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Re your item about struggling students: it’s not exactly anything new. I dropped out in 1979, as my parents couldn’t afford to help me out, as they were recovering from the economic ravages and subsequent recession of the Whitlam era, and my brother was in the same situation, being well into a law degree. We both went into full time work (I’d worked part-time until then to cover costs, and lived like a hermit). I was going to return and finish my degree, but found I was enjoying what I was doing, and earning more than I ever would have had I qualified; since then I’ve obtained a qualification that earns me a lot more than I would make otherwise, and joining the workforce introduced some reality to my life and also saved me from wasting more time and effort on a useless humanities degree, which would have rendered me either unemployable or destined for a life of low-paid drudgery in academia or the public service.
It’s called market reality, and why should tertiary students be exempt from it? They’re already heavily subsidised by taxpayers, who recieve little if any benefit in return; we employ several students in our company, a couple of which manage full-time study with work, and have a pretty good time. Anyone who can’t juggle such responsibility at this stage of their life probably is wasting their time (and our money)studying.
(BTW- both my brothers worked full time and completed LLBs. I finished my BA in my own time in areas I was interested in, and have since finished some postgrad studies online. It’s not that difficult, if you have the ability; there’s a lot of people at university who probably shouldn’t be there in the first place, but the institutions need the numbers to maximise funding. Might be worthwhile to ask the VCs why they take inferior undergraduates and offer non courses to cater to same, for the sole purpose of swiping as much commonwealth funding as they can).