Career

<html><body>
More than three million Australians are thinking about changing careers once the virus subsides, says ING bank.
More than a quarter (28 per cent) have considered learning new skills to insulate themselves from future economic upheaval, including those with jobs.
The report noted a decade’s worth of technological advancement and skills evolution had been being compressed into 2020 due to COVID-19.
"The virus has unleashed a global ‘future of work’ experiment on us all and businesses have had to adapt at exponential speeds," it noted.
Almost a third (32 per cent) believe it will be difficult to find new opportunities, and almost one in four (23 per cent) feel anxious about the thought of job hunting in the current economic climate.
ING head of retail banking Melanie Evans said the pandemic has caused Australians to dream about a different life and consider whether their existing skills will always be needed.
"Looking at our current circumstances, there are many questions about the world we live in," futurist Anders Sörman-Nilsson noted.
The report noted almost 600,000 Australians lost their jobs due to COVID-19 in April 2020.
<div class="page" title="Page 4">
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
<div class="page" title="Page 4">
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
The research indicating one in three (35%) Aussie adults are likely to look for a new job post pandemic including almost half (45%) of all Millennials. 
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body></html>

j.ballantyne1990-6AQqhLzZaK

Millions of Australians thinking about changing careers after pandemic

<html><body>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/74698/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1">GUEST OBSERVER
If I ask you to picture an economist, what’s the first image that comes to your mind?
I’m guessing it’s a man, probably with grey hair, a suit and a certain air of authority. And that’s not surprising: that is pretty much the public face of economics in Australia.
Very few women have reached the most senior ranks of the profession. Australia has never had a woman federal treasurer or Treasury secretary and only one women has been elevated to the head of a major economic agency at the Commonwealth level (Jane Halton, Department of Finance). We have never had a female chief economist at a Big Four bank, and very few major think tanks have been run by women.
The dearth of women in leadership positions raises a red flag for the quality of Australia’s economic decision-making. Too many “like” individuals reduces the range of perspectives informing decisions. It also means wasted talent: if you bench half your potential team then the one that takes to the field is probably not your strongest.
Those in senior roles now recognise the problem. Reserve Bank head Philip Lowe, Labor Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen and the secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and former Treasury head Martin Parkinson are all persuasive advocates for improving the gender balance in economic leadership roles.
Where are things going wrong?
In Australia, like many other nations, the economics profession has a “leaky pipeline”: women’s participation starts off strong but progressively falls through the ranks.
At university, women account for between 35% and 45% of undergraduate economics students. They progress through to honours-level economics at a similar rate to males.
At our most significant economic agencies – Treasury and the RBA – about 40% to 50% of the staff are women. But they account for only around one third of the senior management positions. At the very top of Treasury, there are now two women (Maryanne Mrakovcic and Meghan Quinn) among the six secretary and deputy secretary positions. At the RBA there are two (Michele Bullock and Luci Ellis) in the top seven.
The leakage is even starker in academia where women make up half of research/teaching fellow positions in economics departments, just over a quarter of senior lecturers, but only 15% of associate professors and professors. And at the prestigious Group of 8 Universities, fewer than 10% of economics professors are women.
When it comes to the media, the pipeline nearly dries up. The 2016 Women for Media Report showed that of the people cited as “analyst” or “economist” in major Australian newspapers, just 9% were women. This was lower than the percentage of women cited with the position of CEO or Chair. My own survey of newspaper opinion pages showed that only 12% of opinion pieces in the Australian Financial Review over six months of last year were written by women.
But perhaps most concerning for the economics profession is we may now also have a problem at the source: the share of female enrolments at high school and university is falling.
In NSW, our analysis of data from the NSW Education Standards Authority found the number of HSC economic enrolments has fallen 16% in the past five years – and among female students the fall was 21%. This pattern is repeated in other states.
At universities, our preliminary analysis of student enrolment data from Commonwealth Department of Education and Training suggests the share of females enrolled in economics courses fell from 43% in 2001 to 39% in 2015.
In other words, the economics profession’s “women problem” is now stymieing its ability to attract the next generation.
Why has economics fallen out of fashion with younger women?
Economics teacher at Burwood Girl’s High School, Leith Thompson, has received a scholarship from the Reserve Bank to study this question. She says a number of misconceptions about economics have contributed. “There is a perception that economics is about maths and theory, and that you only study economics if you want a career in finance.”
And teaching methods don’t always help. “Students are not necessarily taught how economics applies to the bigger picture societal issues they are interested in,” she says.
As economics enrolments fall, subjects with more obvious career paths such as Business Studies and Legal Studies have been growing strongly.
The Economic Society of Australia has recently established a Women in Economics Network to tackle these pipeline problems for economics. It aims to broaden people’s view of economists and create role models for the next generation of talented young women. So that just maybe, when your daughter pictures an economist, the first image that comes to her mind might be a woman.
Danielle Wood is a Fellow at the Grattan Institute and author for The Conversation. She can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/danielle-wood-147710" target="_blank">here</a>.
</body></html>

jchancellor-FAypfDUnLy

Women are dropping out of economics, which means men are running our economy: Danielle Wood

<html><body>
GUEST OBSERVER
With advances in technology and shifts in the demographics of people attending university, the campus experience is changing. We’re taking a look at how students have traditionally experienced university across the globe, and how that’s evolving in each region.
<h2>In the UK: not all living away from home</h2>
Paul Ashwin, Professor of Higher Education, Lancaster University
The dominant image of the UK campus experience is of students in their late teens or early 20s living and socialising on the campus of a long-established university.
However, figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) paint a different picture. In 2013-14, around one-third of full-time students lived at their own or their parents’ home and one-third of all students were aged 25 or over. Around 15% of the student population were distance learners, with around one-third of these based wholly overseas.
HESA do not collect figures on the number of students studying in private institutions, but a survey in 2012 suggested there were around 100,000 students at private institutions. This represented around 4% of the 2011-12 student body.
Part of the reason the dominant image remains unchallenged is that these different kinds of students and experiences tend to be located at different kinds of universities.
The researchers in the Social and Organisational Mediation of University Learning (SOMUL) project identified three different kinds of student experience based on the levels of student diversity at an institution and the extent to which students' experiences were shared or individualised.
The danger of the dominant image of the young student living away from home, as the SOMUL project recognised, is that higher education experiences that fit with it are often assumed to be higher quality than those that do not. Our research in the quality and inequality of teaching in undergraduate first degrees clearly showed this is not the case.
While technological developments have changed the experiences of students studying at a distance, for other students it seems that it has been integrated into their experiences without changing them fundamentally.
This is similar to what happened with television in the 1970s, which was thought to have signalled the end of the traditional lecture. While it did offer higher education in a new form to students engaging with the programs made by the Open University, the experience of most students did not greatly change.
<h2>In the US: the digital age isn’t necessarily bringing us closer</h2>
Karen Sobel Lojeski, Assistant Professor in the Department of Technology and Society, Stony Brook University
Just outside the main student activity centre, information tables line collegiate quads featuring everything from ceramics classes to geology clubs. However, while on the surface this sociable scene still plays out in one form or another across the country, the campus experience is changing.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, as of 2012, approximately 12.5% of the 21 million or so enrolled undergraduates attended online classes exclusively – meaning they missed a “real-life” campus experience altogether.
However, for the 75% or so reportedly attending traditional classes entirely, technological tethers are also impacting campus life on the ground one way or another.
The increased use of web-based lecture technologies like Echo 360, for example, is designed to enhance students’ learning experience. Research shows it is perceived to be highly beneficial by those who cannot attend class – providing them with flexibility and multiple learning options when emergencies and other life circumstances prevent them from being there “live”.
On the flip side, an unintended consequence is that some students see web-based lecture technologies as a way to justify surfing the web while in class because they can always go back to the “replay”. However, while this often leads to a negative impact on grades, it can also change the trajectory of social interactions inside and outside the classroom – fuelling a sense of being “alone together”.
For example studies show that depression and anxiety among college students is rising significantly, creating what the American Psychological Association calls a mental health crisis on campuses across the nation.
On the one hand, social media can benefit student sufferers by keeping them regularly connected to family and friends – easing worries and providing comfort. On the other hand, social media can contribute to the psyche’s catastrophic thinking by creating an increased sense of isolation called virtual distance. Whether the student is walking down a crowded campus thoroughfare staring at a screen or curled up in their dorm room looking at Facebook friends’ “highlight reels” making them feel more lonely than ever.
The bottom line – technology is impacting campus life on both sides of the ledger in ways that can enrich as well as detract from precious encounters with new knowledge and friends.
The lesson for our youth is that even if you spend a lot of time with your computer companion try to also throw some clay on a wheel, slip down a watery bouncy slide or mine minerals from shoe boxes with like-minded collectors for as Carly Simon sang a long time ago, it is still the case for your generation that “these are the good old days”.
<h2>In Australia: spending less time on campus</h2>
Jason Lodge, Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne
University students in Australia usually stay close to home to go to university. Rural students predominantly stay in rural areas to study and city dwellers tend to stay in cities.
Australian domestic students are less likely to live in dorms or on campus than students in other parts of the world. They instead tend to live with their parents or partners.
While the situation is different for international students studying in Australia, the living arrangements and mobility of Australian domestic students has remained relatively stable. The same may not be said about their actual attendance on campus though.
A recent report from the Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education highlights some changing trends. Students appear to be spending around the same amount of time studying overall but are spending less of that time on campus. 
Students also indicated they were less engaged with their peers than students in the past have been. Instead they appear to spend much more time on the internet or studying alone.
Data in the same report also indicate that students are increasingly using technology to study. However, the notion that these technologies mean they can spend less time on campus was not shared by a third of the sample.
These data challenge the argument that Australian students devalue campus life in favour of online content. The available evidence instead suggests that a complex set of factors drive student decisions about where and when they study.
This is perhaps not surprising given that the student body in Australian higher education is far <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/816-mapping-higher-education-2014.pdf">l</a>arger and more diverse than it traditionally has been.
Australian university students also have increasing commitments outside of study including work, family and carer responsibilities. These obligations force them to make strategic decisions about their study habits. This includes deciding whether it is worth making the trip to campus despite whatever value they see in being there.
Jason M Lodge is research fellow, ARC Science of Learning Research Centre &amp; Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education and can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jason-m-lodge-442" target="_blank">here</a>.
Karen Sobel Lojeski is assistant professor, Technology and Society, Stony Brook University and can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/karen-sobel-lojeski-143489" target="_blank">here</a>.
Paul Ashwin is professor of Higher Education, Lancaster University and can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/paul-ashwin-166223" target="_blank">here</a>.
All are authors for The Conversation.
</body></html>

Career

Editor's Picks

Have something to contribute?

The latest real estate & off the plan properties & news, delivered to your inbox.

Developments

New apartments

New townhouses

News

The latest real estate & off the plan properties & news, delivered to your inbox.

Career

Editor's Picks

Receive the latest news stories to your inbox

Have something to contribute?

The latest real estate & off the plan properties & news, delivered to your inbox.

Developments

New apartments

New townhouses

News

The latest real estate & off the plan properties & news, delivered to your inbox.