Class sizes at Australian universities have blown out since the pandemic, with tutorials of dozens and lectures of hundreds now the norm, according to the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU).
An NTEU survey of nearly 3,700 academics and 800 general staff has found that student support is becoming increasingly difficult to provide as classes balloon. Eighty-nine per cent of tutorials – the “most personal” type of class – have 20 or more students, even though almost two-thirds of respondents believe classes of less than 20 are optimal for learning.
Sixty-two per cent of respondents said tutorials had increased in size since 2019, with half now containing between 30 and 100 students, and 38 per cent said lectures had grown – particularly “at the upper end of the scale”.
“There are too many students and not enough time,” the report says. “Staff describe tutorials that have become mini-lectures, classrooms where students queue along the walls waiting for help, and a creeping impossibility of knowing – let alone supporting – the students in their care.”
This “erosion of small-group teaching” is especially damaging for disadvantaged students, the report says. “They are…least likely to have the external support networks – family experience of university, financial cushions, established social capital – that can compensate when institutional support is withdrawn.”
