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Saria Ratnam

Saria Ratnam

Saria Ratnam is a University of Melbourne arts student. She was highly commended in the 2023 Age/Dymocks Essay Prize for young writers.

Students want to know about employment outcomes, research opportunities and the effect on their career choices.

Lazy students are welching on our uni group assignments. It’s dragging down my marks

If a student isn’t at a level where they can pass a subject, they shouldn’t be able to sail by on the back of someone else’s work.

  • Saria Ratnam

Latest

Rupert Murdoch.

My generation had a chance of escaping the Murdoch grip. Now Rupert’s set to rule TikTok

Unlike a newspaper or subscription TV, social media isn’t seen as inherently biased. Now, TikTok could creep to one side of politics without us noticing.

  • Saria Ratnam
Teenagers are likely to find a way around the social media ban.

Forget a social media ban. If tech companies won’t stop targeting teens like me, block them

The kind of action the US government took against TikTok – albeit brief – might be worth trying in Australia.

  • Saria Ratnam
Clara experienced homelessness and says there needs to be more help for at-risk young people.

As Clara’s world quietly unravelled, her teachers missed the signs

Clues that Clara was heading for homelessness failed to raise alarm. Now she has joined calls for better help for at-risk young people.

  • Nicole Precel and Saria Ratnam
Andy Warhol’s inscription - replete with a Campbell soup can sketch.

The rarest of rare books and letters on show at Melbourne fair

The largest rare book fair in the southern hemisphere remains one of Melbourne’s best-kept literary secrets.

  • Saria Ratnam
Arts students face a bizarre fee systems in which some subjects can cost four times the amount as others.

One uni subject costs $578, the other $2124. What would the average student choose?

I started an arts course this year only to find my choice of subjects meant I would pay as little as $14,000 or as much as $50,000 for my degree. Bizarre cost discrepancies are rife.

  • Saria Ratnam
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Sam Aldemir, owner of De Barcelona cafe in Hawthorn, is encouraging delivery riders to stay on the road.

Reckless food delivery riders making footpaths ‘lawless’ in busy shopping strips

Melbourne business owners are taking matters into their own hands after witnessing speeding and collisions between delivery e-bike riders and pedestrians.

  • Saria Ratnam

After my exam chaos, I was shocked by my ATAR results. Now it’s time to move on

I’d planned out my final school year carefully. What I hadn’t anticipated was that VCE exams are strange, pressurised, unpredictable things where plans fall apart.

  • Saria Ratnam
VCE student Saria Ratnam prepares for her final exam amid embarrassing revelations that some students have accessed leaked questions.

I’m in the middle of my VCE - this exam cover-up has sent the rumour mill wild

This education scandal has taught my generation of high school students to doubt whether working hard, acting with integrity and trusting authorities will pay off.

  • Saria Ratnam
The cost of certain university degrees has got me rethinking what I should study.

As a year 12 student, I dream of doing an arts degree. The price could be a lifetime of debt

I’ve been working towards studying arts for two years. But now as I prepare my university preferences, the reality of how much debt I could be saddled with has me thinking twice.

  • Saria Ratnam