Collective

Education Collective

Education Officer: Cat Doherty

#Who are we?

The Education Action group is a collective of passionate students who care about your education and want you to get the best one possible at this university. In the past the EAG have run campaigns about improving trimesters, classes being more accessible, such as having slides online, more appropriate times for classes and angling for lecture recordings. We work with a belief that universities primarily need to be places of learning and education, rather than a business that is out to make money. Education doesn’t deserve a price tag.

Over the past several years we have seen an ongoing attack on the quality of the higher education sector, under the Abbott government we saw attempts to charge university students $100,000 for a degree- this can be seen as an attempt to Americanise our education system and price students out of a civil right- the right to an education. University students and activists all around the country organised and lobbied and the bad press of the campaign soon led to the government to back away from this plan. However, their systematic attacks on higher education has seen that in the last year alone $2.1 billion dollars be ripped out our education system.

Universities have been increasingly finding new ways to cut corners and increase profits from casualising their workforce, to the creation of trimesters with little to no consultation of students or staff.

#What do we do?

As the Education Action Group, we also work closely with the NTEU - the teacher’s union, in order to get results that are positive for professors as well as students. A university that looks after its staff in turn improves the teaching quality of our university and thus your education.

The UTS Education Action Group also works closely with NUS- the National Union of Students, on a variety of campaigns, but in particular the National Day of Action (NDA), where students across the country gather to show the Australian Government and society that students care about their education and are willing to fight for it.

#How to get involved?

The Education Action Group gives you, the student, an opportunity to make change within the university and be consulted on how your degree is being changed or tailored. One issue which faces many university students in the shift from semesters to trimesters, is the lack of core subjects in the summer session. Another issue is the lack of consideration for regional students in timetable scheduling of classes. If these are issues you feel passionately about please get in contact by email education@utsstudentsassociation.org, and attend some of our meetings! There will be a NDA, and there will be advertising throughout the university, so make sure to attend that too, and show the university management and the government that your quality education matters to you.