Education and Skills
Australia’s trajectory as a modern developed nation depends on a highly skilled, educated and innovative population and workforce. Successive state and federal governments have reiterated this as a key outcome for policies relating to education, training and skills and migration policies. BCEC has a dedicated research program that seeks to further understand the skills and education needed to enhance WA’s economic trajectory and inequities that exist in the current education system that prevent Australians from accessing and achieving all they can.
A number of projects are currently underway at the Centre that focus on the WA education sector including understanding the future international demand for tertiary education in Western Australia and estimating the predictors of apprenticeship completions in WA. At a national level, BCEC researchers are assessing issues such as the efficiency of Australian schools, equal access to education, the labour market return of academic fraud, institutional differences in the earnings of higher education graduates and how socio-economic status influences university outcomes.
Related Projects
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WA Women’s Report Card 2022
Scitech Economic Impact Assessment
Evolution and Future Growth of Stem Skills in the WA Workforce
Housing impacts for Australian children and adolescents; including Indigenous children in remote Australia
Westen Australia’s International Education Sector – Performance and Prospects
Provision of Labour Market Services
Related Publications
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Giving a platform to the debate about graduate employability from the student, university and employer perspectives, this innovative How To Guide explores the challenges associated with ensuring the employability of university graduates. In defining the nature of employability, the book,... Read article
The 2022 Women’s Report Card sets out the status and current state of play of women in Western Australia, and in doing so, helps to track progress to achieving better outcomes for women. As is the case to varying degrees... Read article
The role of parental expectations in determining children’s higher education participation is important in understanding both participation and potential policy responses Using a nationally representative longitudinal survey of Australian households, providing repeat observations on expectations for individual children, this study... Read article
Among Australian studies estimating returns to education, there is a consensus that education is a highly profitable investment. Conventional estimates of returns to education examine earnings conditional upon individuals’ years of education, with years spent in education typically inferred from... Read article
This paper focusses on how careers advice provided to Australian secondary school students varies according to students’ socio-economic background. National data for students in Years 11 and 12 from five cohorts of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth initiated between... Read article
Recent studies in Australia have found that bachelor’s degree participation in vocational institutions in Australia tends to skew towards students from high and middle socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. This outcome runs counter to overall vocational participation which is dominated by... Read article
The Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre team acknowledges the Wadjuk Nyungar people as the traditional owners of the land on which the Centre is situated.