Luke Sheehy, Universities Australia Chief Executive Officer

As former Jobs and Skills Australia director Peter Dawkins said in his final address to the National Press Club of Australia last year: “Australians will need to acquire and continually develop the necessary skills, which will increasingly be high-level skills, if we are to achieve the economic and social aspirations of a prosperous and equitable nation.”

Universities are partners in our national prosperity. Our institutions educate the skilled graduates and undertake the research and development that are essential to helping Australia navigate the forces and trends reshaping our economy.

Australia is fighting battles on many fronts: technological and digital transformation; climate change and the shift to net zero; an ageing population; rising demand for care and support services; and increasing geopolitical risk and fragmentation.

These forces are changing the way we live and work. The task we have is turning them from challenges into opportunities, and that requires smart thinking and solutions. Yet the skilled workers needed to keep Australia moving towards a more prosperous future are in short supply. Everywhere you look, there aren’t enough highly skilled people to ensure our future success.

We are short 50,000 engineers, the shortfall of cyber security professionals in Australia could reach as high as 30,000 in the next few years, and we need an additional 85,000 nurses by 2025 – to name but a few professions grappling with chronic skills shortages.

Without these skilled professionals, we won’t be able to build the infrastructure needed to support a growing population, our security agencies will struggle to defend Australians, and there will be too few health practitioners in our communities, hospitals and aged care facilities to care for our friends and loved ones.

This is a problem not only for the government but also for the nation and it urgently needs to be addressed. Government projections show more than nine in 10 new jobs will require post-school qualifications, while 50 per cent of new jobs are expected to require a university degree or higher in the coming years. Universities Australia’s analysis puts the cost of not meeting the target for university-educated workers at $7bn in 2026.

That is an enormous economic hit – not to mention the social and technological ramifications. To meet Australia’s future skills needs, the higher education system will need to grow by at least 300,000 commonwealth-supported places by 2035 and an additional 900,000 places by 2050.

That’s more than double the number of domestic students studying at our universities today.

This is the challenge the Australian Universities Accord must tackle front-on. The accord is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to review the policy landscape in which our universities operate, and to reinforce the importance of the role our institutions play in building national prosperity.

Australia desperately needs more university-educated workers, so we must do more to attract and educate the skilled individuals we need to grow and prosper. Our future success depends on it.

I have written previously that equity must be at the centre of our thinking in this regard, and that is still the case very much. Enrolling more students will require substantial growth in participation from under-represented groups.

To meet the 2035 and 2050 attainment targets outlined in the accord interim report, 60 per cent of the additional students in the system will need to be from low-SES backgrounds, more than half will come from regional and remote areas, and more than 10 per cent would need to be First Nations students.

Universities Australia has put to government a variety of ways to lift the participation of students from under-represented groups, including by setting new attainment targets, providing cost-of-living support for students and funding for enabling and pathway programs.

If our universities are to rise to the challenge of meeting Australia’s skills needs, they need to be supported properly in this vital endeavour. This is in the interest of the nation. A high-functioning university system that produces the graduates we need is vital to the health of every sector in our economy, and when our economy is healthy every Australian benefits, regardless of their education background.

Through the accord, our universities have embraced the opportunity to reimagine the policy landscape in which we operate and to help shape a future in which our institutions can continue serving Australia’s interests through the education of more Australians and game-changing research.

The challenge for government now is to embrace universities as genuine partners in delivering national priorities through the education of the skilled workforce our nation can’t function without.

To make a successful transition to net zero, we need more engineers. To care for an ageing population, we need more doctors and nurses. To navigate the digitisation of our economy, we need more information technology specialists.

These are all trusted professions you can’t enter without a university degree, and they are among the fastest growing industries. They are all professions that will shape how we respond to and navigate the economic and social challenges in front of us.

Therein lies the impetus for government – to invest in and support a high-functioning university system that fosters the strong pipeline of skilled workers – domestic and international – that Australia needs to grow and prosper.

Without one, our communities suffer, our economy suffers, and our nation suffers.