Puttin' It Into Perspective

The Orphaning of Intellectualism In Australia
I was talking to my brother yesterday about various topics du jour, and obviously the looming, but as yet unannounced election was one of those things. He pointed out that as a University Lecturer, he didn't see the Labor Party getting in as any panacea to the woes of the Tertiary Education Sector.

As some readers may recall, I took an axe to the ALP's record in the Tertiary Education Area right at former ALP Senator Rosemary Crowley last New years' Eve. Half of my gripes about the Dawkins Reform come from my observations off what makes tertiary Education suffer so under the current Howard Administration. The fact is, the damages were done before anything John Howard did - and he really didn't do much except cut things further. In other words, there was nothing qualitatively different between the two major parties. Its been years since the Dawkins Reforms were enacted and there is nothing to say the ill side effects of those policies would be reversed under a new ALP.

So what is so wrong with all this? Under the current system, students are compelled to be totally results driven. So the most common question from a student is not going to be "could you explain that better please?" but "Is this going ot be in the exam?"
The students are results-driven because they see their degrees as a stamp of approval that they need to go get successful careers, which is fine. Except my brother says there is a palpable pain when it come to havin to think. In other words, they would rather have the answer than the idea, because the idea requires thinking. Holding an answer in your head only requires memory.

Students were probably always anxious to get to the end and start their wonderful lives, my brother says, but the best thing about Tertiary Education is that one gets time to think. The system right now takes away the opportunity for thought that existed before. Thought is not a luxury, but a necessity.

UPDATE: Just as I wrote the above, I notice this article.

PUBLIC spending on higher education remains well below the levels in other developed countries, the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development
says.

While spending from all sources in Australia's universities was just above the OECD average, most came from private funds. Astralia ranked with the United States, Korea, Chile and Japan as countries with more than half their annual investment in universities from private sources.

Australia's public spending on higher education was among the lowest of the 34 developed countries covered by the OECD report, with only Russia, Brazil, Japan, Italy, Korea and Chile spending less in public funds on their institutions as a proportion of their economic output.

In its annual snapshot, Education at a Glance, released yesterday in Paris, the OECD also singles out Australia and Korea as spending a very small amount of public money on pre-primary education - just 0.1 per cent of the country's total output - eight times less than countries such as Denmark, Hungary and Israel.

Australia also has the highest proportion of international students, with 17.3 per cent of the campus population coming from abroad. In contrast, the US has just 3.4 per cent of overseas students.

Almost all these students are full-fee paying. The figures underscore the degree to which Australian universities are hostage to the international student dollar.

Our Universities are being short-changed. Welcome to the Ignorant Country

On Inflation At The Dinner Table
Here's the stupidity of the Howard Government's Environmental record of denying the problem even exists. Right now, Australia's on-going drought is entirely linked to the processes of 'Climate Change'. Not only is the drought taking a financial toll on the farming sector, the aggregate cost of food production is going up.

A kilo of grain costs more to grow today than it did at the beginning of the Howard Government's tenure.
It's commonly understood that it takes about 4kg s of grain to grow 1kg of Pork or Lanb and about 6kg to grow 1kg of Beef. So by the time a kilo of beef is on your dinner table, it's taken 6kg of grain's worth of energy and economic activity.

Now, there is a water shortage as well. And various measures are going to cost money in order to supply that water. The Howard Government is talking about 10 billion over 10 years to fix the Murray Dowling system. That cost is coming out of the Tax Payer's pocket anyway, so the water is going to cost more, which is an additional cost to the rising cost of grain production.
Thus the grain price is going to rise even more, going forwards. The cost is amplified proportionately through the 1kg of beef. You sure wouldn't want to be a farmer in this climate.

And the produce has to be carted around this dirty big country - and we do it on trucks and trains burning fossil fuels. Didn't anybody notice the fuel prices going up? So that will get factored in.

Yet, it's not just what is going on in the Bush. Sydney is going to get a desalination plant, which is reportedly going to mean 30% increase in our water bills across 4 years. That's 7.5% p.a. on average. So one imagines that everything that use water is going to be more expensive at a 7.5% rate that water is going to impact.

There is nothing on this list that the price is going to go down on or even hold steady, going into the next few years. The inflation rate could easily pop over 5% in the coming years. And while I won't say all of this is because John Howard won't sign the Kyoto Protocol, I will say that the refusal to engage with the problem until just recently has set the stage for rising inflation at our dinner tables in the near future.

And when the interest rates rise in response to this inflation rate, there will be more foreclosure as it impacts on the property bubble in Australia. There's going to be a lot of people pushed out of their homes, who are hungry and angry.

Good economic management you say, Mr Howard? Looks like a total lack of foresight to me.