May 6
A response to Andrea Hull - VCA Student Union
A post from the VCA Student Union…
On Fri 22 May, VCA Head, Andrea Hull sent an email to students containing a number of outright lies. Here is the VCA Student Union’s response:
Andrea Hull claims: “There has been no move to implement the Melbourne Model at the VCA at this time. Of course, how the Melbourne Model might fit in to the VCA to the benefit of students has been a subject of discussion between the VCA and the University of Melbourne over the last year.”
VCA Student Union’s response: The so called “discussion” has consisted of Melbourne University dictating their plans and the VCA management, including Andrea Hull, obsequiously bowing down (they’re not going to bite the hand that feeds them, after all).
Andrea Hull seems to have a bit of trouble with the exact definition of the Melbourne Model. Last year she wrote a letter to all students assuring them that the changes being proposed by Melbourne University are “an extension of the VCA’s current degree structure, which is already a form of the Melbourne Model as it focuses on both breadth and depth.” (Wed 18 April 2007 - email from A.Hull to all students). In fact, nothing could be further from the Melbourne Model than the VCA’s current degree structure.
Melbourne University’s plan to shrink the VCA’s schools from six schools to three is part of the Melbourne Model - they’re simply not calling it that because they know the model is now incredibly controversial among students, staff and the broader community. VCA students in particular demonstrated their opposition to the model again and again in 2007, so the University decided to be a bit sneaky about implementing it. (And Andrea Hull obviously thinks that she can help to pull the wool over students’ eyes with outright lies to the student body.
Shrinking undergraduate students’ options is a key feature of the Melbourne Model. At the University’s Parkville campus, students used to be able to choose from 96 undergraduate degrees. From the start of 2008, they can choose from only six. The plan to reduce six VCA schools to three and to abolish undergraduate Film and Television fits neatly into the University’s slash and burn approach to undergraduate courses.
Even The Age could work out that the VCA changes are part of the Melbourne Model. Their report on Wed 23 April spelled it out: “The state’s premier arts college will halve the number of its schools next year as it begins its shift to the controversial US-style teaching model.”
Andrea Hull claims: “Consideration is currently being given to the newly constituted Faculty of the VCA and Music having three principal schools (Music, Art and Performing Arts) with Film and TV forming its own school for purposes of branding and marketing, possibly sitting within the VCA Graduate School, or delivering into a New Generation degree dependent on the school’s further consideration of funding and breadth options.”
VCA Student Union’s response: “Consideration” is being given to this plan only in the sense that it was announced by University Provost Peter McPhee in a 15 minute meeting with VCA staff as a fait accompli on Tues 22 April and will be passed (without any genuine consultation with VCA students or staff) by Melbourne University’s council on Monday 12 May.In the case of Film and Television, the VCA has been back flipping for months when asked to confirm whether it will abolish the undergraduate course. In her letter to students in April last year Andrea Hull wrote: “While there has been discussion about a proposal for Film and TV to be offered only at postgraduate level, this discussion has not been finalised and all evidence is pointing to a likely decision which will see this retained as an undergraduate entry program” (Wed 18 April 2007 - email from A.Hull to all students). It’s clear now that this was another lie, and that Hull was hoping that students’ anger about the Film and Television changes would die down, so that the University could ram through their plan to abolish the undergraduate course.