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.

I have two children in Year 11 this year and they have no idea what they want to choose as a career path although they both say that they want a University degree? They are both academic and are good at pretty much everything, they avoided Science subjects as electives as they found Science so boring that they couldn't bring themselves to do it and have picked more Business focused subjects. But they don't know what career path they want to persue. They both say that the haven't had enough life experience to know what they want to do.

One wants to take a year off and go overseas but surely they still have to decide what they want to do as once the year off is over - then what? What do kids do when they find themselves in this situation?

YOu read the University books etc and there is so much in them and so many courses that you cant help but wonder whether they are any good, are of a high standard and whether they are really worthwhile and what sort of jobs do they allow you to do?

It is very confusing for parents when the children seek guidance and assistance and the whole thing is confusing.

I cant help but wonder with regard to the questions that are said should be asked, Who do you ask these questions to?

I think the argument is about whether you get what you pay for. Uni's are not a scarce resource, fee paying students are. What is scarce in some unis and tafes is a full disclosure about the health of their organisation.

If you pay $60,000 for a science degree, one would think that you'd get $60,000 worth of value plus enough education so that you can either carry on to do post graduate or doctoral studies or go out in to industry and do research.

It's fairly clear that some educational providers are laying on the spin.

The comment about patents is a good one.

It looks as though the problems in unis have changed. When I went, I found that while the courses were well-structured and well-taught, the course content did not equip you for the outside world at all. Unis were great if you wanted to do a higher degree as an academic, but pretty ordinary otherwise.

I've still got folders and folders worth of notes from my uni courses that I've never looked at since sitting the exams in those subjects. What a waste of time and effort!

Cheryl, in my experience the smartest people out in the field with PhD's were the one who had done their basic degrees, gone to work in their chosen field for a while to get some feel for what the real world was like and then did their Doctorate. There probably isn't too much wrong with a school leaver taking a year off and working in a few different areas before deciding on a career, preferably without a parent pushing.

One of the prerequisites for studying science is that the student needs to have an inquiring mind. An ability to think laterally is also very useful. A lot of basic science is fairly boring, particularly as dispensed by poor teachers, but without a good grasp of the basics, further progress will be difficult.

My field was analytical chemistry. I got the impression that while the universities taught the basics, most of the really practical applications happened out in the laboratories of the real world. Of course, the word "University" covers a lot of institutions which nowadays should better be described as "Institutes of Technology" if they were honest about it.

David

I am currently at university and I feel like I have been well and truly ripped off. I study journalism and within the last couple of years the university has axed our university newspaper, failed to provide enough quality equipment, amalgamated our courses, reduced tutorials from weekly to fortnightly and are continuing to casualise staff. What should be an exciting, practical degree is poorly run with the view of saving every single dollar they can. I will finish my study because I have only a short time left, but if I ever wanted to be journalist this degree has certainly given me doubts.

The issue is that many students feel like they need a degree if they want to get a job, no matter what that degree is. They put up with the poor standard of education, grind through the boring years of poorly managed courses so that they can come out the other end with their piece of paper.

I go to what is supposed to be the most prestigous university in Queensland. If this University is supposed to be one of the best I have real doubts as to the quality of tertiary education across Australia.

I had the same problem Jolanda. When my son bought home some brochures from a range of unis, they all looked pretty good. He had done some research online and was advised by one senior lecturer to do a hybrid master degree. It had elements of photography, writing and multimedia.

The lecturer said that he could get a job in the film industry or corporate sector but the problem is that while he's an expert web designer, his degree says 'creative media' (might have been Media Arts) which doesn't mean much.

I've since found a website that lists universities by research but this doesn't help us much now and it doesn't help my son much now that he's $30K in debt.

How do international students make sense of all of this?

David draws the distinction between the practical and the theoretical viz-a-viz University education. I think this is the important dichotomy that Unis need to face when designing courses for the future. What's the point of producing a super-theoretical physicist, say, that is so narrowly focussed that he's useless in the real world?

I think the country would be better off if unis had some mechanism whereby students who aren't suited to the theoretical stuff could transfer to another institution or course where they could augment their learning with more practical material, without playing a game of 'snakes and ladders' and having to start a new course from scratch. At least then you don't have students walking off the conveyor belt with a piece of paper in their hand but who are no more useful to their eventual employer than had they only done the first year of their degree.

I also note the comments about truthful promotion of course content and usefulness by the Universities. If it's not clear what they are offering, this is a fundamental problem that must be addressed.

Robp, that is where the institutions and courses where I got my piece of paper excelled. I have an Associate Diploma of Applied Chemistry which was awarded to me in 1960 at what was then Swinburne Technical College.
The chemists and engineers from that period who were trained in those technical colleges were able to go straight into a job and make a useful contribution right away. Those who studied for an extra year at a university took at least another year before they were of any use to anyone. They might have known a bit more about the theory side of things, but they were very lacking when it came to application and I am talking from personal experience.

The areas of scientific endeavor are not the only ones so afflicted. You only have to look at the mess the care of the sufferers from mental illness has degenerated to since the theoretical meddlers from the bureaucracy closed down all the residential institutions and tried to make people live independently.

Everyone seems to study statistics these days, but no one tells them that there are liars, damned liars, and statisticians.

David

Call me old fashioned, but I thought that universities focussed on education and inquiry. Not the begetting of a trade for a job. That's what TAFE is for. Before attending TAFE I'd want to know what are the employment rates.

Interesting that the author of the article wants to know about research and research articles from teachers. So presumably there is still that element of inquiry. Who should fund the research and the writing of papers? And exactly how are my teacher's research papers going to help my job prospects?

One big problem lately, and I encounter this at work on an almost daily basis, is the monumental over education of many people for the tasks that they are required to perform. Any kind of learning in a class room does not necessarily translate in an ability to actually perform tasks.

Australia has an extraordinary number of universities per head of population. Maybe we should differentiate more clearly to studying solely for a particular job or studying to acquire a certain body of knowledge, which at the end of the day hopefully can be utilized for certain types of employment.

Warning: do not waste time studying to teach...Oh Malcom, it is so refreshing to have this topic so succinctly expressed. I am one of many who have recently completed a primary school teaching degree, a single parent who had hoped to better my career prospects and still be able to have time for my kids. Alas and alack - both the Departments of Education, and the various Universities continue to advertise for a job market that just simply does not exist! 'Teach and make a difference' says the NSW authority. A difference to what, you might ask? Their profit margins perhaps? To add insult to injury neither the relevent Department of Education or the University responds to enquiries or feedback, and of course 'economic rationalism' cuts public funding, thus reducing opportunities for both teachers and pupils. 'Dumbing Down Under', now there's an appropriate slogan.

David,

I couldn’t agree more that institutes of technology have a more hands-on emphasis and produce more employable people as a result.

I went through Uni in the early 1980s blindly following the mathematics and physics strands for the first 2 years (without any clear or firm idea about what I wanted to do) before jumping across to earth sciences and majoring in it. It was the best thing I did at Uni because it enabled me to get skills with a job at the end of it. Had I stayed in physics/maths I would probably have ended up being unemployed. The next year, I moved to Perth and did a Grad. Dip. at the WA Institute of Technology. It was the most useful year of learning I ever did as it rounded off my theoretical skills with up-to-date practical ones.

But to make this happen, I had to make all the moves myself as there was no formal mechanism to transfer between institutes.

To partially overcome this problem, maybe the TAFEs, universities and Institutes of Technology could merge into a kind of flexible learning network so that the individual student isn’t taking all the risks himself.

Jolanda, if your kids are in year 10 it doesn't really matter what they study. What subjects they choose in year 10 aren't going to lock them into a career path. What is important in high school is doing the subjects they are good at so that they can get a high ENTER, which can be used to get into a course they want.

Don't think you're going to get a good education from just any university. Research carefully because not all universities are equal. Some have strong reputations and have been around for a long time. Others have been created in a hurry to cash in on some students' desires for any university degree.

A good place is to start is to look at university rankings from The Times Higher Education Supplement (Just Google THES Australia). The highest ranked university in Australia is ANU followed by Melbourne Uni.

Another point which i should have mentioned earlier.

It has been observed, that if a student wishes to have a successful outcome at a tertiary institution, he or she has a better chance if primary and particularly secondary education is obtained at a state school rather than at one of the ever burgeoning private colleges. This is in spite of the perceived deficiencies of the state run education system.

For this reason alone, those who wish to help pay for their child's tertiary education, but who are short of cash, would do well to send that child to a state run secondary college, even though the facilities may be lacking in a few areas. If your child has the necessary "ticker", he or she will not be disadvantaged in the long run.

David

VK3AUU. That is of course if your child doesn't become a target and become depressed and turn to alcohol and drugs in order to cope with the victimisation, bullying and neglect that they experience.

Education - Keeping them HOnest
http://jolandachallita.typepad.com/education/
Our children deserve better

Jolanda, somewhere or other your kids are going to enter the real world and believe me, it can be more brutal out there than it ever is in the much more controlled school environment. There are just as many bullies in the private school system as there are in the state schools. Your child just needs to learn how to deal with it. You won't always be there to deal with it for him/her.

David

David my child/children are dealing with it and they are requesting that I stand up to the bullies on their behalf.

In the playground they stand up for themselves and are highly regarded by their peers, this issue is against adults in and with power in the system.

This all started when they were very young, you can hardly ask a child to stand up to an adult in power. It is my job to protect my children.

So, they are standing up for themselves. They have become very resiliant?

It's interesting to see the wild figures bandied about concerning HECS debts. I have two degrees, neither paid for upfront, and my debt is substanially lower than any figure mentioned in this forum. Furthermore, I completed an education program in November 2004 and, in that same month, I was offered full-time employment. Within the next two months, I was offered no less than six different full-time, permanent teaching positions in Queensland and New South Wales. I have been a happy high school teacher ever since. I could not have achieved this without going to university, and it certainly did not cost me $60,000.

That's because in some states, education and nursing degrees don't attract the same HECS fees as other degrees degrees. The Federal intervened due to perceived shortages in these areas.

Thanks for your reply, Cheryl. I'm aware of the 'special nature' of teaching and nursing programs, though the intervention was only put into place in 2005. The average 35 year-old mentioned in this forum was likely to have acquired his degree - and his $35,000 HECS debt - long before then, just as I acquired my teaching HECS debt before then. Of course, both my degrees were Band 1 programs so my debt shouldn't be too high in the first place, but I got both of them for much less than $35,000. The 35 year-old should have had a fair bit longer than me to pay his debt off, too.

Now I'm not accusing anybody of exaggerating their debts here. How would I know if somebody owed $35,000 or not? I just find it interesting that debts seem to be so high with so little return, when mine is relatively low with a very happy outcome. There are many people in my boat, just as I am sure there are many who haven't been so lucky.