In reply to Karen.

Hi Karen, I was saddened to read your post. Unfortunately this “We will fail you on your final subject” threat is very common in the Teaching and Early Childcare degrees. It is not limited to UNE bottom of the barrel as they are when it comes to any form of competency and decency. I have heard the same from Charles Sturt who threatened me – Albury is filled with young devastated people whose careers have been destroyed because of toxic self important people like this. It is why there should be an effective Ombudsman and a serious review of this whole sector. No-one should have the right to cut down someone’s career like this. They get away with this and have done so for decades because there is simply no-one defending students. I would say that my UNE degrees have given me absolutely zero benefit in terms of employment. In fact they have been a serious liability and I didn’t put their name on my resumes. I can only hope you went into any other employment sector – because education is a complete scam from top to bottom. No other sector invites the media and the public to degrade and abuse their employees. Parliament noted that teaching degrees have a low completion rate – they assumed it was the students. I am guessing the glaring numbers of completed (bar one subject) degrees not awarded was not brought to their attention. You are a winner because I know you will continue to succeed in whatever you do. Those shameless dirt bags will remain exactly that – and they know who they are.

I loved studying at UNE! I completed my Biomedical Science degree as an external student, but I attended intensive sessions several times a year for lab work and stayed in the dorms on campus.

I believe many negative reviews come from students who failed. Some complain about group assignments with students from non-English-speaking backgrounds or about lecturers whose English was difficult to understand. As someone who is not a native English speaker but has completed three degrees in Australia and now works in healthcare, I have a different perspective.

In my experience, Australian students were often lazier, had weaker English skills, and lacked academic discipline. I once had to email a unit coordinator to show the substandard work a group member submitted—poor grammar, vocabulary, spelling, no adherence to academic writing rules, and no proper referencing. Meanwhile, I was studying 8–10 hours a day, 3–4 days a week. As soon as the units opened on Moodle (or whatever the platform was called back in 2016), I planned out my entire term. My assignments were written weeks in advance, then polished and proofread multiple times. I graduated with a GPA of 6.73/7, earning mostly High Distinctions, with a few Distinctions here and there.

The teachers were great overall. I think many students fail to recognise that university is not high school—lecturers are not there to hold your hand and push you through. At least in Australia, they don’t deliberately try to fail you. You are responsible for your own learning, time management, and self-discipline.

I enrolled in the MA several years ago. It took me over a year to get my previous postgrad courses recognised and given as credit which totally messed up my subject enrolments for a year. When I finally got my subjects sorted out the uni kept changing the subjects required to be completed to get the MA. One minute a subject was available and I’d enrol in it and the next minute it was no longer available, and I’d have to enrol in another subject. But because all of my electives were granted as credit from previous postgrad studies I would then have to wait for another core subject to become available. As only certain subjects would be available in certain years it prolonged my course and has taken me an extra 2 years to get where I am. Currently I have one subject to go, a research topic. But now there is nobody in the faculty available to supervise a research topic. Just getting one of the faculty to take on a small research supervisor job so that I can get the 6 units and finish this awful masters degree is impossible. I’ve spent 4 years and thousands of dollars and now nobody at the uni is available to supervise my pissy little 8 thousand word research subject so I’m stuck. Can’t graduate until a supervisor says they will supervise my research subject. And I’ve made it clear to the faculty that I will do ANYTHING as a research topic, I just want to get the 6 units and get this horrible masters degree done……but nope, no supervisors available. So after 4 years and thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours work I can’t see any way to finish my Masters. Am I angry…?? You bet I am.