A Lady has Her Say, the Shortage of Professional Graduates Continues, and the Treasurer Agonises over the Aged.  (April 12, 2005)

    Funny thing, three apparently unrelated news items ought to get a message across to the governed and those who govern.

Yesterday:  The government's training policies have "contributed to serious shortages of university-trained professionals". That's the gist of the seven page paper The Myth of Too Many University Students published in Monash University's People and Place journal by Centre for Population and Urban Research director Bob Birrell and his colleagues Daniel Edwards, Ian Dobson and T. Fred Smith.

They summarise their findings:

The Coalition Government has recently asserted that too many young Australians are training to become professionals and not enough as traditional tradespersons. By implication, there is a surfeit of young professionals. This article challenges these assertions. It shows that there has been a substantial increase in the employment of professionals since the Coalition came to power in 1996. Yet over the same period, the number of domestic students in Australian universities at the undergraduate level has hardly increased at all. All of the increase in professional training at the undergraduate level in Australian universities has been directed at overseas students. Partly as a consequence, there has been a rapid increase in the intake of professional migrants to satisfy employer needs. The article concludes that there is a need for more training of domestic undergraduate students, not less.

In short, the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, doesn't know what he's talking about, and if the newly installed vice-chancellor of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Margaret Gardner is correct when she says, "We are a nation that can and should live on its wits", Mission Control we have a problem.

Today:  The ABC broadcast an item that the Productivity Commission in a "report into the economic implications of an ageing Australia says in four decades the proportion of people over 65 will have doubled" and "if governments do not start planning now, health care will cost twice the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)."

The commission's chairman, Gary Banks told the ABC, "You're looking at a debt burden, 40 years down the track, of over $4 trillion, that's $4,000 billion."

And then the voice of the Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello who told the ABC the he agreed with the Commission's assessment -- "Problems of today will pale in significance unless we start putting in place measures now which will address those issues." And top of his list of what to do  -- the government has already taken the first steps, with its plans to increase workforce participation and "We have to increase funding for people to stay at home. We can't afford to have all older Australians in aged care homes." It's not revealed how Mr Costello and his colleagues are going to overcome the increasing decrepitude of increasing age so that they can be properly cared for in the discomfort and often undesired solitude of their own homes.

If any serious modelling has been done on the efficacy of the Treasurer's vague comments, the results are being kept very quiet.

As to the lady mentioned in the header, she is the former chair of the Australian Research Council, Professor Vicki Sara who on assuming her position as Chancellor of the University of Technology, Sydney is reported by The Australian as telling her audience "constant pressure" on researchers and universities to pursue commercial profits "must be resisted by us all".

"Without fundamental curiosity-driven research we will bankrupt our innovations of the future," Professor Sara said. Citing some of Australia's most significant and innovative research discoveries, Professor Sara said the nation had a "remarkable reputation for innovation".    

    "Australian universities have made significant contributions to what we know, how we can better manage the environment and how we can improve the lives of the world's people," she said.

    "For our size, we have probably contributed more than any other country."

The Swiss and the Swedes for two might disagree with Professor Sara's last comment but that's a quibble. As the new Chancellor of UTS, she was taking issue with the concept of teaching only "universities". According to The Australian "Professor Sara said research was at the 'very heart' of a university. All universities 'must have the opportunity to perform research. To talk about teaching-only universities as some do today is quite simply a contradiction in terms.'"

The matters being addressed by Margaret Gardner, Bob Birrell, Gary Banks and Vicki Sara are not disparate issues and Mr Costello's blather is not addressing the matter of significantly raising Australia's per capita GDP and reducing its current account deficit by raising our national ability to "live by our wits".