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campusreview.com.au
Jobs boom looms
P
opulation growth and workforce
turnover will see an education
sector with too many jobs and not
enough graduates.
That’s according to Griffith University’s
Professor Donna Pendergast, speaking on
the back of research that revealed the fields
of education most at risk of overtraining.
WithYouWithMe Insights analysed
forecasted graduation rates against future
jobs. The team found that the education
field is expected to have an oversupply of
30,242 jobs by 2023.
Pendergast, the dean of the School of
Education and Professional Studies, put
the shortage down to population growth
and the generational changeover of
the workforce.
“We’ve had lots of people who have
been teachers for their whole careers and
they are moving out of the workforce,”
Pendergast said.
She added it’s also a change in the way
the teaching workforce is now operating,
with graduates entering it only to leave
about four or five years in.
However, Pendergast said the industry is
starting to “get some teeth about it”.
“[The House of Representatives]
identified some of the challenges within
the profession and what we might do to
address those,” she explained.
Cheating law ‘too tough’
I
f draft legislation to prohibit academic
cheating services moves ahead
unchanged, students who help out
struggling classmates may start to worry
that they’re incriminating themselves.
That’s one of the potential problems
with the scope of the bill's details, says the
Innovative Research Universities (IRU).
In its submission to the Department of
Education, the IRU detailed concerns that
the draft legislation is too broad in seeking
to cover all cases of cheating through use
of another party.
“Cheating includes ‘providing any part of
a piece of work or assignment’. A cheating
service provider can be ‘any person’ who
provides or advertises these services,
irrespective of if it is intentional or for any
gain for the person providing the service,”
the group said.
“This breadth creates uncertainty over
what will be practically enforceable by the
“It is absolutely a moment where we
can take stock, use all of this kind of
information that we have available to us
and do some work around innovating in
this particular profession.”
Education was an outlier in the
WithYouWithMe report – the only field
to post an oversupply. The number of
graduates in every other industry is set to
outstrip the supply of expected jobs, it said.
The greatest oversupplies will be in
creative arts, engineering and related tech,
and society and culture.
The report said Australia’s education
system has “not been designed to respond
to new changes in the labour market”. It
argued that the lack of regulatory control
means students are enrolling in fields where
job prospects are expected to be low.
“There is no clear overarching
mechanism between education and
employment outcomes and no real
incentive for universities to do so,” it said.
The report added students should look at
where the job growth opportunities lie and
how they can become in-demand talent in
the long run.
Tertiary Education Quality and Standards
Agency (TEQSA), whether universities
become obligated to report all cases to
TEQSA and when to involve TEQSA in
investigations.”
The Council of Australian Postgraduate
Associations (CAPA) also voiced its concern
about the breadth of the legislation, saying
it was too heavy-handed.
“While commercial contract cheating
services often advertise to vulnerable
students in order to profit, individuals
who assist in cheating (such as parents
and friends) are more likely to be well-
intentioned and may have a lack of
understanding of academic integrity.
“This type of cheating should be dealt
with inside the established university
system, with an educative focus for
prevention, rather than punitively through
the courts.”
IRU would like to see the scope of
commercial contract cheating services
restricted or a more nuanced definition
of "part of a piece of work or assignment”,
should the department retain the current
list. It also wants clear guidelines for
how universities can assist TEQSA with
investigations.
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