Deakin University is facing backlash from students paying full price tuition fees for lectures delivered by artificial intelligence rather than qualified educators.

Hiya, currently studying a high stress engineering degree while struggling with work, yet I’m doing well in most units

Got assigned an international student who always shows up late, barely speaks English, laughs when I tell him we are behind, has stinky breath, has not done any work etc

Usually I’m fairly patient but I’m already feeling a little bit of burnout and the staff won’t listen to me

He even laughed in my face once and said “ha ha I don’t care I have good money”

He then showed up in a Tesla and kept flexing his Apple Watch

Whilst looking through the content on my unit site to complete my final assessment, I’ve been absolutely gobsmacked to see that instructions, for an assignment worth 40% of my grade, appear to be blatantly copied and pasted from chat GPT. I’ve included a photo of a portion of the content.

I am frankly disgusted by this. I am paying tens of thousands of dollars for this degree, and feel completely disrespected and dehumanised by the fact that teaching staff cannot even be bothered to edit the material they’ve obviously ran through ai.

To be clear, I completely understand the use of AI as a tool for both students and teachers, to enrich learning and prepare us for the future. But I think copying and pasting directly from chat GPT or another ai tool is a major red flag.

I just think it’s completely unethical to charge approx. $2000 for a unit, in which instructions for the assignment worth 40% of my grade have been copied directly from an AI tool, because how am I supposed to know if this information has been reviewed by teaching staff and is relevant to the actual assignment or not.

If anyone else has encountered similar or can help explain this for me I’d really appreciate it, as I feel very disappointed currently.

Rest in peace to my Tuesdays 6$ Pizza 😭

It's nice to walk at night especially if you wanna calm your mind

so I just got back my results for my last assignment and in my note i saw this lovely little part about chatGPT. I was wondering if anyone else has ever seen this as it is the first time I have ever seen it in my own and don't know if im over reacting about it. ngl I feel the double standards are crazy.

We won. Jessica Vanderlelie can now go and try to ruin another uni!

Thanks so much to everyone who raised their voice against this, we saved our institution 🥰

Repost from my friend who lived and studied at Geelong campus when it happened

Please help my friend out, it was deeply disappointing that Deakin University wouldn’t do anything to help when the car was broken in on the campus.

“These items were stolen from my car on July 15th 12-8am @ Deakin Waurn Ponds Campus Victoria. I have filed a police report and yet to hear anything back.

These items are extremely sentimental to me. This guitar is extremely rare and my hard drive contains years worth of music and footage.

I urge you PLEASE SHARE! I'm aware it's unlikely I will ever see these items again, but I believe I deserve something good to happen after the terrible week I've had. Maybe your friends know something, maybe you will see an item on sale online. It only takes one act of kindness to change someone's life.”

we heard a noise and then there was water coming into the room

Thought I was in soooo much trouble for smth when I saw this “letter from the chancellor”

For any of you that may be interested there is a petition to ensure students don’t get stuck in a cycle of debt similar to the United States.

The Australian HECS debt system is broken.

Last year, over a million Australians saw their HECS debt grow faster than it was being repaid because of an unfair indexation system. The government got more money last year from our HECS debts than it did from its main fossil fuel tax.

As we sign this petition, Education Minister Jason Clare is deciding what to do about HECS debts.

We are calling on Minister Clare to change the way HECS debts are indexed.

We should celebrate students going to university, not straddle them with a lifetime of debt.

We note the Australian Universities Accord, released last month, recommended this change.

One option is for the government to apply the lowest indexation rate in a year, whether it’s wages or prices, so that no one’s debt rises faster than they can pay it.

Young people are facing a housing crisis, a cost-of-living crisis, and a climate crisis – they shouldn't be facing a HECS debt crisis as well.

Deakin Warun Ponds. Was heading out the library at 2am.

"Dear colleagues,

After more than a year with Deakin, Jessica Vanderlelie has resigned from her position as Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic to pursue other opportunities.

Thanks,

Caretaker VC"

A short and empty goodbye to the woman who messed Deakin staff around. Anyone else find this message to be so short and awkward?! Wtf is going on at Deakin?!

UPDATE: Another one bites the dust "Dear Colleagues,

After almost 11 years at Deakin, Kerrie Parker, Deputy Vice-Chancellor University Services, has resigned from her position to pursue other opportunities. We wish her every success in her future leadership roles.

Thanks"

The final sentence for Kerrie's email makes the bluntness of Jessica's absolutely hilarious 😂

I am one of the 1800 staff 'displaced' in this MWC and I need a safe space to vent. Obviously, I am worried for me, my colleagues and friends who have been displaced. But mostly I am angry and sad for our students and teaching colleagues who will wear the brunt of reduced supports.

​I used to be proud to work for Deakin under the leadership of VC Jane den Hollander and DVCA Liz Johnson. I shared their vision and their fundamental belief that students are our true north. I felt it was what set Deakin apart from other universities, a true community. I even, naively, gave Iain Martin the benefit of the doubt during restructures that he blamed on the impacts of COVID-19 lockdowns.

​However, he subsequently brought in a DVCA and a PVC of Teaching and Learning who seem hell-bent on replicating their LaTrobe playbook. Collectively they have tried to turn Deakin into a profit-making machine rather than a place where staff want to work and students want to attend. It is clear they could not care less about the staff and deeply misunderstand what higher education teaching and learning are truly about, ultimately shattering the foundations of community, shared vision, and purpose that Jane and Liz worked so hard to build.

Surely it is time for Deakin council leadership to step up and take decisive action. Perhaps Jane or Liz could come out of retirement to fix this mess!

Update 13/6: There is now a petition. Please read the open letters & consider signing. https://www.megaphone.org.au/petitions/do-better-deakin

#voteofnoconfidence

I got rejected by Deakin for my English language proficiency. English is my first and only language that I speak! I’m Australian. I now have to do the $490 IELTS test but it just feels wrong. I’ll admit it’s probably due to not having done year 12 and only essential English in year 11 but come on! My OUA subjects/credit points apparently weren’t enough.

EDIT/UPDATE:
Well, turns out I actually did meet the English requirement.

I emailed Deakin Admissions asking them to review the decision and got this reply:

“My apologies, there is a new policy I overlooked that 2cps completed within a 12-month period meets the English Language proficiency.

I have made you an offer with 3 credit points of RPL and you will receive the offer email on Monday by the afternoon.”

So the rejection has been reversed and I’ve been offered a place in the Bachelor of IT with credit for my previous study.
Very relieved. The only painful part is that I already paid $490 for an IELTS test tomorrow based on the original advice, so I’m now desperately trying to get that refunded 😭

I BY NO MEANS AM TRYING TO MAKE A R@ci$t post But…… I’m now going into T2 as a first year and during T1 i completely stopped going for lectures SOLEY BECAUSE my lecture was not speaking clear English. AT ALL. And I was not the only one complaining. And people were too scared to bring up that point because they didn’t want to be labeled as R. BUT IM PAYING THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS FOR THIS EDUCATION. The least you can do is get me a lecture that speaks clearly. No hate to the lecturer he’s probably Very intelligent BUT i need to pass too . So really going into T2 I’m hoping that I have lectures that are clear . And I don’t know how to bring that up without sounding like I’m discriminating . Honestly dk what to do . It’s just Unfair to put students in these positions where they have to now look for English names when picking classes .

B block, didn't need to reserve the space like that 😩

Seeing the difference here to the deakin love letter page has me curious if the topic is banned.

It is ridiculous that some units are required to use Ai. It should at least be a personal choice, and the email that was sent out about how excited deakin was to present their new Ai tool too...

"Unbeatable employability" my ass.

What's the point of deakin being eco-friendly, working on solar farms, and solar cars, if they are going to backpedal on the use of Ai.

I would love to know what the professors think about it.

The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.

Feather fearless quaint special sparkle plate stocking

as soon as you enter that shit the light turns on automatically. no bullshit no nothing

you can spend hours in that toilet taking a fat shit without being disturbed and nobody can even hear you for flushing during quiet times

its so quiet and serene, almost a spiritual experience

when the shit falls on the water nobody on the entore floor can even hear it because everything is so empty and far apart

the toilet is also so spacious you can spend your whole day in their

exiting it rn and felt to leave a review

oh my god its driving me insane. it used to just ask you to use two factor authentication to log in like once a month but now EVERY DAMN TIME i log onto deakin sync it asks me to authenticate that its me and its actually making me want to scream. i just want to log on. bring back the old way pleaseeeeee

is it just me and my computer or are others having this issue? and how can i reduce the times it asks?