One of the paradoxes afflicting the economy is how Australia has never had more people completing university degrees, yet ‘skills shortages’ are worse than ever and productivity stinks:
“Arguably, we are a less innovative society today than we were for much of the 20th century,” [Productivity Commission chief Michael Brennan said last month].
“What lies behind the paradox is that maybe the [education] system is perhaps encouraging conformity rather than creativity and not sufficiently encouraging innovation.”
Accordingly, the OECD’s head of education and skills, Andreas Schleicher, believes our higher education system needs to modernise:
“Australia has been very successful in expanding its higher education systems,” Mr Schleicher will tell The Australian Financial Review Higher Education Summit on Tuesday…
Sluggish productivity in the Australian economy, despite 50 per cent of young people now acquiring a degree, was connected to the structural blockages in the workforce that interfered with the full extraction of value from graduates, he will say…
“Higher education tends to be the most conservative education system and has real difficulties adjusting to changes in the real world. You could see that during the pandemic. Australian schools were quick on their feet to offer online remote learning, but higher education had a much harder time adjusting to the challenges.
Data published this month on the federal government’s Course Seeker website suggested the explosion in enrolments has been achieved by scraping the bottom of the barrel, with 221 different bachelor degrees offering university places to students with Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) scores below 50 – the bottom 10% of high school leavers:
“Low university-entry scores for teaching degrees is a growing concern”, [Australian Education Union president Correna Haythorpe warned]…
“Evidence suggests that students admitted with low ATARs are likely to be less successful at university and are less likely to complete their course.
“The bar must be raised by setting minimum entry requirements”…
Federal Education Department data shows that more than 13,000 students with below-50 ATAR scores applied for university last year, with 55 per cent accepted.
Domestic university enrolments soared under the former Gillard Government’s demand-drive university reforms, which massively oversupplied the economy with graduates holding bachelor degrees:
University enrolments have soared.
This policy cost both students and taxpayers a small fortune, with outstanding HELP debt skyrocketing:
Outstanding HELP Debt grows exponentially.
One of the consequences of this oversupply was that over 30% of university-educated individuals were working in jobs that do not require a degree (skill levels 2–5) at the 2016 Census, with their share also rising over time:
University graduates drive Uber.
Meanwhile, funding to Australia’s vocational education and training (VET) sector was slashed as university funding boomed:
The data, therefore, suggests that Australia has too many university graduates chasing too few professional jobs, while there are chronic shortages of tradespeople and technicians.
Hence the never-ending complaints of ‘skills shortages’ by business groups, despite Australia churning out more university graduates than ever.
The policy focus, therefore, needs to be reversed, starting with lifting entry standards to university for both domestic and international students and expanding places for VET and TAFE.
