University class sizes have surged since before the pandemic and student learning is in decline, a new report suggests.
The report, released today by the National Tertiary Education Union (Nteu), surveyed more than 4,000 university staff across the nation.
It found the proportion of tutorials with 30 or more students had more than doubled since 2019, from 12% to 27%. The optimal range is considered to be between 10 and 19, but the report found just 9% of tutorials were meeting that standard.
More than eight in 10 staff surveyed said their ability to support students individually had been compromised, with just 1.7% reporting an improvement in student outcomes since 2019.
The president of the Nteu, Dr Alison Barnes, said “class size explosion is being felt at campuses nationwide”.
double quotation markThe real-life consequences are unmanageable workloads with students ultimately paying the price. Students aren’t getting the attention they need and their education suffers. This could have a dangerous ripple effect that we feel for generations.
Australia typically performs poorly internationally for its faculty to student ratio, with no Australian university scoring in the top 300 according to the QS World University Rankings. Its universities record an average score of 12.5/100 on QS’s ‘learning experience’ indicator, well below the global average of 28.1.
