Teaching is not always appreciated to the same extent as research within university environments and yet teaching, particularly of large classes, is a significant source of revenue for universities and a significant contributor to reputation. Academic staff with lecturing responsibilities will often prefer to focus their teaching on fourth year or postgraduate students, because more prestige is associated with these advanced students and classes are generally much smaller, reducing the lecturer's work load. Yet if a university does not have lecturers willing and able to do an excellent job of teaching first year students, retention becomes an issue, as does reputation and consequently recruitment in subsequent years. Recruitment and retention are very important for all universities but are issues that Australian universities are particularly focused on as they move into a period of increased competition, driven by a significant reduction in government funding over recent years and consequently a much higher reliance on student fees and other external income. Teaching of first year students is particularly important because it is during this critical freshman year that students are most likely to drop out of the system if they become disengaged with the learning process. It is the responsibility and challenge of the first year lecturer not only to teach them the subject matter but also to motivate students, to instill in them a love of the subject, to confirm in the students' minds that the choice they made is the right one, to provide opportunities to cement their learning and also to ensure, at every step of the way, that students are assisted to make the transition from secondary to tertiary studies.
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