"If anyone asks, we hold women in the deepest of regard." Credit:Andrew Quilty ·Is there enough information and advice for students to make an informed decision about their education investment and its potential return? ·Is there sufficient regulatory scrutiny of university course marketing? ·Can students seek redress from universities that do not deliver what they promise, and move easily between education providers? If the answer is yes to these questions, then students have themselves to blame for choosing courses and professions that are chronically oversupplied.

My sense is that a range of factors – across society, industry, finance and information – are railroading students into overpriced degrees that have increasingly poor returns. Not enough students are able to make informed decisions. Irrational degree demand, in turn, is fuelling course oversupply, and vice versa. Don't think universities, nearly all not-for-profit organisations, will cut back on enrolments even though it is arguably the right thing for students, industry and the community that partly funds tertiary education. Third-tier universities have to churn students through their courses to pay the bills. How else will they fund academics to attend overseas conferences or occasionally produce research, too much of which summarises other academic work, for obscure journals? One university after another has launched a law school because they are cash cows that fund other disciplines and research. Right or wrong, universities are meeting demand for degrees, even in oversupplied professions. That's business.

Student demand, however, is out of whack with reality. Crazy societal expectations have elevated degrees too high. Parents, myself included, want their children to go to the best universities. Those without a degree are somehow lacking. It's rubbish: many of Australia's best entrepreneurs do not have degrees. The downgrading of vocational education, fuelled in part by scandals in the sector, has not helped. Federal and state governments should lift the profile and appeal of vocational education, and position it as a viable alternative to university. One need not be better than the other. Some students are suited to university and others gain more from vocational education. Australia must have two strong arms of post-school education and better pathways between them. Industry is also to blame for inflated degree expectations. Large companies outsource too much in-house training to tertiary education, have little collaboration with universities, and then complain that unis produce graduates with the wrong skills.

Some of Australia's best print journalists, for example, started in the copy room. They learnt on the job, not in university classrooms, and were much better for it. The same is true of articled clerks in law and other professions that once trained staff on the job and funded them to work and study part-time, a better model than full-time study. Today, some corporates I know joke about recruiting secretaries with university degrees. Or they expect graduates to have double degrees and be vastly overqualified for their role. All so airhead recruiters can pat their back for hiring an overeducated worker on a paltry salary. Nobody asks if the graduate will be deeply dissatisfied with the role and soon leave. Where are industry associations on this degree oversupply madness? A few have argued publicly that universities are flooding the market with too many graduates. But the majority seem silent on this issue. Are they too close to their corporate members who benefit from cheap graduate labour, and not representative of individual members who suffer as a flood of university graduates lower salaries across professions? In an agile, knowledge economy, it makes no sense for students to study and work in such a linear fashion: for example, four years of study, then work, then barely no study. Granted, professions such as medicine, engineering and others require years of study to perform the role without killing somebody. But that is not true of business and many other fields. Surely it is better for business students to do eight subjects up front, gain a diploma, find a job, and come back for the next eight subjects a few years later (or in-between jobs) and so on. Rather than consume so much education initially, they could align their learning to their career and get more out of it, as needed. That would require unis and industry to think differently.

We expect students to pay for years of education in advance when the coming machine age will make some of today's skills redundant. There must be a mentality of continuous, lifelong learning that is fast and adaptable, not a model of study that has barely changed in 100 years. Then there's university influence on degree demand. I cringe at some of their marketing material. The sector excels in twisting statistics from surveys for marketing purposes. Every Australian university seems to be in the top 2 or 3 per cent worldwide for something. Who could blame students for believing their university provides world-class education when claims are sometimes based on spurious surveys. For example, the uni that says it ranks number one in student satisfaction but fails to mention how its poor assessment standards and low expectations keep students happy. Comparisons sites, such as Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT), provide much-needed data on student, graduate outcome and employer satisfaction surveys. All universities should be required to publish similar material on their websites about each course, or at least make it easier to find. Detailed information that outlines course outcomes, such as employment rates and salaries, should accompany glossy uni brochures and website material. Promotional course material must be balanced, because products worth tens of thousands of dollars, bought on debt, are being sold mostly to teenagers.

Prospective students should know, with little effort in searching, if the $40,000 marketing course they are enrolling in has a 30 per cent success rate for employment in the field, and ranks well below the industry average for starting salaries. Courses that throw around phrases such as "world class" must be held accountable. Does the course deliver on the marketing material (small class sizes, attentive teaching, one-on-one feedback) or are students being jammed into ever larger class sizes, taught by more sessional academics who are cheaper, and receiving less feedback on their assessment (assuming it is marked properly to begin with)? Better redress would help. I recall paying $2500 for a master's subject taught by a lazy sessional academic who showed out-of-date videos in half the lectures. I complained, but there was no chance of a refund. Dropping that subject meant becoming ineligible for the degree. Like so many students, I was hostage to a bad course. Imagine paying $40,000 for a car and discovering that some features are missing, there is no warranty, or it does not perform nearly as well as promoted. Consumers would scream.

Degree financing is another problem. I have no sympathy for students who rack up $40,000 of course debt, never show up to lectures or download course material, and whinge about their degree. But the current student loan system reduces the perceived value of education. Technology and social media is rewiring students' neurology to expect instant rewards. Some are losing the ability to plan and save, delay their gratification, or think about long-term consequences. They enrol in oversupplied courses, without enough circumspection, because they do not pay for it up front. What if students had to pay a 10 per cent deposit on their university degree before enrolling? Safeguards could be introduced to protect those from low socio-economic backgrounds who cannot provide $4000 for a $40,000 degree, or to ensure those in dearer degrees, such as medicine, had capped deposit levels. More students might work a year after leaving school instead of travelling overseas, save up the degree deposit and get a grounding in the real world before university. They would pay more attention to the value of their degree and its likely outcomes if they had to stump up $4000. Studying a little later and gaining more life experience has to help one's university education. It must be better than students who don't know what they want to do, signing up to expensive university courses straight after school.