Australians are doing too many degrees says Melbourne's Age

ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA Bill Haggerty is a Melbourne-based international executive search consultant. In yesterday's The Age, Melbourne's quality daily, he said: "I've met overqualified people who just lack basic common sense, but because they've got an undergraduate and a postgraduate degree, they expect to walk into a senior management role."

Haggerty is being quoted by writer Gary Newman in a feature entitled Are we too clever for our own good? Newman tells us of Australians aged between 55 and 64 only 19% have a degree. But in the 25 to 34 age group that figure rises to 32%.

I'm not sure of Newman is arguing that this is a bad thing but what becomes clear in his piece is that Australia has it fair share of "course junkies" just as we do in the UK…and probably elsewhere.

A "course junkie" is defined as someone who, not satisfied with gaining a basic degree, goes on to do a Masters or other higher degree rather than going out and getting a job and experiencing real life.

After their Masters the true course junkie will do yet another degree, probably in another subject.

Newman writes: Obtaining a qualification for status rather than education is called "credentialism". Professor Steven Schwartz [Vice Chancellor of Macquarie University, Sydney] says it occurs because students increasingly think of education in terms of economic returns.
But until they stop doing course after course, there can be no economic return.

Haggerty says, according to Newman, demand for qualifications is often driven more by university marketing than employers' requirements.

Whatever the case, what I took away from Newman's well-written piece is that people should enter the world of work and gain life experience before embarking on a second qualification.

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