The Zero Room

One must be careful not to read too much into RUN press releases. In reality it is not the case that more than negligible amounts of research take place at SCU; still less so at the Coffs Harbour campus. This is what one would expect from a commercial vocational training college which, by historical accident, is allowed to use the word "university" in its name. SCU graduates can manage a hotel bar, or pour a mean espresso, but are not expected to be able to think creatively or independently. It's too much to ask of the "less academically-prepared students" which constitute SCU's target market. Plagued by one of the countries worst student retention rates, SCU works hard to develop courses that will not challenge the barely-literate, in order to get the full three years worth of student fees from them.

Until last year it was at least theoretically possible to pursue post-graduate research at SCU, by offsetting graduate student fees with casual teaching work. This practice was terminated by a round of cost-cutting which now sees the majority of undergraduate students studying via distance education, either formally or as notionally internal students receiving "converged delivery"; i.e. distance education for which you can sit in a classroom and enjoy on a larger screen.

It is true that research takes place at the Marine Science Centre, but not by recent marine science graduates from the Coffs campus. Marine science degrees are still available at Lismore, for the moment.

Service Desk
Thu 26/02/2015 12:29 PM
To: All-Students;

Dear Students,

As part of our subscription to the Microsoft Office 365 platform, Southern Cross University is pleased to announce that all current students now have free access to Microsoft Office on your personal devices.

… in order to give access to your personal devices to the NSA and ASIO.

In the campus IT induction spiel I went through in 2013, I was delighted by the witless IT drone who warned us to conduct all uni communication via our official student email, rather than something shonky and insecure like Hotmail. He was apparently oblivious to the fact that - as the university email system was Outlook.com, which is Microsoft's rebranding of Hotmail (which they purchased in 1997), and just a month or so earlier a Snowden leak informed us that Microsoft had given the NSA a back door to Outlook.com even before it was officially launched - our official SCU email service is as shonky and insecure as they come.

Dissolute Edwardian aristocrat Vita Sackville-West proclaimed "I detest democracy. I hate la populace. I wish education had never been introduced." She felt that all but an oligopolistic elite should be "as well fed and well housed as dairy cows - but no more thinking than that."

This sentiment has been behind every higher education reform in Australia since 1987, and is why pseudo-universities such as Southern Cross University operate as remedial high schools and professional colleges, where desperate and vulnerable young people are conned into paying to acquire the skills that they will use in the service of those who (like Abbott and Pyne) went to private schools and elite sandstone universities.

There are no "precious elite students" at SCU. There are no non-vocational 3 year courses offered at SCU. The "new universities" of the late 80s and early 90s specialise in granting qualifications for relatively low-paying jobs which often previously required no qualifications. It's a scam that sucks up money from those who can least afford it, and provides a dull, docile labour force for Abbott's bunyip aristocracy.

Gosh. I'm glad the Coffs Advocate took the time to paraphrase this press release from the office of the NSW Valuer-General, Mr. Simon Gilkes.

"Si", or "the Gilkester", as he's known outside public service office hours, has a reputation for producing pretty racy prose. Many a seasoned quasi-journalist has fainted dead away before even beginning to copy and paste from one of his executive summaries.

Without the calming influence of an irrelevant file photo and gentle introductory paragraph, such incendiary phrases as "slight decrease", "generally remained steady", and "moderate increase" could whip the populous into such a frenzy that they might take up torches and pitchforks to march on the Coffs town hall, only to discover we haven't got one.