VET & TAFE
The danger of losing scientists and historians
Something has gone wrong when, on present trends, we face a future with few graduates in some of the essential disciplines.
Australia faces a national skills crisis as students abandon unpopular subjects such as maths, science and humanities in response to tertiary deregulation.
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It is ironic that so many claims of shortages in empirical disciplines such as this ignore empirical data. Of all the bachelor graduates available for full time employment 76.6% were in full time employment In 2011.
But the employment rate for many of the sciences was much lower:
agriculture 70.9%
chemistry 63.0%
physical sciences 71.0%.
This suggests that Australia doesn’t have a skills ‘crisis’, ‘shortage’, . . . (insert your favourite alarmist noun). If the argument is based on the employment demand for graduates, Australia is clearly producing too many graduates in these fields.