American Reacts to AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES | How are they different??
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- Опубликовано: 26 авг 2024
- Thank you for watching me, a humble American, react to AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITY vs. AMERICAN COLLEGE.
This was a fun and interesting video. Really not what I expected! Thanks for subscribing!
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My experience in Australian Universities is that they expect that their students to complete not only the class work and attend them but also do a lot of self-led study out of class. I completed engineering, computing, and project management uni courses. It seems, from what she’s saying, is that she is doing an arts degree. She wouldn’t survive science or engineering courses.
On the back of a dunny door just below the toilet paper at an engineering company that I worked at, which also employed people with arts degrees, someone had written ‘Arts degrees, please take one’.
On the back of my dunny door I had Latin verbs in all their forms and glory!
Arts graduate here. I used to read those same types of messages on the dunny doors. BTW we had a mix of essays and exams. No stuffing around the way she's describing!
@@FionaEm Yes, it gets tiring listening to them denigrate the workload of something they know nothing about.
Well said ^^
I attended uni in my 40's and did a triple-major Arts degree (with a bunch of minors). I attended uni 2-3 times a week and had a more-or-less fulltime job. My job afforded me the space to do uni stuff there and so I could squeeze in more study, research and writing over the week. It took me 5 years to complete.
One of my majors was the Indo-Malay language. This took up an inordinate amount of study time for the credit points. Every day you had to learn more and more vocab, do exercises, projects, read texts etc etc.
Another was philosophy. You might only do 2-3 essays a semester but the research and reading workload was enormous.
My marks were exclusively and evenly divided between Distinctions and High Distinctions.
So, Mr Engineer, do you really want to make such dumb-ass comments again?
BTW, do you want to know how many out-of-work engineers I've met in my life?
And exactly what does a science degree get you? A high school teacher's position?
And what does a philosophy degree get you? You NEVER lose an argument. I mean, N_E_V_E_R.
In my 4 years of University in Australia I never once had my timetable line up so I could only go 1 or 2 days, usually it was more like 3 to 4 days a week. A full load would be 4 subjects, usually a 2 hour lecture, and a tutorial or workshop per subject over the week. There would also be course readings required, the idea was between face to face time, readings time and course work/assignments work you would spend roughly 10 hours a week per subject. Most university students in Australia also will have a part time job working 20+ hours a week or more.
My weeks were pretty similar, except my favourite semester (2nd or 3rd year of B. Comm.), where I managed to line up all my classes on one day - 8am to 9.30pm - 6 day weekend, woo!
We'd have 4 subjects per semester, each subject was 3 hrs - either 2hrs lecture + 1hr tutorial, or just a 3hr seminar. Since I was only doing a Bach. Commerce, most of the economics, marketing and maths subjects were just a repeat of highschool, so lectures were pointless :)
Don't know where she went to uni... in sciences you have lectures and labs and tutorials
Second year of a science degree I had 21 contact hours per week which included lectures, tutes, and labs - geology lab was 3 hours, chem was 4. Then we had maths assignments, lab write ups, field trip reports (oh, yeah, field trips some weekends), further reading, etc. We were expected to do at least as many hours private work as contact hours. I lived in college (colleges are residential buildings for students) and saw the arts students who drank and smoked pot all night, almost never went to class, wrote one essay per class each term, and passed. Many arts degrees simply mean you can spew word salad without having a clue what you're talking about. The exceptions were languages and, to some extent, archaeology and HPS.
@@Ausecko1
I did part time study with full time work. I attended more lectures than this woman
Totally different from when I was at Uni. I was at Uni four days a week (usually 23-25 hours). I think you need to think about the fact she said that she is currently in her fifth year of a three year degree, so she may have been doing it part-time? Sounds to me that there is a lot more rote learning or memorising involved in US and more critical thinking required in Australia.
Lol the attendance requirements are obviously highly variable depending on what degree you are doing. In my (Australian) science degree I was doing 5 full days a week for the first year, getting a couple of afternoons off in 2nd year, and just marginally more time off in the final year.
Same here. She's definitely not doing a science degree.
Yeah I have friends who studied science and law that had waaay more contact hours than me. So glad I studied Communications! I was surprised by how few contact hours in comparison to secondary school, but very quickly got used to it and took full advantage of the additional time.
@@derekboland1460 didn't she say she had a pathology class?
@@godamid4889 don't know, maybe but doing a pathology class is completely different to doing a science degree. With a degree there is a minimum of one 3 to four hour lab for each subject eg usually 3 or 4 three/four hour labs a week on top of tutorials and lectures.
@@derekboland1460 possibly. Given the pandemic they are probably taking anyone who can use a microscope.
As an Australian who has attended a few universities in Australia, this is all too weird 😵💫 Nothing is true. Maybe she attended Aus Uni part time?? It would be interesting to know which Aus Uni she attended 😂
Im from Melbourne and pretty much every uni here is like this here, full time you have 4 classes tutorials are usually 1 or 2 hours long, lectures about the same. So very normal to have full hours of like 8-16 hours. Lectures we would go to for like the first week or two and then it drops to like 10 kids going out of 100. Now they're almost all online and we just skim through on x2 speed getting the basic jist of it.
Sounds like she’s doing Arts. It’s a long time since I was at uni but Arts was definitely the bludge course then and it sounds like it still is now. I was doing a science course and had 40 contact hours. Definitely not a bludge.
I don't know about USA as I'm Australian. I did a business course full time 4 subjects per semester, total calss time was 12 - 13 hrs a week. What she said about ozzie uni is pretty accurate.
This is the thing. Which one did she go to? That's the question. I had an American student staying with me a few years ago and she had classes every day. She told me the work was harder.
Wouldn't a lot of this depend on the class a person is taking? I didn't go to Uni, I did TAFE about 25 years ago so I have no idea lol.
She’s talking about an Arts degree which is a reading degree, therefore far fewer face to face hours at uni in Australia. Studying science, law, education, medicine, etc it’s a completely different experience due to expectations. Yes we are graded: High distinction, Distinction, Credit, Pass etc.
My University experience in Australia was definitely not like hers. I studied nursing and had a mandatory attendance rate of 80% or we would fail the subject. I was at uni 5 days per week generally between 8 am up until 9pm some days, depending on my schedule. We had to do huge amounts of reading, present case studies (which are assessable and form part of the grade) each week, and participate in skill development labs. We also had 2 written essays, plus a final exam for the semester. If you failed the exam, you failed the unit, regardless of how well you did on the assessments and weekly tutorials. On top of that we had to also do clinical placement, and still complete assignments due during that period, plus do placement specific assessments.
The grading the University I attended went from 1 to 7, with 1 a fail and 7 equivalent to a high distinction or an A. So our GPAs go up to 7.
The word counts in assignments is true. We also used turnitin, which is for electronic assignment submission and also checks for plagiarism. We generally had either until 5 pm or midnight on the due date to have the assignment submitted.
I've studied at three Australian universities in three different states, over 5 degrees. I majored in English and we always had exams, so I have no idea where she studied! The limited amount of time she described in classes in Australia does not reflect my experience nor does the smaller workload. I always had readings etc, from class to class. Perhaps it's a change related to covid. I last studied in 2017 so I can't compare that. We still use A,B, C etc in schools.
Maybe she just never did the readings
Can confirm that it hasn't changed. She said she had a pathology class, I think. Scary.
@@godamid4889 oh God, that is worrying 😬
"We still use A,B,C etc in schools" yes in some of the backward schools that haven't found the 20th century yet, my recommendation to any parent, if your school is using A-F marking scale in the 21st century, try to move your kids to another school, this is the first sign that the school is not keeping up, I wasn't able to so we had to provide extra tuition to our kids ourselves, luckily we did my son's year 5 teacher thought "-2-5" was -3. Seriously teachers should be required to pass the subject before teaching it.
@@godamid4889 That would be scary! But no, she was doing mythology.
I just tune in to hear you say "Happy Arvo"
Takeaways:
I did nursing.
I had one day at uni that was 12 hours. I had a two hour class at 8am, followed by 2 tutorials an hour each that took me to midday. Then a 4 hour break until my arvo session from 4pm, which consisted of two 2 hour lectures back to back on opposite sides of the campus.
One thing that I noticed with our American students, they didn't have the general background in high school to prep them for an Australian university.
It seems like American college students are failed on stupid things. Plus, our class bell curve is shifted to reflect the average.
Her assessment of the pass rate is dependent upon the course. I did a bachelor of Information Technology at university here in Australia to pass i needed 80% bare minimum. So she is maybe right for a bachelor of Arts (idk) but not for what i did. Every unit i did had a final exam that was worth enough for me to fail the unit if i did not pass well and did not get good marks for the assessment projects. So her experience with Australian University is very subjective because she is doing a relatively easy bachelor. Full time i was attending university 4 to 5 days a week, depending on my unit load for that semester.
Gday. Same, eh
I had the same sort of schedule.
I did a law degree and a commerce degree at UNE and some law subjects required a 85% pass mark and that was 4 days per week at UNE full time. Big difference is that I did mine externally but they said each subject requires 7 hours of reading the material each week and it was hard. At the start of my law degree we were told 80% will fail or drop out.
The difficulty of an Australian university exam should be guided by the Australian Qualifications Framework. This can be managed the control of action verbs directing assessment in the test instrument. An exam can be set to make achieving 50% difficult. Undergrad courses should be more than understanding the textbook and exercises using a template (that’s a college diploma). Folk aspiring to management need to be independent thinkers. Commercialisation of Australian Universities can find Markers under pressure to pass marginal students by the Dean.
100%! Your course determines the work. I’m doing a Bach of communication design, and don’t get me wrong, I’m doing it online so it’s in my own time, but if I don’t study everyday things won’t be that great. It’s also dependent on what courses are available for the semester. My assignments are labour intensive and take hours and hours to complete. I can only imagine what it would be like if I was studying to be a doctor or some sort of science based degree
I think there's a difference between "busy" work and critical thinking 🤔. The few US students I met were struggling to get credits here, when they were used to distinctions in the US. When it came to grading my PhD the Australian professor was toughest, the UK 🇬🇧 marker was in the middle and the US marker the most favourable. Meant that I only needed to make revisions to the satisfaction of my university, not having a re-mark to graduate.
When I was an undergrad in the early 2000's a lot of Americans attended the University of Sydney, the one I was at. (This was true post 9-11 because they, quite rightly, saw Oz was safe + the US buck bought them a lot more here.) They couldn't understand how no one received high 90's for their essay mark. They said they regularly received that mark back home. To even get an essay marked 90 or above is an extremely rare event here.
Surprised by the reference to Jane Eyre. We studied that in yr 9 or 10 at high school. Btw lightning severed the tree which is a metaphor for their relationship.
US college is sounding like just another four years of high school!
Gday. It totally depends on the degree. For a science degree I had lectures/tutes every morning and 4x3h pracs in the arvos. Also colleges here are usually referred to as the residential living place, not the educational facility. Ir can also be an independent specialised training place. Cheers
For attendance it depends on the bachelor - STEM fields require a lot of actual attendance, while bachelor of commerce and art often have online courses.
Depending on the uni you can also schedule your classes and make your own timetable to fit everything into a couple days. Australian uni encourages self-study and they treat you as an adult. Classes may be only 3-4 contact hours, but they generally expect a minimum of 10-15 hours study per subject per week.
No idea what she was studying in Australia but class contact hours was 25 hours. The online requirement and readings required to be prepared for contact hours was about the same plus assignment time. I think what she is telling you is misleading
I agree. I’ve studied at Uni and I work in the Uni sector, my kids are studying Engineering and Teaching - all of our experiences are very different to hers.
I've done parts of both a science degree and humanities/arts degree at Uni and they are very different! Humanities/arts have a lot less contact hours as she's describing here, but science you have labs and more lectures etc for each topic. A big plus though was almost all of the lectures for both were also recorded and put online so technically you didn't have to attend in person, the only attendance recorded were for the tutorials, labs, workshops etc. Definitely made it easier to shift your schedule around and get majority of lectures on one or two days so you didn't have to go in as much :)
Here in my state in Australia a college is a joint primary and secondary private school.
This entire video is bollocks. Firstly, she's speaking for all universities, when they're all different. She's speaking for all courses, which are sooooo different. If she got away with attending lectures/tutorials once or twice a week she must have been doing an Arts degree.
Gday. Totally agree. Arts degree students were the biggest partyers at my Uni.
To be fair, I'm doing a 'difficult' degree in Australia at the moment and most of my lectures are pre-recorded and tutorials are online. So I end up only going on campus max two or three times a week (usually one tbh). Covid definitely changed things.
Yeah attendance is definitely a big deal here… I went to RMIT and halfway through the year we had 2 people that were failing based on attendance record.
I agree- to be fair I was at uni like 15 years ago, but many of her points don’t li e up with my experience.🤷♀️
She must have been studying a BA at a basic uni.
An arts degree at a decent uni in Australia is a whole other level than what she is describing.
I think the difference is that our Universities want students to think for themselves(with independent research) instead of learning things “by wrote” or from a textbook. We have that in our senior high school education and are then given the opportunity to fly in terms of our own interpretation, analysis and critical thinking.
*rote
And, agree. We (Australia) rely much more on self directed learning.
She’s describing basically doing the absolute minimum necessary to skate through. You’d never pass, if you actually did it for all your classes. At my uni 50% was called a “Conceded Pass” and you were only allowed a couple of those in your entire course, if you expect to graduate.
You’re expected to put in the same number of hours, outside class as you do in it, some classes have lectures, tutorials and prac as well, so it mounts up. At Australian Unis all the weekly lectures are done in one session. Lectures, you can on catch up from home, if necessary, but tutorials are mandatory. Also, you’re expected to have done the ALL reading before the lecture and not after.
Some Unis do have exams, even in the social sciences. I had one for every unit in undergrad. Open book exam sound easy but it’s only helpful if you’ve actually done the reading.
Also 2,500 word assignments is only in first year by 3rd year and post grad you’ll be handing in 4000-5000 words without breaking a sweat, plus doing weekly in class presentations and group assignments.
Year 5 doing a 3 year degree … that explains why she says she is finding it hard to do so much in a week in the States. We don’t know whether she had to redo something or whether she is a part time student in Australia because she is working also, but I doubt she failed at anything because she personally achieved 70-90% on her units. I worked with a young woman who had wanted to study Law but didn’t have a high enough High School pass score to get a University place (you have to have a nearly perfect score to get into Law and Medicine because of the limited places) so she had done her nursing degree and then used the credits to enable her to study Law. She was working full time and doing her Law degree … incredibly hard worker and determined to achieve her Law degree but it was a long road for her.
Admittedly I attended Uni in the 90s and I understand some things have changed, but I attended classes and tutorials every day. Had plenty of essays and exams each semester including for English. Plus I had to read all the assigned books.
I was horrified to discover they now do exams on weekends and in the evenings which just seems to be a bit much.
I got my degrees in mid 2006 and it was the same. Looks like things have gotten much easier. My exams were usually on the weekend or at night but I was part time and did one degree externally.
Studying an "Arts" degree explains it all.
BA = Bachelor of Attendance
Would you care to elaborate?
Gday. Yep. Even my BA friends would joke about that.
@@theimperfectscrapper5313 I don't know of anybody who has studied Engineering or Science in OZ that could only attend class for 1 or 2 days and pass. She mentions classes with 2 contact hours; that never happens in Science/Engineering. 3hrs is a minimum: lectures 2hr with a 1hr tutorial. More commonly from my experience during my BSc was: lectures 2hr; practicals 1-2hrs and a 1hr tutorial. Contact hours ranged between 12 to 18 per week for a 4 course semester. Constant class clashes made it impossible to streamline a timetable.
@bob wrong! I have an arts degree and work in an excellent career which pays very well!
Definitely depends on the degree or uni you're at in Aus or attending in the US. I have pretty much completely the opposite to this gal.
Aus uni - Griffith Uni
US uni - Illinois State Uni
I definitely agree contact hours/class expectations in the US are much more depending and super inflexible. In Aus I am also usually only at uni 2-3 days a week (mostly 2 days) but I never had classes mandated. So you could show up to absolutely zero classes as long as you passed your assessments. Whereas my US uni had a 'two classes missed' maximum. Also found the classes in the US were so short and had multiple so you had to be available everyday which was a huge pain for me.
Also found the US classes to be HUGELY easier and way easier to pass hence why I think their pass rate was 70%. I got questions in a third year class that I was getting in first year classes in Aus, also got half points + points for making jokes? It was wild. In Aus I averaged about 85% in the US I averaged about 98%. Often got 100% papers because they would have so many smaller assessments that were a few pages long and didn't really have any substance.
Also agree about the paper thing, and that was 4 years ago so the fact that it still happens - weird.
Addressing a couple of things that came up:
1) Even when I was at uni in 2000-2004 there were people that could get away with 1-2 days of face-to-face. The difference that is probably lost is that you have a lot more choice in tutorials to select when you have those times, rather than mandatory class times. I'm a scientist and while I had usually a minimum of 20 hours face time, there were (up until 3rd year when the classes are smaller) usually between 2 and 4 choices of lab times. The lecturers would also bunch their lectures to give them time to do their own research on specific days. They also didn't (usually) schedule stuff for Friday mornings because Bar Night was Thursday nights.
2) Pass marks are different between universities, schools, and even lecturers. Also what you have to do in order to get marks can be adjusted to make direct comparison a little harder. For example one lecturer had 6 assignments (one for each core topic) and to get a Distinction you had to get that or higher in every assignment, getting a single credit (even if by 1 mark) meant the highest you could get was a Credit (and no, I'm still not bitter about that 20 years later. Not. At. All.)
3) The amount of assessments can vary wildly. Some units I had 2 exams and a single assignment/essay whereas for others it was a lab report each week. And even the format of those could vary. For one final year subject the reports were really just supposed to be answers to the questions posed, but when the lecturer changed (due to a heart attack suffered by the usual lecturer) the lab reports suddenly had to be full-on reports because one student complained that that's what they had done and they got a lower mark than the rest of us that "didn't put in as much effort".
Overall the experience can be different across the spectrum. There's a lot of leeway that Australian universities have in setting their standards and how they execute their programs, and so they can set themselves up for different student experiences. Some are also a lot more akin to the Junior Colleges in the US in how they deliver programs. At the end of the day, it should be about how do you ensure someone has the skills, knowledge, and practical training for the field they are entering, rather than following a regimented program of learning.
My uni had a 7 point scale. High Distinction, Distinction, Credit, High Pass, Low Pass, High Fail, Low Fail..... however you were only allowed to get 2 low passes (so 2 subjects rated overall as a low pass) throughout the entire 4 years and then they were counted after that as High Fails.
at my university, the final exam was 70-75% and you had to get over 50% on that to pass Plus pass each assignment. may sound easy to you try doing an engineering assignment.
in the exam you need 2 scientific calculators to break the formula in half as it is 2 big for one calc. there is smoke coming off pen nibs
Sounds like she was in a low-effort Arts Degree. It’s really not representative of most university experiences in Australia. My wife is currently studying law and the workload is intensive with weekly assessments, plus major assignments and exams. There are hundreds of pages of weekly readings that are quizzed in class.
When I went to university in the 1990’s (studying town planning) 20-30 contact hours was expected and you could be on campus most days including days from 8AM to 9pm. Her course sounds like a doddle.
Both colleges and universities can issue bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees. However, in Australia, there is a big difference between colleges and universities. There are 43 universities in Australia that award bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees.
Sounds like she is doing an arts degree (Medieval, American Lit, Creative writing, Victorian studies, and Mythology, Can anyone tell me the career this is setting you up for?) which can have a lower direct interaction requirement. I'm sure you talk to someone doing an engineering, Science, Medicine or Computer Science degree and they will tell you I believe a full time load is 20 - 30 hours correct me if I am wrong
Maybe writing fantasy romances?
@@jacquelenebennett4028 Ignoring Gerorge R.R. Martins wishes and finishing game of Thrones after he dies which is the only way the series gets finished
When I went to an Australian university in the 90s it was very much about being an independent learner. Yes you didn't have many set hours, often a lecture and tutorial or prac for each subject each week, but you were expected to put in a significant amount of study or library time on top of that. On average for every hour spent in class, students were expected to spend approximately 2-3 hours studying. In some subjects, it would be significantly more.
Attendance wasn't taken for lectures but tutorial attendance and participation was part of your grade in some subjects. There were often only 1 or 2 assessments per subject per term, an exam or assignment or both.
As my own child is nearing uni age, it seems it's still about being an independent learner, which some students really struggle with. You get out, only what you put in. You have to be self motivated.
The exams for English...I don't know about uni, but in high school, with external exams now for senior, they have to write their essay under exam conditions. So if they're studying Shakespeare, they will be given 3 essay questions to prepare, but only 2 will be offered as options during the exam. They have one sheet, with a set word limit (very limited) where they pre write their quotes from the text, which is all they will have available to them during the exam. This is handed in a few days before the exam, and if they fail to, they have no quotes available to them.
Edit: In QLD (at least at my kid's school) the senior English exam is a completely blind essay written on the Shakespearean play being studied, Macbeth in yr 11 and Hamlet in yr 12. No quote sheets and the question is only seen during the exam. That was the yr 10 exam above.
(Edit: Just realized, that I forgot to mention I’m an Australian, who studied in Australia.)
I think it must be course specific, because my experience at Uni was very different to her’s. It was actually a lot more similar to Ryan’s. I did engineering and it was minimum 40hrs a week. I got assessments every week from each of my classes. What was interesting is that for most of my classes you could pass with only a 50% however there were a few classes where they rose the criteria and made it so you could only pass with a 60% or more.
Every class I ever had except for maybe two, had exams. As an engineering student you can’t escape them.
I did a Commerce degree while my mates did Engineering, GIS and other degrees. Engineering was definitely a 9-5 job, GIS was maybe 25-30hours per week, my Commerce degree was at most 12 hours per week (if you attended all of the lectures, which only international students did). I don't know how much private study the engineers were doing, but I'd assume quite a bit given the maths and science learning required... as opposed to an Arts or Commerce degree, which was just however much reading you wanted to do to write the essays.
That's right, we don't call university college
The thing about only two days at Uni, when I went through Uni, I was there only two and a half days a week but they were longer days, I managed to choose classes that were one after another for most of the days with a break somewhere in between, sometimes there from 8am-6pm, but then i had rest of the week to do assessment and work
It is interesting to listen and compare! Thanks for nice sharing Ryan! Have a great week!
I really enjoyed hearing your opinions
I studied Engineering in the ‘90s and we had about 40 contact hours. That’s 40 hours of lectures and tutorials. Plus all of the work you are expected to do at home. She’s right about the assignments though. We had one major assignment plus an exam each semester which counted for the lion’s share of your marks. I can’t remember if we required to get a higher mark than “pass” for any particular subject. A, B, C grading is a primary (elementary) school thing here. At high school it is percentages.
Good reaction video. Keep it up!
Yep, 34-40 for Chem eng when I did it, depending on whether you did the business subjects. That wasn't the tutorials, you were expected to do those in your own time. For every contact hour you are expected to do 4 hours study as well.
Was hectic. But I still managed to get to B.A.S.I.C. once a month.
A note on Pass at 50% versus Pass at 70%. If both exams are well structured, the same proportion of participants should exceed the pass mark. The difference is that with the 70% exam it is more difficult to distinguish the exceptional students from the less adept. In short, I would expect an exam with a 70% pass mark to be easier than one with a 50% pass mark.
When I was studying a BA, another student who was studying a double degree BA and Teaching said to me - “oh, my teaching degree is so much more difficult than my BA which is super easy”. My response was - “so you get straight As in your BA then”. She replied “well no, I don’t”. I then replied “well I get straight As, I have 3 Deans Honours Awards, an International Honours Award and was invited to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship- and trust me, it wasn’t easy”.
Also - I work in the Uni sector, my kids are studying engineering and teaching at the moment. All of our experiences are very different to what she is saying. And yes, my degree was graded As through to Fs.
I spent a lot of time when dealing with American exchange students preparing letters to explain where 63%, for instance, fell on the distribution of marks for the class (about the same percentile as about 80% US) - and that the mark depends on how hard or open-ended the questions are and how mean the marker (or the rubric)
This. I had an American student staying with me and she got Cs here, where she was used to As in the US.
yeah, in my experience (from working at an Aussie Uni, studying at an Aussie Uni and talking to US exchange students in years gone by) that Australian Uni's mark a lot harsher than US uni's (colleges) in that a 50-60% at an Aussie Uni would equivalent to a 70-80% mark in the USA. (generally anyway, not like it is hard and fast, ive seen a wide mix of marking harshness vs ease anyway)
Yes, of course we get A's, B's etc... "straight A's" or "Big Fat F's" XD and all that jazz but it's a high school thing! Not generally used in university terminology.
Also, the fact that she's doing an Arts Degree says it all really! So there's your answer for her lack of contact hours/days of the week she was required to attend. That is not the case for other degrees! lol, why do you think people make jokes about Bachelor of Arts/Arts Degrees being easy!?
Hi Ryan: Canada here. From the comments, I suspect this person, may be a bit of an outlier in her description of Australian Universities. I have attended both Canadian and American universities and they are pretty similar. My undergraduate experience was similar to your description of your time at university. However, my time in my graduate program was actually quite similar to this young woman’s experience as far as class schedule time was concerned. Of course, there was a tremendous amount of work preparing for those classes. The thinking is that by the time one is in a graduate program you do not need a lot of direction and supervision but need time to do your own research.
The terms college and university is a bit muddied in the United States. College seems to refer to any post secondary learning period. I am not sure about Australia, but in Canada, college refers to any non university post secondary institution offering complete programs in various trades and skills that are not part of the university offerings. Universities tend to be institutions that focus mainly on learnings that are often classed as academic pursuits, universities being the domain of academia. The most prominent programs focus on the pure sciences, social sciences, communication skills and professions such as medical, legal and education. The institutions in the United States that are called universities are basically universities and would not be called colleges in Canada.
PS: We have our share of stupid in Canada too!!( But fortunately we also have universal health care.)
look at the subjects she is reciting. this is a "i don't want to have to work yet", student. she is not studying a real degree.
"College" has a few meaning in Australia. None of which are university, exactly. Universities provide (almost) all Bachelor degree and above qualifications, we don't have any(?)/many "research & higher degree only" or "teaching only" universities so go from Bachelors to PhD although not all will offer PhDs in every field.
The main is "technical college" or "TAFE" in most states. These may offer bachelor degrees on occasion, but are mostly focussed on qualification below degree level and were originally non-academic subjects. Often they provided the school part of apprenticeships - car mechanics, plumbing, and so on. Added to this are things like childcare. Even retail has traineeships with an in-school component that may be run through TAFE, but more often private training providers.
Confusingly some universities have a TAFE component, and others changed from being an "Institute of Technology" (a sort of hybrid) to a full university.
Some universities seem to call some departments within a faculty a "college". This will normally apply to something which could be aligned to a TAFE style field, or another non-academic field such as performing arts.
The second refers to "secondary college". In Tasmania, the ACT, and rural parts of some states (occasional city areas have trialled it and may still be in use) years 11 and 12 are separate from high school (in the public systems). These used to operate a bit more like unis, in that attendance was largely optional - so long as you got the work done, you could pass. This isn't in widesperad use as a term outside that one state and one territory.
Many private high schools call themselves "colleges". I'm not sure if that is supposed to give an air of prestige about the name, or of it refers to having boarding school facilities.
Are there any australians who live close who can give Ryan a face-to-face tutorial on the correct pronunciation of "arvo", cos it's starting to get to me!
Nah, "Happy Arrrvo" is uniquely Ryan. Like no one says that... ever. He should trademark it.
I totally understand. I did comment once, but he can't get too Aussie! lol. Funny how he pronounces the ss in Aussie too.
My only issue is when he says “fair dinkuN” lol
@@mishamelbourne1649 I'm still a fan of the tutor solution
@@mishamelbourne1649 "My only issue is when he says “fair dinkuN” lol"...... why???? who cares how he says it !, as The Gorn says, it's uniquely Ryan, in our multicultural society I have never heard an Australian correcting new Australians, or visitors from other countries, so please don't correct anyone, it is not necessary, It's disrespectful.
It probably depends on the course, type of degree you are going for. My daughter is doing animal studies at TAFE -TAFE is a college not a university. She attends once per week but has assignments once per fortnight (some are short others are longer) They are given a satisfactory or unsatisfactory on them and nothing in-between. If you gain an unsatisfactory you can redo and resubmit. She needs 100% to gain that satisfactory and if you gain two
non-satisfactorily in a row you fail that section and would need to redo them another year. For example nutrition or health &safety. So far she hasn't failed any but she has had to resubmit a couple and as you can imagine this is quite stressful when one assignment can make or fail an entire area.
I don't know what she's talking about. I had classes every day when I was at uni in Australia
My daughter had 6 contact hours. The rest of the time she was doing assignments, not at uni. Whereas I had 39 contact hours when I went to uni.
I only had class a few days per week. 4 classes (the actual class and the tutorial) and that was 2 hours per class and 1 hour per tute. They were normally just 3 hours straight per class and tute.
Its even easier now post covid since almost all lectures are online, so we go even less. I just graduated my last semester and i was at uni 2 days a week for like a total of 9 hours a week lol
Interesting when I was at UTS it was two days worth. Admittedly the days were from 9am to 10pm
I’ve done three degrees at different universities in Australia, one bachelor and two masters. In the courses I’ve done, the core subjects requires grades of 70%, some as high as 80% to progress. Elective subjects require a pass. Elective subjects reduce as you move into specialty areas.
UK system similar to Australian (no surprise there), but self managed study, research and written work is more intense. Lectures and tutorials are to guide you as to how you may decide to approach the topic. What I am getting to is that our systems are based on independent learning and showing independence of thought in one’s approach to the subject.
Cost is 1/3 the price or less & under grad courses are 3 years only & NOT 4 years. I am part of a USA University for my Ph.D studies. 24 subjects for undergrads & 12 subjects for Masters or MBA. We now have the online courses / subjects that can speed up your graduation rate. I studied 5 nights a week at night to get my undergrads & then MBA at night for 2 years back in the olden days before the internet existed.
University is not just about attending classes. You're supposed to do a lot of study and research outside of University attendance and completing assignments is all part of it. Saying you only need 50% is meaningless. A 50% score in a hard exam might be equal to an 80% score in an easy one. Same for assignments. Also, are the results scaled etc? This person isn't making any sense.
A 13 week semester in Australia usually consists of four units, each requiring about 10 hours per week of study, readings, tutorial exercises, including a lecture and a tutorial, plus working on one of usually three assignments due during the semester, and sometimes an exam, depending on the complexity of the assignments. That will get you a pass, but if you want Distinctions or High Distinctions, then more effort needs to be put in.
I attended uni most days however my limited understanding is that some uni classes are mostly online now due to COVID (Australian university). As far as workload, depends on the degree & specific classes. I certainly experienced a decent workload. Interesting that it didn’t cover the cost of university. In Australia, as a citizen, we are not required to pay upfront fees and the fees are paid back over time at a reasonable rate. I know that there have been recent changes and the cost of uni is going up but I am very aware of how lucky we are here in Australia.
I'm a bit older than the woman in this piece, and have done 2 different Arts degrees. For both I usually managed to pack it all into 4 days most semesters. Pass/fail was at 60% for most subjects, determined by several larger pieces of work (and you couldn't switch courses without at least a 70% average passing average)
She is definitely doing her courses in Australia, whatever they may be, part time. Definitely an arts degree. My first degree was a hybrid, first two years full time, final year part time (took me 4 years) for a total of 6. First two years, two full days on campus followed by two full days doing teaching rounds at my assigned technical school. Day 5 was taken up by study, class prep, assignments, etc. It was pretty full on. Note too, that first two years didn’t include any method area training, I already had qualifications in the subject for which I was being prepared to teach. The final year covered advanced topics in my method area which took 3-6 hours of lecture attendance at whatever times I could squeeze it in, usually evenings. Did my two post grad degrees fully part time, one to two evenings a week. Commenced uni in 1981, final graduation in 1993. I’d like to know which uni she attended, sounds pretty cruisy compared to my experience.
I guess everyone’s experience is different. My brother studied in Australia and was struggling to get a credit and found the course really hard. Then he went over to Washington DC and studied and he said he found it much easier and was getting great results.
Even in our TAFE system (what you probably call a trades college) the pass rates are 75% minimum with a full load being done day or night across 5 days. The only time that got changed was in the final semester when Pass, Credit and Distinction came into use for Uni transfer.
I don't know what sort of degree she was working on but in my BVA (admittedly, earned in the early 90s) I had classes 5 days a week. 2 full 8 hour days of my major Sculpture on Monday and Tuesday, 4 hours drawing on Wednesdays, 4 hours of Art History on Thursdays, and 2 extra complementary classes each 2 hours a week (Sociology, Psych, Literature etc). Add to that assignments etc and full time courses during vacations for more specific skills etc, from visiting lecturers. It seems I did more time taking BA classes in my Visual Arts degree than she did in her whole Arts degree.
Gday. Same, eh
Great video, really informative to hear about differences.
The advantage with online submission is that the students have to run the assignment through a plagiarism program prior to submission. Also, the majority of Australian universities offer only two semesters per year whereas one, Bond University, squashes in three semesters per year which is what I believe is the situation for the majority of US Colleges.
As an Australian I've grown up with American TV shows and I've always gotten this vibe that America is a land of professional students. Like a lot of Aussies probably don't do college and university after school, and do courses later in life.
The vibe I get from your shows and culture is that it's more important where you go rather than what you study, and it's frowned upon if you don't go to a college after highschool. Getting the marks, passes, grades.. whatever it is.. seems more important than actually understanding the information. A lot of what I was taught tended to be encouraging self-led study, and Its a skill that I have continued to use my entire life. At least that's how I perceive it
In Australia “college” often refers to the University specific accomodation- so I guess “dorms” would be the American equivalent!?- we do have some educational places called “colleges”, but Universities and Colleges are not the same thing.
I did a science based uni degree in NSW. I was on campus 4 days, I did 4 subjects a semester, and each subject has at lest 3, 5000 to 7500 word essays, and a final exam.
By the way, I have never seen a Macdonald sign named Maccers, it is just a slang Australians use. We do it with names as well such as John would be called Johno and you would be called Ryno.
I’m not too sure which uni in Australia she attended. But honestly, I disagree with her on Australian Uni’s. Can’t comment on the American
College. By the way. University and college are one and the same. However, we don’t call them colleges. Some of our high schools do call themselves a college though. Example Truganina P-9 College is a primary school that goes from Prep (kindergarten) to year 9.
But no uni calls itself a college.
Anyway, she’s away with the fairies or she was super lazy at university.
As a general rule of thumb for us Aussies and the Brits a college is a section of a University rather than the whole thing... King's College at Oxford being both a modern and historical example.
I haven't studied in the US, but as an aussie studying at Uni, I was expected to study 10+ hours per subject with usually 3-4 subjects per term. We had three terms at my uni. We had 1-1.5hours per subject for online tutorial as I was living remote and able to study online. I also had a residential school once a term that could run from 1-2weeks. The best thing is that our uni is pretty cheap as we have a HECS system but also our uni has a cap on how much they can charge. I ended up completing two science degrees with a $43,000 debt. In my second degree, medical sciences, we had a student that travelled from England as it was still far cheaper for her to complete at the international rate plus her travel down here than for her to complete the degree in the UK. Plus it is internationally recognised, and being mostly online, which made it far easier to complete while also working. My degrees did have around 300 hours of unpaid on the job experience.
We had to achieve more than 50% to graduate. Our grading were Fail, Pass, Credit, Distinction and High Distinction rather than a, b, c, d.
We do have colleges, but they're usually private schools and cost a LOT of money to study. I'm unsure if you can complete a degree in our colleges.
Lastly, I love your work and it's currently 2:30am and I am still awake watching this clip 😄👍
I love your reactions dude, I look forward to them. Seeing as you have this Aussie thing going on all the time (yes, I am an Aussie) you should try reacting to some of the talented musicians we have. Your channel will grow through the roof if you started doing that!
I love how you told us how you got away with page count. 😂
So far my daughter had had to miss 2 classes due to Covid and flooding. Both situations completely out of her control. Luckily with the flooding class was canceled since only 5 managed to get to the actual class room. If there is any teacher who would punish students for such things they need to be retrained or even fired. She would have missed a third class but she caught Covid over break so she only missed 1. Unfortunately the teacher had given a big assignment over this break which she was able to get an extension on due to the Covid -but who gives assignments to students going on break?
Assignments are all online. None are done on paper since highschool.
I agree with Jo. My two children went through Uni , both did final exams and would attend classes more than 2-3 days a week. Second if you see a D grade on your results here that usually stands for distinction and would mean a grade of 75-80 percent
The rule of thumb is contact hours x 2-3 for the amount of work, depending on the course.
She is doing an Arts (Humanities) course. For my Science degree, I was at uni 34-36 hours a week (including labs). And was expected to do an equal.amout of study at home.
High school had more contact hours and very little free time.
I completed a bachelor of arts at a college in Australia in 2010. I had classes every week day in a full-time course. Pass was I think 60-70, credit 71-85, distinction 86-95, 95+ high distinction. When I was there, they were working on getting approved for university status. All I know about that is they were preparing to apply when in my first year and they had not got there by the time I left 4 years later. Passing wasn't difficult if you went to most classes and did most assignments. I got a credit for a talk I did on a book I still haven't read. Thank you cliffnotes.
You should do a reaction to the song Straya to the tune Hey Ya.
I've had uni two or three days a week full time but those days were packed like 9am-9pm sometimes but if you have to work it's more ideal no one wants a 2-3hr break between classes. We do have to do more homework as she describes these days due to the new blended learning style especially if you're online however its not graded and not mandatory and I have had chapter quizzes plenty of times. However, I guess it depends on what you study I did health sciences but I rarely went to class unless its a lab/prac you don't have to go and you don't have to give an excuse unless there's a quiz that day or something. Nahhh we get don't get straight As we get straight Ds🤣 (equivalent of a B but yeah). Also we not only have word counts we often have formatting requirements so no messing with the font size/margins/line spacing for us. This has been my experience at an inner city and a regional uni over the course of 10 years studying nursing, nutrition, dietetics, and health promotion.
From the UK. My experience at UK uni is similar with regards to attendance. Very few "required" attendances for lectures etc and if you don't turn up they send you an email asking why and to fill in an online form with your reason. Do it or don't. Nothing happens if your attendance is 0%. You've paid for it. Wasting your own money.
No way a lecturer can lock the door though. Would be a violation of health and safety.
There are a lot of lectures that are online these days. College is more like school, University expects the student to be a responsible adult and apply yourself without supervision. Also, i just completed a Masters degree and each subject required a 70-80% pass. She must be studying soft subjects.
I left high school at the age of sixteen (1976) at the beginning of year 12 the final year of high school in Australia. I got a job as an apprentice auto electrician. To become a qualified tradesman you go through a four year apprenticeship, the general rule is you do three years at TAFE (technical and further education) one day a week then the last year is full time at work. Because I started work after the beginning of TAFE year. I had to start my first year of TAFE in the second year of my apprenticeship. I was at TAFE and the lecturer came in and announced he had an urgent appointment and the days topic was on generators (yes I'm that old). So he pointed at me and announced that I would be running the class, for that morning period. I got through it with quite a few heckles from the crowd. I managed to pass TAFE with a credit grade and bought my first business at the age of Twenty, just before I actually got my tradesman's certificate.
SOOOOO triggered!!! Love your videos. I'v started using them in class time as a treat. This chick has been to some uni that isn't a uni. Probably one of the coastal universities (eyeroll). I am a total academic snob and would say her 50% pass degree ain't worth much and here in Australia, employers look. They want transcripts. I just got a job in the UK. A big part of what sells me is that I have 3 degrees, am working on my PHD and they are all from universities that are the big uni's that people respect. Like, the University of Melbourne and The Conservatorium of Music. We absolutely had a 65% pass rate and that was a conceded pass. Which means they have to review your work and decide if you can pass. Our system is a bit weird in that We have 4-7 being 4=pass 5= credit 6= distinction and 7 = high distinction and tbh I can't recall all my percentages as my undergrad transcript only talks in terms of the number and word e.g. Subject Name Bla - Grade 5 Credit
I absolutely went to uni everyday when I studied FT and it was a requirement. Maybe she is talking about doing classes from home online? Most of our universities offer that now. Aussie universities are diverse but people know the good ones. It is possible standards have slipped at some but the big uni's ... no way. Cheers Ryan!
Like I did in the early 1990s, she is doing a literature degree . . a Bachelor of Arts. It sounds alot like my Medieval & Renaissance literature and Communication, Arts degree (plus I did some French, Japanese, psychology, and Australian literature). It also sounds like little has changed. Most of my subjects were assessed by 2 or 3 essays, and often with tutorial attendance AND participation being worth 5%. Few subjects in literature etc had exams. The large essays were great preparation for those of us who were working toward Masters and Doctoral studies. The low contact hours gave us the TIME to do the Required and the Recommended reading (maybe) - there was always ALOT !! Frankly, it forced us to learn HOW to manage our time and be responsible and accountable for the amount of effort we put in. To me it felt great to no longer be treated like a child and have my mode of learning forced upon me ('spoon feeding' was how my lecturers referred to the High School education method). Some people really blossom using the Australian University type of format because their learning style was SO incompatible with that highly 'controlled' Primary and High School format. When I went to Uni, it was the first time I truly felt like I was being treated as an adult - with all the freedom and accountability that that entails. I could also do some of my subjects at night, when most of the part-time students attended their lectures and tutorials. That gave me more flexibility in my timetable for work or sleep or number of days I physically attended Uni, because it was a 45min drive each way (plus 25mins finding a park! - until I started riding my motorbike to Uni . . THEN parking was right IN the Great Court (centre area) of the buildings my classes were in. Yay!
G'day mate, my daughter did her four-year Bachelor's of Education degree in Brisbane and was in the top 5% of her cohort. She went to Uni 3-4 days a week and did assignments and studied at home for most of the rest of the week. She went to Uni for 26 weeks in the year. The Australian system requires you to do as much work at home as you do at Uni itself. She had a study group that spent many hours on campus each week. The Australian system requires self-discipline and self-motivation and is not an extension of high school regimentation. The system makes it easy to fail.
I attended uUni for a double degree in Early Childhood and Primary Education (incomplete). There was no exams and and no mandatory attendance. As long as you did your assessments and kept your grades up, you were good to go 😂 #straya
Practicum?
I think Aussie uni is less strict because you are 100% adult by the age of 18. She took the lazy route in an Arts degree (I also did one but put maximum effort in). If you’re doing a STEM based degree, expect way more structure.
I certainly didn’t it that easy in my OT degree. In fact it was all quite the opposite of what she is saying. As per most of the comments on here, highly dependent on your chosen course.
As many have already said, "I don't know where in Oz she went to Uni or what she did, but it isn't like that." I did my undergrad (Bachelor's degree) a long time ago now, but I also did an Honours degree, Masters, PhD and I was a uni lecturer and course coordinator. Generally, most degrees are not like how she described it, but an average Bachelor's degree is probably a bit less face-to-face contact time than High School, although the self-directed workload in your own time is usually supposed to be much higher, if you do it all.
At my Uni (The University of Queensland, in Brisbane) full-time enrolment was a minimum of 35 credit points and a maximum of 50. My Bachelor's degree was a total of 380 credit points over four years. A credit point was supposed to be equivalent to one hour per week of work in order to pass. Different courses had different amounts of face-to-face contact, but the total amount of work you would be expected to do for a specific credit point value was the same, and most degrees had a similar total amount of expected 'work'. What counts as 'work' varies from degree to degree.
In my degree, most subjects were worth 10 credit points each, so you would have to do 4-5 subjects per semester in order to finish the degree on time, which is supposedly 40-50 hours of total work per week. Most subjects in my course had 2-4 hours of lectures each, plus 1-6 hours of tutorial / practical sessions per week, so you would generally have around 20 hours or more of face-to-face contact time per week. Some degrees have more contact time than this and some have less.
We also generally had 1-2 smaller assignments (5-10% each) and one larger assignment or project (20-40%) and an exam (sometimes one smaller one in the middle and one big one at the end) per subject per semester, but assessment varied with the type of subject. Some subjects were just one big research project with no formal scheduled contact, but you still had contact with supervisors on an ad hoc basis.
Depending on what subjects you chose each semester, you might be able to arrange your timetable so you had a day or two with no face-to-face contact sessions, but that meant the other days were usually pretty packed. If you had a subject with a practical placement you might be working full-time every day and doing all of your other sessions at night, but not all courses have this. Some subjects also have expeditions, so you might have to be away somewhere, often in holiday breaks, as part of the subject. Whether you were in lectures and tutes, on placement, doing self-directed research projects or doing your own reading at home, the load was supposed to average out to one hour per week of work per credit point value of the subject.
Grading was often done on the 'normal curve' or 'bell curve', not percentages, so if the subject was graded generously and everyone got high marks, you had to get higher marks to pass. If the subject was graded hard and everyone got lower marks, you could still pass with lower marks. It was based on the number of standard deviations you were away from the average grade. That may not be the same anymore and it may be different at other Uni's.
The grading was 'High Distinction' (HD) or a '7' for the Grade Point Average (GPA), 'Distinction' (D) or a '6' for GPA, 'Credit' or a '5', 'Pass' or a '4', 'Marginal Fail' or a '3' where you may be able to do additional assessment (extra credit) to be awarded the credit points for the subject, but you may not be able to use the subject as a prerequisite for entry into another subject, or just 'Fail' with a GPA value of '2' or '1' for your GPA.
There are also subjects that were simply 'Pass' or 'Fail', where you either got the full credit or not. These subjects didn't count towards your GPA. If you failed any subject, you didn't get the credit points from that subject counted towards your degree and the low grade drags your GPA down, which may affect whether you can get into subjects or courses with entry quotas.
In the subject I coordinated, I used criterion-based assessment (CBA), so everyone had a very clear idea of what they had to do to get each grade. As a result, despite having 42 (small) pieces of assessment (mostly 1 page critiques in dot points), almost every student got a HD or 7 because they all did exactly what they had to do to get the highest mark. At our Uni, we talked about getting 'straight 7's' like you talk about 'straight A's'. CBA was unusual at the time, but now, is more common. Most people graded on the 'normal curve'.
What is also more common now is that all lectures and tutorials are done on-line and lectures are recorded like a podcast, so you can view them at any time. This has reduced the face-to-face contact time dramatically, so that may be what it was like for this girl's courses. My girlfriend is doing a Psychology at Swinburne University in Melbourne, Victoria, but she is living in Adelaide, South Australia - in a completely different state. Her degree is completely on-line. She's getting straight HD's so far and she's in her last year (but she is a complete maniac, a mature-aged student, and very driven - I still like her 'though).
One other major difference is that in US 'College' from what I understand, the first two years are more generic, no matter what degree you are doing and full specialisation comes towards the end, whereas in most Oz degrees, the specialisation starts straight away, especially in STEM degrees. Quite often, people graduate from a 4-6 year degree and they've never done anything except for very discipline-specific subjects, so they don't have a very holistic view of the world.
As I mentioned, my Bachelor's degree was a long time ago now, but even though I specialised in Physiology (and Teaching - didn't get any teaching work until much later and at Uni, not schools), I still did Psychology, Sociology, History, Biomechanics, Motor Learning, etc. as core parts of my degree right through to second-year level in every domain, plus a few of them at advanced level. Some of my lecturers had had a 'classical education' and also did arts, literature and spoke Latin.
I still use all of that generic stuff in my job after 30 years and I regret not having the 'classical' stuff aswell. It teaches you to see the world and think in a completely different way. The new graduates I see these days ("the kids these days") are like robots. They can use all the toys but once you step away from the textbook scenarios, they're just like high school kids. Once upon a time Uni's were there to teach you how to think, not what to think. Now, they're like technical colleges doing vocational education. Apologies for the long post.
I did a 3 year Bachelor of Communications degree - I did 4 1-hour tutorials, 4 2 hour lectures, so while I COULD have shoved that into 1-2 days a week it was almost impossible if I wanted to absorb the material. There is a lot of emphasis here on self-study so once you get out of that lecture it's time to revise your work. Then it was time to prepare for the tutorial. Generally I tried to shove both into the same day so I could dedicate a whole day to a subject then move on the next day but that still means 4 days a week. I also did a media studies class in my first year that didn't start until 6pm. It sounds like she did it part-time, which is valid and a lot of people do it especially for some of the Arts degrees, but this does not generally apply.
in australia back in the 1970's and early 1980s australia did have colleges now known as *TAFE*
This explains why the UK doesn't see many Australian students in our universities.
Her Australian Uni experience sounds exactly like mine, as a Bachelor of Arts student. I’ve studied at multiple uni including unimelb (#1 Aus ranked uni) and my experience lines up with hers.
Full time student is 4 units, each unit is generally:
1 hour tutorial & 2 hour lecture or
2 hour seminar
When timetables are announced you quickly put on as many as you can in one day and that means you normally have 2 days at uni. If I have a lecture only on another day I’d never go because you can do it online.
Also with attendance if you miss more than 25% of classes with is normally 3 classes you’ll lose 20% of your grade. Tho, I was terrible in one year of actually attending classes was travelling interstate a lot. I’ve gotten HDs (over 80%) in units where I went to 1 tute. Like she says it’s super easy to talk your way out of. Most of my friends thought I was wild how I did uni but I got better grades.
I feel Aussie unis put the emphasis on individual learning and the professors are guides more than anything. Again, this only fits with a BA. Practical units need more contact hours and have harsher guidelines.
Especially since exams have gotten less common in BA, the summer/end of year holidays are nearly 4 months! I’ve lived with many international students and many say we have a lot more slack and independent but the work itself and grading isn’t easier. Currently living with a Dutch student and she is doing a Masters in International Relations. She has 3 days at uni and generally those days are 3 hours long each, I think one of her days is long
She's doing a BA Bachelor of Arts, aka a "Bugger All".. I don't know from the experience of Australian Universities but from the experience of NZ University, & Aus/NZ are quite similar, the requirements are a lot stricter than she laid out. Perhaps she went to a lower grade University, or she's talking from a Covid Era experience. But considering that Australian Universities are highly reputable, & actually from what I've heard from American students studying in Australia themselves, is that the level of content studied, particularly in sciences, is higher in Australia. IE the content studied is say half a year ahead in difficulty/complexity from what they studied in the US, & its definitely that case with UK being ahead in level of content too. So i don't where this chick got her experience from. Maybe its a BA thing, but i would say for the sciences, medical, engineering etc, the requirements would be much stricter than she lays out. As for the paper thing, yeah that's ridiculous. When i was at Uni in 2007, studying Psychology & Social Work we had to upload our assessments to a portal for programme that checks through a massive database for plagiarism. The assignment is then accessed by lecturers & professors & marked accordingly. No paper needed. I would use paper for my own purposes, for going over drafts & highlighting things to be edited, to get around my own Dyslexia, but all our hand ins were digital. Now days if i was studying to that i would just use the highlighter on my pdf reader. I dare say this chicks experience of Australian university is, if not quite accurate, its definitely not universal.
She is really misrepresenting Aussie unis. I don’t know what course she did in Australia but when I went to uni I had 40 contact hours per week plus reading assignments etc etc… sorry but she just comes off as a whinger!
2nd year physiotherapy student here and I have no clue what she did as that is not what I or my friends who are in other courses have. In physio, we have a 85% attendance rate. I attend classes from Monday to Friday. I had to watch recorded videos and do readings (some were 4-5hrs long) and write notes before lectures, and then we had tutorials to supplement our theory knowledge as well as practical classes (where for classes like our clinical subjects and anatomy we're in the physio rooms or the anatomy lab), and on top of that we have weekly assessed quizzes for most of your subjects so you have to stay on top of your content throughout the semester if you want to do well in your quizzes. This is not to mention the various assignments throughout the semester and then exams towards the end of the semester. If you don't pass your exams for the clinical subjects, you fail the entire class even if you had enough credits to pass. Australian unis I find is very dependent on self-learning. You have to find time to learn - it's really all up to you and your discipline and management skills. The classes here are also a bit more rigorous (compared to America at least - my cousins did Pharmacy and Business and it sounds like the marking scheme is a lot more laid-back there) and it's harder to pass them which is why 50% is the pass rate, and the top score is only getting above 85%. The education system here is: Fail (F) = 85%. Most people in my course get credit and distinctions in my course despite working quite hard if that gives you any understanding of how hard it actually is to get a mark above 85%.
I studied online, so never had to set foot in the University :D But saying that I'm not sure what she was studying, but I worked my arse off. Every day there was things to do, readings, videos, assignments, lecturers online, responding to questions, forums etc.
Australian Uni is 4 units ( full time ) per semester. Each with a Lec and a Tutorial. Tutorial class times are usually 2 - 3 hrs with many Lecs online, especially since Covid. At enrollment time when you pick your classes timetable, you can work it so you could only have to turn up for 2 days but it would be 2 full days. I haven't been that lucky yet. 3 days always seems to be the best i've been able to reduce it to. TAFE which is our government run technical college only goes as high as Diplomas. Your in class 4-5 week full time but typically a Diploma course is only 1-2 years, it use to be 3 years decades ago.
Because I had to travel to the other side of the city, I used to try and make it 2 full days and rest and catch the rest of the week. It was a tough two days especially back to back though.
@@arnitaxavier9446 i know what you mean. i'm on trains for 1 hour and 15 each way. you don't feel like doing any study after those full days
I studied undergraduate medicine at an australian university, and it is definitely more than 2 days a week. In general 4-5 days/week, but some days might be lighter than others. We have multiple lectures, tutorial groups, practicals/labs, anatomy classes, etc... Some people does combined degree with medicine, it must be crazy busy, I don't know how they do it.
in australia,
college = high school/community college
university = bachelors degree -> phd
She discerned all of that in just 3 and a half weeks? How in that time could you learn it is so much harder to pass in USA?
In case no one else has already said so, the reason she said Australian University vs American college, is because over here in Aus, we don't call University, College. High School (grade 7 to 12) is sometimes referred to as "Secondary College". We also don't have middle school. . . or at least, I've never heard of one. We just have primary School, which is grades; prep,1,2,3,4,5&6. High School/Secondary College, is Grades; 7,8,9,10,11&12. And we don't call them "Grades" we call them "Year levels". We also don't use the terms, Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior.
I did a double major in history and English at an Aussie uni. At least 80% of my English courses had exams. The exams mostly required 3 short essays on 3 different texts and centred on major themes not insignificant details.
In Australia, you could literally show up to 2 classes a week and watch the recordings from your bed. Stem has more classes and longer labs but still you only have to attend compulsory things like tests
As an austalian uni student I will agree to disagree with her. I am aware there is a very large difference depending on what course you are completing (sounds like she is doing an English course of some sort)
Typically assignment breakdown is 40 total across 4 practical/labs, 6-8 assignments, 12 quiz and a 60% exam. For an engineering course
50% to pass, however 40% exam grade is also a requirement.
50% of students or more will more often than not fail the exam. If it is more than 50% of students that fail the exam grades will be adjusted so that half of the students score more than or equal to 50% of the exam. After adjustment any students that score below 40% either be allowed to attempt a replacement exam if their exam grade was an outlier or they will have to retake the course.
Participation is not required, however you will fail without it.
I'm not sure which uni she was going to in Aus but, like most of the other commenters, her experience is wildly different from my time at uni. In first year I did 4 courses, each of which had 3 1-hour lectures each week plus one or two 1-hour tutorial each week. The science subjects I did (physics and chemistry) each had a 3-hour lab session each week. In second and third year I was doing 6 courses, but it was only 3 courses per semester as they were half-year courses rather than the full-year courses in first year. The number of in-class hours was the same. In science and maths courses, the final exam was about 50% of the final mark, with assignments and lab work making up the rest, and there were weekly assignments. In humanities courses, there were generally fewer assignments, but they required about the same amount of work per week. As for pass marks, there are (or were when I was at uni in the 80s) different gradings - a mark of 50 - 64 was considered a pass, 65 - 74 was a credit, 75 - 84 was a distinction, and 85+ a high distinction. If you wanted to go on to post-graduate studies, such as a Masters degree or a PhD, you needed to maintain a distinction or high distinction level in the subject you were planning to do post-graduate work in.