Kerre Woodham: Uni students either shape up or ship out

Photo / Rotorua Daily Post

It's about time universities took a harder line with poor performing students.

Now unis are no longer funded by the bums-on-seats model, they've signalled that they can't afford to carry deadwood.

They couched it in far more politically correct terms but basically if you can't keep up, you're out.

Previously, students who passed fewer than half their courses could faff around for up to three years before universities either suspended or expelled them.

That's three years of missing classes, unintelligible essays and extra workload for tutors who tried to bring the students up to speed.

It's also three years of a student loan - and three years of taxpayer subsidies to a student who can't even scrape together a C-grade BA.

Hardly a good return on investment. When I was at school, the more academic girls were the ones who were destined for uni - the other girls usually left at 16 and got jobs in offices or government departments or found themselves an apprenticeship.

There was no sense of university being better than a paid job - the girls just went where their skills and talents dictated.

Now, however, we seem to have the notion that everyone should be spending three years at uni whether they're capable of the academic workload or not.

According to a number of tradespeople I have spoken to, they're crying out for keen and bright young people to train up but they say careers advisers tend to think that the trades are the last resort for the very bottom of the educational pool.

When I was working on a TV show many years ago, interviewing tradesmen, there was nothing lowest common denominator about those guys.

They had successful businesses, great families and were pretty much set up by the time they were in their 30s.

A lot of them said they couldn't wait to leave school and get out into the workforce and start "doing".

One of them said he never saw the point of maths while he was in the classroom but once he started having to balance his books, he learned pretty damn quickly and discovered that he actually enjoyed juggling the numbers.

Some people learn better when they apply their learning in a practical way and not seeing the point of gender studies doesn't necessarily make you a fool.

If universities have to restrict places to only the most able students, I don't have a problem with that.

Having people at university and tertiary institutions who simply aren't interested or able is a waste of time and money.