Edited 10 Apr 2018 17:54, 3 years ago, edited by don_dunstan

As you may know Don, the uni's are not state funded, they are federal funded so the voice into the new Premier's ear is of limited value.

Wrong. Universities have been federally funded for decades but it's the states that actually pull the strings and make the decisions - believe it or not our tertiary institutions are legislatively established and governed by the respective state parliaments. That's why there's been whispers about the viability of three universities to the newly elected Premier - the individual with the power to actually do something about it.

Your comments on Engineering is a wa_nk and I told you that before. Your voicing an opinion in a market trough, yes some industries are going/gone, others are growing and this includes the RE Power sector!

One of my best friends runs a successful engineering business and he's a chartered/independent engineer with a wealth of experience so he's my source on that. He says it's a chronically over-supplied area with graduates and that very few graduates will ever get the experience they need to be employable - he also says that 457's are hugely over-represented in his industry and that Engineers Australia have been ignoring membership requests to stop approving thousands of new entrants to an already-saturated market.

He lives he and he works in the trade: I think I'll take his view of the industry over yours.

Your reference to say we are not a manufacturing and hence don't need STEM is also BS.

Where is the growth in manufacturing jobs? They are less than half the FIRE (Finance, Insurance & Real Estate) industry now-days. I didn't say we don't need STEM - I said that it's a lie to tell a school-leaver that it's a boom industry - it isn't. And it's never going to be.

The few STEM jobs there are having lower-cost overseas staff in them - even state-of-the-art new Aussie success story Atlassan was under fire last year for on-shoring jobs to Australia and then filling them with 457's. What hope do Aussie graduates have when large Aussie employers have a preference away from them because they've found a more compliant source of workers who'll work for less?

The demand for tertiary graduates has nothing to do with actual industry demand and everything to do with the fact that the government has funded a monster that keeps demanding more and more money and growth for the sake of itself - not because its necessarily in the national interest.

If I had my way I'd go back to a pre-Dawkins system where the universities were much smaller and the TAFE/CAE sector provided teachers and nurses (for example) with a much more hands-on practically-orientated training instead of trying to make absolutely everything an academically-learned vocation. Universities have become way too powerful as yet another lobby group demanding that their government funding be increased; we've made Vice Chancellors very powerful people (many get paid $1 million plus p/a) and its time we evaluated the role of education in our society and what purposes it serves.