“Voluntary attendance. Online classes. Student numbers swelling”. The Guardian’s education correspondent, Caitlin Cassidy, has questioned the erosion of teaching standards at Australia’s universities, which have transformed into little more than “degree factories”: More than a dozen academics who spoke to Guardian Australia on the condition of anonymity say their work has become undervalued and underpaid,
According to the Department of Education, a record 1,018,799 international students were enrolled in Australia during the year ending Q3 2024: The table below shows a breakdown of enrolments by type of institution. As you can see, vocational education and training (VET) has had the largest increase in student enrolments since 2019, from 247,467 to
Domain is busy trying to argue Australians wouldn’t support Trump policies. The only problem is that this ignores the four major Trump policies and themes that got him elected. Slashing immigration to protect wages. Applying tariffs to boost local industry. Disengaging from China. America First! How are we to know if Australians support Trumpist policies
DXY is still legging it down. AUD was soft anyway. Plenty of room to catch up to lead boots. Gold is about as overbought as anything, ever. Oil not liking Ukraine peace. Another commods false start. Miners rolling. That deep suckered sound you can hear is Chinese stocks hoopla gone bust. Junk is telling us
Wall Street is still failing to make a comeback after its Friday night breakdown with tech stocks again on the back foot while European shares were mixed as the German DAX made a new high on the back of a new conservative government that looks set to go full steam ahead in defense spending. The
When RBA kiss-arses like old Rossco turn, you know your central bank has lost its credibility. With the labour market so “tight”, surely wages could take off at any moment, halting the fall in inflation – or worse, sending it back up. What’s unnerving them is an old ’70s-model NAIRU machine in the corner, with
Asian share markets are generally doing well after a big drop on Wall Street from Friday night, but have absorbed the volatility out of the German election result from the weekend. Local shares are still flopping around due to the latest rate cut that wasn’t really a rate cut from the RBA while the Australian
Late last week, I was interviewed by Tom Elliott from Radio 3AW Melbourne regarding the dire financial situation facing the state. Tom wanted to know what was driving Victoria’s ballooning debt. And, more importantly, the measures the state government could take to resolve the situation. Below is a summary of the themes discussed in the
Australian housing affordability has never been worse. The percentage of income required to meet repayments on the median-sized mortgage hit a record high of 50.6% at the end of 2024. Rental affordability also reached a new low, making it difficult for first-time buyers to save a deposit. Prior to last week’s 0.25% interest rate cut
Westpac’s credit card tracker for the two weeks prior to the rate cut. The Westpac-DataX Card Tracker Index* barely budged over the past fortnight, with the latest print coming in at 136.6, up a mere 0.1pts. After a rollercoaster few months, spending patterns appear to be normalising somewhat. So far, February’s reads have been on