Peter Busch, Global Business Institute: Sydney Spring 2024
The academic culture in Australia is significantly different from anything I’ve experienced during my time at Pitt. The power distance between the students and teachers is much lower than that of the American classroom. I’ve found that many of the professors here prefer to be called by their first name, whereas at Pitt I oftentimes find myself referring to my superiors as “Professor so and so” or “Doctor so and so.” The decreased power distance has also left some of my classes feeling disorganized. At Pitt, the courses are laid out in a straightforward manner and success is easily definable. In Australia, I oftentimes found myself wondering if I was doing well in my courses due to the less organized class structure. Perhaps I was just comfortable with the Pitt classroom format after being immersed in it for so many years, but nonetheless the adjustment to Australian classes was difficult at first.
Another note that struck me as different in the Australian classroom environment was the amount of writing each class demanded. Prior to the semester in Australia, I hadn’t written a formal, academic essay since my freshman year at Pitt. However, each of my four classes in Australia required that I submit multiple written essays. By the end of the semester, I had easily written over ten-thousand words in my essays combined. The change of pace in coursework was refreshing, but I much prefer written exams over essays. I’d also like to mention how different the class sizes were in Australia. On average, my classes in Australia had between six and eight students – for comparison, my classes at Pitt average about thirty students per section. Now this may be more attributable to the size of the program than the Australian academic culture, but the decreased class sizes still presented quite a change from what I’m used to. I found myself contributing to course discussions far more often and in depth than before.
As a final note, I’d like to touch on the inclusion of guest speakers and field trips in my Australian courses. These experiences aren’t unique to the Australian classroom by any means, but their inclusion was much more frequent and strategic than what I have experienced at Pitt. Guest speakers and field trips were used to introduce or reinforce topics in my classes in Australia, whereas many of the excursions I’ve had in the Pitt classrooms have been done with less integration to course topics. I found that the guest speakers in my International Supply Chains course in Australia were especially great, as they added a plethora of insight and industry knowledge to class discussions. Overall, I felt that class excursions were especially well executed in the Australian classroom.
(Pictured above is my Intercultural Communications class field trip to Sydney’s Chinatown for Lunar New Year)
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