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Is the knowledge economy pretentious jargon?
23 August 2008
When writing these columns over the years, I have made a genuine attempt to keep them as topical and as jargon free as possible, so that the general reader might be interested enough to dip into them occasionally to gauge the progress and impact of the University.
Yet I am surprised sometimes how even an “old graduate and journalist” recently wrote that he regards ‘knowledge economy’ and ‘knowledge workers’ as ‘pretentious jargon’. Interesting! I mistakenly thought that across the last ten years or so, terms such as those, and ‘Smart State’, and so on, had been generally understood.
So, perhaps before again promoting the escalating need for many more ‘knowledge workers’, or in other words, graduates with some form of formal qualification, I should explain the use of my terms even more explicitly.
Let me try. Across the last decade or so, in particular, increasingly sophisticated consumers and businesses are searching for more well qualified employees, that is, ‘knowledge workers’. Cars are developed on more sophisticated research; medical operations are performed by more highly trained specialist surgeons; i-phones are sought after by more people and created by talented engineers; movies include more high-tech stunts and effects from creative industries graduates. The examples could go on and on. Education institutions cannot turn out enough graduates to fill the vacant positions for skilled and highly skilled people. Just look at health. Internationally, there is a shortfall of health ‘knowledge workers’ which amounts to a crisis for the elderly and sick.
Industries, businesses, occupations that have provided most of the new jobs in the last decade require a base in courses at TAFE or University.
The scale of this international shift to the growing need for ‘knowledge workers’, where it has been measured, is huge. In the U.K., for example, nearly half of the national income, half of all employment, and a quarter of all exports are generated by knowledge based industries.
That is why ‘knowledge nation’, ‘Smart State’, ‘Innovation Centre’ and many other descriptors are indicative of the shift that is occurring. That is why we as a Region have a ‘Knowledge Economy Strategy’, and why as a Region we need to concertedly address how we can maintain a Sunshine Coast lifestyle in the future.
Unless we attract more people into universities and TAFE; unless we keep those graduates in careers on the Sunshine Coast; unless we develop new knowledge-driven industries – then the chance of the Sunshine Coast surviving as a distinct, sustainable region in its own right are slim.
If we don’t succeed, we may see people using more efficient roads and railways to facilitate access to Brisbane on a daily basis. It is already an economic magnet. And consider how little infrastructure we will in that ‘feeder-mode’ be able to create for ourselves with our limited internal resources.
As a Region, we need to develop our strengths and accentuate our differences relative to Brisbane, not be swamped by the Great SE Qld conurbation. For this to occur, we need an economic plan for knowledge work and knowledge workers in far greater numbers.
I really hope this helps clarify the terms and the urgency to back our educational institutions.
Professor Paul Thomas AM is Vice-Chancellor at the University of the Sunshine Coast.