[LINK] Percentage of graduates to population

tomk tomk at unwired.com.au
Thu Nov 22 12:48:57 AEDT 2012


On 21/11/2012 11:31 p.m., stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
> Meaculpa, that's 50% of the population *at the typical age of graduation*
>
>> Australia is certainly a smart nation. According to the latest available
>> OECD figures we've the 3rd highest percentage of graduates to population
>> in the developed world .. just under 50 percent.

Excellent, and how do we make our money ?
The same as the uneducated countries of the world - Mining.
So that's a bachelors degree and 50 tons of iron ore....

In fact lets analyze the value of education to our balance of payments:

Major Australian exports, 2011-12 (A$m) (e):    (All numbers in billions)
Iron ores & concentrates 62,729
Coal 47,914
Gold 15,813
Crude petroleum 11,176

Versus Major Australian imports, 2011-12 (A$m) (e):

Crude petroleum 20,919
Passenger motor vehicles 15,980
Refined petroleum 15,576
Natural gas 11,960
Telecom equipment & parts 8,723
Medicaments (incl veterinary) 8,541

We don't even have the smarts to be able to refine our own petroleum.
(And if you can work that out - then you must be an apolitical economist.)

Conclusion - We don't seem to be using out brains much - oh wait - 
services.... OK:

Australia's trade in services, 2011-12:
Exports of services (A$m): 50,545
Imports of services (A$m): 60,239
Services trade deficit (A$m):9,694

Nope - still no brain power surplus there...

Gee our brains must be employed in the investment business then....

Australia's investment links, as at 30 Jun 2012:

Level of Australian investment abroad (A$m): 1,235,983
Level of foreign investment in Australia (A$m): 2,038,395

Nope - still can't see any justification for those $20,000 per year uni  
fees.
They don't seem to add anything to the economy.

We should give every fifteen year old a pan, a shovel and a metal 
detector and say "Go forth and mine young man.... Don't bother going to 
Uni - they pay PhD janitors less than uneducated Janitors because the 
PhD's spend 7 hours a day thinking about how they can maximise their 
output for one hour per day.

Justification for comments ?

Australia invented WiFi - how much did we make out of it ? 450 million. 
How much has the rest of the world made out of it ?
About 4.8 trillion.
Whose fault is that ?
Some academic lawyers who couldn't see past their fees for the 
litigation case.

Think about that boys and girls as WiFi morphs into a P2P world 
continuing to dismantle the ambitions of (all) the carriers.
Invented in Australia but we were too greedy for the pittance windfall 
of a litigation case to benefit from the invention.

University - Yeah Yeah...  Good for Social Networking and learning how 
to write a good report. (That only other academics will want to read 
because of the obfuscation levels employing five syllable word-smithing.)

For an economy to benefit from the education of it's peons,
First you need good governance at the political, jurisprudence level and 
the acceptable commercial practices level and then, only then does an 
education become actually worth anything.
Unfortunately Australia appears to be missing a few of the necessary 
"good governance" levels - most specifically at the jurisprudence and 
corporate governance levels. We appear to have a truly non independent 
court system.
Making us hardly the ideal reference country for a high education 
quotient amongst the populace.

References:
http://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/fs/aust.pdf
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/04/how-the-aussie-government-invented-wifi-and-sued-its-way-to-430-million/





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