Unis hit by skills rebound

The shortage of skilled labour has affected most industries in Western Australia, and universities are no exception.

The universities are under pressure to produce more graduates yet at the same time they are battling to meet their own staffing needs.

UWA deputy vice-chancellor Margaret Seares said this reflected both long-term trends and current boom-time pressures.

“In the English speaking world there is going to be a major problem for all of us because we all had our growth in the ’70s and those people are reaching retirement age,” she said.

“At the same time as we’re trying to provide for the skills shortage in the state, we’ve also got our own issues to deal with there.”

Curtin vice-chancellor Lance Twomey said the skills shortage had had an unexpected “rebound effect”.

“We have more students than ever before in our existence who deferred for a year, and they are largely in engineering and science and related areas,” Professor Twomey said.

“They have all been picked up by the employers they worked for at Christmas time and they are being paid professional salaries to work in the north-west and mining areas.

“It made a big hole in our estimates of total student load that we had to correct savagely in the second half of the year.”

Professor Twomey said a big problem was the Federal Govern-ment’s failure to fund extra places in areas of high demand.

He said the overall increase in funded student places this year was not “that large” relative to need.

“The real gripe was where we were allowed to take them,” Professor Twomey said. “They were all at the lower end of the market.”

For instance, he said Curtin and UWA were given funding for just 15 new places for engineers and only five in the Pilbara.

“We asked for something like 20 in the Pilbara; five is almost useless because you can’t afford to sustain that sort of number. Similarly there was almost none in science,” Professor Twomey said.

He said the big increases were all in the very low cost areas such as law, business and teaching.

Professor Seares said UWA had a similar problem, with little growth in science and engineering but big growth in commerce.

“Why? Because they are cheaper for the Commonwealth to fund,” she said.

Professor Seares acknowledged the ‘boom and bust’ cycle in WA made planning difficult.

“We could take a whole raft of geology students now. What happens if, when they graduate, there is a bust in this state?” she said.

This was a concern backed by Chamber of Commerce and Industry of WA chief executive John Langoulant.

“We are in danger of chasing our tail,” he said.

“We are in a cyclical economy with booms and busts and that will continue.

“What we do need is to ensure that in all areas of training that we have as much flexibility as we can.”

Coogee Chemicals chairman Gordon Martin took a contrary view, arguing that WA faced a “unique set of circumstances”.

“China and India to me are unstoppable,” he said. “I think the growth in demand for resource and energy products will continue to grow.”

Mr Martin said shortages run from the shop floor to high-end technical skills.

“Costs are escalating dramatically but we cannot find the people we want,” he said. “What that says to me is that we have to sit back and look at what the universities are going to put out in three, five, 10 years.”

He suggested a series of constant roundtable forums to help with the planning process as well as more liberal migration rules.

City of Joondalup chief executive Garry Hunt said the local government sector was trying to get to potential staff while they were still studying.

“I’m looking to run programs through the universities so I can secure people before they graduate because I can’t get them in the open market,” Mr Hunt said.