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Education and health get the lion’s share of additional places in scheme to tackle skills shortage.
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Accounting gets tiny share of 20,000 extra fee-free courses
25 October 2022
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9 minute read
Accounting will get only a tiny share of 20,000 additional fee-free university places announced by the government.
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The initiative, which was designed to counter the widespread skills shortage, has relegated accounting to a minor role.
A spokesperson for Charles Darwin University (CDU) - which gets 831 of the 20,000 new positions - said accounting courses would get fewer than 6 per cent of the total.
Accounting courses were grouped with several others including psychology, counselling, social care and digital enterprise at CDU, which together were allocated just 53 of the additional fee-free positions for 2023.
Courses with the most extra places included health, with over 350, and education, with almost 200 the spokesperson said.
CDU vice-chancellor Scott Bowman said the funding of additional university places would help high-demand professions, particularly in the Northern Territory.
“CDU welcomes the government’s announcement that it will give more students within the territory the opportunity to go to university while also addressing our region's workforce needs,” he said.
Health and education also got the lion’s share of the 20,000 extra places Australia-wide:
- 4,036 in education, including 1,469 for early education
- 2,600 places in nursing
- 2,740 in health professions like pharmacy and health science
- 2,275 in IT
- 1,738 in engineering
The extra places will be allocated to underrepresented students including Indigenous Australians as well as those from poorer backgrounds and remote Australia, according to the Minister for Education’s office.
“This means more teachers, nurses and engineers and it means more Australians from poor families and rural and remote Australia doing these jobs. That’s life-changing,” said Education Minister Jason Clare.
The places are split among 42 tertiary educators with the bulk going to five institutions: CDU, the University of Wollongong (UOW), Curtin University, Edith Cowan University, and the University of Newcastle.
UOW gains 936 additional places and vice-chancellor Patricia Davidson said a majority would go to healthcare and education.
“This funding will enable more students in our communities to benefit from a world-class university education and will deliver back to those communities and to industry the highly skilled workforce that they need,” she said.
“UOW is ready and able to start training more nurses, clean energy leaders, school teachers and cyber security specialists and engineers to meet skills shortages and industry needs.”
UOW declined to say how many extra places would go to accounting.
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