A simple concrete proposal to improve the quality of Australian undergraduate education

There is an opinion piece Up-end attendance rules for tutorial and lectures by Peter Van Onselen in the Higher Education Section of today's Australian newspaper. He is a Professor of Political Science at U. of Western Australia and a contributing editor to The Australian. He says that Arts/Humanities courses follow the "tried and true" format of two lectures and one tutorial per week. The former are optional and typically attract less than 50 per cent attendance. Tutorials are compulsory, are over-crowded, and diluted by students who have not done the assigned reading. He argues that the quality of education could be improved, without any additional costs, by making the lectures compulsory and the tutorials optional.

I prefer my own proposals: Fail more students and set the pass rate at the lecture attendance rate.