Charles Darwin University — Attraction in Brinkin

CDU is the only proper university in NT. No competition means no incentive for them to perform. People who are in the NT have no choice but to study at CDU. What saves them is government fundings and international student fees.

Lecturers and academic staff are usually great, just like any other universities, there are many good ones but some bad ones do exist.

The Management is hopeless, working culture is bad, non-academic staff aren't motivated, some are arrogant. Tbh good staff won't last in this organisation due to it's toxic and boys club culture.

Campus life is non-existent. There are many international students in courses like IT, hospitality, accounting, engineering, etc., but most students are busy working to pay for their expensive uni fees, so there are not many activities happening within the campus among the students. The cafeterias are very expensive.

The physical campus buildings are great, the campuses are well maintained and they are quite spacious with great facilities, they have kitchens where you can do simple meal prep. They have so many buildings (Imagine the cost of maintaining so many campuses. Darwin is so small, yet they have four campuses: Waterfront, CBD, Casuarina, Palmerston; not including satellite campuses in other regional NT and interstate!) Parking is considerably easy in many of their campuses, compared to other universities down south.

The online platforms are okay, it used to be great before covid as there weren't many unis offering online study, but post-covid, many unis offering better, more user-friendly online platforms.

It's ok for short courses and for more practical TAFE courses which require equipment, labs and other facilities, but I wouldn't do long uni courses here. It's bearable but many students have mixed experiences, especially when it comes to placement, a lot of them faced challenges and were angry with CDU.

Lucky in Australia, we have strict educational standards. A lot of courses are highly regulated, especially those prescribed courses such as nursing, accounting, teaching, etc. Hence the quality of the courses are usually on par with other universities who are offering the same qualification.

The tuition fees for bachelor and master levels are cheaper than other proper universities down south, but for a couple thousand dollars extra, I'd rather go to a better, more caring university - unless CDU offers scholarship or they have a suitable research supervisor. Although, Darwin do have it's own advantages, for example, the housing cost is considered lower and easy to find, plenty of jobs to go around, friendly multicultural town, more relax and casual.

But compared with TAFE, colleges, and other RTOs who offer Cert III, IV and Diploma qualifications, CDU fees are much higher. In fact, CDU discontinued offering certain courses for international student on Cert/ Diploma level as they can't compete with other RTOs who offer way lower price. See StudyNT for all RTOs available in the NT.

Overall it's an okay experience, neither good or bad, just try to get along with everyone and finish the study on time, but don't expect much memorable time here. It is not a nightmare, if you choose to study here, most probably you won't regret it, there area always pros and cons wherever you go.

The best is to get feedback from people who are doing or have done that particular course recently, as the experience can vary across different faculties.

Many people living in Australia are on Facebook, students form Facebook groups for their uni/ course/ unit, alternatively find a group of people from the country who are living in Darwin and get...

They changed teaching styles from classroom learning for theory to almost entirely self study. This bothered me as I had called in the year before to enquire about teaching styles.

Since the lecturer who I started with left after a month, I still haven't received a grade on the units they taught. It's been almost a year.

The classroom where we did the practicals was constantly "double-booked", despite having several months advance notice to use it. The lecturer (second) didn't bother emailing the class to tell them that there was no class on that day, as the students didn't notify the lecturer that they were coming to class. For the class they paid for. And took annual leave to attend. Some of whom had to take public transport. My class was required to send these attendance emails in before every class, as our lecturer claimed that this was "how workplaces operated". An asinine statement, made to a class of adult learners, most of whom understood from first-hand experience, this was NOT how workplaces operated.

Several of the units didn't have the two-hour tutorials, tutorials being the only form of classroom learning for theory. No attempt was made to address this.

When we were able to access the practical room, the room was almost never set up to our needs and the CDU staff would often take an hour to an hour and a half to move 2-3 mannequins. Equipment that we needed to learn how to use were broken and were not fixed over a period of 3 months.

A couple of our units were missing study guides, which may not of been a big issue, except for the fact we had been switched to a self study style of learning. Several of the power-points, all of which were meant for classroom learning, were incomplete.

I felt that the lecturers were incredibly overworked, as they seemed to operate in a team of around eight people, but were cut down to around 2.

Our lecturer had to walk us over from the theory building to the practical building, as if we were a primary...

Arguably the worst university in the country! There are so many issues at this uni; it is a tough decision to decide what to outline here as this review could go on for days. So i will outline the two major issues i encountered. I enrolled to study Accounting to further my business knowledge at the CDU Waterfront campus, and while the facilities were modern, that is where the positives ended. The first lecturer, i had kept getting confused between Debitors and Creditors, and when i called her up on it, she started yelling at me to be quiet. I later wrote a formal complaint about her, and the Team Leader called me to advise she is now off on stress leave and that, due to this, they can no longer run the unit. I left and enrolled in another uni via correspondence. Sadly, we have had several apprentices go through the Electrology Vet area, and i would not wish this on anyone. AANT even said they are aware of their incompetence, but they have no choice as NTG back CDU and ignore complaints. The most recent issue with Electrology is that a complaint was made to the Team Leader about bullying by a lecture. However, this complaint was ignored. They are now making every interaction difficult when there is no choice but to continue to take the courses through them for the qualification. This is due to NTG not approving other RTO's, so CDU have a monopoly. I would not entrust this unorganised, useless, admin-heavy, dysfunctional circus of a university with the education of a field mouse. It is a joke and needs a major review by a...