I mean, if it was the Daily Mail, I would have more doubts, but when it's The Guardian deciding to run a series on this issue:
Australian universities accused of awarding degrees to students with no grasp of ‘basic’ English
I do pay attention.
Mind you, I also don't have any doubt that Universities can harbour right wingers on staff who may well exaggerate this problem. (I wouldn't be surprised, for example, if UQ's pro-Trumper James Allen was one of the anonymous academics for the article. But then again, he's in the law school, and I expect that not too many non English speaking overseas students pick that as their subject.)
I think all of us suspect that there are cases of overseas students unfairly sailing through to a degree with very little useful english by relying on the myriad ways that technology (and capitalism) can help. But the question is how often it happens and how seriously the universities treat the issue.
No comments:
Post a Comment