Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Last Thursday, I told every public university in this country that, unless there are compelling reasons or exceptional circumstances, they should get rid of group assignments. The response has been profound. In the last five days, I've been flooded with responses from people across the country who shared their experiences. People feel deeply about this issue. On Friday, I spoke to a mum who told me that her daughters chose not to enrol in particular subjects to avoid group assignments. On the weekend, I spoke to another mum whose daughter had been penalised because someone else in the group had been caught using AI. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Since my speech, I've heard from thousands of students and teachers across Australia venting about their experiences, including people like Hilary, who said:

Group assignments are torture. It is virtually impossible to get others to do their fair share.

Steve wrote:

Spent 30 years working in universities. Could not agree more.

Laura said:

Agree—group assignments were horrible …

Alison wrote:

100% absolutely agree. I have just completed a 4-year nursing online degree where there was a considerable weighting on group work … It is a contrived and unrealistic replication of teamwork in the 'real world'.

Sarah wrote:

Group assignments for online degrees should be outlawed! The reason I'm studying online is because I'm a Mum to little ones & I don't have a uni near me but I'm expected to do a group assignment somehow? Insane!

Megan said:

I totally agree. Unless students are made accountable for their contributions a few are doing the work for everyone else.

Sharon started like this:

Totally agree. Our daughter and niece always were left to carry the others—even in high school.

Rontania said:

Absolutely agree. As a teacher I've seen too many kids get stuck with terrible groups and have to pull all the weight only to achieve a satisfactory grade.

Braden said:

I withdrew from a course because of the group assignments. Especially with adult education, where some students work shift work, juggling family responsibilities, it's not fair and feasible to be doing group assignments this day and age.

Others disagree, and their main argument seems to be that, in the workforce, you often have to collaborate. I appreciate that. Collaboration is a good thing, and I understand that employers want graduates who can work with others. But, at a time when the integrity of the university assessment system is under attack and the purpose of a degree is to assess an individual's knowledge and skills, not a group's knowledge and skills, group assignments only weaken the standing of a degree, and, in too many cases, they are simply unfair.

The depth and volume of the response sends a clear message. This issue has hit a nerve, and there's a common thread. It's about fairness, and it's about the integrity of the degree. Students feel instinctively that, in many cases, it's deeply unfair to assess them individually based on the work of others. There's always that student who does the work and that student who reaps the benefit. A university degree is an individual certification. It tells the world that the individual student has met the required standard and that they have a particular set of knowledge and skills. In group assignments, too much of that falls away. In a sense, it's the same basic question that is being raised by the use of AI and cheating factories: is the individual student demonstrating they have the knowledge and skills to earn this degree? Have they been properly and fairly tested? In a group assignment situation, too often the answer is no.

On Friday, the Minister for Education was asked for his thoughts on the issue. Instead of answering, he used the opportunity to make a joke and give some gratuitous political commentary. He's a politician—fair enough. I'm a politician; I get it. But it's a shame, because this isn't about politics; it's about students. It's about 1.6 million students in higher education in this country for whom group assignments are a daily reality. I say to the minister: listen to the students who tell you they're being unfairly penalised; listen to those who are telling you that group assignments force them to carry others; and listen to the mums and the mature-age students who somehow have to fit study between work and caring and family responsibilities, who don't have the flexibility to work around three or four other people, who don't have time to do the lion's share of a project that is meant to be split and who can't hand in an assignment, which their group have left until the last minute, during their night shift. This isn't a small thing; it's the real life experience of students.

In conclusion, I say to the students and former students across this country: I'm listening. If you've had an unfair group assessment, if you could have been assessed in a better way—tell me. Let's make it better, because our system needs to be modern and it needs to be fair. To academics and university administrators around the country, I say this: unless there are compelling reasons or exceptional circumstances, I'm calling on you to get rid of group assignments. Thousands of students have now backed this in. I'm calling on the universities to listen.

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