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Alma no matter: university choice barely impacts grad salaries
You know a paper is almost certainly ethically clean when it undermines its affiliated institutions' business models.
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Having worked at two Go8 universities (mentioned in this article) and a high performing non-Go8, my perspective is that the Go8 are no where near as innovative in their teaching practices as non-Go8, and care a lot less about outcomes for undergraduate students. Many of them still adhere to the “sink or swim” mentality of education (throw you in a see if you survive). I would also argue that they do not have “more qualified staff”. A PhD is NOT a teaching qualification, and a high quality/volume research output says absolutely NOTHING about a University’s ability to teach and educate to a high standard.
Having worked at 2 G08 and 3 non-G08 universities over a 24 year period, I would say there is NO difference whatever in the expertise of the staff. What is the basis of this claim? That is a most disingenuous myth generated by G08 institutions to over-inflate their value in the eyes of students. The academic employment market is intensely competitive and poorly qualified staff do not cut it at all anywhere.
I would say though that there is a difference in the level of research support provided to the academics, with more generally given in the G08 universities, as well as theses institutions enjoying a greater automatic privilege in ARC funding applications.
This can result in staff in non-G08 universities being denied workload for research, and their research careers languishing as a consequence. I have also seen in these institutions workload policies that make academics with low-moderate research productivity lose their research workload altogether and get lumped with most of the teaching in instead. This can produce a situation in which students largely come into contact with academics who are not active researchers, fueling the myth that non-G08 universities have less qualified staff.
G08 universties also seem more likely to hire overseas applicants, contributing to the academic unemployment problem among Australian PhD gradutates.