A New Vision for Meaningful Work
A flourishing society is one that provides meaningful and dignified work for all - work that allows people to contribute, develop mastery, and build a stable life.
In Australia, we have failed to realise this ideal, and it is this failure that lies at the heart of a web of interconnected policy problems — a web that encompasses education, immigration, housing, unemployment, productivity, and wages.
Let’s start by defining what meaningful work cannot be. It cannot mean everybody gets their dream job, or even a good job. Somebody needs to clean the toilets (in fact, a lot of people do). It cannot mean a society of university-educated knowledge workers. We only need so many engineers, accountants, and lawyers, and training more than we need is not just a waste of time and money — it is setting up graduates for disappointment and failure.
It certainly cannot be what we have now: a system that continuously fails to produce workers in the areas where they are most needed, a problem for which the prescribed medicine is worse than the disease — extremely high rates of immigration. The reliance on immigration doubly punishes young workers: they bear the brunt of unaffordable housing driven by massive population growth, and they lose out on career growth opportunities because it’s easier and cheaper for employers to import skilled workers than to train locals.
Our system pushes people into university — many of whom are not academically inclined and gain almost no benefit from their degree. It especially pushes people into STEM because politicians are obsessed with this acronym, seemingly out of a misguided belief that more STEM graduates will create more STEM jobs. They ignore the reality that STEM jobs emerge in dynamic economies with high-tech industries — economies that design and build complex things that need scientific and engineering expertise. That is not Australia. According to Harvard’s Atlas of Economic Complexity, Australia ranks 93rd in the world — between Pakistan and Uganda.
Our system punishes people for pursuing a classical education. The Job-Ready Graduates scheme attempted to deter people from studying the humanities, and rather than achieve this aim, it merely loaded arts students with huge debts. It is disgraceful that this policy came from the Liberal Party. As conservatives, we of all people ought to understand the value of a classical education — one that elevates the learning of history, philosophy, and literature as among the highest forms of human endeavour.
Our system, with its uncapped university places and perverse financial incentives, has led to a devaluing of degrees and an oversupply of graduates. Employers report that graduates today are less job-ready than ever before.
Clearly, our current vision for meaningful work is flawed. It is based on a distorted kind of aspiration — a fool’s hope that says you can be whatever you want to be, and the government will help you get there. The results speak for themselves: youth unemployment sits above 10%.
The situation calls for a major rethink of what a sustainable, realistic workforce policy would look like in Australia.
I suggest we start with the following two principles.
Meaningful work for all means:
1. Every person, from plumber to judge, has real prospects of career development and recognition of technical mastery.
A key reason people gravitate towards university is the perception that degrees offer better career prospects in the long term. Other jobs, even well-paying ones, are considered dead ends and lacking in prestige. This need not be the case.
In Switzerland and Germany, vocational pathways enjoy high status on par with degrees. This is for several reasons. Firstly, large, respected companies — Siemens, BMW, Nestlé and others — all run apprenticeship programs that the public perceive as elite. Secondly, they have a strong culture of professional identity and mastery, based around the concept of the Meister (master craftsperson). Thirdly, parents, teachers, and careers counsellors reinforce the value of vocational training as a worthwhile and valid career path. Finally, and most importantly, vocational pathways are not considered dead ends because there are well-established routes to higher education and career growth. For example, a Meister qualification in Germany is legally equivalent to a bachelor’s degree and grants university entry rights. Importantly, course content, accreditation, and standards are led by industry, not government bureaucrats.
When a 19-year-old apprentice at Siemens earns a solid wage, gains a recognised qualification, and advances to management by 30, it sends a powerful social signal that skill and craftsmanship are as valuable as degrees.
What’s needed in Australia is a concerted effort to elevate the status of vocational pathways. The best way to change the public’s perception of their “dead-end” nature is to create real opportunities for career growth that prove VET is not a dead end. We must get industry more involved in the process, ensuring apprentices are held to a high standard and equipped with the skills they actually need to do the job. It is a win-win for all involved.
2. Every person who invests their time and money in pursuit of vocational training or tertiary education can do so with confidence they will get a job in their chosen field
When someone undertakes a medical degree, they do so with confidence that if they continue their training, they will one day become a doctor. This is because medical places are strictly capped, commensurate with the demand for new doctors. The result is that entrance into medical school is highly competitive and many aspiring school leavers miss out. That is a shame — but it could be much worse. Imagine if medical schools were uncapped. Just as many people would miss out, but they’d be missing out after spending five years and tens of thousands of dollars on medical school. What a waste.
But hold on — this is exactly what is happening in almost every other profession. Thousands study law, and only a handful practice as lawyers.
In my profession, engineering, prior to uncapped places every graduate was virtually guaranteed a job because of compulsory work placement. When caps were lifted, work placement was dropped and a massive oversupply of graduates left many without a job in engineering.
The answer is simple: places should be capped, and they should be capped based on the capacity of industry to provide work placements and graduate jobs for every student. Every year, caps should be adjusted based on graduate employment outcomes. If industry can’t provide work placement and graduate roles, it is a sure sign that there is an oversupply of graduates. This is not about bureaucrats deciding how many engineers or lawyers we need — it is a market-based solution that encourages better coordination between universities and industry. Obviously, this approach would only work for certain degrees with natural links to industry. Degrees or majors without such links should be capped as well, because the opportunity to study these fields at taxpayer expense is a privilege to be earned, not an entitlement. This will go a long way towards raising the prestige of Arts degrees which have been devalued to the point of worthlessness in recent decades.
Some might argue that uncapping places maximises individual choice and allows the free market to operate, but the approach has clearly failed. School leavers are not rational economic agents. They do not choose their course based on price signals and detailed analysis of the job market. They choose based on the career they want. The only freedom that uncapped places maximises is the freedom to fail later at much greater cost.
A flourishing society is one that values all forms of work — intellectual and practical. The government’s role should not be to subsidise false hope, but to align training with opportunity. The goal of policy should not be to promise everyone their dream job, but to build a system where every job is worth doing, and every worker can take pride in doing it well.