The Senate higher education inquiry today has heard that deregulation will create crippling debt burdens and threaten the supply of graduates in vital professions. Representatives of veterinarians, nurses and teachers all told the inquiry that under the Government’s proposed changes to higher education the cost of studying to enter their professions would become prohibitive for many students, especially women. Ms Lee Thomas, Federal Secretary of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, said that Australia was facing a shortage of up to 109,000 registered nurses by 2025. “Ninety-two per cent of nurses are female. When you take into account the part-time nature of women’s work and also the time that women often have off to have children and to manage family responsibilities, it would be no surprise that we do not support these changes for the impacts that they potentially have on nursing. “The disincentives are great. That, at the individual level is a real concern to us, but more broadly it is a massive concern to us in terms of the health of the community.”
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 21:51:21 +0000
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