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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Caitlin Cassidy Education reporter

‘Teaching to an empty hall’: is the changing face of universities eroding standards of learning?

Students outside the sandstone buildings of the university of Melbourne
Students at the University of Melbourne, one of the ‘sandstone’ institutions where student life is still based on campus, says Prof Chi Baik. Photograph: James Ross/AAP

It’s easy to picture a university campus. The manicured lawns packed with students reading books in the sun, the commanding academic in a bustling lecture hall, the cheap beer at the student pub after class, debate getting livelier after each glass. We imagine it as the site of multiple awakenings – political, sexual, philosophical, intellectual.

But this cliched experience, if it ever existed, has become a thing of the past. With class attendance often not compulsory, academics now speak to empty rows of seats in massive, echoey lecture halls. Students watch their classes later online at a convenient time, if they get around to it.

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