To students, staff, university leaders, and members of the wider JCU community,

Our members have been telling the Physical Sciences Society committee, clearly and consistently, that their learning experience at this university is not what it should be. We have listened, and we understand what they are telling us. We are publishing this open letter because these concerns reach beyond any one subject, cohort, or student society. They affect the character and quality of the university experience we share, and they deserve an open, university-wide response.

The concerns students have raised fall into five areas.

The first is teaching quality: what is happening in the classroom itself. Students are reporting a shift away from in-person teaching toward online-based delivery for a growing number of subjects, with additional concerns about how block mode subjects are functioning in practice and clashing with trimester subjects. The mode of delivery matters because it affects the quality of engagement, access to immediate feedback, and the kind of peer and academic interaction that in-person learning provides.

Alongside this, experienced staff are leaving and not being replaced. Students are conscious of this shift; our seasoned lecturers are not just familiar faces, but have valuable accumulated subject knowledge, established relationships, and successful teaching approaches that took years to develop.

This is the current backdrop for the recent change proposal regarding the laboratory and technical services. Should the proposal be accepted, it would lead to a loss of 1/3 of the affected staff, the privatisation or removal of many functions of the technical staff across biological sciences, physics, chemistry, engineering, medicine, and veterinary sciences. This includes the complete privatisation of the veterinary lab, a loss of live animals in biological practicals, and tech staff will no longer attend field trips where techs have been so integral to the experiences of so many students. Students are wholly concerned that these changes reduce the value of their education and the completeness of their degrees. The University has given zero clarity to students and affected staff on the status of the proposed changes.

The second is assessment: how students are evaluated, and the conditions in which that evaluation takes place. The cap of three assessments per subject and the reduction of marked practicals are restricting the ways in which students can demonstrate their knowledge and progress. Students are also reporting slow feedback turnaround, uncertainty about when results are released, and inconsistent or unclear application of pass/fail decisions. These issues are compounded by changes to the Special Circumstances Policy, including the removal of adverse impact provisions for most subjects, with that support now largely remaining only for students in the MBBS and MDS degrees. For many students, this represents a significant reduction in the support available when illness, personal hardship, or other serious circumstances affect their academic performance.

The third is course and calendar structure: the architecture within which students are expected to learn. The move to trimesters has reduced the teaching period from thirteen weeks to ten. Thirteen weeks of content does not compress into ten simply by renumbering the weeks, and the question of what is lost in that compression has not been answered. For courses that include mandatory internships or placements, the problem is more concrete: minimum duration requirements for those placements are set externally and cannot be shortened to fit the trimester calendar. The available placement windows no longer align with what those courses require. These are not incidental difficulties and are the structural consequences of a calendar change that has not been fully thought out and worked through.

Most immediately, study vacation, a dedicated study-only period in the academic calendar, was abolished next year and, only after student outrage, was half-reinstated to five-days of study vacation followed by a three-day exam block. This is a significant reduction from the one week of study and one week exam block that is allotted in the current academic calendar. The new reduced nature of study vacation leaves an inadequate break between the end of teaching and the start of high-stakes assessment. Whatever the pressures on the calendar, students need time to consolidate learning before they are examined on it. Further, the reduced exam window will inevitably force students into taking exams back-to-back, further exacerbating the stress and time pressure that students are now facing at JCU.

The fourth is consultation and transparency: the process by which the university seeks and responds to student input. The concern here is not that the university is failing to collect feedback; it appears to be collecting it consistently. The concern is that nothing travels back. Changes requested through formal channels are not made. Survey results are not communicated. Students have no way of knowing whether their feedback is being considered. What compounds this is timing: by the point at which feedback is sought, the relevant decisions have often already been finalised. Students are being asked for views on outcomes that are no longer changeable, which means the process –– whatever its intentions –– is not functioning as a genuine input into decision-making. The result is a student body that has largely stopped believing that official channels make any difference.

The fifth is confidence in institutional direction: a concern that sits above and beyond the individual issues listed here. Students are not only frustrated with specific policies or processes, but they are also finding it difficult to trust that the university has a coherent and considered plan for what it is becoming. The combined effect of staff departures, changes to course structures, worsening university reputation, and uncertainty about future offerings has created a broader anxiety about institutional trajectory that is not easily addressed by fixing any one of the issues above. Students feel as though the university is moving further away from their pioneering corporate statement for the sake of cost-cutting at the expense of their education. It is a question about where the university is headed and whether students can rely on JCU to remain the institution they chose to attend.

We are asking the university community to treat these concerns as a shared responsibility. We call on university leadership to respond publicly to each of the five areas, explain what action will be taken and within what timeframe, and ensure that students and staff are consulted before decisions are finalised. We also invite students, staff, alumni, representative bodies, clubs and societies, and others connected to JCU and its broader community to share their experiences, support constructive discussion, and help build a fuller picture of how these changes are affecting learning and teaching.

Contributions can be sent to pss.jcu@gmail.com. We are happy to meet, hear individual or collective perspectives, and work with others across the university on practical next steps. Every contribution matters, because any response must be shaped by the people who study, teach, work, and participate in this community. We invite the university to respond openly, and we encourage all members of the JCU community to take part in the conversation.

 

Yours sincerely,

JCU Physical Sciences Society