E&OE
TOM ELLIOTT: Our next guest is the CEO of Universities Australia, Luke Sheehy, good morning.
LUKE SHEEHY: Good morning.
TOM ELLIOTT: So, I’ve got a copy of your speech here, which you haven’t actually given yet. But anyway, it says you say recent funding in major road projects for example, would easily cover the cost of this truly nation building reform, the reform being extra investment in university research. You say, I think that’s a failure, I think voters would rather a booming economy over a shorter commute. Now our roads are pretty awful, particularly here in Victoria. We’ve got potholes, we’ve got traffic jams and so forth. Are you really certain that motorists in particular would prefer university funding or extra university funding over better roads?
LUKE SHEEHY: No, absolutely not Tom, what I’m making the case for today, just before we go to the polls, to both major parties, is how important it is that we uplift university support so universities can deliver for the nation, including providing engineers to provide new homes and skills and build roads and all the things that universities need to do. It’s making an analogy that both major parties find it easy to fund roads, but they’re finding it harder to fund university to provide the skilled workers we need for the future economy.
TOM ELLIOTT: So, I’ve got a friend who’s a cancer researcher and spends a lot of his time at university doing that. And he says it’s extraordinarily hard to get money. But one of the things I see, particularly when you look at the social sciences and the arts faculty and whatever, there is research money being spent on some pretty weird things that I can’t imagine have much in the way of social improvement. I mean, could we reallocate the research funding we already have?
LUKE SHEEHY: We have a really relatively small direct funding from the government on competitive grants for research in this country. But the point I’m making today is that if we want to do the big things in the country like AUKUS, like transition to new energy sources, including nuclear, if the Liberals get in, we need the research and capability of our universities. So, it’s not about reallocating what we’ve currently got, it’s about turbocharging our efforts as a nation. One thing we learned from the COVID pandemic is that Australia’s sovereign capability was almost shot, and our universities need to be turbocharged so we can secure our own future. And that’s a really important message that I’m sending to both major parties. You want good defence? You need good unis.
TOM ELLIOTT: Yeah, and I don’t disagree with you. I just think the comparison with road funding is perhaps not the best comparison because road funding is also one of those fundamental basic things that we need to do. Whereas if you compared it to, I don’t know, politicians, pensions or something like that, I think a lot more people would support it.
LUKE SHEEHY: Look, I think you’re right. I’m also going to be saying today that we are going to be 132,000 nurses short in the system in the coming decade. Already we have 4,000 fewer teachers than we need. Now where do those skilled workers come from Tom? From universities. So, it’s not just about research, it’s actually about providing the skilled workers and the pipeline of skilled workers that Australia needs. That’s not just about unis, by the way. We need more apprentices, we need more people going to TAFE, we need more skills, right throughout the economy. So, in an election year, I’m saying you can give us money for roads. I love driving. I’m a Victorian, I would like to see less congestion, less potholes on my roads in Melbourne. I agree with your callers. But what I also want is people to be looked after when they’re sick and people to be prepared for the future with classroom-ready teachers.
TOM ELLIOTT: Just on that…what can universities do better to guide students into courses or training or areas for which there is actually demand? For example, so many young people who get good marks say, oh, I’m going to study law, and there just aren’t nearly as many jobs in law as what they think there are. Or we get it here. So many kids say I want to do journalism and they don’t seem to realise that the bottom has fallen out of the newspapers and TV and whatever. Are there more universities could do to say look, you might think you want to study law, but actually there’s not many jobs in law, why don’t you do this instead and you’ll have a better chance of a decent job at the end of it.
LUKE SHEEHY: It’s a big challenge for the Australian economy, right? We’ve got to make sure we encourage our best and brightest into all the fields that are actually in demand. You’re absolutely right. One thing I’m going to say today as well though, is changing the fees hasn’t helped. So, the previous Coalition government made it cheaper to do teaching and we still have fewer teachers than we do. So, it’s not just the setting of the fees. I reckon it’s a team Australia effort. Universities should work with businesses and send a signal to parents and young people and workers that there are jobs at the end of that pipeline. So many of our universities already have our students going in and taking compulsory internships and work with industry while they’re studying. I want to see students going to the skills areas we need. We can’t do it with the current funding system, and we can’t do it if they’re going to curtail international students, who top up and subsidise the experience for Australians.
TOM ELLIOTT: Alright, thank you for your time. Luke Sheehy there, CEO of Universities Australia.
ENDS
