THE CLEVER EMIGRANT

I suppose that it doesn’t come as a surprise, even though our Dear Leader would surely know what the word avarice means, that Australia is now the most expensive nation in which to get an education and still they whinge and whine about how universities and colleges of advanced education are costing too much money to operate.

Keep in mind when you read this story that most of those wanting to raise university fees received a free University education under demi-God Gough Whitlam.

Much of this problem can be laid at the feet of John Howard, not for supporting fees but from driving up the cost of running universities. In a bid to one-up the States he moaned and groaned about the quality of education and the way in which the sates were delivering it. At a when all states were Labor and the federation was Liberal.

He decided to enter the Technical field by adding them to Universities. This is why people who want to act, write, create or destroy attend a University. It sound really high falutin but really just brings down the higher ideals of the lofty arts and pouts them in the hands of potential barristers who serve coffee and not the law.

Universities like Sydney and Melbourne were once held in high esteem. A certificate from one of these great kudos and a belief you were dealing with the best in the country. Doctors, Dentists, Lawyers and Economists. Universities like Wollongong, Ballarat and Bond had lower expectations of their students and the honour of their degrees Arts, Music, Counselling and Chiropractice.

Colleges were better known for Associate Degrees in animation, cooking, knitting and chicken raising or Certificates in welding, computing, electronics and French polishing.

The civil service has a habit of self-perpetuation and even rapid growth as, like a virus, they multiply voraciously all with the intent of ruling the masses. So the cost of running these places of higher leaning rise more rapidly than the number of students or the fees.

It’s a very military type of structure where every box has to be ticked and every senior office saluted. Every 9 actual teachers had to have a team leader (+assistant), every six teams a supervisor (+ 2 assistants) every three supervisors had to have a manager (+2 assistants and a secretary) every Manager had to have a Head of Department (+3 assistants, 2 clerks and a receptionist) and so on all the way up the chain of command to the Minister for Education. It is believed that for 100 students in the system there are 32 just to operate the system.

As an example of priorities. When I did my prestigious Welding Degree at Ballarat (see also Federation University or School of Mines) one of the Tutors, those who demonstrated how not to set fire to ourselves, instructed us about O.H & S and to ensure that machines were safely secured with a lock when being left un-attended. But because they had just bought a $48,000 Virtual Welding Machine (a foolproof way not to be able to destroy anything) they could not afford enough locks to secure the machines. He then showed us how to do it with a bit of wire twisting where the lock should have gone.

This is just one example of the bureaaucratic madness which can ensue in government departments which drive up costs which then have to be recovered. So to cut a short story long the federal department of education, which doesn’t actually run anything with its 7,000 staff) John Howard gave all the states a great excuse to wind back and abolish much of the states institutes for technical training.

What really is the point of this story? The high cost of an Australian education makes it very attractive for our brightest, cleverist and financially secure young people to go overseas for a cheaper, and superior education, at places like Caltech, Harvard and M.I.T (Massachusetts not Melbourne). Once there they can graduate, apply for a Green Card and earn two to three times as much income in US research establishments and Mulit-national Corporations. How else would it be that Australians once headed the World Bank and Ford. On TV one constantly runs across experts in America with clear Australian accents.

Two young Australians are now leading the field in Drone delivery technology in Nevada, interrupting the work of Google, Amazon and their like. This could never happen in Australia we do not have the imagination, the foresight or the adventurous investors to develop high technology on this island. The government has made it so and the public service, devoid of any guts, has willed it so.

If they are forced to stay in Australia for their Degree, they face huge H.E.C.S loans (an attempt at commercial interest rates failed) which, if they then fly the coop to England, Europe or the U.S to work do not have to repay the loan as their salary is not paid in Australia and our Tax Department is none the wiser.

So our advice to aspiring Biochemists, Aerospace Engineers, Marine Scientists and Technology wizards is, why single and financial go overseas for your schooling and only return here to get married and raise the bar on the quality of our intellectuals.

The moral of the story. ‘If it can be fucked up by governments then Australia is the place to do it’.