NEWS
campusreview.com.au
Work
proposal
VET research hub aims to improve job
prospects for next generation.
G
etting young people into education and employment is the
main focus of a new VET research centre.
The Centre for Vocational and Educational Policy, within
the University of Melbourne’s Graduate School of Education, will
unite researchers to work with government and other parties on
getting young people into jobs and educational opportunities.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics shows the current
unemployment rate is 6.2 per cent. Youth unemployment is at
13 per cent. Professor John Polesel, head of the new centre, said
economic hardship hits young people the hardest.
“There was a recent report released by the Bertelsmann
Foundation in Germany, which argued that young people are being
hit hardest by the crisis in Europe,” Polesel said. “The gap between
young people and older people is growing in terms of earnings and
access to the labour market. We’ve got a similar situation here in
Australia, where the youth unemployment rate is well over twice as
high as the general unemployment rate.”
The centre will focus on co-ordinating strategies between
government agencies. Polesel said the lack of co-ordinated
services means many pathways aren’t well established. Schools
also have too much of a focus of getting their students into
prestigious courses, he said.
“For a long time, we’ve conceptualised careers advice as advising
students on what subjects they need to get into university, or to get
into law, or to get into medicine,” Polesel said. “We need to think
about careers education much more broadly. A lot of kids do not go
to university, and a lot of kids need good quality careers advice and
guidance about how to enter the labour market, how to get training,
how to find jobs, how to pick careers in a broader sense.”
The institute is working with the NSW Government to achieve
this. It’s also working with the Victorian Government to create
better links between VET and workforce. ■
Analysis of rodent waste
leads to breakthrough in
study of climate history.
F
Photo: Brian Chase
From urine
to Eureka!
Brian Chase, with urine fossils in south-west Africa.
8
ossilised rodent urine has helped
researchers make a crucial
climate discovery.
Australian National University scientists
have created a coherent picture of abrupt
climate change at the end of the last Ice
Age. During this period, Antarctica suddenly
stopped warming and began to cool down
for almost 1500 years. At the same time, the
Northern Hemisphere warmed rapidly.
Researchers have brought evidence of
the complex variations in earth’s climate
during this period together in a single study.
This involved collecting samples, which
give a temperature record.
Samples included ice cores from Antarctica,
cave samples from Northern Australia and
stalagmites of fossilised urine from rock
hyraxes – a South African rodent. The spots
where these animals urinate and defecate
become refuge heaps called middens, and
some are almost 30,000 years old.
They have rich pollen records that
researchers use to understand changes in
plant dynamics over time.
Paleoclimatologist Dr Brian Chase, of
France’s Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique, used this trait to understand
past changes in precipitation.
Research team member Claire Krause,
from ANU, said: “It was a combination of
pulling together these existing climate
records and trying to understand them
in one new big synthesised story. The
Northern Hemisphere warmed abruptly. At
the same time, the Southern Hemi