Month: April 2017

Thought leaders and public intellectuals in the ideas industry

Andrew Norton2 Comments

I have never liked the term ‘thought leader’. But Daniel Drezner’s new book, The Ideas Industry, persuades me that even if the language is unappealing the concept is useful in describing how the contemporary world of ideas works. In some cases, the category of people known as thought leaders can also make the marketplace of ideas more effective.

Drezner argues that the marketplace of ideas is much larger and more open now than it was in the post-war decades. Technology is one obvious reason; anyone with an internet connection can now publish and social media can be used to bypass the old publisher and broadcaster gatekeepers to audiences. Drezner covers this, but I think the most interesting parts of the book are about how even though it is more possible now than in the past to promote ideas on a small budget, this is also an era of for-profit ideas.

The language of thought leadership is used most by consulting firms, which publish reports as part of their branding – these are the trends and problems your industry faces, come to us for solutions. Drezner says McKinsey spends $400 million a year on these activities. Locally, PwC, Deloitte and others advertise their thought leadership in various fields.

While government spending on consultants seems volatile, there is little doubt that they play a much bigger role in advising governments than they did in the past. So their ‘thought leadership’ is likely to transmit directly to government this way. (Drezner has a chapter on how economics is more influential than other social sciences; that consulting firms are big employers of people with economics degrees is another route for economists to influence government).

Drezner contrasts ‘thought leaders’ with the older term ‘public intellectual’. He has a table of what he sees as the distinctions between them:Read More »

The boom in HELP debtors

Andrew Norton3 Comments

The latest ATO taxation statistics come out today, giving us some new information on HELP.

Although growth in higher education student numbers moderated in 2015, VET FEE-HELP was still out of control in the period covered until mid-2016, contributing to a substantial increase in total debtor numbers. They grew by nearly half a million (a 24% increase) between 30 June 2014 and 30 June 2016. With big policy changes in vocational education taking effect in 2016 and 2017, along with continued moderate growth in higher education numbers, the rate of growth should slow substantially in the year to 30 June 2017.

On current policy settings, however, the number of debtors repaying is not likely to accelerate rapidly. Only 22 per cent made a repayment in 2013-14 and the number is likely to to be lower still in 2014-15 (there is a 2014-15 number in the chart, but these have a history of significant upward revision due to late tax returns, so it is too early to say exactly what proportion made a repayment).

The 2014-15 repaying share is likely to be lower because of the number of people who are still students, the high initial repayment threshold of nearly $55,000 a year is delaying repayment for recent graduates, and a large proportion of VET FEE-HELP borrowers are unlikely to earn enough to repay.

There is speculation that the initial threshold for repayment will be reduced in the Budget. These numbers explain why the idea needs considering.

How bad is student mental health?

Andrew Norton2 Comments

The media this morning is reporting some dramatic figures on student mental health. According to Headspace, a youth mental health organisation, two-thirds of students responding to an NUS survey reported high or very high psychological distress over the last twelve months, and a third experienced thoughts of self-harm or suicide.

I’ve recently been doing some reading on this subject, as part of a project on student attrition. I’m convinced there is a problem, but I am not so sure that it is this bad.

The latest ABS National Health Survey from 2014-15 shows that the main student demographic, those aged 18-24, has worse mental health than any other age group. This is only moderately so for men, with 11 per cent reporting high or very high psychological distress on the Kessler scale, compared to 10 per cent for all adult men. But it is dramatically so for women, with 20 per cent reporting high or very high psychological distress, compared to 13.5 per for all adult women.

According to other ABS sources, about half of 18-24 year olds are students. An analysis of an earlier NHS (along with HILDA) found small overall differences between students and non-students, especially after adjusting for demographics, with students being on average younger and more likely to be female than the general population. The NHS survey found 10 per cent of its student sample were experiencing high psychological stress, while it was 21 per cent in HILDA.

One important reason for different results is that the ABS surveys and HILDA ask about mental health issues over the last month, while the Headspace/NUS survey asks about the last twelve months. Mental health issues tend to be episodic, so we should expect more people to experience one over a year than a month. There seem to be widely varying results even from surveys with similar methodologies, so mental health is clearly something that is difficult to measure at a population level. But Headspace/NUS getting triple the rate of the ABS or HILDA seems high. They have not published their detailed results, so perhaps we will have a better idea of why when they do.