Out with the Old, In with the New James Greenbriar
Peruse the 2021 UWA handbook and you will quickly become aware of major changes to the University undergraduate degree structure. No longer are we greeted by an undergraduate structure of five specific Bachelor degrees and one concurrent diploma option. Instead, we see a substantial departure from the post2012 established precedent. The University has opted to expand undergraduate offerings with the addition of seven new Bachelor programs, fourteen Combined Bachelor and Master’s (CBM) degrees, twenty-seven new major sequence variants, and thirty-six minors. Whether these changes will result in increased student satisfaction, better employment outcomes for graduates, a stop to haemorrhaging of future students, or a reduction of UWA’s $70 million structural deficit is yet to be seen; however, it will certainly be interesting to see the outcomes of these changes. These significant changes to undergraduate degrees at UWA primarily arose out of an increasing awareness of incoming student preferences for ‘job-ready skills’. Communicating to University staff in late 2020, Vice-Chancellor Amit Chakma recognised the limitations of generalist 10
undergraduate degrees which, he said, resulted in UWA being outcompeted by other universities with “more straightforward offerings”. He said such broad undergraduate degrees resulted in UWA losing a considerable share of the state’s post-secondary students. The roots of UWA’s 2012-2020 undergraduate degree structure lie in changes made between 2008 and 2012 at the University. Following a two-year-long internal University review – which was summarised in the Education for Tomorrow’s World report – the UWA Senate approved the Future Framework in 2008. The most important element of this report was the recommendation that UWA follow the University of Melbourne in introducing a streamlined undergraduate degree structure – dubbed the “Melbourne Model”, which it adopted in 2012. This model is a standardised academic structure that operates broad three-year undergraduate courses which are followed by more specific and job-directed two-year postgraduate programs. At UWA, this meant the twenty-seven Bachelor degree variants were reduced to only five, resulting in many degrees – including the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS), and Bachelor of Laws (LLB) – moved to postgraduate alternatives.
‘Read Library’?! What’s next? ‘Sports Oval’???
