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Education is central to the country’ s future
More investment is needed in the higher education sector to ensure the country’ s economic future is optimised, according to Universities Australia.
Universities Australia recently launched a policy document, A Smarter Australia: An agenda for Australian Higher Education 2013-2016, in an effort to advance Australia’ s international standing in higher education.
“ We aim to make higher education core to the national vision for our economic future,” Universities Australia chair Glyn Davis said at the National Press Club in Canberra.
“ More than half the jobs created in the Australian economy this year will require a university qualification.” The policy statement coincides with a $ 5 million campaign by UA to promote the importance of higher education in the nation’ s future.
Davis said this was a call for political leaders to recognise that higher education is an asset to the country.
The Smarter Australia document details how they want government and universities to work together over the next five years.
The policy framework addresses four key themes: increasing participation, global engagement, research and innovation to drive economic and social progress, and increased investment and improved efficiency.
Over the past two decades, investment in higher education and research has not kept up with the rest of the world. While there has been an increase in the level of investment made in recent years, this has not been sufficient to lift Australia from the bottom 20 per cent of OECD nations for the level of public investment made in universities.
Many university leaders have backed calls by the UA for better policy agenda.
La Trobe vice-chancellor John Dewar said we must build our investment in higher education.
“ Australia is a great country, but we have any number of challenges to face if we want to remain internationally competitive,” Dewar said. Victoria University vice-chancellor, professor Peter Dawkins, said the policy statement is a“ wake-up call”, while RMIT University vice-chancellor, professor Margaret Gardner, said investment is“ critical” for Australia’ s future prosperity.
University of Southern Queensland vicechancellor, professor Jan Thomas, has also thrown her support behind the policy agenda, saying that as a nation“ we really need to do better”. n
Apprentice and trainee enrolments decline
trade and non-trade commencements in apprenticeships have declined, according to early estimates released by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research.
The December quarter figures from Apprentices and Trainees 2012— early trend estimates shows that from 23,900 trade apprentice commencements in the September quarter last year, the numbers dropped by 2500 to 21,400 in the December quarter.
This contrasted with significant growth in early 2012.
For non-trade commencements, the adjusted and smoothed estimates show a decline from 57,700 commencements in the September quarter to 44,000 in the December quarter.
NCVER’ s general manager( statistics), Sandra Pattison, said the number of commencing apprentices and trainees was linked to the economy and what was happening in the labour market.
“ When employers are uncertain about the economy they tend not to take on new apprenticeships.
“ Indications from business confidence surveys undertaken by some of the banks show that business confidence is softening,” Pattison said.
She said government incentives saw some changes last year, primarily the removal of incentive payments to those apprentices and trainees not on the National Skill Needs List. The significant growth in non-trade traineeships until June and the subsequent decline was largely due to this change.
New apprentices would need to have started training before July 1 to receive the old subsidy, she said.
Pattison said that traditionally the greatest intake of trade apprenticeships happened in the March quarter.“ Our latest early trend estimates are for activity to December 2012, so we will need to monitor the March 2013 intake to obtain a clearer picture of any impact.”
NCVER will release information on national and state / territory level intraining, completion, and cancellation and withdrawal data next month. n
www. campusreview. com. au March 2013 | 7