GCCA | Graduate Careers Council of Australia

Graduate Careers Australia

ergo - Number 87 June 2002

How Is Higher Education Valued?

Why do people go to university? Many studies indicate that the majority of people who attend university as students do so with some aspect of career or lifestyle enhancement as their major rationale for the sacrifices in time and earnings that are involved.

Without entering the debate about “vocational” versus traditional liberal-arts and science degrees, I can be confident that most students have an expectation that the university experience will be fulfilling from at least the employment-readiness perspective. Employment-readiness is a complex topic. I like to think that as an issue for universities it can and should co-exist perfectly happily with academic attainment – focused on the honing of intellect and the gaining of knowledge.

The Role Of Universities

Universities play a vital role in passing on fundamental knowledge – whether it is based in science or humanities. To this, universities add modern thought, current technologies – the tools that will be useful in the 21st century. Given the appropriate infrastructure development and investment in this country, there is the potential for brilliant careers in both the traditional professional and administrative roles occupied by our graduates, and in the emerging fields of bio-technology, nano-technology, information and telecommunications technology.

Universities have also contributed over the centuries to individuals’ broader personal development. During the last decade there has been a growing focus on the so-called soft skills. Variously discussed as generic skills and personal attributes, they include analytical, communication and team-working skills. They were summarised as “self-reliance skills” in a brilliant 1995 handbook called Skills for Graduates in the 21st Century.

In addition to traditional teaching and skills development, many institutions offer direct exposure to employers, professional bodies and potential future clients. Co-operative education, compulsory or voluntary work experience, business projects, mentoring and so on are collectively called experiential learning. It is my observation that across the higher education system as a whole in Australia, the opportunities for experiential learning are far fewer and less recognised for their value, than in the United States for example.

Collaboration

I believe that students of all disciplines deserve the opportunity to have that type of exposure. A new publication from the Business/Higher Education Round Table echoes this thought. Entitled Greater Involvement and Interaction between Industry and Higher Education, it goes a stage further to endorse the concept of: “staff from both sectors moving freely across boundaries in order to engage in new and expanding forms of collaboration”.

How is higher education valued? A recent study from the University of Melbourne estimated that over a working lifetime, a graduate has a $400,000 salary advantage over others not completing tertiary education. However the other big winner is of course society itself. The OECD’s most recent Economic Outlook report covers the topic: “Investment in human capital through post-compulsory education and training”. It observes that: “social rates of return are also high, even if they are lower than the private rates, and point to the benefits of investment in post-compulsory education for society as a whole”.

Employment Readiness/Outcomes

However, the system is input-focused, and process-focused. It is my fervent hope that the forthcoming review of higher education announced by Education Minister Dr Brendan Nelson, will pay more heed to employment-readiness issues and actual employment outcomes of the system than did the 1997 West report and last year’s Senate review of higher education. The debate about Australia’s capacity to operate one, two or more “world class” universities – in other words to compete effectively in the international knowledge economy – may currently only capture headlines in the educational media. Perhaps the new Higher Education review will push the issue further up the national agenda? At the heart of this is undeniably our capacity to be amongst the world’s leaders in research and development. However, for the bulk of those hundreds of thousands who attend university primarily in order to further their career, the universities are expected to provide core knowledge, modern techniques, generic skills and perhaps, experiential learning.

It’s a big ask – but do we have a choice? I think not, whether we look at the country’s development from an insular or from an international perspective. The previously-mentioned seminal text “Skills for Graduates in the 21st Century” has printed on its cover: “Nothing less than the economic and social future of our country is at stake when we are dealing with the preparation of graduates for employment”.

That they were said by a Vice-President of Mobil in relation to another country perhaps serves only to emphasis the point that whatever direction the higher education debate takes, the balance of outcomes in relation to input and process – in my personal view – needs to be addressed.