policy & reform
Make those industry links future ready
Connections with business must serve the needs of the nation. By James Arvanitakis
It is obvious that the Australian economy is facing a number of adjustments. The closures of Ford and Holden, as well as the recent announcements from Qantas, highlight the reality that some once-plentiful opportunities no longer exist.
The slow and steady decline of the manufacturing sector that such job shedding highlights has prompted many to argue that new opportunities will emerge in the service sector. Such claims tend to be vague because it is difficult to know where the jobs of the future will emerge.
Preparing university graduates for jobs of the future is one of the challenges that remains top of mind for policymakers, educators and university administrators – and in the many conversations I have had, it is also a concern for parents all around the country.
One solution that has been proposed is greater links with industry.
This was the driving force behind the recent announcement by Universities Australia of a new agreement between the tertiary education sector and business groups to improve work-readiness of university graduates that has been met with universal praise. Coming off the back of Ernst and Young’ s 2012 Report into tertiary education that made such recommendations, the message is clear: the focus should be on job-ready graduates to fill the current and emerging gaps in the employment sector.
There is much to like about such an initiative, particularly its focus on work-integrated learning, a concept that includes activities such as work placements accredited for university course work, mentoring and internships.
But identifying the source of new employment requires imagination and creativity – two attributes that programs designed by industry rarely do.
And here is the risk of drawing closer links to industry: the economic imperative means that the private sector is often too focused on profits – both in the short and medium term – to consider the needs of our society. For example, what demands would Holden have placed on graduates 12 months ago and how transferable would such skills be?
So where will jobs of the future come from and how can we best prepare our nation’ s youth?
At this stage, we can speculate that there will be at least four growth areas that may lead to a surge in employment. The first is health and medical care, which reflects our ageing population and the growing focus on preventative approaches to medicine.
Then there is infrastructure – both in the physical and virtual worlds. Growing populations and changing lifestyle habits will alter the way cities are designed and our reliance on the IT world will only increase.
Thirdly, there are environmental services especially related to climate change and limited resources.
The fourth area is the tourism sector, buoyed by the growing middle class from countries such as China and India.
But these are not straightforward opportunities and, in a global market characterised by increasing competition, requires a workforce that is both innovative and aware of the resource constraints we are confronting.
As such, whilst it is important to make sure graduates are skilled in their chosen discipline, educators must ensure that three additional skills are encouraged within graduating students – be they from tertiary or secondary institutions.
The first skill to prioritise is creativity. The need for it in education has been well documented by Sir Ken Robinson, who argues“ creativity is as important as literacy”.
But schools and universities tend to be bad at this and it is something that private industry rarely identifies as a necessary skill. If you look at the average engineering course, for example, there is little room for a focus on imagination or promoting the liberal arts. Likewise, very few arts graduates are encouraged to learn of the fascinating and creative world of scientific research such as brain plasticity – as Todd Sampson recently explored in his Redesign my Brain series on ABC.
This raises the second point – the need for education that crosses disciplines. A consistent challenge for both the private and public sector is the silo mentality that plagues management and leads to low productivity. In a world that is getting increasingly collaborative, it is crucial for graduates to have a broader learning experience across arts, science, commerce and other streams.
The problem is, however, that if the focus is only on immediate work-ready skills gaps, there is little room for anything else. As such, there is no time for arts and science students to understand economics, or economics students to undertake cross-cultural analysis.
Thirdly, we need a realignment of good social and scientific research with policymaking to create an atmosphere for entrepreneurship in the search for solutions to some of our contemporary and future challenges. This gap has never been wider: repeated calls by the scientific community to take climate science action are ignored; arts programs that are seen to have wider social and health benefits are the first to go when fiscal tightening is required; and, we have seen renewable energy entrepreneurs head to the United States and China as special interests undermine their innovations in Australia.
There are many opportunities that could exist. There is no reason Australia should not lead the way in advances in health and science, renewable energy and tourism, high tech and high-value manufacturing.
Short-term focus on immediate problems will get our economy only so far – the task is for us to prepare for the challenges of tomorrow – and without such an approach, we are preparing graduates for jobs that may not exist in a few years time. ■
James Arvanitakis is head of The Academy at the University of Western Sydney. campusreview. com. au | 13