The State will have to create the right incentives to avoid a skills shortage in the future, writes John Dunne
The economy has never been stronger and our Leaving Certificate graduates, receiving their results today, have lives of great opportunity ahead of them. They have every prospect of being more materially and intellectually successful than any previous generation.
Crucial to achieving these goals will be, firstly, career choice and secondly, their attitude towards skills acquisition and updating over what should be 40- to 50-year careers. What they need to realise is that as their careers develop, they will need to attain multiple skills and qualifications to underpin career success and enhance their value - and thereby their earnings potential - in the workplace. Achieving desired results in the Leaving Certificate does not represent a finishing line but rather the starting gun for maximising one's skills and earning potential.
It is a truism that Ireland must become a highly productive, knowledge-driven society if it is to be successful. We have recently moved from being an "also ran", failing economy, to being a thriving globally recognised success. If we are to maintain this success, then our people, and especially our next generation of graduates, will have to have the skills needed to embrace the opportunities that will arise.
From successive reports of the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs, we know that we will need more graduates and postgraduates, especially in technical disciplines including, engineering, information technology, mathematics and the physical sciences to fulfil the skills needs of the economy.
Underpinning this requirement, the Government recently announced a new strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation, involving an investment of €3.8 billion over seven years.
While it will be impossible to deliver the graduate numbers needed to underpin and "man" this investment exclusively from our domestic population, Chambers Ireland believes we can deliver higher numbers of technically skilled graduates if we actively incentivise students to undertake these courses by offering them funding to assist towards their living expenses in college.
This initiative could also go some way towards solving another issue in our third-level education system - the under-representation of students from poorer socio-economic backgrounds in higher education.
In a booming, full employment economy, Leaving Certificate students can command reasonably attractive wages straight from school. It is a significant challenge to encourage those from non-traditional university attending backgrounds, to go to college and "delay gratification" in the form of pay by upwards of three years. This is despite the fact that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has recently calculated that the average difference in relative earnings in Ireland between someone who left education after secondary school and someone with a third level degree is about 63 per cent.
Accordingly, if we want to attain a more balanced social mix of students in our universities while also delivering on increased numbers graduating with technical degrees - upon which they will need to subsequently graft additional qualifications over their lifetime, then the Government will need to pay those students who take up third-level education in fields identified by the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs.
These thematic areas could be reviewed regularly and would contribute towards encouraging children from non-traditional backgrounds to go to college while also mitigating the potential for skills shortages arising in the new industries that will drive Ireland's development in the future.
In tandem with this, we must move towards an abolition of the "free fees" system and replace it with a long-term loan system (similar to that applied in Australia). The Australian system does not require fees to be paid upfront, but graduates gradually repay some of the cost of their tuition when they start working and their income reaches a certain level.
Research has shown that abolition of fees has not done enough to address the under-representation in the numbers of students from lower income groups attending our universities.
Changing from free fees to a loan system would free up Exchequer funding to offer the aforementioned incentive grants while also dealing with the manifestly unfair situation where those who do not or have not attained a third-level qualification are subsidising their more wealthy counterparts to command a dramatically higher salary and enhanced standard of living.
Let there be no doubt that a technical qualification blended subsequently with additional skills attained over a 50-year career will deliver higher salaries, a better quality of life and more intellectually demanding and rewarding work.
• John Dunne is chief executive of Chambers Ireland, whose 59 member chambers representing over 12,000 businesses constitute Ireland's largest business organisation