A timely article for the current batch of year 12 for when they start thinking about racking up a $50,000 to $100,000 HECS debt.

The key question is of course
"Exactly how many students from last year’s graduation have obtained fulltime jobs in this discipline? Meaning - is there industry demand for graduates?"

Also need to be aware of proportion of graduates in fulltime jobs. 50 graduates in full time is great for a small course but pretty pathetic if there were 500 graduates.

In 1992 less than 1% of Victorian graduates got full time work within the state. Graduates left for Toronto, Sydney or started in menial positions and switched into graduate positions years later when demand for graduates picked up.

My son paid $30K in full fees to a Victorian uni and regrets ever cent. He did a post graduate media arts degree. He said the teachers were doctrinnaire and the facilities below standard. His results were always posted late and they had numerous errors.

He is working in a call centre two years after graduating and he has been looking for work fulltime.

I'm sure there are good unis and excellent teachers out thereout but he should have asked some of the hard questions before enroling. You never know what goes on behind the scenes.

The first question students should be asking should be asked in year 10. Do you really think that a University/Tafe course is for me or should I learn a trade.

Somewhere a short time ago, I read that the average 35 year old university graduate had a $35,000 HEX debt while the same age tradesman already owned his house.

It makes you wonder why the federal politicians have taken so long to realise that we need tradesmen as much as we need university graduates.

David

Perhaps we will have the situation where the girls go to universities and do arts courses, and the boys go to TAFE college to learn a trade and later earn income to actually run the household.

But all is not rosy, as eventually a tradesman has to be producing something that will sell, and hopefully can be exported. So what they produce has to be new or cheaper or of better quality than what is currently on the market.

That is where research becomes important, and that is where universities will become important.

However from what I can understand, it is becoming increasingly difficult for someone to get a job in a university unless they have been oppressed, or at least feel that they have been oppressed.

So it remains to be seen how many highly qualified people can be attracted into universities to do some research in that type of environment.

Don't think for a moment that all the innovative ideas come from universities. There are a lot of smart people out there who are making an enormous contribution in the real world. For instance, there is a company called Thorium Power who are making some very useful inroads into the use of Element number 90, Thorium, as a substitute for Uranium for the generation of power. No doubt, some of their people are university graduates, but they are not a university.

David

VK3AUU
Undoubtedly there are many smart people employed in industry, but they would not be capable of much research without some type of infrastructure.

The success of a university could be judged on how many patents they produce, and not just on how many graduates they can churn out.

I know of a local campus that runs science courses, but there is not a laboratory or even a single test tube on that local campus. However they run many arts courses because they are cheap to run, and there is no requirement for any type of patent to be produced.

In fact anything can be done in an arts course.