THE Muresk Old Collegians’ Association (MOCA) says there remains more questions than answers after it met with officials from Curtin University to discuss the new agribusiness associate degree planned for the Muresk campus in 2019.
The two-year associate degree was announced in August when the State government confirmed it would stop providing supplementary funding to support Muresk’s three-year Charles Sturt University (CSU) Bachelor of Agricultural Business Management (BABM) course due to low enrolment numbers. The new associate degree will be a pathway to the three-year Bachelor of Agribusiness degree offered at Curtin.
The announcement was met with a mixed response from the WA agriculture sector, with concerns that Curtin’s new two-year degree would not meet industry requirements to the same level as the three-year BABM course.
MOCA spokesperson on agribusiness tertiary education Peter Lee said the meeting was frustrating and left the MOCA delegation with several concerns. He said MOCA was unsure as to why the university was developing a “TAFE- type” course at Muresk instead of a university level degree.
“They want an associate degree but we’re saying it’s not a university’s job, why don’t you do something a university does instead of doing something a TAFE does?”, Mr Lee said.
Mr Lee said MOCA also had concerns the university would only provide 300 credits for students who go on to enrol in the bachelor degree at Curtin, which requires 600 credit points to be completed.
He said it was unclear how Curtin had determined this if it was yet to finalise the course outline for the associate degree.
“Only three semesters will be good enough to go into the university course, but they haven’t designed the course yet so how the hell do we know and how the hell do they know more to the point,” Mr Lee said.
Mr Lee said it was unclear if MOCA would be involved in any ongoing consultation for the construction of the course.
