From The Australian today:
THE Employment Department has raised concerns about Labor’s “demand-driven” system of university funding, warning that job prospects for graduates may get worse as the historic expansion of Australia’s tertiary system pumps ever more job-seekers into a deteriorating labour market.
The department’s report, obtained by The Australian, says the proportion of new graduates in full-time work is at its lowest level since the 1990s recession, and the full effect of a dramatically enlarged university sector is yet to be seen.
Under the so-called demand-driven system of university funding, caps on enrolments were lifted, and the number of taxpayer-subsidised places for local students rose from about 469,000 in 2009 to an estimated 577,000 last year.
…”(These graduates) are going to be entering a labour market that has weakened sharply,” Monash University researcher Bob Birrell said yesterday.
…Canberra University labour market expert Phil Lewis was not swayed by the department’s analysis. “There have always been times when the graduate market gets a bit of slack in it, and it always affects fresh graduates, but in the long run, university education provides by far the best chances of being in employment and the highest salaries,” he said.
Education is also a prime driver of long-term productivity growth and who can determine which disciplines will provide it and which not? Nobody.
We won’t have long to find out. One the key components of the Roy Morgan unemployment numbers is the rush of early year graduates because its figures are not seasonally adjusted. We saw the leading edge of this in its December figures. Over the past few years this has been one of the main drivers of the unprecedented divergence between its numbers and those of the ABS:
