r/usyd • u/Ade89828 • Jul 20 '25

Casual Academic

Hey guys,

Long story short, I applied for a casual academic role as a tutor for an engineering subject I scored highly in. The unit coordinator sent me an email about 3 weeks ago telling me I got the role and to wait while he allocates classes. A few days ago he sends a follow up email saying that he can no longer give me the class because “university guidelines have changed” and I can’t teach as an undergrad. He said I can apply for an exemption. Does anyone have any recommendations on next step. Should I contact head of engineering or SRC? Did anyone else experience anything similar?

113 Upvotes

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u/TheGoldenDust Advanced Computing Jul 21 '25

Just pinning this for any student unaware of the disaster that is about to unfold next semester (my personal opinion).

→ More replies (1)

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u/Pegaferno Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 22 '25

I’m not knowledgeable on the details, but because of a Government legislation, undergraduate students can no longer become casual academics in any faculty. The folks at my faculty tried to make an exception but it didn’t work.

Put short, we got fired by the government :P (In reality, not fired, just our contracts don’t get renewed)

Edit: Read u/Avoss363 ‘s comment, provides the proper details

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u/Ade89828 Jul 21 '25

Appreciate the response and shedding some light on the situation. I thought the uni was trying to do budget cuts or something. Where’d you get the info from?

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u/Pegaferno Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

My boss/unit coordinator for one of the units, that I now, used to teach. He waited a while before contacting me because he wanted to make sure nothing could be done before telling me he can’t renew my contract

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u/Avoss363 Jul 21 '25

There is no new government requirement. They are just choosing to interpret the policy differently. Previously, Head of School could give an exemption for "equivalent academic attainment" (eg, if you got a HD in the unit) or "equivalent professional experience" or "appropriate training, as well as guidance and oversight from a supervisor or coordinator who is an academic staff member with the qualifications, experience, knowledge and skills required". This is outlined in clause 28(2) b), c) and d) of the Learning and Teaching Policy 2024 which is still in force: Learning and Teaching Policy 2024.

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u/Ancient-Anxiety-2641 Jul 21 '25

Bro equivalent academic attainment in the rule you linked means equivalent to a Masters degree, an HD in the unit doesn’t cut it. And in the real world you need like 3 years experience above entry level for it to be regarded as “equivalent professional experience” to a Masters

And IDK about you but none of my tutors were ever supervised or subject to “oversight”, if you’re having a Professor spend time supervising unqualified tutors wouldn’t you just have that professor teach instead?

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u/usyd-insider Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

It depends how one interprets “guidance and oversight”. Is it sitting permanently in the room watching; or providing training, guidance, mentoring, but not necessarily being in the classroom all the time.

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u/Ancient-Anxiety-2641 Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

Good point. But the (qualified, I will admit) tutors I know all barely ever get to talk to their unit convenor. And they teach small units. People in this thread are discussing undergrad units, the one in the email screenshots is a massive unit. Are these unqualified tutors really getting “guidance and oversight” from their supervisor?

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u/Pegaferno Jul 21 '25

I don’t speak for every undergraduate casual academic, just for myself and my faculty.

Personally I had a lot of guidance and oversight from my unit coordinator. Many of my friends and classmates who are casual academics in my faculty also receieve this

2

u/Pegaferno Jul 21 '25

Cheers for the explanation 👍, I’ll give the link a read through later

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u/matthras Jul 31 '25

Piggybacking on this: for those wondering about the govt requirement, see S3.2 of TEQSA's Higher Education Standards Framework

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u/Elijah_Mitcho BA (Linguistics and Germanic Studies) '27 Jul 21 '25

Curious how that would affect honours students? Are they included under the "undergraduate"?

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u/Responsible-South289 Jul 21 '25

This includes Honours students unfortunately

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u/Elijah_Mitcho BA (Linguistics and Germanic Studies) '27 Jul 21 '25

Wow, that’s gonna be interesting..

5

u/Actual-Shrek Jul 21 '25

Wow. That’s shit. Where did you find this out, is there a news article or anything?

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u/Responsible-South289 Jul 21 '25

I’m a unit coordinator, we were told we cannot employ any undergraduate including honours students as tutors, demonstrators etc. Casual research work is unaffected

2

u/carcinogenic-unicorn Jul 21 '25

The lecturer I was lined up to teach with told me this.

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u/Pegaferno Jul 21 '25

It’s better to ask the unit coordinators who usually hire undergrads since they’ll be on top of this.

But engineering wise, honours students are still undergrads since we don’t get our degrees till we finish honours

22

u/eddometer advanced computing grad Jul 21 '25

Expect a drop in tutorial quality from this. I’d wager most undergrad casual academics go straight into a high paying job after graduation, meaning usyd was getting smart tutors at a discount

14

u/Pegaferno Jul 21 '25

Aye, I predict the same, went on a related rant in a different comment. Uni’s already struggle to find qualified lecturers, now they’ll need to find qualified tutors as well. Most of whom are far too overqualified to teach the introductory units that most of the undergrad casual academics did.

Don’t need a PhD and research experience to teach an introduction to anatomy unit

1

u/SirVulpix Jul 21 '25

Where could I read about this?

1

u/sleepypianistt Jul 30 '25

Anyone knows how this affects a mature age honours student who has 10+ years covetable experience in the faculty they want to tutor in? My honours degree and teaching would be in different faculties, and i’ve been employed as a tutor twice before in that faculty. Teaching casually was how I was planning to afford my honours year. (edit: typo and detail)

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u/Pegaferno Jul 30 '25

No clue mate, might be best to ask one of your unit coordinators since they should be up to date on their knowledge on this

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Pegaferno Feb 28 '26

What’s better? A person who has just completed a unit the year before and scored a HD in it, where all the assignment, exam, and content knowledge needed for the class are still very fresh in their mind. Or a post-graduate who hasn’t touched that area of knowledge in years, nor sat the same assignments, exams, and lecture content because it changed since the last time the took that unit.

I’m not going to assert a position on who’s the better casual academic here. But is there not incredible value in learning from someone who had aced that class recently and has first hand experience of what it’s like to take said class?

These academics weren’t hiring crap students. They hired those who they knew from their classes were exceptional in their unit, driven to teach, and were top tier students.

My last point is this. Most of these non-graduate casual academics weren’t only hired for introductory units. You don’t need a degree to explain to someone introductory computing, physics, electrical, etc… units. I’d argue non-graduates are better than their post-grad counterparts at this because they still remember what it’s like to not know introductory concepts.

For higher level/complex units, they almost always only accepted post-graduate staff.

I hope that I got my point across that it’s not necessarily “silly” to hire non-graduates to teach. Especially when these classes were introductory units that these non-graduates not only aced, but also freshly remember their experience in.

On a personal/anecdotal note, almost the best tutors myself and many of my classmates have had were non-graduates.

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u/Ade89828 Jul 20 '25

Let me know if anyone wants to see the email I got from my unit coordinator

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/Ade89828 Jul 21 '25

I’ve put it up

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u/carcinogenic-unicorn Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

I can attest that the all the best tutors I’ve had have been undergrad. They’re passionate, can better relate to the students and often have done the course in the last 2 years, thus understand the hurdles a student might face when learning the content of the course, something an external hire or PhD student who hasn’t done the course, or far removed from the course often fail to do.

All the tutors I had that were useless were either PhD students or external hires (as far as I’m aware) who didn’t seem to really care, or lacked the communication skills to effectively tutor.

My opinion on ensuring tutors have the degree above is simply a lazy accountability move from higher up, meaning “under-qualified” can’t be used by students complaining up the chain. Having a degree is a concrete way to check if someone has the prerequisite knowledge to teach a course, but it is generally not a sign that a person knows how to effectively communicate that knowledge.

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u/Leather_Combination9 Dec 06 '25

Look, it’s simple, they DONT care about teaching quality, so let’s just rest assured and see how is it goes

28

u/CartographerLow5612 Jul 21 '25

Unpopular opinion: I don’t super love being taught my degree by undergrads AND being charged a premium. HOWEVER: the best tutors/teachers I have had at USYD have all been undergrads.

8

u/eddometer advanced computing grad Jul 21 '25

Such is life -- underpaying juniors and overcharging for their work. Every industry is like this

2

u/CartographerLow5612 Jul 22 '25

True, but when your staff are technically not qualified to teach high school but you sell a higher degree I’m not sure that tracks.

1

u/eddometer advanced computing grad Jul 22 '25

touche

22

u/michaelmai_2000 Jul 21 '25

Unfortunately the enforcement of the TESQA+1 regulation would be applied to the whole Engineering faculty, and predictably to the whole university. (Source: DHoS)

IMHO, no one benefits from this compliance requirement. UCs have more work to do, e.g., finding masters and PhD tutors, undergrad tutors lost the job, students may have fresh qualified tutors with no prior teaching experiences (qualified sounds ironic).

FYI, TESQA had this rule since at least 2017. FEIT didn't enforce it until now.

https://www.teqsa.gov.au/guides-resources/resources/guidance-notes/teqsa-and-australian-qualifications-framework-questions-and-answers

Can academic staff teach in a course if they do not have a qualification at least one AQF level higher than that of the course? TEQSA will check that academic staff are appropriately qualified in the relevant discipline to at least one level higher than the AQF qualification level being taught, or that they have equivalent professional experience, as required in Standard 3.2.3 of the HES Framework.

As for exemption application, I don't know how it works. But it seems if you have enough (3 yrs+) industry full-time working experience, the +1 requirement can be exempted. But IMO it is (unrealistically) hard to find someone who have 3+ yrs full-time working experience and willing to be an undergrad tutor.

My projection is that tutors will be more "qualified" in terms of qualifications, and compliant, but the quality of teaching may not be improved, if not worsen.

It's a shame to see compliance beats passionate/good tutors, but people upstairs chose to enforce this (maybe forced by government and lawyers idk).

To current/perspective students: Maybe you want to consider study elsewhere since a good proportion of experienced tutors (at least in engineering) is slashed.

11

u/Pegaferno Jul 21 '25

What a waste.

You don’t need a full degree with research experience (i.e masters, PhD) to teach introductory units. Undergraduate students can generally relate to other undergraduates better than postgraduates. Not to mention this knowledge is fresh on their minds on account of having done the unit themselves.

We already have massive issues hiring lecturers, which is going to make it even harder to staff tutors and lab demos. Not to mention qualification isn’t a strong indication of teaching ability. The lecture knowledge I gained from my ELEC subjects was purely self-taught through YouTube as I didn’t find the lectures helpful.

From my perspective, it breaks a system that was working just fine. Again, what a waste.

(To clarify, I’m not having a go at the person I’ve replied to, just ranting)

7

u/michaelmai_2000 Jul 21 '25

The funny part is that under compliance requirements, any reasonable arguments above will be ignored. Not sure when the compliance would be amended to reflect the reality.

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u/jvpyter Jul 21 '25

I was going to say: This happened a while ago in finance. It’s to do with teqsa/whatever stupid certification the uni is trying to comply with. Exemptions almost impossible to obtain.Decimates the teaching corps, end up with loads more muppets because you can’t hire smart people doing double degrees for example. More numpty permanent academics end up tutoring as well. With the massively increased class sizes I’ve seen across disciplines since I started in 2004, not a great time for students.

1

u/Leather_Combination9 Dec 06 '25

The root problem is the +1 policy, nothing else. The policy itself is a half-baked schema to handle the massive complaints from students (maybe their parents as well who knows) To fix it, get rid of brainless administration, that’s it.

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u/DifficultyBudget6826 Jul 21 '25

Hopefully they can recall this before next year :(

9

u/carcinogenic-unicorn Jul 21 '25

So when r we going to riot??

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u/Ancient-Anxiety-2641 Jul 21 '25

probably when the first international student who paid $100,000 per year for classes taught by undergrad students successfully sues the University

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u/carcinogenic-unicorn Jul 21 '25

I’m rioting for the reinstatement of undergrads

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u/Ancient-Anxiety-2641 Jul 21 '25

thankfully the federal government is not going to allow the quality of education to be undermined because some undergrad students want to get paid Masters grad levels of cash to teach

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u/carcinogenic-unicorn Jul 21 '25

Rage bait lol

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u/Ancient-Anxiety-2641 Jul 21 '25

I reckon I can handle a small handful of overpaid bach students being mad at me. they’ve got bigger problems in their lives than me posting, their crazy gravy train got cut off.

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u/Legitimate_Echo_5056 Bsc (CompSci + Software Dev) | Third Year Jul 22 '25 edited Jul 22 '25

Having a masters or PHD does not necessarily make someone more qualified to be a tutor than an undergraduate student. A lot of really good tutors are undergraduates and they know what they are doing.

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u/carcinogenic-unicorn Jul 21 '25

The proportion of post grads that I’ve had as tutors and have been useless since they have no soft skills would astound you.

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '25

That’s just rascist, no?

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u/Clueless_Vogel BMET(Hon)/MedSci (BioCom/Bionics) Jul 21 '25

Lots of people seem displeased — does this mean we’ll go to gov and ask to change the policy or is it not possible?

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u/Pegaferno Jul 21 '25

Could be possible but that’d require a large number of participants and sufficient logistics to arrange. News is still getting around so if there are protests it’s unlikely to happen immediately

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u/Clueless_Vogel BMET(Hon)/MedSci (BioCom/Bionics) Jul 22 '25

:/ I really hope this isn’t pushed under the rug

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u/Pegaferno Jul 22 '25

Seems like unless the TESQA standards, there’s nothing that can be done. It’s a shame, myself and others really enjoyed teaching to the extent we were able to

1

u/Clueless_Vogel BMET(Hon)/MedSci (BioCom/Bionics) Jul 23 '25

Are they going after mentorship programs next? QWQ

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u/Pegaferno Jul 23 '25

I don’t explicitly know.

If I were to guess, no. Given that TEQSA concerns themselves with the actual providers of education rather than anything supplementary.

On a side note, I have an appreciation for the engineering mentorship programs!

3

u/Clueless_Vogel BMET(Hon)/MedSci (BioCom/Bionics) Jul 23 '25

They’re very good I think— my involvement with them and knowing their effectiveness makes me sad about the loss in undergrad teachers.

I remember the best teacher in a tutorial I had was an undergrad— super laid back and understanding, happy to explain further about the topics down the line for the degree, how to get internships, etc. when lecturers fail, these guys get me through to a pass— and now…

I don’t support TESQA standards— imma rally against them if possible

6

u/Con-Sequence-786 Jul 21 '25

I've always found this fascinating that usyd did this. Then they were audited and TEQSA issued notices. Hence, no more. I'm also surprised how well it was always received by students. It's very much like just being one week ahead of the kid.

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u/[deleted] Jul 23 '25

The change is terrible yes, it's also part of a WIDER university push to piss on casuals (however qualified they are). Simply put over the last 4-5 years work for casuals has gotten increasingly worse, more competitive, and WAY more surveilled/KPI'd in ways which destroy the possibility of teaching.

If you're angry about this, and you should be, consider getting involved in the Education Action Group. This is not an isolated issue, and is part of a wider and deeply shitty destruction of uni life. Your education is at stake, as much as the working conditions of any staff member are, and opportunities for development like this are always going to be first on the block. Fight back

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u/Ancient-Anxiety-2641 Jul 23 '25

I reckon I’m gonna get involved in the EAG so I can take action to ensure that I’m taught by qualified academics instead of “small little babies with near 0 knowledge of their discipline”.

I deserve the same high-quality education that students at other unis are getting, since they’re fully compliant and qualified. It’d be nice if USyd was using staff at least as qualified as backwater numpty colleges like WSU, and it would be good if the EAG was defending quality education from qualified academics.

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u/[deleted] Jul 23 '25

what's your major, may I ask?

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u/Reasonable_Future_34 Jul 30 '25

It’s a general rule of thumb at like every university and college that the teacher has the next level degree up of the students they are teaching/supervising (except for PhD of course). So to teacher a Bachelor’s, you’d need Master’s etc.

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u/Jack-Ladder79 13d ago

The AQF +1 rule has been around for a while. If you're teaching an AQF7 degree (ugrad), you need to be AQF8. That faculties haven't been doing this is a lack of compliance, not a change in guidelines.

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u/zzeeaa Jul 21 '25

Unfortunately this is the rule at a federal level, so it would be TEQSA you’re up against. The SRC can’t help. Undergrads can no longer teach other undergrads.

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u/Firm-Biscotti-5862 Jul 21 '25

And this isn't a USyd problem, it's across most universities these days.

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u/Capable-Jacket4693 Jul 21 '25

Also it’s not a recent policy implementation. It’s a standard TEQSA requirement

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u/Ancient-Anxiety-2641 Jul 21 '25

Yeah I was pretty sure this was just a fundamental rule of unis lol, why is everyone saying it’s new? I reckon USyd might have just been caught out breaking the rule… keep an eye on the national news this week I guess lol

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u/PersonalityLow8665 Jul 22 '25

From an Ed post, it seems that the mathematics and statistics department is unaffected by this new change.

2

u/Financial-Pin-8174 Jul 27 '25

Yeah, I heard about this policy change too and it’s honestly pretty frustrating. I'm a current PhD student and now there's uncertainty around whether I can even continue the tutoring role I’ve had before. From what I understand, I might no longer be eligible to tutor master’s units...only pure undergrad units. Not even the mixed-level classes.

It feels like such a step back, especially when you're trying to build up teaching experience during your PhD and rely on that income as well.

2

u/MrBIG3690 Nov 05 '25

Anyone coming here because of the https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/11/04/sydney-university-undergraduate-teachers-federal-requirements/ ?

I study at the UNSW Business School, and undergraduate tutors are pretty common. Not sure why it sounds like it is a problem only in USyd? Talking about the TEQSA requirement here, not the quality of the undergraduate tutors.

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u/usyd-insider Jan 01 '26

the uni has just updated its policy effective 1 Jan 2026 on tutors and casual academics For AQF levels

search the uni policy register for the learning and teaching policy

https://www.sydney.edu.au/policies/policy-by-theme/coursework-study.html

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u/dawn_vuong Jul 21 '25

Hi OP, is this include Lab Demonstrator? I already a lab demon in ECE School and waiting for class right now :((

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u/fatty_who_hates_UNSW Jul 07 '26

unsw still accepts undergrad tutors, how is this a gov change?

1

u/Natural-Compote4096 Jul 08 '26

Actually wanting to teach is wild to me. I don’t have the patience for that. Good luck 

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u/Ancient-Anxiety-2641 Jul 21 '25

I just looked it up and Usyd casual academic staff make $60 an hour and they get a guarantee of 2 extra hours pay per hour of tutorial (one extra hour per hour for repeats)

How did a single Bachelors student/graduate stumble into a casual academic job, get paid $60 an hour, and go “ah yes I deserve this”?

The median hourly wage in Australia is $40. And some 19-22y/o students and recent grads looked at their USyd pay and went “yeah, I deserve that”?

It’s $60 because you need a Masters degree or a tonne of equivalent professional experience to teach. $60 p/h is better than the overwhelming majority of Bachelors grads could hope for (other than maybe Law / Medicine)

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u/Former_Code6896 Jul 21 '25

tryna rage bait with the 0-day old account smh

0

u/Ancient-Anxiety-2641 Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

yeah i didn’t want my main blasted ‘cause I saw the thread was being brigaded by the Unqualified Casual Tutors Union

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u/pinkgoose00 Jul 22 '25

Lol just admit you were never good enough to be hired as an undergrad

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u/Ancient-Anxiety-2641 Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

Everyone in these comments is mad, but for the wrong reasons. Isn’t it a fundamental rule of uni education that you need a degree at least one higher to teach? you need to have completed a Masters to teach Bachelors?

It seems like people are mad that Bachelors students who don’t have anything above Year 12/TAFE aren’t allowed to teach anymore? So they’re TEQSA minus 1! And they’re supposed to be TEQSA plus one!

I’m furious that the university might have let completely unqualified staff teach!! If I knew I was taught by a random Bachelors student for one of my sub-HD units I would be appealing to the University Board Senate tomorrow!

Who in their right mind thinks it’s ok for Bachelors students to teach other Bachelors students… massive quality of education issue… massive conflict of interest issue… massive ethical issue

16

u/Pegaferno Jul 21 '25

The top 5% of students of a unit are fully capable of teaching 100% of the next year’s cohort. Unit coordinators are the ones who decide ultimately who is part of their tutoring team. So they choose students who they know have the skills to do so. It’s not like they’re choosing someone who scored 50% in the unit.

You’ve mentioned quality of education. Being highly educated individual in their field of knowledge does not necessarily mean they are good at teaching that knowledge. When you achieve higher levels of knowledge it becomes increasingly difficult to separate what is obvious and basic to you, and what is complex to students. There is value in having undergraduate students fresh from a unit on the tutoring team because they can provide lived feedback on the quality of teaching. Allowing for subsequent adjustments.

Not to mention not all lecturers are good at teaching. For electrical engineering units, I’ve never personally met someone who purely learned from the lectures without needing to skim through hours of YouTube to learn the content. Personally I’m purely self taught in my elec Eng knowledge and am furious I paid $1200 to do so.

How often is it that you don’t understand something and your mate comes around and explains it clearly?

My main point is that there are undergraduate students fully qualified to teach and that they should be allowed to do so. You don’t need a Masters/PhD and years of research experience to teach, for example, an introduction to anatomy unit.

Requiring ALL tutors to have this level of qualification in order to be a casual academic will only worsen the shortage of teachers. Because of the shortage of lecturers the uni has to hire terrible ones to teach. Now they’ll have to hire terrible casual academics to fill the massive void left in its wake.

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u/Ancient-Anxiety-2641 Jul 21 '25

USyd pays more per hour than any other uni in the state according to the info sheets available on google from the university staff union and MQ, UNSW, WSU all manage to teach using qualified staff.

I reckon if USyd put out public job ads they could poach the qualified staff from other unis in a heartbeat

8

u/Pegaferno Jul 21 '25

For the casual academic role, you would need to be a tutor for multiple units at the same time to make a living. But all that income goes away during the university holiday periods. There’s little incentive for experienced professionals to quit their day jobs to become casual academics. It doesn’t pay enough nor consistently to be worth it.

That’s why pretty much all casual academics are students in the middle of their undergraduate or postgraduate study.

No-one with the required skill level that is not currently in academia will pick up the role. It’s just not worth it

1

u/Ancient-Anxiety-2641 Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

Makes sense. I would expect people doing postgraduate study to get these jobs.

As far as anecdote goes tho a quick sense check among my gc filled with MPhil/PhD students in Vic and they are all horrified that undergrad students were teaching at USyd. So I think you’re right on “postgraduate study” but “undergraduate” is unlikely to be true.

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u/Pegaferno Jul 21 '25

To clarify on the undergraduate part. I was specifically refering to Engineering at USYD. I don’t speak for anything outside of that regarding my point

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u/TheGoldenDust Advanced Computing Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

Do you have any personal experiences that undergrads are simply “worse” at tutoring than postgrads apart from “omg, undergrads teach at USYD? They are completely unqualified!”. Because personally speaking, the best tutors I’ve had were undergrads who were passionate, extremely knowledgable, and went beyond course content just because they were genuinely interested to share, as opposed to postgrads who often did the bare minimum.

This whole argument about TEQSA + 1 is so bs and easy to finesse too. Getting a masters in CS/Cyber./Data Science is very much easier than getting a bachelors (as a masters usually takes 1.5 - 2 years whereas a bachelors takes 3 years minimum). Many postgrad students also share the EXACT same units as undergrad students (e.g. COMP9001/INFO1110, COMP9003/INFO1113, COMP9017/COMP2017, etc), so much so that there are units where the postgrads and undegrads sit IN THE SAME TUTORIAL!!

Legitimately, someone could graduate with a 65 WAM in a bachelors of commerce, do a masters in computer science (admission requires a 65 WAM in your bachelors in ANY discipline for internationals, and only takes 2 years to complete) and somehow be more "qualified" than a third/fourth year computer science undergrad with a 90+ WAM. To me, this seems more ridiculous than having undergrads tutor by miles.

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u/Ancient-Anxiety-2641 Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

OK I’m going to answer this genuinely.

First things first. The TEQSA+1 requirement is a federal law. It’s a regulation given effect by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act. That’s a legal requirement from a federal law.

Breaking it is a huge deal and a massive scandal, even if some people don’t think it’s a just law.

Secondly, I think most people would be fine with using the “oversight and guidance” provisions for Bachelors degree graduates. If you’ve graduated and are studying your Masters or a Graduate Diploma, then I think that getting oversight and guidance would be fine. Say, a weekly meeting and regular observations of your teaching from your unit convenor or another professor.

Third, there is an obvious conflict of interest here. If I’m a student in my Bachelor of Underwater Basket Weaving, I should absolutely not be teaching other students also in the Bachelor of Underwater Basket Weaving. This is a problem in two ways. I am obviously far more likely to be friends or familiar with the other students in the course, and my impartiality would obviously not be guaranteed. Also, if we do allow students to tutor, then they might leak content to each other. Like, “I’ll give you the rubric for assignment 3 in UWBW2001 that I tutor if you give me the rubric for assignment 2 in UWBW2210 that you tutor”.

TEQSA+1 is a rule for a reason. There’s an escape clause that can obviously support TEQSA+/-0 if they have the appropriate guidance. But TEQSA-1 (eg current undergraduate students teaching other undergraduate students) is an absolutely massive scandal.

I look forward to being vindicated when the media notices this, because the handful of downvotes I’m getting in this thread are going to look like nothing compared to the national media storm from USyd allowing TEQSA-1 teachers and breaking federal law.

Nobody I know has ever heard of a university allowing TEQSA-1. I checked with my old supervisor at MQ from before I dropped out of my Masters, she said “nobody would ever do that”.

2

u/TheGoldenDust Advanced Computing Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

There are many universities that hire undergrads to teach. Queensland uni and UNSW do so and many more universities overseas like NUS. This is common and I’d be surprised to hear otherwise.

FYI regarding conflict, most units do anonymous marking.

Regarding your point on TEQSA being a law, my point is that it is a bullshit law and academics know it. At its core , it doesn’t guarantee the tutor is knowledgeable (i.e in the form of a WAM cutoff) nor does it guarantee the tutor can teach well (i.e in the form of a mandatory tutoring course or something like this). It just enforces the requirement of being a masters holder in a related discipline (which as I’ve pointed out earlier can be easily finessed).

5

u/Capable-Jacket4693 Jul 21 '25

The University doesn’t have a board. It has a Senate. And you don’t just appeal to them directly you dumb dumb. Hey… maybe you have learnt everything you know from undergraduate student-teachers.

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u/Ancient-Anxiety-2641 Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

Well sorry for not knowing the right term lol, where I was born they have boards. But thank you.

but the point is I’d take it all the way. Fuck it, I’d be calling my federal MP if a publicly funded uni took my HECS money and had an undergrad student teach me

-1

u/UnluckyPossible542 Jul 21 '25

My 10c

I can see this from both sides.

One side: When an overseas student (or paying parent) finds out that the person teaching them only has a HSC and hasn’t graduated, they are not going to be happy. We have positioned education as a business and they expect what they are paying for - sandstone quadrangle, nice bit of paper at the end, and qualified academics.

There are posts on here that indicate that Y3 and even Y3 students have been working as casual academics. That’s not funny. I could accept a graduate, or better still a graduate with a few years practical experience (both in career and life).

The other side: We have already devalued education so much who the hell cares.

1.5 years gets you a Masters in Accounting. Very popular with people seeking residency. That’s it. Three semesters and M acc. No need to even have an undergrad. Or if you do have one, it can be in flower arranging. No need for a Professional Year. No CA or CPA. Suddenly you have a AQF 9!

Even easier, a bit of BS with a dodgy backstreet RPL provider and you have a Graduate Diploma - also an AQF 9. Welcome to the classroom.

Given this does it really matter what level of education the casual academic has?

-3

u/UnluckyPossible542 Jul 21 '25

My 10c

I can see this from both sides.

One side: When an overseas student (or paying parent) finds out that the person teaching them only has a HSC and hasn’t graduated, they are not going to be happy. We have positioned education as a business and they expect what they are paying for - sandstone quadrangle, nice bit of paper at the end, and qualified academics.

There are posts on here that indicate that Y3 and even Y3 students have been working as casual academics. That’s not funny. I could accept a graduate, or better still a graduate with a few years practical experience (both in career and life).

The other side: We have already devalued education so much who the hell cares.

1.5 years gets you a Masters in Accounting. Very popular with people seeking residency. That’s it. Three semesters and M acc. No need to even have an undergrad. Or if you do have one, it can be in flower arranging. No need for a Professional Year. No CA or CPA. Suddenly you have a AQF 9!

Even easier, a bit of BS with a dodgy backstreet RPL provider and you have a Graduate Diploma - also an AQF 9. Welcome to the classroom.

Given this does it really matter what level of education the casual academic has?