An Education Disaster !

Alarming figures from our Universities revealing that of the one million domestic students now studying at Australian Tertiary Education facilities, one in five drops out without completing their course.  It is noticeable that this attrition rate increases with the distance the campus diverges from the centres of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

In  New South Wales the universities  Charles Sturt, Southern Cross and New England have a drop out rate of between 22% and 24% and in Tasmania the university in Hobart loses 46% of those enrolled before graduation.    Those that walk away accrue a HECS  debt that will haunt them for the rest of their commercial life.

It seems that the traditional city universities do better in retaining students.   The drop out rate at the University of Sydney is a much more modest 6%.

Attitudes have changed and many families now pressure their children to gain a university education in the belief that this will; ensure a high pay career.  At the same time ATAR scores  slip ever lower and some students are probably aiming well above their mental capacity.   That old axiom that some are destined to work with their heads - and others to work with their hands - still applies.

The problem is that university education has eclipsed the traditional methods that allowed the less academically gifted to  pursue a trades career.  A century ago those ambitious people determined to succeed enrolled in "night school "- which was the term for the nations Technical Colleges.

The other pathway to qualification was to gain an apprenticeship.   Master tradespeople enrolled apprentices who they taught their trade and in the early years the pay was low.   Often, this was a mixture of on the job training and time at TAFE to learn the technical aspect of the work.

Unfortunately, it fell into disfavour.  Training apprentices was almost a public service.   They were fairly useless on the jobs in the early stages and when wages began to rise they immediately left their training employer on graduation and were snapped up by firms that did not train apprentices.  Today, such training opportunities are rare.

As a result, there is a dire shortage of qualified trades and those with qualifications are now earning at the level of many professionals.   In particular, bricklayers are in such short supply that a rate of one dollar per brick laid has now expanded to ten dollars where job completion is critical on a contract basis.   Some tradesmen simply work a two day week to modify the tax take.

There seems little point cramming unsuitable students into universities if they are going to fail to complete their courses.  ATAR's need to rise rather than be lowered to ensure that those accepted have the capacity to meet the needs to qualify.

It is very clear that TAFE needs work.  Their original purpose was to supply trade qualifications and they have degenerated from that aspect of their tuition.  A university dropout rate of one in five is not sustainable.   These are the very people we are failing when we fail to deliver a realistic alternative to tertiary education.

Sometimes the answer to a major problem is so obvious that the academic mind ignores it because of its simplicity !