Learn from the mistakes of others

Disclaimer: I have a ubiquitous BA LLB, allowing me to be gainfully employed. So I speak as one who hasn't had trouble getting a job, who has sat on the employer's side of the fence and who has friends running small businesses (employing between 5 and 25 people).
(1) Universities have always proclaimed that their brief is not to prepare people for jobs, except in the overtly professional degrees like Medicine, Dentistry, Engineering, Commerce and Law - given the preponderance of privately educated sweet young things from the middle classes (are we allowed to use "bourgeois" these days?) in Arts/Law courses, I wonder about applying the professional label to present day Law courses.
(2) In these days of high taxation (not withstanding recent cuts in company tax rates) and the cult of user pays, both individuals and companies often ask what are they getting for their money and expect that one thing will be school/university leavers who are equipped for jobs. "If we are expected to hand our money to government, then the least government can do in return is pick up some of our training costs by supplying employable people through the education system".
(3) In the 80s and 90s, when things were not so good (according to private industry), companies cut their scholarship, graduate and apprenticeship schemes, as cost reduction measures. "Why should we give out apprenticeships, because they leave us and join our competitors after they have finished their apprenticeship?". In the case of apprenticeships, companies are now reaping the rewards of those measures - hence the lack of sympathy from many quarters when, for example, the mining industry bleats that it is being hampered by a lack of skilled labour and that it is all the fault of short-sighted governments.
(4) Most graduates are not ready for direct entry into the work-force - not into the globalised, "look out for yourself" workplace of 21st century Australia. Recurring complaints from employers are that new graduates "have excessive expectations/ambitions", "lack appropriate skills", "can't write/communicate to save their lives", "expect a recipe for everything", "want a computer program where they can click some check-boxes and hey-presto, there's the answer", "expect to be paid just to turnup", ad nauseum ...
(5) Some professions recognise that fresh graduates are unready for employment, so they put in place post-graduate training, eg PLT, CPA courses, residency in Medicine, IE membership.
(6) Lots of graduates end up working in areas far removed from their fields of study, eg. political science graduates as receptionists in hotels, environmental scientists in retail ...
(7) In 21st Century Australia, 17 is too young to make a decision about a future career, even if there will be 2 or 3 major changes/reskilling in career during their working lives. That may have been ok 40 or 50 years ago, but not now.
(8) In 21st Century Australia, 20 is too young to be entering the workforce as a graduate.
(9) Universities and employers should 'fess up and admit that 3 year degrees are next to useless for professional employment (it may be ok to have a 3 year BA if you are going into door to door mobile 'phone sales, ...).
(10) Universities should admit that many degrees will not lead to a "good job" - they are not employment prospect enhancers.

OMG, what a grab bag of points - I think I'm trying to say something here.

The BBs could assume that a degree (of any kind) led to enhanced employment prospects. We Gen Xers and Gen Yers do not have the luxury of that assumption. In 21st Century Australia, it is disturbingly easy to waste 4 years and accumulate a large HECS debt on a degree which will do nothing for your employment prospects. Since the Whitlam reforms of the early 1970s, it has been assumed that getting a degree is a "good thing" and necessary for career advancement, thus the push to make degree courses available to everyone and anyone who wanted to get one. The validity of that assumption is questionable.

Ok - I've used enough of your (and my) bandwidth.

mary