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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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
Evaluation of a strengths-based outreach program for adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Related Publications
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A method is developed for measuring the intensity with which skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are used in different occupations based on workers’ field of qualification and weighted by the wage premium associated with their level of... Read article
This latest report in the Centre’s Focus on Western Australia series, the thirteenth in this series, looks at the importance of the early years for young children in influencing outcomes in later life. It also highlights the disparity between advantage and... Read article
The Australian Government recently announced a Higher Education Reform Package that has the overarching objective of incentivising students to “make more job-relevant decisions about their education”. The proposed reforms includes changes to both student and Commonwealth contributions to higher education... Read article
A limited body of empirical evidence suggests a strong sense of cultural identity promotes wellbeing and other socio-economic outcomes for First Nations people, including for Indigenous Australians. A challenge to this evidence is potential endogeneity: that Indigenous people who achieve... Read article
The Department of Communities in partnership with the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre have today released the 2019 WA Women’s Report Card and Data Insights Platform. The 2019 Women’s Report Card presents fact-based information to raise awareness of the status of... Read article
It is commonly argued that maintaining and enhancing Australia’s standard of living will require increasing the proportion of the population attaining university level qualifications in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Accordingly, governments and universities have been proactive in encouraging... 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.