university sadness

I learnt some interesting news a few days back, it seems Bundoora wants to ruin my dreams, and the dreams of many others.

Bundoora has introduced a two year plan to phase out the philosophy and religion department from the humanities and social science faculty.- yep, my major will cease to exist in less than 24 months. they say it is because no one wants to do an art degree, that the philosophy component is no longer viable ( even though we get just as many first years majoring in RPS as other arts departments.)Its about the components of your degree and wether its compatible with education ( yep, thats right, if your doing an art course your obviously doing it for a dip Ed...) this move is putting Harry Oldmeadow, Rod Blackhirst and Roger Sworder out of jobs ( and suprise, suprise Latrobe suddenly starts offering a redundancy package for 150 employees....oooooh) BUT when these lecturers are gone, or shifted to other learning streams, is the money they are saving going to go back to the humanities department to improve what's left of our stripped arts degree? The answer is probably not, it will be put toward more viable sources, for those students in the big smoke! So it has been stated that this years first years are the last batch that can choose philosophy and religion studies as a major, and if any of us decide they want to do any post graduate studies we have to do it at Bundoora! not to mention that if they start to cut these subjects, whats next? literature? history?

The funny thing is, Latrobe's five year plan is to increase rural enrolments by 20%! how is that going to be possible when our arts degree is becoming so woeful that anyone who does get a placing at our campus will immediately transfer to Bundoora at the end of the first year for lack of choice!?


so much for religious tolerance
so much for understanding
so much for choice!
and so much for learning!

screw you Bundoora, we love our lecturers and our major!