The idea that education needs to be ‘funded’, or needs to ‘break even’ like a business, or a commercial activity, is disgusting in the extreme for anyone who actually values _learning_.

So you might have more students which attracts more government funding, but you will not therefore get better teaching. In fact, given the pressures on the commodity suppliers to supply that commodity (rather than something that cannot be measured properly, such as a well-rounded well-educated community), isn’t it more likely that undergrads will be attracted to those places where it is easier and quicker to pass, i.e get their piece of paper? This means that no matter how poorly they perform, it will be much better financially and temporally to pass them anyway.
And certainly, even Steven Pinker (perish the thought! the man appears a charlatan to me, as most celebrities do) will find it very difficult indeed to *teach* 500 students.
What? Does anyone making claims about how removing the cap on how many students a university can take will make that university more competitive in the end, that it will lead to better teaching due to competition, etc – do these people actually work in a university?
Do people imagine that university lecturers just swan into a room, hold forth, then go back to their rooms to read?
Who then, prepares the lectures, material, powerpoint extravaganzas? Who finds the tutors to teach the classes the institution is too lousy to employ full time lecturers to take?
Who does the marking?
Oh, Wait – maybe computers! Yes, instead of reading long, poorly expressed essays written by students who know they are going to pass anyway, and attempting to give them corrective and constructive feedback, why not just implement multiple choice?
That will save time, and it will obviate the need to explain why someone might fail – Hey, don’t ask me, I’m only a tutor (aka the hired help) paid to walk about in a room of more than 50 students – I do not know why you failed. Perhaps because no-one had the time to spend discussing these things with you.
And do not forget mein leibchins – a BA means nothing anymore, because everyone has one and everyone knows they are not worth anything thereby. So do not expect it will equip you for a job, or make you a better candidate for one.
Oh, and also, do not forget that your tutors have done no research in the field either. This means that they really will not know what they are talking about.
It’s a really great future for Australian education we are talking about here. We are set to be a global laughing stock. Oh, apart from in the boardrooms where money, not learning is the measure of a ‘man’.