In reply to John.

Hi John,
I couldn’t agree more with your statement that Griffith is just a business selling degrees. I have been a staff and student here and while my experience as a student wasn’t terrible, I left because I couldn’t tolerate the way I saw Griffith staff treating students AND fellow staff members behind the scenes during COVID 19. Students with genuine complaints about the drop in quality of their education were completely dismissed or treated with absolute contempt. The way staff were treated back in 2020 when they were handing out involuntary redundancies was an absolute joke. Staff of 20 years or more told blatantly that their careers were over and to pack their things without so much as a farewell send off. The university treats people horribly and then quickly tries to sweep it under the rug. They publish on their website that they are an inclusive and fair university who treat staff and students with respect. They are a money hungry business who have 0 respect or ethical standards.

In reply to Amy.

Griffith is the worst, here is why

First of all on PG 49: Employee related expenses decreased by $9.5 million (1.4 per cent) to a total of $665.3 million, a result of lower staff FTE.

Here is the nutshell of the company — or maybe you can call it a university.

From what I can see, staff are being cut to save budget, and the remaining people are expected to take on more work. At the same time, there appears to be spending on new tools or systems that don’t always seem necessary.

Honestly, it’s a masterclass in how to look impressive on paper while making life harder for everyone else.

But hey — on paper, the department has “saved money” because of innovation.

You almost have to admire the confidence.

By the way, the university is reportedly in loss for around $11M again.

Note: This comment has been amended by AI to remove potentially defamatory content while preserving the original wording as closely as possible.

I feel the title of my comment says it all. Go and have a walk around QUT Gardens Point/Kelvin Grove campus and UQ Saint Lucia and then go compare to Griffith, Nathan. I have studied at Griffith and QUT and have found the level of customer service offered by QUT to be far superior to that of Griffith who tend to take a ‘go and do it yourself’ approach to their students. For a university who claim to champion diversity and equity, there is a huge discrepancy between values and how they actually treat their students. I was a high achieving student who needed minimal support and was treated with tolerance by griffith staff, however friends I had who were struggling were treated like inconveniences. At QUT the vibe is welcoming and inclusive. If I don’t enrol on the expected date, I get a friendly reminder phone call. All students are treated with respect and patience regardless of academic achievement. It’s just a less toxic, more inspiring and supportive environment. I have heard similar things from my friends who go to UQ. I regret wasting time and money doing my first 2 trimesters of Griffith and learned the hard way why the drop out rates there are so high.

In reply to Private and Confidential.

Worked in the Finance Service Delivery team, where the person in charge somehow ended up leading “innovation” despite apparently knowing nothing about IT—Power Query, Claudie, M-code, DAX, you name it. How a professional who knows nothing ends up running an innovation team is forever beyond my understanding.

Most of our time was spent on one-on-one “training” sessions designed to kill time rather than foster any actual innovation.

D.S. promoted someone who calculates outcomes in Word and can’t even insert a formula to handle large datasets. Anyone who witnessed this, including the CFO who ran away her self a year ago, would approve she’s been throwing everybody under the bus.

In reply to Private and Confidential.

Griffith University fails to provide adequate scholarships or financial support, leaving some students in extremely difficult situations, including homelessness. Support services are minimal and unhelpful, making it very challenging for students to navigate academic and personal issues.

Based on my experience, I would not recommend studying at Griffith University—or at Australian universities in general—if you expect proper financial assistance, support, or fair treatment.

I previously made a review on this website, with the title ‘Griffith ranks top 2% in the world, and in some disciplines is in top 0.1%, for a reason.’ which has received the most interactions (100+ reactions).

That review was 5 stars, I would like to now update it to a 1 star, and explain why.

I graduated one of the top 5 hardest degrees you can study at Griffith before COVID happened. I was one of the few graduates to get a job straight away (in my field), the excitement I had in succeeding enough to even get a job in the field, made me so happy that a 5 star review was inevitable, I also was quite young back then. I was 19 when I completed my final exam and only just turned 20 by graduation,

I am now older and more mature, married, children on the way and have a very different perspective on study and education. Since that review I have also completed a masters degree at Griffith as well, and I’ve been working in my field for over 6 years now, with a very competitive salary.

Here is the update and realisations:

1. Lowered education quality in favor of student retention $$
2. Job market not aligned to education
3. Vibe check fail
4. HECS

1. The problem:
The University’s financial position off the back of COVID, resulted in the sharpest decline of education quality you can imagine. I followed my degree and friends in academia closely for about 4-5 years after graduating, and what were once 80 hour assignments in notoriously difficult courses, suddenly became 10 hour hand-holding assessments for the SOLE purpose of MONEY. Griffith could not afford to lose students, who were already facing extreme financial pressure from cost of living crisis, so the decision was made to pass almost everyone on everything, bar extremely low-effort students who don’t care enough to try at all.

1. How it impacts you:
In 3 years, you will learn less than you would have in 3 months of self-learning on YouTube. The amount of hand-holding, dumb assessments, ‘collaboration’ and lowered marking standards… why pay $30,000 + for it? University used to be the ONLY place you’d gain that ‘university-level knowledge’. Some of the hardest courses I took which almost wiped me out mentally, made me a strong xxxxxx in my field (I can’t say what i studied). I don’t think these courses exist anymore.

2. The job market, its *. You’re not going to get a job without luck. You can make some luck by preparing a nice resume, actually knowing some of the content of what field you’re in, but it still requires luck. To make this luck harder than ever to attain, Griffith’s POOR quality of education means you’re by default behind the market in terms of other applicant’s experience, knowledge and understanding of your field. I am not joking, I had slides from 1999 for 12 weeks straight in one of my 3rd year courses. I doubt they’ve updated them since. Griffith is jumping on trendy fields and coming up with degrees left right and centre, and it sounds good on paper, but its RUBBISH in reality since they RECYCLE old course content and add a week’s worth of slides for the ‘new’ developments of the past decade. In my degree in particular, they should have been teaching about xxxxx which came out in 2014, sometime soon after 2014, but they still don’t teach it. Shocker 80% of the job market in my field requires expert knowledge of xxxxx which has been around over 10 years now.

2. How it impacts you
Studying YouTube videos which are recent (last 2 years) give you actual RELEVANT study. Its free and you will not waste 12 weeks learning 25 year old content which has been replaced 8 times since in new iterations. Of the 3 years of study you will do (some do god forbid 5), you will waste 2.5 of them. Not by your choice, but by Griffith’s FAILURE to keep up to date. The truth is you will struggle to find a job with or without Griffith, and you’d expect that $30,000 and 3 years later, with Griffith would make it a lot easier to get the job. But it doesn’t. I understand some fields like Medicine you have to study no matter what, or Mechanical Engineering for example, but many fields you don’t have to. Better to have a crap job for 3 years that you hate, but you get hands-on experience and maybe $160k total over the 3 years before tax, than to be $30k in debt, 0 experience and educational knowledge that’s outdated and not current.

3. Vibe check fail. I have a child coming, I already know that now in 2025/2026 I would not send my 17 year old child to Griffith, I know for a fact by 2050 I would not send my child to Griffith. The fact that they accept virtually anyone for money, due to their poor financial position and lowered entry requirements, means a lot of sleezy, genuinely bad people come into Griffith. The obvious motivation is xxx and partying. You will not believe what the demographic looks like during O-week on Griffith nowadays. Bunch of horny 17 year olds and their counterpart the 25+ year olds looking to prey on them. I don’t know what the xxxx happened to education but this is what we are now as a society. There’s still good people at university, of course. Many of them in fact. But look at who hangs out in the public areas, look at the demographics of the first year courses. Mullets everywhere. Short skirts everywhere. This is not what you would expect out of higher education. I spotted signs of this disease (the vibe check of the place) when I was studying, but now its deeply rooted and embedded across the university. There is a place for all this stuff, it is Surfers Paradise and Burleigh Heads. It should NOT be a university campus, a university campus is where people are ‘meant’ to be furthering their lives.

3. How it impacts you
Depending on how social you are, this might impact you really positively, for the 3 years you might survive enough to graduate because you’re too busy drinking every other weekend and hooking up. So in the end it still negatively impacts you.
For the majority of people actually looking to study and meet like minded people.. good luck..
If you are a parent reading this, know that your child may get their mind poisoned by the lowest class people. Drugs, alcohol, sex, drama, the whole lot. You would not believe how hard the students who are studying to become Doctors, party. You might believe it but I will emphasize it anyway just how horrible the demographics are for first year’s bachelor of business, and similar types.
Tip for you parents out there, half these people studying aren’t there for the education. They’re there for xxx primarily. Don’t believe me? Go look how the girls dress.

4. HECS…. Why the hell would you study a double degree? A 5 year degree? Do you even understand what $50,000 in debt looks like? You will never pay it off on a standard salary repayment because guess what, the indexation rate (the interest you pay on the loan), is higher than your repayments!!!!!! $30k becomes $40k after a few years. At one point I was repaying my HECS at 8% rate due to my high salary, and believe me you don’t want to know what it’s like losing $500 a month because.. well.. ‘study loan’. I hardly got away with a $30k degree loan. For my masters, I paid it off outright (under $8,000). I knew the suffering for years after would not be worth it.

4. How it impacts you
The indexation rate will keep you in debt forever. And I really mean it. The education isn’t worth it at Griffith even if it were free. But ok if you want to be a Dr or an Engineer, you need it, I get it. Just be prepared to always be in debt.

Let me give you a piece of financial advise. Do NOT let your employer know you have a HECS debt. Pay your HECS debt fortnightly, yourself, exactly what you owe them. Because guess what, when you get indexed on June 1st (interest applied), your last 12 months of employer HECS contributions, get taxed too!!!! Double tax. Just pay it yourself via ATO portal and avoid that stupid unecessary additional $500 a year fee.

In reply to Lionel Hutz.

LOL. have you worked there before ?