Major Australian University to remove lectures

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A major Australian university has ditched face-to-face lectures entirely in a move which has reportedly outraged both staff and students.

Adelaide University, which will launch in 2026 as a multimillion-dollar merger between the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia, announced “most students” will no longer attend face-to-face lectures, which will be gradually replaced “by rich digital learning activities”.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/ca ... 5c5bf027e3

Dr Andrew Miller, division secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union’s (Nteu’s) South Australia branch demanded the university reverse the decision, revealing staff are “furious”.

Dr Millier, who claimed the decision was made without the proper involvement of staff, said staff should have their own say in learning outcomes.

“Flexibility [between online and face-to-face] ordinarily works both ways – some learners benefit tremendously from face-to-face learning with a specialist academic present while there are other independent learners that benefit from more remote digital engagement.”

Dr Alison Barnes, the national president of the Nteu, further slammed the “outrageous” move, arguing the shift to an online model adds to the “death of campus life”.

“Having lectured most of my adult life … I think about how many students have approached me before or after lectures to raise academic issues, things they haven’t understood about material or want extra help with,” she told the publication.

Higher tuition and lower standards?

Seems likely.

I think this is a sneaky way ultimately to cut costs in the short term and pave the way for AI to teach kids online in the long term.

I knew eventually someone would try to put together a “higher learning opportunity” using AI to cut out the actual professors. They will make a short term killing with it, but they are cheating the students in the long run. AI is not a reliable source of information, as it includes junk sources in the feed data. These students will think that they are experts in a subject, yet will have very little substance to back it with. It will eventually crash much like a pyramid scheme.

It seems like a sneaky way to convince kids to apply elsewhere.

For now, Adelaide is a top Uni in the south so its not going to impact their enrolments in short term anyway.

Perhaps now. I know people who work in AI and they said its only a matter of time where you integrate machine learning with networking between multiple systems to create super accurate self-learning AI. Concurrently the open Science movement means the days of paywalls for scientific journals are over. this means no human will be able to teach like such a mega-computer so effectively ending the need for teachers.

So Adelaide is jumping ahead of the curve - the model is basically online teaching and human practicals/tutorials/labs/workshops. For example AI can't run a chemistry lab, step students how to build an engine or take apart a computer. So humans will still have jobs in University but only in demonstrating/workshopping ideas.