Undoubtedly, our high schools have a big problem in maths and maths-based subjects such as physics. Fewer and fewer students want to study them at an advanced level and there is an acute shortage of qualified high school teachers in those areas…
The next Mark Zuckerberg won’t come from here.
As argued last week, the Abbott Government’s reforms to university fees and funding, announced in the May Budget, are likely to make participation in STEM-related fields even worse, with the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM) estimating that science students could experience a doubling of fee repayments to around $90,000 or more.
There are also other factors preventing Australia from producing its own version of Mark Zuckerberg, including its banking system, which has increasingly become one giant building society that prefers to lend to housing instead of productive businesses (including start-ups):
Australia’s only home grown investment bank – Macquarie – is a case in point. Instead of continuing its role as the broker of high risk, high return business investment, it is instead seeking to become a major player in mortgages.
We should also not forget Australia’s ludicrous treatment of shares/options received under an employee share scheme, which effectively creates an upfront tax charge where the value often cannot be realised (or shares sold), effectively discouraging the development of start-up companies in the process.
And then there is the Government’s contradictory cap on deductions for education expenses (with education expenses incurred when transitioning between careers not deductible at all!), all the while speculative investments in property (via negative gearing) are allowed to occur uncapped.
Rather than encourage innovation, Australia’s policies effectively tell would-be entrepreneurs to “speculate on housing instead”, making it highly unlikely that a home grown version of Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs could ever be produced in Australia, which obviously could also have detrimental impacts on Australia’s long-run competitiveness and living standards
