Please stop devaluing my degree.

You know, when I started studying at my alma mater, I knew we weren't the biggest and brightest university on the face of the earth, but I thought we had something vaguely resembling a decent reputation (especially in certain fields) and I assumed my double degree would be something worth having.

Then, one day, I started looking at some of the postgraduate studies for the "big" and "special" institutions (you know, like Yale and Oxford) and realised my entire double degree might get me some credit towards one of their basic undergraduate programmes, but sure as hell wouldn't get me into a Masters.

I simply didn't study some of the things they considered to be dirt basic components of my field - because they simply weren't offered. Where the big and mighty institutions considered things like "proficiency in one ancient language and one modern language" to be compulsory, I would have had to do some major restructuring of my degree to crowbar the modern language into the mix, and the ancient language simply wasn't on the table.

And that's just one example.

The subjects I was offered - heck, steered towards by the very structure of my course - were the kind of subjects you get offered in regional Australian universities.

Over the years I've come to the conclusion that Australian regional universities are of dubious value. I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me, but there are some good reasons for my thinking this.

Primarily, they are so underfunded it isn't funny. A university is like a building. A building is made up of a large number of small parts - and if those parts are cheaply made or of poor quality, then the entire building is cheaply made and of poor quality. And yet, when the funding is scarce, the first thing to suffer is the quality of the parts.

Poorly funded universities have the cheapest of everything. They have the cheapest technical support, the cheapest computer systems, the cheapest buildings and classrooms... They have labs that aren't as good as the labs in better funded universities. They have library collections that aren't as good as the library collections in better funded universities. They have equipment that's out of date that they can't afford to upgrade or replace. They spend what money they have on cheap systems that break down too easily and they employ people who aren't trained or experienced enough fix them... and everything seems to be running on the edge of complete failure.

What kind of quality graduate can you expect from this kind of environment? It's almost a given that anyone who is any good will go somewhere else, and the only students (or, indeed, staff) who will stay in these environments are the also-rans. The bottom of the barrel. The ones who weren't good enough to go elsewhere.

Of course, this isn't exactly true. Regional universities get good students who want to stay near their families. They get good lecturers who love the lifestyle. They get good librarians who are trying to get a foot in the door of a competitive profession. But, they also get people who aren't that great, they were just the only ones available - or the only ones they could afford. And no matter how good the people might be, there's a limit to what they can achieve with the tools that are available.

Of course, without government support (and even with it, due to the conditions placed on a lot of government funding), the only way they can get money is to attract students. When all of the students who want good quality are going to the universities that have money, all they can do to get the numbers is to lower their entry standards and offer populist courses. This further lowers the reputation of the regional universities, and continues to send quality people away.

It wasn't too bad when I started studying, but it has gotten steadily and consistently worse. Now, ten years after I began my degree, I wouldn't study here. I'd go somewhere where they could afford to repair things instead of just patch them. Where they didn't replace resources reluctantly and with the cheapest model available. Where they had 30 year old textbooks in the library because they want to keep the history available, not because they need to pad out their collection.

I'd go somewhere where they didn't slash the budget every time someone new took over.

And I know that even though the degree I completed five years ago was better supported than the degrees our students are completing now, I also know the reputation of a university is retro-fitted. Every time they slash the budget, they make my degree worth less.

As someone who works for a regional university, I find the budget cuts frustrating and disheartening. As a former student, I just want to grab someone, shake them and ask them to stop devaluing my degree. When you make the university cheaper, you cheapen everything and everyone who ever came out of it. I wonder if anyone in charge of budgets ever thinks of that.