This morning’s papers ran a lot of pre-launch publicity for the Melbourne Model, the University of Melbourne’s new approach to higher education that was officially launched today and will be phased in from 2008.

Over time, the number of undergraduate degrees will drop to six: Arts, Science, Environments, Commerce, Music and Biomedicine. Most professional courses will be taught in graduate schools, with a dozen of these new Masters-level courses starting in 2008, and more to follow in subsequent years.

I’ve said little about this on the blog, as part of a general effort to keep separate and conflict-of-interest-free my roles as an employee of the University of Melbourne and as a higher education commentator. I’ll keep avoiding public discussion of the merits and demerits of the changes (though of course I think that there should be more choice in Australian higher education, with the market rather than the Commonwealth deciding what is offered). Plenty of other people have been offering their views on the substance of the changes at Melbourne. But there are a couple of contextual policy points worth making.
Continue reading “The Melbourne Model” →