RMIT 'dumbed down' foreigner degrees

[Don Dresden]

I'm sure we'll be seeing George Brown and his world wide consortium of busy bodies (i.e., Contreras and Gollin) speaking out about this embarrassing international scandal....  Don't worry, I won't hold my breath waiting.

Degrees at RMIT 'dumbed down' for foreign students

Quote:By Keith Moor From: Herald Sun June 10, 2010 1:35AM

FOREIGN students are cheating and getting special treatment to ensure they get their degrees, according to evidence gathered in a secret investigation by the Ombudsman.

Victorian universities chasing a bigger slice of Australia's $17 billion a year foreign students industry have also been accused of pressuring staff to "dumb down" courses.

Some international students who failed tests at Royal Melbourne Institite of Technology were allowed to keep sitting the same exams until they passed, the Ombudsman's investigators allegedly found.

RMIT's 26,000 international students bring in almost $204 million a year to the university.

An RMIT whistleblower sparked the Ombudsman's investigation early this year. Investigators have found evidence suggesting:

- A teacher allowed students to cheat in aerospace and aviation exams.

- At least one Middle Eastern student suspected of cheating spent months in a detention centre while intelligence agencies checked his background.

- An international student graduated from RMIT despite turning up drunk, missing lectures, failing exams, abusing staff and students, and sparking sex assault accusations.

The university, and the individuals accused of wrongdoing, will be able to respond to the allegations in the Ombudsman's draft report before the final report was tabled in State Parliament.

RMIT Vice-Chancellor Margaret Gardner said the Whistleblowers Protection Act prevented her from commenting on the allegations until after the report is tabled.

She said she would be happy to answer questions when she was legally able to do so.

An RMIT teacher, who asked not to be named, said some staff were concerned foreign students were getting preferential treatment. "RMIT is falling over backwards to make sure these fee-paying international students don't fail," he said.

"A big slice of RMIT's income is generated by international students and they don't want to jeopardise it."

Leading Monash University researcher Bob Birrell claimed some international students who got degrees didn't have enough English to to get a job in Australia in their chosen fields.

Dr Birrell said he couldn't comment on the Ombudsman's report as he was not aware of its contents.

But he said competition between Victorian universities was so fierce that evidence suggested some were cutting corners as they desperately pursued the lucrative international student dollar.

"In order to deal with the students who were being recruited, they had to dumb down the curriculum," he said.

Investigators from the Ombudsman's office are believed to have discovered the cheating during an investigation into other damaging claims against RMIT.

They found evidence suggesting a long-serving teacher handed out an exam paper to a Middle Eastern aerospace student several days before the exam.

The student allegedly allowed other Middle Eastern students to use the exam paper to cheat.

Telephone records of the teacher and several aerospace students allegedly reveal late-night contact in the days before a test on the stress on aeroplane components.

[ham]

Quote:- An international student graduated from RMIT despite turning up drunk, missing lectures, failing exams, abusing staff and students, and sparking sex assault accusations.

An RMIT teacher, who asked not to be named, said some staff were concerned foreign students were getting preferential treatment. "RMIT is falling over backwards to make sure these fee-paying international students don't fail," he said.

"A big slice of RMIT's income is generated by international students and they don't want to jeopardise it."

Leading Monash University researcher Bob Birrell claimed some international students who got degrees didn't have enough English to to get a job in Australia in their chosen fields.


They found evidence suggesting a long-serving teacher handed out an exam paper to a Middle Eastern aerospace student several days before the exam.

The student allegedly allowed other Middle Eastern students to use the exam paper to cheat.

Telephone records of the teacher and several aerospace students allegedly reveal late-night contact in the days before a test on the stress on aeroplane components.

So much for third worlders being that smart, eh?
That happened regularly at my B&M university...when I had problems, they'd shrug their shoulders and say it was my problem...when the colored or turbaned student came along, it was THEIR problem to find a solution.
One professor explicitly commented he had to let the Pakistani incompetent student off the hook hoping he's get lost by himself...but he did not want any discussion with deans about 'racism on campus'...

And the so-called war on terror?
Please...many postgraduate departments look like no-fly lists full of colored people, Muslims and so forth...in one case at one big UK university, you had 50% Iranians...is that the bad country they are supposed to nuke to abide AIPAC recommendations?

I said that already: the west thought about exporting its sham ideals and just educated the next generation of revolutionaries and activists...at the taxpayer's expenses.

[Armando Ramos]

Herald Sun Wrote:Some international students who failed tests at Royal Melbourne Institite of Technology were allowed to keep sitting the same exams until they passed, the Ombudsman's investigators allegedly found. ...

Leading Monash University researcher Bob Birrell claimed some international students who got degrees didn't have enough English to to get a job in Australia in their chosen fields.

That is shocking, especially considering how little English it apparently takes to get a job at the Herald Sun.

[RespectableGent]

Corruption exist at all levels of academia.

This is why no one wants laws regulating what a college can and can't do, or to put penalties upon educators when academic corruption is found. The president of these major universities know that they are every bit as sleezy and corrupt as a "write me an essay" degree mill.

[pgauci]

Margaret Gardner has a long history of corruption and is very well connected with the Australian Labor Party.

In a way I'm possibly indirectly responsible for her move to RMT. She ran a whisteblower out of their job at the University of Queensland - he refused to keep quiet over an embezzlement coverup - and drove him to a nervous breakdown. And then she ran me out of my job when I refused to date a student - because my supervisor had twice instructed me to put up with unwanted attention and then immediately instructed me to apologise when the female student I refused to date made a false accusation of sexual harassment against me - a gay man - AFTER she explicitly threatened me in writing (via email) for refusing to date her. And no-one would even tell me what I'd been accused of.

So instead of protecting me from harassment from my stalker - who turned out to have been helping herself to my Centrelink records (she worked there) and to have been convicted for attempting to strangle her ex-boyfriend - I was run out of my job.

Except I fought back as much as I could. I couldn't get past the corruption but I think HREOC's involvement and the following legal proceedings at least made the University of Queensland uncomfortable about having her on staff.

FYI, Margaret is very handy with a shredder. Key documents have a curious habit of "going missing" when she's involved. She's also very adept at pulling political strings. Making this kind of problem disappear is precisely what Gardner excels at.

[Yancy Derringer]

pgauci Wrote:…the female student I refused to date made a false accusation of sexual harassment against me - a gay man - AFTER she explicitly threatened me in writing (via email) for refusing to date her.

Feel free to send your surplus poontang our way, I’m sure we can solve her problem.

pgauci Wrote:…my stalker - who turned out to have been …convicted for attempting to strangle her ex-boyfriend.

Yikes! On second thought, better send her to DD and DI.  If she likes to strangle fags she’ll have better pickings there—people who actually enjoy that sort of thing.