Australia’s skilled migration system could result in a glut of accounting graduates in a few years while doing little to address the acute shortage of engineers, a Perth conference was told last week.
Australia’s skilled migration system could result in a glut of accounting graduates in a few years while doing little to address the acute shortage of engineers, a Perth conference was told last week.
Curtin University’s pro vice-chancellor international, Kevin McKenna, said the skilled migration system was not working in the desired manner and would have “quite negative impacts on certain sectors”.
He predicted that recent changes to the migration system could result in “plummeting” salaries and increased unemployment for graduate accountants.
“We will have another 10,000 international students who need to get an accounting job at any price,” Professor McKenna told the Skilling Western Australia conference.
In contrast, he said a pilot program designed by the Minerals Institute to lure graduate mining engineers from India had generated “minimal interest”.
This reflected the global nature of the skills shortage, which meant engineering graduates in India already had multiple job offers and saw no point in pursuing post-graduate training in WA.
The Minerals Institute, which has industry, university and government representatives, has also battled to win support for its training initiatives.
In particular, the university members have resisted an industry push for greater collaboration at the undergraduate teaching level.
University of Western Australia vice-chancellor Alan Robson told the conference he was opposed to more collaboration, asserting that differences between UWA, Curtin and Murdoch were good.
Chamber of Minerals & Energy of WA director Reg Howard-Smith said the institute’s industry members, led by former Sons of Gwalia chairman Peter Lalor, were still pushing for more collaboration, particularly in areas such as metallurgy where universities were struggling to attract sufficient students.
“The industry representatives believe that is a critical area for collaboration,” he told WA Business News. “It just seems so logical.”
Curtin vice-chancellor Jeanette Hacket said the members of the Minerals Institute were still pursuing increased collaboration, but only in research and post-graduate teaching.
The institute would shortly be appointing a consultant to develop a business case, but its members were still debating the best way forward.
For instance, Mr Howard-Smith said one option was a graduate school.
Professor Hacket was not convinced of the likelihood of that proposal, however. “To be quite frank, I think that is probably a long shot,” she said.
In the field of engineering, Professor McKenna said Australia’s universities were not producing enough graduates to meet industry’s needs.
He said the mining industry needed about 160 engineering graduates each year to meet demand, but the national supply was closer to 100 graduates.
The high wages being offered to unskilled and semi-skilled workers was exacerbating the problem by encouraging current and potential students to defer.
Professor Robson said this problem had not arisen at UWA, which was enrolling more engineering students.
However, both speakers agreed that the universities were facing their own skills crisis, as they battled to retain and recruit good quality teaching staff.
Mr Howard-Smith said the shortage of experienced lecturers was another reason for increased collaboration.
Engineers Australia executive director WA Janice Lake said an under-lying problem was the fall in the number of school students completing enabling subjects such as maths and science.
Meanwhile, Professor McKenna said a big issue with skilled migration related to international students completing tertiary studies in Australia simply to obtain permanent residency.
Recent changes that require international students to work for 12 months in their field of study prior to applying for permanent residency could exacerbate the problem.
Professor McKenna told the conference that international students were granted more visas than any other category in Australia’s skilled migration program, which comprises 97,500 places per year.
Seventy five per cent of the international students granted visas in 2004-05 were in just two fields – accounting and IT.
He said the IT sector had continued to be popular with international students, even though the sector crashed in 2001.
The effect on the IT profession was negative, with graduate employment falling sharply and graduate salaries also declining.
Professor McKenna said recent federal government changes to the ‘points test’ and ‘occupations in demand’ list meant that international students seeking permanent residency were expected to focus on accounting, which offered relatively short and easy courses.
“What will be the impact? Look at what happened to the IT sector,” he said.
In his conference paper, Professor McKenna predicted that graduate salaries for accountants would plummet and graduate unemployment would increase. This would be a sharp turnaround from the current shortage of accountants.
Institute of Chartered Accountants of Australia general manager WA Con Abbott said extra graduates would do nothing to address the most acute shortage, which was among accoun-tants with three to seven years’ experience. This partly reflected the large number of accountants choosing to work overseas.
In regard to graduates, he said the biggest problem for ICAA members was that “they are not getting high enough talent coming out of the universities”.
If Professor McKenna’s thesis is correct, that problem will only get worse.
