Australia: Wasting Human Capital?

In my first nursing class, I met a young man who has been in Australia for five years, but was originally from India. "I was thinking about studying mechanical engineering. Then I looked at the jobs available online. There were only about two jobs for engineers, and about 50 jobs for nurses. So I'm studying nursing."

My story is similar, though it's not engineering. I have over 20 years experience in medical laboratories. In the San Francisco Bay area, biotech is as hot as other information technologies. I was given a $3000 sign-on bonus the last time I was hired, and there are hundreds of biotech companies, a number of which can use the lab skills of someone trained and licensed in a medical laboratory. Here in Australia, there is a thin sliver of biotech. There are a handful of larger companies. There are lots of tiny three-person companies - they are PhDs or innovators who get their concept to working stage, then sell it off to a large company in the US or Germany. Unlike the San Francisco Bay Area, where there are hundreds of companies working their products up to full-level production, here in Sydney, the inventions get sold off before getting scaled to production. This makes a few PhDs wealthy, but rather than employing a range of aspiring PhDs in laboratories, aspiring PhDs are employed by academic labs (with constantly threatened government support), where the focus is more basic research than streamlining product to market.

It's been said that there just isn't the investment capital in Australia for biotech, and investors don't understand it. There *is* investment capital, but yes, biotech is not well understood, because the sliver of people with a science background is so thin. And because there are few jobs for people with those degrees, there's not much inspiration to study for advanced degrees in those fields. I was shocked, after taking a tour of Australia's one nuclear reactor, at a discussion of some schoolgirls who had also just taken the tour. "What do you want to do when you grow up?"

"Food service."

"Yaay!! Cool!! Waitress!" They were totally serious; totally excited about the notion of food service - and this was after getting the full public relations presentation of a very impressive nuclear facility. On the one hand, I've found it refreshing that the sense of egalitarianism here makes being a "tradie" as honorable as any other profession. It reminds me of growing up in Indiana - a state that also exports intellectual capital. Indiana only wishes it could have the tourism business that thrives in Australia - Indy 500 notwithstanding. On the other hand, I've been a bit appalled that in some respects Australia seems trapped in a colonial mentality, where a handful of administrators are getting wealthy selling off resources to other countries rather than using it to build local infrastructure. I had a discussion with a Chinese student who *is* studying engineering in Australia. He had to work as a cook for several years before Australia would grant him residency, at which point he could afford to go to school - because strangely enough, Australia thinks it has a shortage of cooks, while its engineers go begging for jobs. Or maybe it's a back-door to letting people in, because the cooks have less political clout than the handful of engineers protecting their turf? The Chinese student and I agreed that the main way to a larger economy is having a larger population, but the immigration philosophy is that people have to be kept out to preserve the quality of life for those already here. At any rate, it's a confusing economy that envies the U.S. but works really hard to preserve its status quo.

Do you speak English?

Interesting note regarding accents at orientation for international students at University of Technology Sydney (UTS) .  The presenter remarked in passing "some of you may have learned English from watching American television programs".   The presenter herself did not have a strong accent; what I would describe as a fairly "clean"  form of English.  However,  an Australian might describe what I say is "clean"  as being an "American"  accent.  In general,  Australians don't know a lot about American regional accents.  They probably don't know what they'd describe as an "American"  accent is actually the typical announcer voice in the United States which is fairly devoid of regional accents. So the classic "American accent"  is actually a form that may even have been practiced to intentionally strip traces of any regional accents. 

Similarly,  I was once listening to the radio and Fay explained to me that the announcers didn't normally speak the way they were speaking,  they were sort of poking fun of regional Australian accents.  I didn't even realize their "joke"  -  it all sounded like Australians speaking to me.  It struck me during the orientation at UTS that one person had a much more distinct Australian accent. He was the head of the security department.  The presentation consisted of the head of the international student department,  and a panel of about 10 people representing different departments or services.  The strongest accent overall was a guy who was probably from India,  representing IT services. I would not say that all of the others had "American"  accents,  but their English was,  again,  what I'd describe as "clean".  There is some sense that Australian's may be losing their accents for what is considered "American English",  but I would argue that the English of American announcers isn't so much "American"  but a form that's been stripped of American regional accents. So don't fear being overtaken by "American English" -  it's simply a form that different regions can understand as being stripped of accent.  Of course,  Southerners (in the US and Australians)  might refer to it as a "Yankee accent" -  which in the southern US means "northern".  But there isn't a specific place in the "north"  that is the origin of that "accent" ; if anything,  the source might be California,  a frontier of the melting pot which emerged as the source of much American media.