Uni Graduates Increase 70 Per Cent In Ten Years
The Age
Tuesday March 17, 1992
Up to 120,000 Australians will complete courses at university this year, a 70 per cent increase in the past decade.
At graduation ceremonies across Australia over the next two months, record lines of students will queue to be awarded doctorates, degrees and diplomas. Whether or not Australia is becoming the clever country, it is certainly more qualified.
Estimates prepared by the federal Department of Employment, Education and Training suggest that more than 65,000 undergraduates earned bachelor and honors degrees last year, a 15 per cent rise on 1990. Overall, the biggest number of graduates are from the arts, humanities and social sciences, followed by those in education, business and health.
More than 60 per cent of the students obtaining university qualifications studied in Victoria and New South Wales.
The number of Australians with degrees will continue to rise sharply because of the big increase in higher education enrolments over the past five years. More than 155,000 students started undergraduate courses in 1990 and this jumped eight per cent to 162,500 last year. The total commencing load, which includes all students who begin new courses such as postgraduate diplomas, masters', PhD and bachelor courses, went up by nearly 75 per cent in the decade to 1991.
According to a study by the federal Higher Education Council, mature-age enrolments are increasing at above-average rates. But this has been accompanied by a decline in the rate of growth of younger students.
Enrolments by school leavers rose by nearly 12 per cent in 1989 but then increased by only 6.7 per cent in 1990 and only 1.3 per cent in 1991. ``It appears that institutions have chosen to allocate a significant proportion of their growth places to the older age groups, in particular in the postgraduate area," the council says. ``This is a worrying trend in the current climate of increased demand from school leavers." The Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee now estimates that up to 50,000 qualified students could have missed out on a university place this year.
As the number of graduates leaving university has risen, employment prospects for degree-holders over the past three years have fallen. A report by the Graduate Careers Council says that graduates are now facing their worst unemployment prospects in nearly 20 years.
The proportion of new graduates seeking full-time work last year was nearly double that of 1990 while the percentage of those with full-time jobs dropped from 60 per cent in 1990 to 51 per cent in 1991.
© 1992 The Age