#College in Australia

[reasonsforhope]

Article

"Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Sunday that his government planned to cut student loans for around three million Australians by 20%, wiping off around A$16 billion ($10 billion) in debts.

The move builds on May's budget, which attacked cost of living pressures in Australia and gave debt relief for students, as well as more investment to make medicines cheaper, and a boost to a rent assistance programme.

"This will help everyone with a student debt right now, whilst we work hard to deliver a better deal for every student in the years ahead," Albanese said in a statement announcing the cut to student loans for tertiary education.

The changes would mean the average graduate with a loan of A$27,600 would have A$5,520 wiped, the government said, adding that they would take effect from June 1, 2025.

The government said it already planned to cut the amount that Australians with a student debt have to repay per year and raise the threshold to start repayments.

If reelected at the next general election, due in 2025, Labor would also legislate to guarantee 100,000 free places each year at the country's Technical and Further Education institutes, Albanese said.

"This is a time for building, building better education for all," he said in a speech to supporters in South Australia state capital Adelaide.

Cost of living pressures, stoked by stubbornly high inflation, have a special resonance with a federal election looming and the centre-left Labor government now polling behind their conservative opponents.

(US$1 = 1.5246 Australian dollars)

-via Reuters, November 2, 2024

[nando161mando]

This is happening in Louisiana.

[leclercskiesahead]

Why does he look so big here

[ren-studys]

back at uni again

[unopenablebox]

im making a wedding guest list in order to. uh. destress. from work anxiety. (we are not officially engaged yet in that we are waiting for our rings to arrive sometime this month and also do not even a little have a wedding date and have not figured out a budget yet. so it's a very stupid exercise. but. i can do whatever i want)

anyway im beginning to worry that i only have two friends? i suppose it's actually good because that will cost less but possibly i have some kind of disease or condition

[brick-van-dyke]

As the US election closes in and the final states take to the polls, I want to remind people to turn out and protest.

Yep, protest. Strike, disrupt, be out there on the street regardless of who you voted for or who wins. I expect to see you all out there demanding; access to abortion nation wide, protections against discrimination, free universal healthcare, a free Palestine, anti war, prison abolition, to increase the minimum wage, and for a US free of the electoral college and that counts votes as votes.

Yes, you can say "you should vote for Harris" and do so as much as you like, but do not forget the power you have through your own everyday actions away from the polls and that of protesting. Do not use the excuse that your right to vote means it's somehow more foundational or important than the right to protest. You have the ability to create direct action and that is so so important, please don't just expect a rich representative to stick to their promises every time you vote; you have power too, never forget that.

This system will not change until we, the people, make it. There is NO representative that can ever change the system that allowed them in, and likewise; this system will never allow a candidate that would stop it from continuing and/or ensuring its designated purpose of oppression and subjugation. Resist, regardless of the results.

Long live the resistance.

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

The Squid and the Whale (2005, Noah Baumbach)

27/12/2024

[manisha999]

श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता के अनुसार ॐ नमः शिवाय मंत्र से मोक्ष नहीं हो सकता।

तो अवश्य जानें वह कौन सा मंत्र है जिससे मोक्ष मिल सकता है।

#MysteryOfGodShiva

पढ़ें पुस्तक "ज्ञान - गगा"

[belongstolove]

[yasu-kun]

*usually around Fri 1 pm UST (Fri 8 am EST) until Sat 12:59 pm UST (Sat 7:59 EST)

UPDATE: Now the voting is over (and I can finally edit this post)...

THANK YOU FOR CHECKING THIS POST! I'll randomly share any new scifell contents I make every Saturday as possible (if not or for some occasions, it'll be Sunday instead, or next time to keep as a surprise wait) — regardless what time, Saturday and Sunday ends with "S" for scifell! XDD

[nando161mando]

BREAKING| After only 4 days of student protests, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) vows to pull its investments in Israeli companies that feature on a UN blacklist, and set up a taskforce to explore engagement with Israeli institutions.

[aromanticgarbage]

Thinking about that silly i hate foreigners 2012 filthy frank video and the fact that Joji literally pulled out his government approved passport for a stupid two minutes long comedy skit.

[autismtana]

so you wanna write a heartbreak high fic, but you're american (part 2)

Back in November, I wrote this after reading a bunch of Heartbreak High fics. I always planned to write a part 2 featuring some more aspects of Australian schooling, but my own writing, work and personal things (aka mental illness) got in the way.

As with part 1, this is NSW/Sydney specific, as that's where I'm from and where Heartbreak High is filmed and set. People from other states might have different experiences (I know a little bit about Queensland for example, because my parents are from there and most of my relatives went to school there).

If there's anything not covered here that you're curious about, please check part 1 as I may have covered it there, or send a reply.

Extracurricular activities: these are not timetabled during lesson times (some schools have things like Friday afternoon rewards but those don't really count). They're generally just for fun and a way for kids to socialise. What extracurricular activities are available depends on what the teachers at the school are able to run but aside from competitive and social sport, these are things like debating, mock trial (fake court cases, highly recommend, very fun), music ensembles like choir/jazz band/orchestra, then there are some academic things like Tournament of Minds, coding, streamwatch. The more academic activities are generally more selective, especially if there's a competition aspect like ToM. Extracurricular activities have absolutely no bearing on whether or not a kid will get into uni, although depending on what they are, they can be good to put on a CV for jobs. There are also no limits on how many extracurricular activities a student can do (there's no "oh he chose basketball instead of orchestra as his extracurricular" ... he can do both, they're also usually not running at the same time). Sydney schools tend to run more activities than regional/rural schools because the public transport system means that it's easy to get to and from places outside of school hours. Non-metropolitan schools tend to run things during recess/lunchtime so there's a limit on how many things kids can do.

Sport: most Australian kids participate in some form of sport. The most common ones are: soccer, cricket, netball, rugby league, AFL, touch football, athletics, swimming, basketball and tennis. Private schools often offer things like golf, rugby union and sometimes even skiing, rowing and equestrian. Hartley High has a group of cheerleaders and, like with the uniform thing, this is extremely rare. Cheerleading is a thing in Australia, but it mostly happens through clubs, kind of like gymnastics. It's more common for girls here to just be involved in a more conventional sport instead (usually netball, which, in my opinion, is the most boring sport in the history of the universe, but is pretty popular in Australian schools; league tag is also extremely popular in more regional areas). Depending on how big the school is, Aussie kids who play sport either get involved with school teams or local club teams, and they tend to range from more social/fun to more competitive, particularly as kids transition from the juniors into the older age groups. Some schools might not necessarily have school teams but will scrounge up a representative team for inter-school competitions (so this would be like if the inter-school basketball competition team wasn't necessarily the school basketball team but was just made up of the best 10-12 basketball players that tried out or signed up). Other schools have more competitive teams that compete against other schools. Schools in NSW have to do a mandatory amount of hours of physical activity, so some schools will let kids choose a sport for a certain amount of time to do during that time (this might be when the competitive teams compete). Club sports generally happen on Saturdays and Sundays (for me, AFL was Saturday, soccer was Sunday, rowing was Saturday morning if we didn't have a regatta that week). Kids who excel at a particular sport might get to participate in NSW combined high schools (CHS). Some of the more "prestigious" schools are part of athletic associations like GPS and CAS. In terms of post-school, I know very little about how it works, but all I know is that it's nothing like any of the American systems. We don't have a system like the NCAA here; I know a little about the AFL draft but it's too complicated to explain so here's a Wikipedia article about it (I know nothing about how NRL players go pro so don't ask me that). An Australian kid might attract a scholarship to an American university to play sport overseas, but our universities don't work like that.

Student leadership: Generally, all schools have one or two School Captains and one or two Vice Captains (some schools let the whole school vote for captains, but usually they limit it to teachers and the older grades). Then there are House Captains (kind of like the prefects from the transphobic lady's book), and they're usually elected by all the students in that house. They're involved in inter-house competitions which I'll touch on later. Some schools have captains for things like different extracurricular activities. Schools generally have a student representative council with one or more elected representatives from each grade, depending on how big the school is. My school was a Catholic school, so I got to be a Liturgy Representative (and I absolutely put that on my CV when I applied for my first shitty bakery job).

Carnivals: pretty much every Aussie school has a swimming carnival and an athletics carnival. This is where there's a bunch of races (and field events for athletics) and you participate in as many as possible to get house points. Sometimes swimming is only open to more competitive students but generally more people participate in athletics. Most Australian kids have swimming lessons as part of mandatory PE in primary school and in years 7-10 (I got my bronze medallion as part of mine and I'm now a member of my local surf lifesavers group). The house captains rile up their houses and get them to sing war cries to cheer everyone on (my personal favourite was 'how funky is your chicken'). The winning house gets ultimate bragging rights and is pretty much always the red house (they tend to put all the sporty kids in red and the dweeby nerdy kids in yellow for some reason). You get house points for going in events, but you also get them for cheering the loudest or having the cleanest area. Really, it's just a fun way of getting out of classes.

[lottiestudying]

21.06.2023—winter on campus

[daily-public-domain]

Day 269: "College Cricket, Toowoomba"

link

–This image is part of the public domain, meaning you can do anything you want with it! (you could even sell it as a shirt, poster or whatever, no need to credit it!)–

[morrigan-reads]

gosh i love getting into arthuriana (and medievalism in general.) it's just becoming obsessed with a new obscure manuscript containing a unique form of a work, finding out it isn't digitised or available in facsimile anywhere, then moving on to the next one.

what bliss.