POLICY & REFORM
campusreview.com.au
Students
have
changed,
unis must
Taj Pabari Photo: tajpabari.com
T
Large changes
in the ways
people acquire
knowledge
have made it
essential for the
whole education
system to shift
its focus to what
students need.
David Barnett
interviewed by
James Wells
10
aj Pabari is a 17-year-old high school student
attending Brisbane’s John Paul College,
who has absolutely no aspiration to study
at university.
But he’s also chief executive of his own tech start-up,
Fiftysix Creations, and spends his free time with tennis,
martial arts and travelling. In today’s Australia, when more
young people than ever before are enrolled at university,
Pabari said more effort needs to go into helping students
decide whether higher education is for them. This begins
with reforming the role of career advisers and school
counsellors, he says.
“Wouldn’t it be great if [school] counsellors asked:
‘What are your passions, your hopes for the future?
What do you love doing?’ ” Pabari told a roundtable
hosted by multinational education publisher Pearson.
“At the moment, any career advice tends to be based
solely on job prospects. The whole idea of [school]
counselling needs to be redefined and expanded.”
Pearson recently sponsored the No Mind Left
Behind report from the McKell Institute. Among its
recommendati ons were reforming school careerguidance services and more collaboration between
industry and university.
David Barnett, managing director of Pearson AsiaPacific, says Pabari’s story should be a wake-up call
for universities. He says they need to ask themselves
why they aren’t attractive to someone like Pabari.
Otherwise, they’ll lose the students who fund their
research, he warns.
Barnett sits down with Campus Review to discuss
the role of universities and how he believes it must
evolve to meet the changing needs and desires of
modern students.
CR: What were the key takeaways of the No Mind Left
Behind report from the McKell institute?
DB: It’s interesting to think about the relevance of
the sector. [We’ve had Taj Pabari] work with us on
a couple different events and we’re struck by how,
you know, he’s 17 years old and he’s founded his
own tech start-up. He’s about to move to New York
to build a business in America, yet our conventional
schooling system is not in any way responsible
for the skills he has acquired. He basically taught
himself the skills he used in building the business
and he has no plans to go to uni because he
doesn’t see the point. That’s obviously a sample of
one, he’s a remarkable young man, but there are
many stories like Taj’s.
People are figuring out they don’t need to go to
university to get skills for the future. We talked to a
large professional services firm that’s so disenchanted
with the quality of students they’re getting that they’ve
designed their own program for school leavers to train
them in accounting and accredit them through the
professional accounting bodies. Now that should be
a pretty alarming message for the sector about the
standard of students coming through and the relevance
of the sector.