Professor fails US student over Australia being a Country

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According to the student;

As part of her final class, for which she paid almost $1,000, students were required to complete a project outline last month in which they would compare a social norm in the US and another country.

For her "norm" Arnold picked social media use, and for her country she chose Australia.

But when Arnold got her grade back on Feb. 1, she was shocked to see her professor (who has a PhD in philosophy) had failed her. Why? Because, according to the teacher, "Australia is a continent; not a country."

It's an open and shut case...the professor is an idiot and they should re-mark the girl's assignment...

It's like she picked "Africa".

Did she include New Guineans in her project?

A lot of people consider New Guinea to be part of the Australian continent because they are separated by a shallow sea over continental shelf.

In other words, New Guinea is part of the continent of Australia, but not the country of Australia. That's the difference.

Perhaps we could do a poll to see how many Americans think that Africa is a country.
That would likely yield some amusing results.

The professor warned Arnold to “make sure the date, the facts, and the information you provide in your report is about Australia the country and not Australia the continent.”
https://www.chronicle.com/article/South ... e-U/242509

Better kick Australia out of the UN then, make it give back all the medals it wins at the Olympics, and kick it out of ANZUS? Too bloody right mate! Sheez, it's enough to make someone carry on like a pork chop!! ! (Just as well that one thing Aussies have in great abundance is a sense of humour, and may it ever be so).

They're both wrong, Australia is an island.

Only one? Australia has quite a few islands! (More than eight thousand)

Southern New Hampshire University has apologized to Ashley, replaced the instructor (sacked him) & are reimbursing her tuition for the course

The problem with giving her money back is that she will lose a whole semester having to re-enrol in the unit again!! why don't they re-mark her original assignment? Ashley should insist...

You must have missed the bit where he got sacked for incompetence by the university

English biologist Alfred Wallace divided the fauna/flora of Papua New Guinea (PNG) into Australasia and Indonesia using his famous "Wallace line" however that's where the similarity ends

PNG was a German colony and after Germans were kicked out the Indonesians illegally occupied west papua while east papua became a protectorate of Australia. However since 1975 PNG has been an independent country.

I didn't know that, very interesting.

If true then the professor should be reprimanded.

Australia is both continent, and a country.

I cant even figure out how the professor could be confused.

If it were the other way around "Australia is a country, not a continent" you could surmise that the professor had "Australia" confused with "Austria". Though even then he would be more like Beavis and Butthead than like a qualified professor.


Reminds me of British Protoleum recent corporate pronouncement about how they have now repented from the days when that infamous oil spill happened in the Gulf.

They talked about how responsible they are now, and blah blah, and "we do everything we can protect wildlife, especially the walrus population of the Gulf of Mexico."

The walrus population of the Gulf of Mexico?

There have been no walruses living anywhere along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida inclusive in the million years since some point in the last Ice Age.

Rachel Maddow made fun of BP for that announcement, but actually...I think actually understand the mistake.

Laughable as the idea of walruses (associated with the arctic) living near the beaches of Panama City is, I think I see where the mistake came from.

I suspect that BP has walruses confused with manatees. Manatees are big blubbery sea mammals that do live in the subtropical waters of Florida, and protecting them IS a big issue. And manatees do kinda look like walruses sans the tusks. So even that verbal blunder is more understandable than this Australia thing.

Not exactly. You have the Germans confused with the Dutch.

New Guinea is itself a huge landmass almost continental sized itself (second biggest island in the world after Greenland). It has long been divided politically east and west into two halves.

The eastern Half of New Guinea was a German colony. But that colony got turned over to the British Empire as part of the spoils of victory after the First World War.

The western half of New Guinea was part of the "Dutch East Indies" (along with Sumatra, Celebes, Borneo, Bali, Java, and thousands of other of the "Spice Islands" to the west.

Both halves were occupied by the Japanese in WWII.

The Japs got kicked out.

Then in the post war era the Dutch East Indies became the independent nation of Indonesia. But the Dutch held onto to their western half of New Guinea. You guys can go free, but you don't rightfully own this particular piece of land- so were keeping it! Indonesia didn't agree, and then illegally seized western New Guinea and then booted the Dutch out.

Meanwhile Australia became an independent nation, and had already had the job of looking after the eastern half of New Guinea. So Austalia inherited the territory from Britain. later still the formerly Australian, formerly British, formerly German, eastern half of New Guinea was granted independence.

So now...the western half of the island is part of Indonesia, and the eastern half is its own nation (probably with some connection to the British commonwealth of nations still though).

Continental Australia includes: Australia, Papua New Guinea, Papua and West Papua, East Timor, and part of Indonesia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_(continent)

Wikipedia says "continental Australia" is four countries.

How do locals distinguish? Just saying "Australia" could mean one country or really four countries.

I can see a problem, the student might have cited statistics from the four countries, and the assignment was to use statistics from only one country.

The USA has countless little islands too. BFD

"Australia proper" (whats usually thought of as "Australia"- both the continent and the nationstate) has only one big island. That's Tasmania. As a big as a typical state of the USA off the southeast coast of the main continent of Australia.

But if you wanna go crazy and go with LNH's definition of Australia then New Guinea and other islands of Indonesia (like Timor) can be lumped with the continent (but not with the political nation) of "Australia" apparently. That probably because all of those landmasses are on the same geological "plate" as Australia according to modern Plate Tectonic Theory. As Australia drifts north, New Guinea and the rest drift north with it.

Ironically in prewar school geography textbooks Australia was described as "the world largest island".

After WWII most school textbooks the world over decribed Australia as "the world's smallest continent".

The rise in status of the landmass from island to continent coincided with the rise in political status of the country from being a prewar colony of the British Empire to being the independent nation it is now.

Probably not a total coincidence.