1. Not an equal opportunity employer. Examples
a. Daughter of ex-HOD of Electrical and Computer Science (ECSE) Department recruited as researcher without any due process.
b. An assoc Professor (ECSE) of Sri Lankan origin grants scholarship only to Sri Lankan students.
c. Spouses of senior academics recruited on a preferential basis.
d. Most of Jobs and funding kept secret and allocated to close associates and friends.
2. Exploitation of post graduate students (especially foreign students). Research is plagiarized by academics with the knowledge of senior management. Complainants are threatened with cancellation of visa. Complaints never followed through. Am aware of faculty member who routinely gets his household chores done by south-east asian students for the duration of their scholarship. Formal complaints have been filed on numerous occasions by different students but to no avail.
3. Inadequate / negligible research assistance to post graduates especially in engineering faculty. Substantial time is wasted in procuring, setting up and machining the research equipment which other universities provide prior to research. Trade assistance (electricians/mechanics etc) has been terminated and PhD students can expect to waste a lot of their time in non-academic activities.
4. Adminstrative and Occupational health and safety assistance is non existant. Untrained, unqualified and inexperienced students are made to sign OHS forms to indemnify univeristy of any adverse incidents.
5. Research courses are unplanned and adhoc. There is no mechanism to attend other formal courses that might be related to your research.
6. Quality of undergraduate studies is substandard as compared to countries like China, India, Malaysia and Singapore. E.g. I had to grant a minimum of 60% marks to a student for just turning up for a tutorial/lab. If you are after a true education Monash is not the institution to be in.
7. No unified plan or policy guiding the future. E.g. in my 5 years of stay 40% of academic staff was culled in ECSE in 2007 and two year later fresh staff was hired. Academics are subject to management vagaries with no job security.
