40%of the population with a bachelor's degree by 2025, as opposed to 8% in the early 1990's? It raises the question of whether a university education makes us smarter as a nation or if it means we just have too many people educated beyond their intellectual capacity? I suspect the latter.

There is never any good reason to dumb down the population by restricting University places.

We are still a democratic country as far as I am aware, so if people want to go to Uni and do a course of their choice, and pay for it themselves, then fair enough.

If, at the end of their course, they can't find the job of their choice, then any new knowledge will always set them up well for whatever they do.

...Too many people with unsustainable expectations estelles. I think this article cogs nicely into another on this site by Malcolm King: "At the barricades - Boomers vs Gen Y", and gives additional reasoning to Kings theory of generational resentment.

I think we overrate the benefits of university degrees. How often I hear no HSC no future, no degree no future. What about the value of apprenticeship trades and garbage collectors - they all contribute to society. Don't we want diversity? We do not need more useless and overeducated and institutionalised people. So many university graduates never pursue their field of study - what a waste. And I see a lot of clones who are unable to look outside the square - I see these young graduates in the workplace and they are hopeless, and have very poor people and managing skills, and only go by the book and what they are told to do.

There is a dumbing down at our universities today which I believe has been overtaken by the leftist academics and freedom of speech and academic freedom has been compromised. There is much administrative bureaucracy taking over and the quality of education is going down, particularly with the high intake of foreign students who are actually buying their degrees through fraud.

Most people are not meant for academia. I believe it should actually be more elitist, and not so money wasting.

There is a book out at the moment called "Whackademia" - an account by an insider by the name of Dr Richard Hil which I believe explains this. I have not yet read it.

...Suseonline; where is the sense in sustaining an education system with scarce public funds, exhibiting such huge drop-out rates as the University?

...The role of the University is to educate the educable not entertain under-performers! Huge resources could be redirected to more useful roles if this simple fact were honestly grasped by Politicians keen to win votes from a “duped” public!

Don't worry Sukrit, each time Labor get into power, they sweep up all those over educated twits, & give them nice over paid, under worked jobs in the bureaucracy.

Think of it as a safety measure. You wouldn’t want most of them doing something serious like putting a washer in your tap, or god forbid, wiring the electrical system in your house, now would you?

If we didn’t have this system to keep all the impractical, & incompetent off the streets, we would have unemployment statistics like Spain & Greese, & that looks so untidy.

In this day and age, I believe the populace has the resources to educate itself.

There should be accreditation institutions that run tests on occupational skills, but no actual body that regulates the learning process with lectures and tutorials (I never needed them and rarely attended). Of course private test-preparing institutions would sprout up to help the useless who have the money, but that cant be helped.

So you can get 'certified' in skill sets, but it's up to you which particular skill sets would be required for employ-ability.

No doubt there would be some corruption between the accreditation agencies and employers to make mandatory certifications, but on the whole it would reduce 'degrees' to 6-12 months.

It would encourage the idea of lifelong learning, reduce the outlay in terms of time to gain initial employment, allow flexibility in career development and save everyone a lot of time learning abstract concepts for the purposes of employment unrelated to said concepts.

We would also find out just what concrete, measurable skills are actually necessary for some of the airy fairy occupations.

University is like a Foxtel subscription where one has to buy the whole starter package just to get the sport. In this day and age people go to fulfill occupation skills (The horse has bolted on this), so the more granularity allows them to just buy what they need for their chosen career path, and they can go back for different things as needed.

There is no need for an institution to teach people, there is books, the internet and all sorts of resources available. What employers need is a guarantee that someone has knowledge in a particular area because they're too lazy to work this out for themselves.

Constance has summed it all up very nicely. In days of yore, we had in Melbourne, Technical colleges producing people with Diplomas in Engineering in several different disciplines and Chemistry, to name a few. All these people were ready to go to work in industry as they had been trained in the practicalities necessary to slot them into the work force. Most of these students came from the then existent Technical schools which provided them with hands on education which enabled them to to either become tradesmen or professionals.

I was one of the latter. It always seemed to me, that my fellow professionals who were graduates from the universities, lacked those skills needed for industry and it took some time before they got up to speed.

A previous post complained about the dumbing down of university education. I would submit that the greater sin is the dumbing down of the tradesman. Our technical schools have all vanished so that those children who would wish to become tradesmen now have been given no useful skills before they are turned loose into so called vocational training. The expectation seems to be that they should initially be trained to become academics while doing questionable courses in what are now called secondary colleges. Meanwhile we import tradesmen.

Woe is us.

David

There is no issue that people should be able to voluntarily pay for their own or someone else's education.

The political issue is, as always, whether some people should be coerced into paying for others whether they agree or not.

If all payment were voluntary, the value of the resulting qualification need only be the concern of those most interested in the question: the buyer and seller. But once we introduce the coercive element, it raises issues of value both ethical and economical.

In the USA the student debt bubble is a social time-bomb as serious and destructive as the government's other funny money debacle, the housing debt bubble.

For how anti-social and abusive it's becoming, see:
http://lewrockwell.com/spl5/student-loan-consequences.html

Ultimately, all government schemes to confer net benefits on society by taking from A and giving to B, do not and cannot achieve their original purpose, and just morph into dysfunctional parasitism. Thus democracy is just socialist fascism by instalments.

Is higher education a good investment for students?
Short answer, NO ! There are really no positives to compare to all the negatives since the big Goaf years.

Of course, people should be able to do whatever course they like.

But .....

* If they want to do utterly useless courses such as Social Work, Art and Design, Screen Studies and cultural studies, then they should be free to do so, as full fee-paying students.

* if they want to do valuable courses, the sort that the country needs, such as trades, Agricultural Sciences, Hydrological Sciences, &c, and anything related to the Mining industry - our current economic backbone, after all - then they should be able to study these courses completely free, with adequate student support, guaranteed lifelong employment, and given a five-year tax-break once they are employed.

Once people graduate from the useless courses, they can always go fruit-picking, and compete with international back-packers. Win-win !

Joe

I think the dangers of Higher education are shown in comparison to the old guilds and apprenticeships of old. In a guild, you would achieve ranks dependant on what you were capable of doing. If I was a blacksmith and could shoe a horse, then that would be that. In university, it seems that you are not expected to actually shoe the horse, as much as explain, in great detail, how said horse should be shoed.

Many businesses in the community (actually, probably more public sector as I think about it) require a university degree before employment can be attained. The risk is always that if a person does not actually "do the work" before "having the job" their theory will be swept away by the real world situation they are now in.

I do not argue that education is bad, but i think it would be more effective if, as sugggested, it was taught on an as-needs basis rather than a pre-requisite

Loudmouth has a good idea there.

Frivolous university courses, or courses for subjects that have a poor chance of employment after graduation, should charge full fees.

Those course such as for Doctors, Nurses, Engineers, pharmacy, physiotherapy, law and forensic science etc, should be heavily financially assisted by the Government.

It always amazes me when some people rant and rave about these 'useless academics' , but then when disasters happen in their small lives such as a sickness occurs, or they are victims of crime, suddenly they seem to like the university trained professionals that can help them...

suddenly they seem to like the university trained professionals that can help them...
Suseonline,
you're insulting the medical profession by comparing useless academics to them.

Why do the advocates for education never look back at their previous pushing for education ? Where are those much fabled advantages for our society ? All I ever see is uselessness & incompetence & increasing taxes. Isn't education supposed to make people smarter ? If so, why is there no evidence ? Education for education's sake is a pointless exercise. How much longer before people accept the evidence that it isn't working.

Individual,

Year after year, in the NT, the TAFE figures declared that something like 20 % of all Indigenous adults were enrolled in some course or other, usually Certificate I. Year after year. Yet there are communities now where nobody knows how to change a tap-washer, or fix a toilet.

Ydes, by all means, educate people across the board in all sorts of skills, rigorously learnt skills, not BS. What sorts of skills will australia need over the next fifty years ?

Silly question, but for sure, trades skills of every sort, for a start. Every professional body of knowledge related to the mining industry, to agriculture, and to building and maintaining and improving, our infrastructure - rail, electricity and water distribution, roads, ports, sewage disposal, recycling.

That should keep us all busy :)

But if anybody wants to f@rt around with cultural studies, etc., etc., that's fine, as long as they pay for it, and are prepared for long-term fruit-picking, that's fine.

Cheers,

Joe

that's fine, as long as they pay for it, and are prepared for long-term fruit-picking, that's fine.
Loudmouth,
Agree but that still leaves us with the average Labor voter who believes the rest of us have a duty to mollycoddle them.

Ripping article! Have to agree with many of the comments here - higher education for its own sake has only one purpose - to keep unemployment statistics looking good for the promoting government - but it will come back to bite when the resultant unemployable bunch finally graduate or drop out.

We cannot eradicate all courses of strictly limited application in the workforce, but at least they can be limited by a quota system - which should apply to all tertiary studies, based closely on the anticipated forward workforce demand in each discipline, plus an allowance for dropouts.

Quotas to meet actual workforce needs would give students a far greater assurance of getting employment in their chosen field, and, combined with appropriate entry requirements, should achieve minimization of drop-outs and year-repeats, ensuring maximum results from fees/studies subsidization - more 'bang' for the buck.

I believe it is important, however, that all students (other than scholarship or Bursary students) should incur some reasonable expenditure for part of their course costs (but with substantial dispensation for a quota of worthy indigenous students - no absolute free rides just for the sake of numbers, all entrants should still have to meet appropriate entry standards), to give sufficient incentive to take their studies seriously. Fee-free (other than the above exceptions and some possible asset-based dispensation) will only encourage hangers-on, to no-one's benefit.

Fees could also be discounted for disciplines in particularly high demand, to ensure filling quota with the most most 'suitable' applicants. I also think entry requirements should include an assessment of 'psychological fitness', and not be solely based on prior studies 'scores', particularly for studies leading to mentally stressful and demanding occupations - such as doctors, nurses, engineers, and the like. Similarly, trades studies entrants ought to meet any relevant physical demand criteria. Again, optimising the bang for the buck, and ensuring as far as possible 'horses for courses'. Anyone missing out can still pay their own way at a private institution, or wait for an opening. All we need now is enough jobs to go round.

Saltpetre,
Thank you for giving me hope.

My degrees provided value for money: I needed one (BEd) to get a job; another (BA) has made me more employable due to my increased subject knowledge; the third (MA) has helped me to climb the ranks a little quicker, again because of my increased subject knowledge and also because of my demonstrated commitment to continued learning.

So they have provided me with value for money - but have they done the same for the taxpayer?

Maybe not. I think I'm well-suited to my job, and I would have had the knowledge and skills to be a good teacher as a result of my curiosity and determination to be better at what I do. Three degrees have served me well, but perhaps others with exactly the same qualifications would not be as well-equipped, and others with fewer qualifications would be as good or better.

The suggestion of 'horses for courses' raises one of the biggest problems with universities: admissions procedures. Rather than selecting students based on their aptitudes, universities select students according to demand - the applicants' results from their schooling are used to calculate a single score, and they are selected or rejected through the ranking of those scores. People with great marks who would make terrible doctors/vets/physiotherapists get into those courses; people with mediocre marks who would make excellent doctors/vets/physiotherapists do not. People who achieved well in maths and sciences but are terrified of speaking in front of audiences get into law programs; People who did well in the humanities and just scraped through with the minimum requirements in a token science subject become engineers.

I reckon the admissions centres need to be abolished and university faculties should take responsibility for their own enrolment processes. Then, perhaps, they could pick those likely to succeed rather than those who achieved success in another system.

It won't sort out the employment prospects of graduates, but it will at least increase the likelihood of producing graduates who may be capable of contributing to the world in their chosen fields.