Chris Lester

Going to university is a substantial achievement for anybody but for an individual who is the first in their family to do so, a tertiary education is particularly significant.

Choosing the right university can be a long journey for students. Many simply choose to follow friends, go where their parents went, or to the university they’ve heard the most about.

If you’ve wandered past any university campus in recent weeks, you may have noticed a flurry of activity, and perhaps an army of parents and high school students making their way through a circus of stalls and performances.

Around 600,000 international students come to Australia each year, roughly one third from China. It’s a gigantic influx that generates around $20 billion per annum, but to my mind, we’re just getting started.

It’s been another massive year for the education sector. Despite the condemnation of cuts to funding and unemployment rates, there have plenty of positives to take away from 2016.

The federal government has responded to Australia’s growing debt and declining growth by slashing spending on several fronts. Announced on Monday 19 December, Treasurer Scott Morrison’s Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) contained a mix of mostly bad news for the education and training sectors. Below are some of the highlights. 

There are all sorts of explanations for Australia’s alarmingly wide gender pay gap, which the Bureau of Statistics recently put at around 18 per cent. Active sexism is certainly one of them, along with unconscious biases which are prominent in many work places. 

Just as Australian real-estate agents are reporting a rise in the number of enquiries received from US citizens considering a move down under, it seems Australia’s education institutions may also be unlikely winners of the US election.