A bundle of my mail from New York arrived yesterday - it had been sent in September by courier to Shepparton and returned for some reason (!), and then sent again and once again returned (!!), but has now safely arrived at the Philosophy Department. It includes a letter from the University of Melbourne dated 2 August (!!!) offering me status as an Honorary Lecturer within the Faculty of Arts, associated with the Department of Philosophy.Honored, I'm sure! I thought I was just a somewhat shady Visitor. Whom can I lecture?
Melbourne Uni is actually about to embark on the biggest curricular change in its history, a sort of half-way accommodation with the American model and the Bologna Process making its way through the EU universities. Instead of applying into 3-year degrees in one of a huge number of subjects, effectively choosing their careers as they enter university, students starting in 2008 will enter one of six broader fields - and will get a "liberal arts" education, taking many courses outside that field. If they want, they can then stay on for a more specialized 2-year masters degree; they're assured a place if they've performed well.
I've heard it described lots of ways. (I dare you to brave the lame music and twangy students in their video for future students.) It will be good for students, I'm assured, because it's a more broad-based education, and allows them to make later and more informed choices about careers; it will also allow them to change field as they enter a masters, very difficult under the present system. It will be good for the humanities, I'm told, as more students will be taking courses in the humanities to satisfy the outside-your-major distribution requirement. It will be good for faculty, I'm let know, as they'll be able to teach more upper-level courses - and there'll be more of them.
But not everyone is enthusiastic. How will the broad undergraduate majors be structured with intellectual integrity? Some see the Melbourne Model as a grab for more tuition money for more faculty - students interested in specializing will now have to spend five years getting a general undergraduate degree and a masters, instead of four in a more specialized field culminating in a demanding honors year of research. (Under the present system, strong students are encouraged after their first year to aim for the honors year, effectively turning their remaining 2 + 1 years into a higher level course.)
I'm sure there's much of it I haven't yet understood, but it's exciting to be around as such big changes are bruited - though it might have been more exciting still half a year ago, before the Model was finalized and approved.
Needless to say this brings back endless discussions about curriculum, liberal arts, and the like back home! As you know, I think a liberal arts education is the way to go, not just because it anchors you in a more complete awareness and understanding of the world's richness and complexity (the traditional argument) but because most of the preprofessional stuff we teach will be obselete in a few years. Our students, at least in the US, are looking forward to switching career twice before they retire (if they can afford to retire, but that's another issue), - and not always because they want to.
So by all means give them a good foundation for redefining themselves and learning to learn new things, and some of the wisdom of the past for reflecting on what's happening. They'll need it.
