4 ms·

Sky-high wages and low immigration were probably big factors here. Either way, there are alternatives: Give kids more vocational stuff to do at school. Most ch

Sky-high wages and low immigration were probably big factors here. Either way, there are alternatives: Give kids more vocational stuff to do at school. Most children grow up with almost no understanding of the world of work. Improve the humanities courses. Suggesting that they offer no workplace skills is nonsense. If you go to a good uni, you get skills that are useful in business. Simple. Make university low-cost - why does it need to take so long? why does it need to cost so much? Make it more expensive really helps no-one. If you made a bad choice, you are now more fucked. The price mechanism doesn't work with education (ironically, this may have been clear if policy-makers had more STEM education...or is economics a social science? Who knows?). Most of these effects are because humanities courses matriculate way more students than STEM, entrance to STEM is often controlled by trade bodies, the students have different goals, and more lower quality institutions do more degrees with more students that get thrown into humanities. University is not the be-all...if you study history, that shouldn't really limit your career in any way. There are countries that turn out masses of STEM grads and haven't taken over the world (India, China's "engineer mindset" amongst its political leaders is also infamous). I am in the UK, and most people who do STEM degrees end up doing something non-STEM related to actually make money (either CS or finance)...most STEM jobs here actually pay poorly (most engineers earn the average salary, staying in academia in a STEM field is career suicide). It is great headline but I suspect it will achieve little.

deecewan 6y ago
Low cost, low quality university is often the reason why the masses of STEM grads from India haven't taken over the world (as well as a healthy touch of racism). This is in Australia, where not only do you get tax free (but indexed) loans for university, but the government also provides a "Commonwealth Supported Place" - they cover half the fees, and then you get your tax-free loan for the other half. This is entirely just trying to maximise ROI for the government. If people want to do an arts degree, they are able to, and will still get the tax-free loan. But the loan will be higher, because the government is less willing to subsidize degrees that have a lower likelihood of high income.

deecewan 6y ago

Low cost, low quality university is often the reason why the masses of STEM grads from India haven't taken over the world (as well as a healthy touch of racism). This is in Australia, where not only do you get tax free (but indexed) loans for university, but the government also provides a "Commonwealth Supported Place" - they cover half the fees, and then you get your tax-free loan for the other half. This is entirely just trying to maximise ROI for the government. If people want to do an arts degree, they are able to, and will still get the tax-free loan. But the loan will be higher, because the government is less willing to subsidize degrees that have a lower likelihood of high income.