As it turns out, there are enough interesting things to say about tertiary education in Australia, that we thought we’d write another blog about it. We recently learned that awhile back (perhaps in the 60s or so?), only the top 6 or 7% of students went on to university. Other people went to colleges, which sound to us like vocational schools or community colleges, but only the top students got university degrees. That then changed completely when the Whitlam Labor Government abolished university fees in 1973. So, suddenly, everyone could go to university, and the Government was going to pay for it. As you can imagine, this didn’t work out so well, since it didn’t take people too long to figure out that they could avoid getting a real job, and just continue on at university, getting 3 or 4 degrees. Their financial success in university was also due to the fact that the Government paid students an allowance (called the dole), and still does. Yep, that’s right. As long as your parents don’t make too much money, the Government pays you a weekly allowance while you’re in university. (If your parents do earn over the threshold, you can still get the allowance if you prove that you’re independent, which means that you’ll have to work an average of 30 hours per week for an 18 month period before you can get the allowance. Since many students take a Gap year, it would be easy to work that much for at least 12 months, but perhaps could get tricky if you wanted to start school, and still had to work 30 hours/week.)
Back to the period of free education, we heard some stories of people purposely failing exams so that they could remain students and keep receiving the dole while going to school for free. School is not free anymore (that ended pretty soon after in the 1980s), though prices are still much lower than in the US. And, it sounds like they’re planning to increase the dole as well in order to encourage more students to go to university. In fact, the recent Unilife Magazine here at the University of South Australia (UniSA) says that most students currently receive $377 every two weeks. If their rent is more than $250/week, then they can receive additional rent assistance of up to $113/week. Starting this year, there are also scholarships of $1300/year to help pay for books. This is expected to increase to over $2000 by 2012. Now, students can earn up to $236 every two weeks before their allowance is reduced. That will also increase to $400 in 2012.
These are my two favorite excerpts from the article about the allowance increase: “I think it’s ridiculous that they are trying to give us more. It’s money for nothing, all I have to do is study and then support the baby boomers when they retire,” and, “Nick admits the extra money would probably go into savings and not have a huge impact on his lifestyle.”
Maybe I’m just jealous, but I really can’t imagine receiving an allowance from the Government while I was at college. It would have been great indeed, but just seems like the most foreign and unimaginable concept ever. It’s a little hard to understand why students need the dole since many of them actually still live with their parents while they go to university. Also, if you need to borrow money to go to school, you don’t start paying it back until you graduate and get a job that pays you at least $30,000/year. Then, the money is automatically taken out of your pay check, sort of like taxes, to pay back your loan. I guess things are different than in the US because the percentage of students at university is much lower. Seems like Australia is experiencing the opposite problem, which is too few students getting higher degrees. In fact, Australia is heavily dependent on international students at universities (I’m pretty sure the Government doesn’t give them an allowance, and their tuition fees are much higher.) Interestingly, we learned that when the economy nose-dived in 2008, Australian universities were worried that international students wouldn’t be able to afford tuition any more, and that their numbers would decrease. Instead, what happened is that they could no longer afford US institutions, and numbers at Australian institutions actually increased.
The last little tidbit about education here is that to get into school, the only thing that matters is how you score on the national tests (I’m guessing it must be something akin to the SAT or ACT in the US.) Students do not have to submit the same kind of applications that we do in the US, where it’s essentially a resume of your academic, athletic and extra-curricular activities, along with recommendations, transcripts, etc. Here, the school and subject you study is based on how well you do on the exam, and also how many other people want to do the same subject as you. So, if you were really bright, but wanted to do a relatively unpopular subject, you would perhaps not be with many other bright, engaged students, as it would be relatively easy to do that subject. Definitely an interesting thing to think about whether or not it’s a good idea to have students competing so hard to get into the best schools…
Well, that’s perhaps most of the interesting things we’ve learned about higher education here in Australia. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed learning about it as much as we have!
Friday 11 June 2010
Wednesday 9 June 2010
The long view on water in Australia: An amateur’s view
Australia is frequently billed as the driest populated continent in the world (Aussies are fond of applying superlatives to their homeland). South Australia is even the driest state in Australia. We came here for the year specifically so that Chelsea could study water policy here because so much research has been done on the various facets of water policy. Water is of such interest to Australians precisely because they have so little water to go around for all the different users: cities, industry, agriculture, and river ecosystems.
Like most countries, agriculture uses the majority of water. In Australia, the lion’s share of agriculture takes place in the Murray-Darling Basin. And agriculture occupies an important place in both the national economy and the psyche of Australians—quite similar to the importance of the American heartland and its residents to our national identity.
In the mid-1800s, surveyor George Goyder laid out what is known as Goyder’s Line, a boundary that separated land that receives enough rainfall for farming from land that was suitable only for light grazing. While Goyder’s Line exists only in South Australia, it would not be hard to continue the line through the other southern and eastern states—it would essentially follow the crest of the Snowy Mountains and the Great Dividing Range. Alarmingly, the entire Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) lies on the wrong side of Goyder’s Line.
So how is the breadbasket of Australia located in a semi-arid climatic zone that is poorly suited to agriculture? The answer comes in two parts. First, farmers and ranchers spread into the Murray-Darling Basin in two waves, following the first and second World Wars. The decade following World War I was a time of unusually high rainfall and the Australian Government, eager to reward its loyal soldiers and settle the empty plains of the interior, granted land and water rights without restraint. Importantly, the water rights were based on the rainfall during those exceptionally wet years. When climate returned to its normally arid self, many of those farmers found themselves struggling to survive (in fact many did not, causing the first of a number of periodic waves of farm consolidations). Following a second wave of land grants to soldiers returning from World War II, farmers similarly found themselves unable to be financially successful in the climate of the Murray-Darling Basin. The second part of the answer to the question comes in the response of the government, which built a massive series of dams (weirs) along the River Murray and to impound the streams draining the Snowy Mountains (the latter being the so-called Snowy River Scheme). These massive construction projects served a number of purposes: they employed many returning soldiers, they encouraged huge numbers of European immigrants to come to relatively unpopulated Australia, they provided flood control (viewed as needed after the 1956 flood of the Murray, which had submerged the entire ground level of most structures in communities along the river), and they engendered confidence in the abilities of the still-young Australian nation. They also forever turned the river in to a series of what are essentially lakes—a geomorphologic subsidy for Australian farming.
Even with huge amounts of water to make the land agriculturally productive, the problems of the Murray-Darling Basin were not at an end. Intensive agriculture has drawn down the water table, adding substantial amounts of salts (primarily gypsum, calcium sulfate mineral) into the Murray-Darling hydrologic system (much of the MDB is underlain by Miocene carbonates and evaporites). Experimental projects have used mechanical means to remove salt, but they are small and expensive. Ironically, the only system large enough to remove the amounts of salt now present in the Murray-Darling system are the wetlands that line the river—wetlands that are stressed and disappearing because of the fundamental changes that were made to the rivers in the 1950s. Because of this, Australia has become one of the first countries to widely accept the need for environmental restoration.
To make matters worse, some have tried to sidestep the water crisis by tapping groundwater supplies. Use of “bore water,” as groundwater is commonly called here, is widely encouraged. Unfortunately, this fix won’t even last as long as the Ogallala Aquifer in the central United States—groundwater reservoirs in Australia are mostly small and shallow, and often saline.
Being a geologist, I tend to see the debate in a slightly different light—from a longer-term perspective. Fundamentally, the climate of most of the agricultural regions of Australia makes agriculture there impossible without huge additions of water for irrigation. Would it make sense to put in hundreds of square miles of rice paddies in Arizona? Australia is the largest producer of rice outside of southeastern Asia, and the growing takes place in relatively arid regions. (To be fair, the US government has massively subsidized similarly senseless agriculture in much of the arid western US.)
Today, Australia is struggling with what to do about water—there simply isn’t enough for municipal use, growing industry (both mining and power generation use substantial amounts of water), and healthy wetlands (that can hold salt levels down to manageable levels) as long as huge amounts of water are diverted to make what is essentially a desert into productive farmland. Something has to give, and in that situation the errors of the past century are glaringly apparent: overallocation of water rights and a climatically foolish choice of a main agricultural region. The United States shares both of these elements, particularly the former. The primary difference between the two seems to be that Australians are actively discussing (and disagreeing) about what to do about the problem. And how they are trying to solve the problem is a topic for another post…
Like most countries, agriculture uses the majority of water. In Australia, the lion’s share of agriculture takes place in the Murray-Darling Basin. And agriculture occupies an important place in both the national economy and the psyche of Australians—quite similar to the importance of the American heartland and its residents to our national identity.
In the mid-1800s, surveyor George Goyder laid out what is known as Goyder’s Line, a boundary that separated land that receives enough rainfall for farming from land that was suitable only for light grazing. While Goyder’s Line exists only in South Australia, it would not be hard to continue the line through the other southern and eastern states—it would essentially follow the crest of the Snowy Mountains and the Great Dividing Range. Alarmingly, the entire Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) lies on the wrong side of Goyder’s Line.
So how is the breadbasket of Australia located in a semi-arid climatic zone that is poorly suited to agriculture? The answer comes in two parts. First, farmers and ranchers spread into the Murray-Darling Basin in two waves, following the first and second World Wars. The decade following World War I was a time of unusually high rainfall and the Australian Government, eager to reward its loyal soldiers and settle the empty plains of the interior, granted land and water rights without restraint. Importantly, the water rights were based on the rainfall during those exceptionally wet years. When climate returned to its normally arid self, many of those farmers found themselves struggling to survive (in fact many did not, causing the first of a number of periodic waves of farm consolidations). Following a second wave of land grants to soldiers returning from World War II, farmers similarly found themselves unable to be financially successful in the climate of the Murray-Darling Basin. The second part of the answer to the question comes in the response of the government, which built a massive series of dams (weirs) along the River Murray and to impound the streams draining the Snowy Mountains (the latter being the so-called Snowy River Scheme). These massive construction projects served a number of purposes: they employed many returning soldiers, they encouraged huge numbers of European immigrants to come to relatively unpopulated Australia, they provided flood control (viewed as needed after the 1956 flood of the Murray, which had submerged the entire ground level of most structures in communities along the river), and they engendered confidence in the abilities of the still-young Australian nation. They also forever turned the river in to a series of what are essentially lakes—a geomorphologic subsidy for Australian farming.
Even with huge amounts of water to make the land agriculturally productive, the problems of the Murray-Darling Basin were not at an end. Intensive agriculture has drawn down the water table, adding substantial amounts of salts (primarily gypsum, calcium sulfate mineral) into the Murray-Darling hydrologic system (much of the MDB is underlain by Miocene carbonates and evaporites). Experimental projects have used mechanical means to remove salt, but they are small and expensive. Ironically, the only system large enough to remove the amounts of salt now present in the Murray-Darling system are the wetlands that line the river—wetlands that are stressed and disappearing because of the fundamental changes that were made to the rivers in the 1950s. Because of this, Australia has become one of the first countries to widely accept the need for environmental restoration.
To make matters worse, some have tried to sidestep the water crisis by tapping groundwater supplies. Use of “bore water,” as groundwater is commonly called here, is widely encouraged. Unfortunately, this fix won’t even last as long as the Ogallala Aquifer in the central United States—groundwater reservoirs in Australia are mostly small and shallow, and often saline.
Being a geologist, I tend to see the debate in a slightly different light—from a longer-term perspective. Fundamentally, the climate of most of the agricultural regions of Australia makes agriculture there impossible without huge additions of water for irrigation. Would it make sense to put in hundreds of square miles of rice paddies in Arizona? Australia is the largest producer of rice outside of southeastern Asia, and the growing takes place in relatively arid regions. (To be fair, the US government has massively subsidized similarly senseless agriculture in much of the arid western US.)
Today, Australia is struggling with what to do about water—there simply isn’t enough for municipal use, growing industry (both mining and power generation use substantial amounts of water), and healthy wetlands (that can hold salt levels down to manageable levels) as long as huge amounts of water are diverted to make what is essentially a desert into productive farmland. Something has to give, and in that situation the errors of the past century are glaringly apparent: overallocation of water rights and a climatically foolish choice of a main agricultural region. The United States shares both of these elements, particularly the former. The primary difference between the two seems to be that Australians are actively discussing (and disagreeing) about what to do about the problem. And how they are trying to solve the problem is a topic for another post…
Sunday 6 June 2010
It’s been a while
It has indeed been a bit since we’ve posted on the blog. We seem to have slowed a bit on our posting. I’ve been thinking about why that is, and I think part of it might be that we’ve gotten into a routine, and many things are starting to feel familiar. When things seem familiar, or normal, it somehow seems less important to blog about them. And, when your routine is fairly busy, as ours seems to be, it’s also hard to find time to write.
But, I do intend to keep up the blog for the entire time we’re here, and there are exciting things to share. At least I think they’re exciting. So here we go.
This weekend is the first we’ve been at home both days for quite some time now. The first weekend in May, we went on our first official bushwalk with the Adelaide Bushwalkers (ABW). It was a walk for people under 35 years of age, which means scraping the barrel for the aging Bushwalking Club. We had five people from the club, and our friends Brad and Laila, who came along for the walk. Although we were few, the miles and smiles were many. We went something like 25 kms, starting at the bottom of the Adelaide Hills, and walking up almost to Hahndorf. Grumpy’s pizza restaurant was our final destination, and we were all happy for the delicious food after a long walk. That weekend was a bit epic for us. We also did an 85 km bike ride down to McLaren Vale and back up through the hills. It was a beautiful ride, with perfect weather and a delicious lunch stop about half-way through.
The following weekend, Dave demonstrated (this essentially means to be a TA) for a first-year geology trip down at Sellick’s Beach. I joined him for the first day, and enjoyed a lovely day walking on the beach, and even managed to learn some geology. (I have to say, the more I learn about rocks, the more I like them : ) If water doesn’t work out, I think I’ll become a geologist!) The highlight of the day was watching these guys who parked their car on the beach try to push it out of wet sand. They had parked it at low tide, and had spent the day a ways down the beach, probably drinking beer, fishing and hanging out. By the time they decided to head home, the tide had come in, and even from a distance, we could see the waves lapping at the front wheels of the car. By the time the guys made it back to their car, the sand around the front tires was well and truly wet. They couldn’t drive the car out, as it didn’t have 4 wheel drive. So, they tried to push it. However, whenever a wave came crashing in, they would abandon the car and run up the beach to avoid getting their feet wet. Apparently, saving your car from the ocean is not as important as keeping your shoes dry! Eventually a four wheel drive car came down and pulled them out, but I have to say the whole scenario was hilarious. Hehe.
The next weekend, we headed up to a town in the southern Flinders Ranges called Melrose. The town is really tiny, with a hotel (this really means a pub) and a few little shops, and perhaps one of the nicest mountain biking shops in all of Australia. The area is renowned for its mountain biking, and Dave and Ryan, our neighbor, spent Saturday out on the trails. It was Dave’s first time mountain biking, and Ryan said that he improved by 200% over the course of the day. I went on my second ABW walk, which was an all-girls walk this time. There were six of us this time, and we had a lovely day climbing Mt. Remarkable. My favorite part was actually the descent, which was indeed remarkable. I even stopped to take several pictures, which is sort of a rarity for me. We had a lovely meal in the pub that night, which included one of the best desserts I’ve had here. It was a rhubarb and quandong (a native peach-like fruit) crumble, served in a coffee cup on a saucer. It was so cute, and even more delicious. The following day, we went for a shorter, drizzly walk in the Wirrabarra Forest before heading to a dry, warm bakery for some delicious pies.
The final weekend in May, we played in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament down in Victor Harbor. Although the weather was wet and windy, we played three good games on Saturday, and even got to play on the same team. (We’ve both been playing in a league the past few months, but it’s not co-ed.) It was sort of an amazing thing, because it seemed that each time we took a break (between games, or for lunch), dark gray clouds would immerse the fields in rain. By the time w were ready to play again, however, things had cleared a bit. The best was when we were playing our second game, and the other team took a time out to get a rest. It was actually sunny when they called the time out, but by the time we had all made it over to our sheltered water bottles, it started to rain. It kept raining, and fairly hard, so the other team called another time out. Then, we called a time out. And, then we called another time out. Finally, the rain stopped, and we went back out to finish the game. Frisbee tournaments always involve parties and food after the games, and so after finishing, we headed over to the Chiton Rocks Surf Lifesaving Club for showers, food, and hanging out. I don’t know if we have anything like Surf Lifesaving Clubs in the US, but they are quite common here, and really pretty neat. They are lifeguards for the beach, and they were bright yellow and red outfits with these hilarious little caps. The theme for the party that night was ‘Unsung Heroes’, and one of the girls on our team dressed up as a Surf Lifesaver (she actually used to be one), and I wish I had taken a picture for you to see. The cap is so funny! Anyways, the Club had a bunkroom, showers, kitchen, TV, pool table, and was right on the beach, so it was a perfect place to stay, especially for $16/night!
We ended up not playing Frisbee the next morning, as the weather was still wet and windy. Instead, we came home and went for a walk with our neighbors up into the hills. We’re all going on a weekend bushwalk to the Flinders Ranges next weekend (it’s the Queen’s Birthday weekend, and so we have Monday off). We took the opportunity to do a little training walk, and actually went again this weekend, and this time carrying backpacks with 7 liters of water. We walked back home through Belair National Park this weekend, and got to see a koala up close. It was so cute, I had to keep myself from picking him up for a snuggle.
It’s Sunday night now, and we actually haven’t left the backyard at all today. We Skyped some people in the northern hemisphere, ate some tasty leftovers for lunch, played a board game, cleaned the house, and are about to have dinner and watch a little Master Chef Australia. I’m still in my lounge about clothes, and am really enjoying the quiet day. We have some pretty exciting adventures ahead of us, and it will be a while before we have a quiet day at home again. But, I promise it won’t be that long until we update the blog. Stay tuned for trip reports on our weekend backpack to the Flinders, diving at the Great Barrier Reef, and two weeks of shepherding 80 geology students in central Australia. (Oh, and there are more pictures here, if you'd like to have a look. We actually update these more regularly than the blog!)
But, I do intend to keep up the blog for the entire time we’re here, and there are exciting things to share. At least I think they’re exciting. So here we go.
This weekend is the first we’ve been at home both days for quite some time now. The first weekend in May, we went on our first official bushwalk with the Adelaide Bushwalkers (ABW). It was a walk for people under 35 years of age, which means scraping the barrel for the aging Bushwalking Club. We had five people from the club, and our friends Brad and Laila, who came along for the walk. Although we were few, the miles and smiles were many. We went something like 25 kms, starting at the bottom of the Adelaide Hills, and walking up almost to Hahndorf. Grumpy’s pizza restaurant was our final destination, and we were all happy for the delicious food after a long walk. That weekend was a bit epic for us. We also did an 85 km bike ride down to McLaren Vale and back up through the hills. It was a beautiful ride, with perfect weather and a delicious lunch stop about half-way through.The following weekend, Dave demonstrated (this essentially means to be a TA) for a first-year geology trip down at Sellick’s Beach. I joined him for the first day, and enjoyed a lovely day walking on the beach, and even managed to learn some geology. (I have to say, the more I learn about rocks, the more I like them : ) If water doesn’t work out, I think I’ll become a geologist!) The highlight of the day was watching these guys who parked their car on the beach try to push it out of wet sand. They had parked it at low tide, and had spent the day a ways down the beach, probably drinking beer, fishing and hanging out. By the time they decided to head home, the tide had come in, and even from a distance, we could see the waves lapping at the front wheels of the car. By the time the guys made it back to their car, the sand around the front tires was well and truly wet. They couldn’t drive the car out, as it didn’t have 4 wheel drive. So, they tried to push it. However, whenever a wave came crashing in, they would abandon the car and run up the beach to avoid getting their feet wet. Apparently, saving your car from the ocean is not as important as keeping your shoes dry! Eventually a four wheel drive car came down and pulled them out, but I have to say the whole scenario was hilarious. Hehe.
The next weekend, we headed up to a town in the southern Flinders Ranges called Melrose. The town is really tiny, with a hotel (this really means a pub) and a few little shops, and perhaps one of the nicest mountain biking shops in all of Australia. The area is renowned for its mountain biking, and Dave and Ryan, our neighbor, spent Saturday out on the trails. It was Dave’s first time mountain biking, and Ryan said that he improved by 200% over the course of the day. I went on my second ABW walk, which was an all-girls walk this time. There were six of us this time, and we had a lovely day climbing Mt. Remarkable. My favorite part was actually the descent, which was indeed remarkable. I even stopped to take several pictures, which is sort of a rarity for me. We had a lovely meal in the pub that night, which included one of the best desserts I’ve had here. It was a rhubarb and quandong (a native peach-like fruit) crumble, served in a coffee cup on a saucer. It was so cute, and even more delicious. The following day, we went for a shorter, drizzly walk in the Wirrabarra Forest before heading to a dry, warm bakery for some delicious pies.
The final weekend in May, we played in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament down in Victor Harbor. Although the weather was wet and windy, we played three good games on Saturday, and even got to play on the same team. (We’ve both been playing in a league the past few months, but it’s not co-ed.) It was sort of an amazing thing, because it seemed that each time we took a break (between games, or for lunch), dark gray clouds would immerse the fields in rain. By the time w were ready to play again, however, things had cleared a bit. The best was when we were playing our second game, and the other team took a time out to get a rest. It was actually sunny when they called the time out, but by the time we had all made it over to our sheltered water bottles, it started to rain. It kept raining, and fairly hard, so the other team called another time out. Then, we called a time out. And, then we called another time out. Finally, the rain stopped, and we went back out to finish the game. Frisbee tournaments always involve parties and food after the games, and so after finishing, we headed over to the Chiton Rocks Surf Lifesaving Club for showers, food, and hanging out. I don’t know if we have anything like Surf Lifesaving Clubs in the US, but they are quite common here, and really pretty neat. They are lifeguards for the beach, and they were bright yellow and red outfits with these hilarious little caps. The theme for the party that night was ‘Unsung Heroes’, and one of the girls on our team dressed up as a Surf Lifesaver (she actually used to be one), and I wish I had taken a picture for you to see. The cap is so funny! Anyways, the Club had a bunkroom, showers, kitchen, TV, pool table, and was right on the beach, so it was a perfect place to stay, especially for $16/night!
We ended up not playing Frisbee the next morning, as the weather was still wet and windy. Instead, we came home and went for a walk with our neighbors up into the hills. We’re all going on a weekend bushwalk to the Flinders Ranges next weekend (it’s the Queen’s Birthday weekend, and so we have Monday off). We took the opportunity to do a little training walk, and actually went again this weekend, and this time carrying backpacks with 7 liters of water. We walked back home through Belair National Park this weekend, and got to see a koala up close. It was so cute, I had to keep myself from picking him up for a snuggle.
It’s Sunday night now, and we actually haven’t left the backyard at all today. We Skyped some people in the northern hemisphere, ate some tasty leftovers for lunch, played a board game, cleaned the house, and are about to have dinner and watch a little Master Chef Australia. I’m still in my lounge about clothes, and am really enjoying the quiet day. We have some pretty exciting adventures ahead of us, and it will be a while before we have a quiet day at home again. But, I promise it won’t be that long until we update the blog. Stay tuned for trip reports on our weekend backpack to the Flinders, diving at the Great Barrier Reef, and two weeks of shepherding 80 geology students in central Australia. (Oh, and there are more pictures here, if you'd like to have a look. We actually update these more regularly than the blog!)
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