‘Teaching to an empty hall': is the changing face of universities eroding standards of learning?

The Guardian

19-02-2025

It's easy to picture a university campus. The manicured lawns packed with students reading books in the sun, the commanding academic in a bustling lecture hall, the cheap beer at the student pub after class, debate getting livelier after each glass. We imagine it as the site of multiple awakenings – political, sexual, philosophical, intellectual.
But this cliched experience, if it ever existed, has become a thing of the past. With class attendance often not compulsory, academics now speak to empty rows of seats in massive, echoey lecture halls. Students watch their classes later online at a convenient time, if they get around to it.
Quadrangles are quiet, save for students walking between classes, or the occasional tourist.
When Adelaide University became the first Group of Eight institution in Australia to ditch face-to-face lectures last September. The move was slammed by the National Tertiary Education Union as accelerating the 'death of campus life'. The newly amalgamated university, to open in 2026, intends to roll out 'rich digital learning activities', noting there has been a 'steady decline' in attendance on campuses.
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'What is a 'rich digital learning activity'?' the national president of the NTEU, Dr Alison Barnes questioned at the time. 'Removing [the] human in teaching? It completely flies in face of the nature of academic work, the very fabric of the institution.'
In reality, Adelaide University was no outlier. In 2020, Curtin University and Murdoch University released plans to move away from face-to-face lectures, even after the pandemic. The next year, the University of the Sunshine Coast did the same, citing a 'gradual shift' from the number of students wanting to attend lectures, as did the University of Tasmania.
Darren McKee, then-chief operating officer of Murdoch University, put it bluntly: 'The face-to-face mass lecture is all but dead'.
More than a dozen academics who spoke to Guardian Australia on the condition of anonymity say their work has become undervalued and underpaid, with recycled, pre-recorded lectures and Zoom tutorials without attendance requirements leading to a steady decline in the value of tertiary education.
More than 900 degrees across almost 30 Australian universities can now be attained entirely online, according to Open Universities Australia, which partners with tertiary institutions to make higher education more accessible.
These courses are designed to be taught 100% remotely, providing flexible study options while allowing students to graduate with the same qualification as those on campus.
But academics say casualisation of the workforce and budget cuts are also pushing traditional courses away from face-to-face teaching.
Many express a sense of hopelessness and resignation, they mourn the days when teaching was more than addressing faceless Zoom screens, when classes were small and intimate, giving tutors time to connect with students and their ideas.
Several academics say their role is no longer about fostering learning, it's about money – which means catering to the masses at as low a cost as possible.
'Universities are simply degree factories now,' a casual academic with 20 years experience in the sector says. 'There is no focus on learning – academics aren't encouraged to help people to learn.'
Deputy vice-chancellor of student experience at Monash University, prof Sarah McDonald, says as campuses have increasingly diversified and expanded, so have student expectations.
Students are enrolling at a greater rate from low socioeconomic backgrounds, are mature age, from diverse backgrounds or studying with a disability. Flexible learning has become increasingly important in enabling equitable access to a more heterogenous cohort.
'There's a real recognition that students now face a multiplicity of pressures – jobs, family commitments,' McDonald says.
'It's not that learning isn't happening in person, it's happening in a way it wasn't 10 years ago. [Decades ago] few students didn't come from an affluent background. It was a different beast. Now students also need flexibility.'
Studies show a sense of belonging among young people has been consistently declining in higher education settings and at school from even before the pandemic turbo-charged the shift to remote learning. McDonald's role was established late last year to focus on campus life outside the classroom – including academic and disability support and health and wellbeing.
In 2025, that means free yoga and mindfulness sessions, the expansion of quiet spaces and silent discos, a world away from raucous beer-skolling marathons and heated university politics. In a previous era, organic social connection supported wellbeing. Now, universities are dedicating significant resources to programs and spaces that help students find a sense of place.
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McDonald isn't worried about the drift online.
'It can be engaging in the online space,' she says. 'Tutorials, workshops, labs, seminars, these are the things students really value and are prepared to make time for [on campus].
'We're beholden to meet students where they are.'
The argument put by universities is when learning is specifically catered to the online space – it can be interactive and provide the teacher with a great degree of freedom, that is supplemented by smaller, face-to-face classes.
But while online learning can provide greater accessibility and functionality, others say the digitisation of education is being adopted for financial incentives without consideration of the student experience.
A sessional academic at a Victorian university says the learning standard has become 'below average', with course materials and case studies often 'older than the students' themselves.
'Slides are rarely updated,' she says. 'Lectures are mostly recorded and recycled each semester. Hardly any of the students listen to them and the tutors then have to do the lecturing as well, so a somewhat meaningful discussion can take place in class.'
Professor of higher education at The University of Melbourne, Chi Baik, says the idea of the university experience being based on campus is now only true for older 'sandstone' institutions.
'For previous generations there was a social aspect, they would come to campus to hang. Now the majority of first year students only intend to come to campus when they have to. If it's not compulsory, they don't,' she says.
'It was a trend happening before Covid, but Covid gave it a huge injection. Numbers [of students] have increased so much, for many, it's not a personal experience any more, it's transactional.
(In 1990 tertiary institutions had, on average, one staff member for every 14 students. In 2023, the figure had almost doubled to 22.)
'It's always going to be challenging when there's so many students to staff. You're one in thousands.'
Baik says this is 'demotivating' for academics who put in hours of preparation and are 'lecturing or teaching to an empty hall'.
But other than mandating participation, she says 'the ship has sailed'.
'Flexible learning, the online hybrid model, is just getting bigger,' she says.
'It offers opportunities and access previous generations may have not had, but we won't return to a time where you'll see students of their own volition coming on to campus for the majority of study hours.'
As students shift off campuses, it's also harder to determine who's engaging with course content, and how much. Coupled with the pursuit of profit, academics interviewed say good teaching becomes 'completely determined' by pass rates, instead of the student experience.
One academic who has worked at three Victorian universities says the standard of work has 'never been so low'. It has reached the point he is considering moving to the private sector.
'I have been repeatedly asked to un-fail students,' he says. 'People are graduating with little knowledge or applicable skills.'
The sessional tutor says around half of the class is absent at every tutorial. Some don't attend all semester.
When he initially reaches out – he's muted, fatigued. He doesn't think anything he has to say is new, nor, in all likelihood, will it change things.
'I used to want to lecture, but now I think, 'who would I be lecturing to?'' he says.