Politics With Michelle Grattan

With university graduates finding it harder to find jobs, questions have been raised about the merits of a typical tertiary qualification. Dr Ken Coates, Canada research chair in regional innovation at University Saskatchewan Campus, says by 2050 we’re going to have hundreds of more specialised, boutique institutions. “We’ll have a smaller number of what we call these ‘multiversities’ - the large scale enterprises that have the 30, 40, 50,000 students offering everything to everybody. I think we’re going to see a much larger shift towards private education,” Coates says. As it stands, graduates are left with what Coates calls “a huge dose of career paranoia”. “We have significant challenges in different countries with the unemployment of university graduates. It’s very high in places like Spain and Greece and other countries. We have a larger problem with graduate underemployment. … They get a job, but the job doesn’t require a university degree. "I think one of the issues is that we have too few good jobs. S