Campus Review Volume 28 - Issue 10 | October 2018 | Seite 19

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Another thing is we have quite interesting
results from it, and we thought it would be
good to highlight that.
What were some of the interesting or
surprising results?
There are a few. The first is we found that
the graduate premium – which is the
marginal benefit of going to university
compared to Year 12 school-leavers – is
falling for both men and women. For young
women, their premiums fell by about 8 per
cent between 2006 and 2015. For men the
drop was about 6 per cent.
The story is slightly complex in this case,
because you have men and women getting
quite different results. For men, the main
cause of the deterioration of their earnings
is because of their chance of getting a
full-time job. So, they're less likely to be in
a full-time job and less likely to be in a job
that requires their qualifications. We saw an
increase in the proportion of them in sales
and services jobs, which generally do not
require a degree.
For women, it’s a complex story because
the earnings for female graduates have
actually gone up. But, the reason the
premium has gone down is because the
earnings for female school-leavers has
gone up even more. Because the premium
is essentially the difference between the
two – you have a kind of the premium
narrowing during the period of 2006
and 2016.
Of course, we wondered why earnings
for women had gone up but earnings
for men had gone the other way. So, we
looked into it.
What we found was women increased
their participation in the workforce during
that period. And the main driver of that is
women with children who are more likely
to be on maternity leave rather than leaving
the workforce.
The benefit of that is that women who
go on maternity leave are much more likely
to return to work, and also work full-time,
than those who quit the workforce. As a
result, that’s why we think earnings have
increased during that period.
Another interesting thing we found is
that some disciplines did particularly well
even during the GFC and the end of the
mining boom.
For example, medicine, nursing and
education. For male graduates these are
essentially the three disciplines that had
earnings growth during that period.
For the other disciplines, they either had
a deterioration in earnings or no growth
at all during the 10 years. The worst
ones were science and commerce. They
deteriorated the most during that period.
The earnings dropped by about 6 and 7
per cent for science and commerce during
that period.
The main reason is because science and
commerce graduates are much less likely
to be in jobs that require their qualifications.
So, a smaller proportion of them were in
professional jobs and a larger proportion in
sales and services jobs during that period.
The deterioration in science was quite stark
between 2011 and 2015.
Just on those health graduate findings,
we know that enrolments in those fields
have been among the most popular in
the last couple of years. Do you think that
could change with increasing amounts of
graduates in those fields?
No. Nursing has been popular, and I think
it will continue to be popular in terms of
enrolment as well as in the workforce,
because you have an ageing population,
which means that nurses are always
are going to be in demand. And, we’ve
seen even in the last year of enrolment
that nursing still grew quite a bit, unlike
commerce which has gone down
quite a lot.
As for the other fields, do you think the
effects of the GFC will continue?
It’s more like a cohort effect, isn’t it? Of
those who graduated during the GFC – so
between 2008 and the end of the mining
boom in 2015 – we expect the effect to stay
with them.
But, of graduates who are entering the
labour market in the near future, we expect
them to have a better outcome than those
in the previous cohort. Not to say that it’s
going to be as good as in the early 2000s
when the economy was doing really
well, but certainly we’ve seen quite good
outcomes so that the graduates who are
coming out in the near future, in the next
couple of years, we expect their outcomes
to be better than for the previous cohort.
I know the report is simply reflecting data,
but do you have any opinions on what
various stakeholders in higher education
can take from it?
Yes. The first thing is that, for the majority
of prospective students, it’s not the worst
time to go to university. The premium is
still relatively large, even though it is falling.
The majority of them are still going to get
a full-time job and are still going to get a
managerial job, eventually.
Choosing the right discipline is also a
key factor. We see evidence of science
graduates not doing too well, and the
deterioration between 2011 and 2015 was
concerning in terms of the proportion of
graduates not getting a job that requires
their degree.
On the other hand, you have things
like nursing and education, which did
particularly well during the GFC, partly
because you have enterprise backing all
these contracts and workers employed by
the government, and they are usually better
insulated during the downturns than those
in the private sector.
Having said that, given the fact that we
have an ageing population, nurses are
always going to be in high demand for at
least the medium term. We would expect
their career outcome to remain relatively
good. So, choosing the right discipline
is important.
Also, we know the government likes
to encourage more people, especially
women, to do STEM.
While that’s not a bad idea, we need to
explain the differences when we say STEM,
If we are going to
encourage more people to go
into science, we need to work
out if whether there are jobs
available for them that require
their qualifications.
because engineering students are doing
relatively well but sciences are not doing
great.
So, we should not simply encourage
more people to go into STEM. If they want
to do engineering, that’s a good idea.
Science, not so much.
If we are going to encourage more
people to go into science, we need to
work out whether there are jobs available
for them that require their qualifications.
Otherwise, they’ll be working in jobs they
could have done without a degree. ■
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