The Coalition Government has recently asserted that too many young Australians are training to become professionals and not enough as traditional tradespersons. By implication, there is a surfeit of young professionals. This article challenges these assertions. It shows that there has been a substantial increase in the employment of professionals since the Coalition came to power in 1996. Yet over the same period, the number of domestic students in Australian universities at the undergraduate level has hardly increased at all. All of the increase in professional training at the undergraduate level in Australian universities has been directed at overseas students. Partly as a consequence, there has been a rapid increase in the intake of professional migrants to satisfy employer needs. The article concludes that there is a need for more training of domestic undergraduate students, not less.
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/daniel_edwards/12/