The Government has a somewhat anti-University agenda. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Universities in Australia have drastically grown in size over the last

The Government has a somewhat anti-University agenda. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Universities in Australia have drastically grown in size over the last 20 years, funded by international students. The other trend seems to be a lot of lightly employed people doing graduate degrees which are pretty lucrative for the Unis. Almost everyone I know is doing some kind of diploma, MBA, masters, PHD etc etc. I think in at least a non-trivial proportion of these cases, they do it because they can't get a good enough job or enough hours of work. It feels like everyone is over-educated and underemployed. Not clear any of this over-training leads to better job prospects. Feels like an example of the meritocratic trap [1]. They make ends meet because Australia has free healthcare, and the previous generation is very wealthy and can support them. This only lasts one generation of course. There seems to be a dearth of opportunity for young professionals. On the one hand you have people in their 60s - 70s working longer, because they earn a LOT (eg > $300K a year as well established doctors, lawyers, accountants). The pay scales in government jobs also mean senior people can earn huge amounts just by virtue of being around for a long time (ie close to double what someone 20 years younger would earn for doing essentially the same thing). On the other hand you have young professionals who can't get a decent job, with ever more candidates piling up behind them. I am not sure about the idea of a STEM shortage in Australia. Is this broadly true? The last mechanical engineer I spoke to quit to become a java programmer because he couldn't get a job. On the other hand a guy I know in Fintech hired out the whole team from overseas, there wasn't anyone with .NET experience locally. Boeing has a software shop and they used to hire a lot of engineers, not sure what they do now. It's puzzling. I suspect there are some social effects at play that are restricting labour market mobility and also that universities are not well aligned with the labour market. One thing I definitely notice - there is a real lack of highly technical startups here. Apparently venture capitalists in Australia are not the best. 'I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire' was one comment I heard about local VCs. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/meritocracys-miserable-winners/594760/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/meritoc...