Is that a boy or girl holding the sign :lol:

This part is 99% of the problem!

Damn students, how dare they get an education! How dare they express opinions! They should just take those menial jobs that I would never want to do instead.

How dare these kids pay for their education ! They should get it for free! Gina Rinehart should pay for it! I don't like rich people!!

Damn straight, Gina Rinehart and co never get any benefit from these kids going to Uni and getting qualifications that help them make money. Business owners all over the country should be demanding Australia de-skill!

Yeah I can see where you come from.

It shits me to see people leaving uni with a useless degree that gives them no job opportunities, at the taxpayers expense.

But how would you propose to solve this problem?

Ban university.

Be realistic about offering degrees. Lets face it, there are how many science students for how many science jobs? There are how many creative students for how many creative commissions? There are how many psychologists for how many psych jobs?

In the case of many degrees unfortunately demand is in short supply. It makes the profession competitive but it does force a lot of grads with huge debts to work jobs outside their field.

There are also those who give up and go and do post-grad studies which eats up more tax payer funding and makes them over-qualified for most jobs for people with no industry experience.

And make everyone work menial jobs .

How often does this occur though? Are most people seriously not paying back their debts?

"You will study what we tell you to study and work in the jobs that we need you to work" sounds familiar...

It was a huge decision for me to either start paying back my HECS/HELP debt, or intentionally earn less than $50k p.a.

Don't know actual figures but I guess the big issue is the repayments. For me at uni 1 subject was $1200/semester so lets say a round number of 10k a year debt. Before i paid off my debt, my repayments on my debt were like $70 a fortnight or something and I was way over the minimum repayment threshold. I guess the pressure comes from an increasing amount of People going to uni and the slow rate that repayments are made coupled with people who don't find work to pay it back.

Going through my FB friends list, of the 120 or so that went to uni about 15 or 16 I know straight away have been out of uni for 3 years working at coles and spotlight etc.

No need to be the smart country! We're the lucky country! Education is for the arrogant and wasteful underclass, they constantly get degrees and then deliberately seek unemployment in order to avoid paying back the debt! They're un-Australian!

What are you talking about? Nobody gets their education for free (except for scholarships). People just have a HECS debt that gathers interest the longer you take to pay it back.

Ah! Predetermination of employment! Man I love this thread, it constantly delivers. We have a number of jobs in b sector, c people in that field are going to leave it over the course of the next 4 years so we must offer d places across every university in Australia in order to fill that need. Because we can see exactly how any given field is going to develop and how any given industry is going grow/contract.

I'm not actually having a go, I understand what you are trying to say - but universities are profit generating enterprises, they will take in as many students as they can in every degree they can offer.

Because... umm... rich people! Commies! Boat people!

Exactly but they take the money, the government and the tax payer is out of pocket.

For most students who go to uni and don't screw around and study everything under the sun because making decisions in life is too hard i sympathise.

We have 3 undergrads at work getting experience and none of them have a chance of employment with us. Engineering is contracting hardcore and yet uni's are taking on more engineering students than ever.

Engineering is also one of those degrees where you don't learn how to be one until you are working as one, though that is just me repeating something my dad would always say about the graduates that would attempt to get work with his company.

I guess the issue then is the threshold at which we make them pay their loans back...

The Australian government determines that an individual can afford to support themselves if they are earning around $23,000/annum - I'm not convinced.

Full Scholarships!\:d/ \:d/ \:d/

Your dad was a wise man. Uni did not prepare me anywhere near as much as I expected for real world problems.

I thought we had a shortage of engineers in Australia?

Well the cost of living remains the same. Taking more money off people struggling to survive because their uni degree isn't helping them (which defeats the purpose of going to uni) is like kicking someone while they're down.

Yeah those arts and humanities students would be helping Gina make her billions.

Funny thing to me is how the people suggesting this are deriding communism but this was the biggest flaw of the whole system. Forget all the crap about equal pay for all. In communism, the state has to try predict demand and order state owned companies to supply accordingly. This is turns out to be almost impossible and capitalisms "let the consumers drive supply through their own demand" works much better.

Now think that was usually only one year max predictions, people are expecting universities to predict what's going to happen in 3+ years time? :lol:

If their uni degree isn't helping them and they're not earning more than $50k they don't have to pay it back. If they're struggling to survive on $50k they need to subscribe to less porn sites.

Maybe its who you know as well as what you know to get a foot in the door just to get a lucky break. Social skills too are probably a thing an employer looks for as well. You can be the smartest guy in the world have High Distinctions in everything but if you can't communicate or fit into the workplace environment then your qualifications might not mean much.

Maybe not in the same numbers as engineering, geology and some other fields but a large company like hers would absolutely require people with those skills. At the very least many lawyers start out on arts degrees, pretty sure she uses them all the time for contracts and other legal matters.