{"id":1918,"date":"2017-10-12T07:42:02","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T07:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/?p=1918"},"modified":"2017-10-12T07:43:23","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T07:43:23","slug":"is-going-to-university-really-worth-it-for-most-people-rn-abc-news-australian-broadcasting-corporation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/is-going-to-university-really-worth-it-for-most-people-rn-abc-news-australian-broadcasting-corporation\/","title":{"rendered":"Is going to university really worth it for most people?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Put the future in your hands. Change your life, change the world.\u00a0Thrive amid the rise of machines<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In their advertisements, Australian universities promise prospective students quite a lot.<\/p>\n

You might wonder why they need to advertise at all \u2014\u00a036 per cent<\/a>\u00a0of the Australian population had gained tertiary qualifications in 2011, compared to two per cent in 1971.<\/p>\n

Universities collected over\u00a0$27 billion in revenue<\/a>\u00a0in 2014.<\/p>\n

But with increasing graduate numbers,\u00a0national lists of skills shortages<\/a>, and stalled real\u00a0wage growth<\/a>, the question must be asked: is it really worth getting a degree?<\/p>\n

More money, but at what cost?<\/h2>\n

For prospective students, a key argument for university study is its presumed positive effect on wages over a lifetime.<\/p>\n

Andreas Schleicher, director for education and skills at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, says that figure is quite large in Australia.<\/p>\n

“You get about $300,000 in earnings more than those who do not study,” he says.<\/p>\n

There’s also a benefit for taxpayers.<\/p>\n

“Better educated people pay more taxes, incur lower social costs \u2014 it’s a good investment,” Mr Schleicher says.<\/p>\n

But that positive effect on lifetime wages isn’t uniform over all degrees, according to the Grattan Institute’s higher education program director, Andrew Norton.<\/p>\n

\n
Do you think the benefits of university study outweigh the cost? Have your say in the comments below.<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\"Sandstone<\/a>PHOTO:<\/strong>\u00a0University prestige only has a “moderate” effect on lifetime earnings, Andrew Norton says.\u00a0(Unsplash: Aaron Cinard)<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

“Our research very consistently finds that if you do a degree such as medicine, dentistry, law, [or] engineering \u2026 that is really the key to good earnings,” he says.<\/p>\n

“You’d be better off doing engineering at a low prestige university than arts at a high prestige university in Australia.”<\/p>\n

But for Alison Wolf, an economist and professor of public sector management at Kings College, London, the perceived prestige of the awarding institution shouldn’t be dismissed.<\/p>\n

For employers, a so-called “Sandstone University” degree can act as a sort of screening test.<\/p>\n

“It signals to society that [students] are relatively intelligent, good future employees \u2014 the sort of people you won’t get sacked for hiring,” Professor Wolf says.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Listen to the program<\/a><\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nHear the full discussion about the value of university education on The Money.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

But Professor Wolf also believes students should have more options at the sub-degree and technical education level.<\/p>\n

“If you’re 18 and you want get some form of tertiary qualification, you can have a full-time, three-year degree, and that’s basically it,” he says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For students in the United Kingdom, Professor Wolf says, the lack of mid-level technical education is “desperately wrong” and “extremely unfair”.<\/p>\n

“Essentially, you’re robbing these kids \u2014 they spend a long time in courses which they don’t particularly enjoy. You get high dropout rates and they pile up debts,” he says.<\/p>\n

Universities no longer broaden minds<\/h2>\n

Historically, attending university had a broad social component: making new friends, sitting in a common room arguing about the world’s ills with strangers.<\/p>\n

For Australian higher education students today, there simply isn’t time. Australia Bureau of Statistics data shows that, for many students, working while studying is essential.<\/p>\n

In contrast to the American or British tertiary systems, a high percentage of Australian students do not relocate to study. Nearly\u00a040 per cent<\/a>\u00a0of university students live with their parents.<\/p>\n

\"Sandstone<\/a>PHOTO:<\/strong>\u00a0It can be rare to find universities offering courses below the degree level.\u00a0(Unsplash: Davide Cantelli)<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

Meanwhile, student activism \u2014 fertile ground for mind-broadening and friendship-fastening \u2014 has never been\u00a0more atomised<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For Fairfax economics editor Ross Gittins, that socialising component is long gone.<\/p>\n

“One of the things I’ve noticed is, you talk to young people and you say, ‘Well, who are your mates?’ and they’ll say, ‘The people I went to school with.’ In my generation, we’d say, ‘The people I went to uni with.'”<\/p>\n

Could degrees themselves be the problem?<\/h2>\n

Mr Schleicher says universities \u2014 and the types of qualifications they offer \u2014 were designed for a very different time.<\/p>\n

Our qualifications, he says, are “lumpy” \u2014 assuming a relatively static workforce, where graduands aren’t required to continuously adapt and engage with new environments.<\/p>\n

The opportunity to continue learning throughout life, Mr Schleicher says, is “the big challenge” of modern university.<\/p>\n

“If you continue learning at the workplace, or learning later in life in university, I think there is still a big gap between the needs of the modern society and the traditional universities as institutions.”<\/p>\n

ABC NEWS<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Put the future in your hands. Change your life, change the world.\u00a0Thrive amid the rise of machines. In their advertisements, Australian universities promise prospective students quite a lot. You might wonder why they need to advertise at all \u2014\u00a036 per cent\u00a0of the Australian population had gained tertiary qualifications in 2011, compared to two per cent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13826,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-other","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13826"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1918"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1925,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1918\/revisions\/1925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/wanfahminfaiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}