the completely standardized and very strict UAI (now ATAR) ranking system?

EDIT: That does not include accommodation though, which obviously makes a big big difference. You can't put accommodation costs on HECS obviously though. Nor does it include textbooks but this govt site puts the cost of that at $400-$1000 which I can say for a maths/physics student is a reasonable estimate.

Instead of lower academic standards, could it be the very real principle that when something is handed to someone it is not respected? It's amazing the motivation to care for an item that occurs when people are forced to pay for things out of their own pocket. I have a friend that went to university in Sweden for about ten years to become a doctor. Half of that time he spent dicking around playing video games. If he was over here and forced to take out student loans to pay for his education, you better believe he would've finished his studies in a much shorter time period. People milk the system because they don't respect it. They don't respect it because they feel entitled to it rather than privileged to receive it.

I'd want to see graduation rates as a percentage of university entrants, not just high school finishers, before seeing that. A bucketload of kids drop out at Year 10 and a bucketload more don't go to Uni.

And by the way, at my uni at least, in my field, we go through material at a much, much, much quicker rate than any American uni I've seen. And that can be made even faster if you pull the right levers. Just comparing to MIT, I can tell you right now the DiffEQ course I did was much more difficult than the Honours level course. The complex analysis material I've already done in four weeks is the literal equivalent of the full course I see on OCW. The Physics I see there are half-a-semester to a semester behind as well.

This is compared to a normal, non accelerated courseload that is. Accelerate and the comparisons become silly.

But it's very easy to tell if you've got into a place here. If your ATAR was higher than the listed requirement, you're in. For the very top levels, say, 99/100 requirement, you might need to fill in a form or do some paperwork but otherwise it's a pretty automated process.

JohnG@lt wrote:

Spark wrote:

JohnG@lt wrote:

Instead of lower academic standards, could it be the very real principle that when something is handed to someone it is not respected? It's amazing the motivation to care for an item that occurs when people are forced to pay for things out of their own pocket. I have a friend that went to university in Sweden for about ten years to become a doctor. Half of that time he spent dicking around playing video games. If he was over here and forced to take out student loans to pay for his education, you better believe he would've finished his studies in a much shorter time period. People milk the system because they don't respect it. They don't respect it because they feel entitled to it rather than privileged to receive it.

I'd want to see graduation rates as a percentage of university entrants, not just high school finishers, before seeing that. A bucketload of kids drop out at Year 10 and a bucketload more don't go to Uni.

And by the way, at my uni at least, in my field, we go through material at a much, much, much quicker rate than any American uni I've seen. And that can be made even faster if you pull the right levers. Just comparing to MIT, I can tell you right now the DiffEQ course I did was much more difficult than the Honours level course. The complex analysis material I've already done in four weeks is the literal equivalent of the full course I see on OCW. The Physics I see there are half-a-semester to a semester behind as well.

This is compared to a normal, non accelerated courseload that is. Accelerate and the comparisons become silly.

But it's very easy to tell if you've got into a place here. If your ATAR was higher than the listed requirement, you're in. For the very top levels, say, 99/100 requirement, you might need to fill in a form or do some paperwork but otherwise it's a pretty automated process.

You sacrifice precision for speed though. I viewed my freshman calc class as masturbatory. Find ten thousand different ways of moving the derivative around. Beat the student over the head and make sure they can do every single manipulation imaginable. It was mind numbing but it did the trick. Could they have said 'here's what a derivative is, here is how you calculate it, you're on your own interpreting it when you come across a variation you haven't seen before'? Of course. But like I said, the tradeoff is precision.

Last edited by Spark (2010-11-04 08:02:46)

Spark wrote:

JohnG@lt wrote:

Spark wrote:

I'd want to see graduation rates as a percentage of university entrants, not just high school finishers, before seeing that. A bucketload of kids drop out at Year 10 and a bucketload more don't go to Uni.

And by the way, at my uni at least, in my field, we go through material at a much, much, much quicker rate than any American uni I've seen. And that can be made even faster if you pull the right levers. Just comparing to MIT, I can tell you right now the DiffEQ course I did was much more difficult than the Honours level course. The complex analysis material I've already done in four weeks is the literal equivalent of the full course I see on OCW. The Physics I see there are half-a-semester to a semester behind as well.

This is compared to a normal, non accelerated courseload that is. Accelerate and the comparisons become silly.

But it's very easy to tell if you've got into a place here. If your ATAR was higher than the listed requirement, you're in. For the very top levels, say, 99/100 requirement, you might need to fill in a form or do some paperwork but otherwise it's a pretty automated process.

You sacrifice precision for speed though. I viewed my freshman calc class as masturbatory. Find ten thousand different ways of moving the derivative around. Beat the student over the head and make sure they can do every single manipulation imaginable. It was mind numbing but it did the trick. Could they have said 'here's what a derivative is, here is how you calculate it, you're on your own interpreting it when you come across a variation you haven't seen before'? Of course. But like I said, the tradeoff is precision.

Well, the way I made sure my calc was perfect wasn't in 1st year calc at all (which I did the first semester of, and then literally skipped the remainder of out of boredom). It was in all those tougher courses which required you to be sharp as a knife at it. When you're doing, say, DEs of either variety, then you need to be pretty fucking awesome at calculus. If you're not good, you become good very quickly.

It certainly works for me.

EDIT: It's the same reason they make actuarial students etc. take honours level 1st year maths. Not because they need to know double integrals, or the formal definition of a limit, or a Taylor series, which are all pretty important if you're going to do maths or physics at more than bog-standard level, it's because to do calc they need to be razor sharp at algebraic and functional manipulations as a requisite. Doing calc makes them so, not because they actually need to know the calc itself.

SenorToenails wrote:

JohnG@lt wrote:

I joined the army to pay for college. My younger brother took out loans. My dad is a bum and my mom is a financial idiot (though I love her, fantastic person) so there was no help coming for either of us. We made due and the burden wasn't ridiculous enough that either of us ever contemplated quitting school. It's an investment.

There are ways for those enterprising enough.  I just wish I had wrangled a cosigner for my private loans so I would have a lower interest rate...that is where my desire to see more federal loans for undergraduates comes from.  There just wasn't anyone available to cosign for me though... 

SenorToenails wrote:

Spark wrote:

Well, the way I made sure my calc was perfect wasn't in 1st year calc at all (which I did the first semester of, and then literally skipped the remainder of out of boredom). It was in all those tougher courses which required you to be sharp as a knife at it. When you're doing, say, DEs of either variety, then you need to be pretty fucking awesome at calculus. If you're not good, you become good very quickly.

It certainly works for me.

EDIT: It's the same reason they make actuarial students etc. take honours level 1st year maths. Not because they need to know double integrals, or the formal definition of a limit, or a Taylor series, which are all pretty important if you're going to do maths or physics at more than bog-standard level, it's because to do calc they need to be razor sharp at algebraic and functional manipulations as a requisite. Doing calc makes them so, not because they actually need to know the calc itself.

Hell, I first learned to deal with PDEs, ODEs, multivariate calc and all that fun stuff in my physics classes, long before my calculus classes got there.

SenorToenails wrote:

JohnG@lt wrote:

That sucks man. What interest rate did you end up with? My brothers loans came from Sallie Mae.

Yea, mine are through sallie mae too--and they are variable.  I'd have to look up whatever it is today, but it's not too high right now since prime is in the tank (they are <9%, I think).  The part that hurt was the interest gathering on 4 years of loans when prime was high--like 12-13% APR on those fuckers.  I'll pay them off, but it just hurts to look at it!  Luckily I never approached the 'home I'll never own' status on student loan amounts...I just think of it as the luxury sedan I can't drive.  lol

SenorToenails wrote:

JohnG@lt wrote:

SenorToenails wrote:

Hell, I first learned to deal with PDEs, ODEs, multivariate calc and all that fun stuff in my physics classes, long before my calculus classes got there.

I took calc concurrently with chem so by the time I got to physics it was pretty neck and neck. It really helped me in both courses.

I tested out of intro mechanics, so I jumped right into second year physics as a freshman.  It worked...but it was really fucking hard at some points, since it assumed quite a bit of knowledge that I hadn't learned yet.  It was a blessing in disguise though...getting just a single class ahead made it so I could get the higher level classes done a year earlier and pick up a second degree in the 4th year of college. 

JohnG@lt wrote:

That's pretty clutch. I'll bet it helped being a semester ahead when it came time to register too. I always took the path of least resistance when it came time to register and I used to watch these monkeys spending days, and I mean days, trying to shoehorn classes in just so they could stay on the recommended course path every semester.

Spark wrote:

I'm doing the same thing with EM right now, got so sick of the 1st year stuff that I just decided to go for the real deal a la http://studyat.anu.edu.au/courses/PHYS2016;details.html, it's actually been a lot of fun. So much so that my big regret thus far was not having gone straight for the 2nd year QM course in the first semester.

Spark wrote:

SenorToenails wrote:

JohnG@lt wrote:

That's pretty clutch. I'll bet it helped being a semester ahead when it came time to register too. I always took the path of least resistance when it came time to register and I used to watch these monkeys spending days, and I mean days, trying to shoehorn classes in just so they could stay on the recommended course path every semester.

I had the whole thing planned out my first semester sophomore year.  I had to overload a few semesters...and I still had time for courses that I would enjoy that weren't math or science related.  That made registration very, very easy for me, as long as the classes weren't overlapping time slots.  That was rare though.

Were you able to skip courses at all?

JohnG@lt wrote:

I switched to EE as my major in the middle of my junior year, so because I was a semester off, it made registering a breeze.