2007/09/19

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.

4 comments:

Narky said...

I would be more concerned if the govt had tried to pass off the problem as "climate change".

The notion that this drought, this flood, this hurricane and so on is 'entirely' linked to global climate change is ludicrous.

To conclude that regional climate varitation must be caused by a larger phenomenum is a foolish over-generalisation. As such, I'm glad our government is denying such claims.

The problem with the drought is a lack of water. The solution is better environmental management, but environmental management is not climate management. Australia needs to use its land in a friendly manner. Get rid of the plants/animals that arn't suited, the cows, the pigs, and the sheep, and ensure farmers grow suitable crops for their location.

Art Neuro said...

The continuing drought probably IS global warming. The notion that it is NOT requires an alternative theory that can be tested and proven. i.e. the onus is on those who say it is NOT global warming to provide an explanation that can then be tested.

So far there hasn't been one that has stood the analysis. Hence, one should probably accept the scientific verdict that is IS global warming.

Another way of looking at is this. If you ran the roulette table and were looking for the distribution of numbers, you would expect a random variation.

What we're seeing in terms of average temperatures is far from random, The Top 20 most hot years on record have all taken place in the last 20 years. This is no coincidence.

I know that people *want* it to not be true and so exercise their so-called scepticism but it just doesn't stack up against the evidence available. Reality is that which doesn't go away when you close your eyes.

The time to be a global sceptic AND have you credibility was 15 years ago. In the last decade, all the notable global sceptics have either changed their tune, renounced the position entirely, or have been exposed as being on the pay-roll of the oil industry.

It's not a great group of people from whom you would want your expert opinion.

Narky said...

Yeah, my issue is not with global warming but people trying to pass off this drought as something new that's come about due to our mis-managment of planet earth.

Alternate theory, how about we say Australia is just a dry contenant and pretty much always has been?

That's certainly a well proven 'theory' so much so i would happily endorse it as fact. Is it really any surprise that little rain falls on the other side of the great diving range ?

As for my sources .. well there are some sensible people out there that dont blame everything on global warming/climate change who are not on big oil's check book.

The Australian Bureau of Meterology backs me up for one..

http://www.bom.gov.au/lam/climate/levelthree/c20thc/drought.htm

"Australia’s rainfall history features several periods of a decade or longer that seem to have been distinctly “drought prone”. For instance, the mid to late 1920s and the 1930s were a period of generally low rainfall over most of the country, continuing through most of the 1940s over the eastern states. A similar dry spell occurred in the 1960s over central and eastern Australia."

So that's 20's, 30's, 40's, 60's, 90's .. experiencing 'extended' periods of drought.

Art Neuro said...

I look at it like this.

Australia *is* prone to long decade long droughts. Given the fact, something like Carbon Emissions and the greenhouse effect *is* going to exacerbate the problem.

Even if the current 'drought' is one that is 'normal', it is being made worse by the GH Effect as well as other human mismanagements such as the issue of water management such as cotton growing and so on.

It's only relatively recently that the Federal Government has tried to solve this problem as an ongoing structural problem. Most part of the decade was spent in handing out financial aid, saying the drought should break.

Therefore it can't be said the Federal Government have been good mangers at all, given the accumulating financial impact on food. Like I wrote, there will be a lot of pissed off people when food prices soar.

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