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campusreview.com.au
Grads ‘wasting’ skills
The proportion of graduates reluctantly
underemployed has increased markedly compared
to 10 years ago, a government report shows.
By Loren Smith
“I graduated from Melbourne, participated in and won a few
presentation competitions at uni and did an internship at a tech
startup (the role was somewhat about research, marketing). I’m
literally looking for anything right now but haven’t got anything for
months … both part-time and full-time.” – ygorrilla123
O
nline forums are littered with stories like the one above,
which have proved to be more than simply anecdotal.
Fewer graduates are working full-time than they were 10
years ago, a trend that has many concerned.
The government’s 2017 Graduate Outcomes Survey National
Report revealed that between 2008 and 2017, the proportion of
graduates who were reluctantly underemployed increased by 10.8
percentage points to 19.7 per cent, around 10 per cent more than
the workforce at large.
Josh Healy says these figures generally “tell you that people
are dissatisfied”. The senior research fellow at the University of
Melbourne’s Centre for Workplace Leadership thinks the global
financial crisis and its economic fallout is largely responsible for
the continually depressed job market, which has hit relatively
inexperienced graduates harder.
“We haven’t recovered back to where we were before that crisis
took grip,” he says.
SKILLING DOWN
“Worst case scenario for me would be to get menial work that
you don’t need a degree to do, thus meaning you aren’t learning
anything or gaining any transferable skills. Friends in this position
say they feel what they have learnt at uni is going to waste, as they
are essentially doing glorified data entry and the like.” – zucchini
are especially vulnerable to. However, he also thinks it’s nothing
new, and could even be positive. The “churn” that occurs in the
early years of employment, due to graduates searching for better
jobs, could also be viewed as a “matching process”, whereby
graduates seek, and often find, employment they are happier with.
“That is part of the story line that I’m not freaking out about,”
Healy says.
Universities Australia shares his opinion. According to acting
chief executive Catriona Jackson, “the data shows that graduates,
like everyone entering the labour market, need time to establish
their careers”.
THEY CAN GET SATISFACTION
Despite high underemployment and low reported skills utilisation,
most graduates are in fact happy with their lot. The report found
that “overall satisfaction among undergraduates remained high in
2017 at 79.4 per cent”.
Perhaps this is indicative of their awareness that, ultimately,
university graduates enjoy greater fulfilment across multiple social,
professional and health indices. As Healy puts it: “It remains the
case that going to university is still a good bet, but it’s a somewhat
riskier proposition now than it used to be.”
POSTGRAD PAIN
In regard to employment and satisfaction, those with postgraduate
degrees scored higher than undergraduates. They rated their
experiences roughly the same as undergraduates in terms of
skill utilisation.
Natasha Abrahams, president of the Council of Australian
Postgraduate Associations National, says this indicates how
“incredibly important” postgraduates are to employers, and thereby,
the economy.
Yet she tempers her response with a criticism of the level of
financial support these students receive: “The current lack of
consistent income support for Australian postgraduate students
makes life harder for this cohort.”
WHOSE PROBLEM IS IT ANYWAY?
According to the report, 41.1 per cent of employed undergraduate
degree holders said they didn’t fully utilise their degrees at work.
Healy believes this is “a bit worrying”, and reflects the “bad mix” of
the outcome of the demand-driven system (between 2001 and
2016, domestic undergraduate completions rose by 53 per cent),
coupled with weakened employment demand, which graduates
4
Should universities be doing more to make graduates job-ready?
Healy offers a qualified yes. “Across the whole sector, I think there’s
plenty of work still to do,” he says.
“There’s always work to do in listening to employers [but] I don’t
want to see universities become … glorified vocational education
training providers.” ■