Week 7

Week 7 - 18-24 January

I don't know what I did with the last blog...it didn't work! So here it is again - will try to replicate it.

Have been in Melbourne on holidays so have fallen a bit behind. Sadly, though, I did the Quiz while I was down there and didn't realise we had that extra week (a week I should have used studying so I'm a bit mad with myself). My bad!

I bought two BRW magazines for the plane ride and they opened my eyes somewhat. I've never read a business magazine before so it was interesting to see that yes, people pay a lot of attention to the business of making money! I really like the David James articles. He had a dig at ASIC by writing a fake ASIC interview with Tiger Woods - very funny.

There is also an article in Jan14-Feb3 by Chris Richardson about the exporting of Australian education. He quotes Bismarck saying that the most important fact of the 19th century is that the US and UK both spoke the same language. This is especially important because of the growth of internet commerce - mostly conducted in English. Therefore, English speaking countries find themselves with quite a commodity...English education. He says that education services are now Australia's third largest export earner, ranking only behind coal and iron ore. Full-fee paying international student enrolments rose 18 per cent last year. 18 PER CENT! That a huge jump. He lists safety for students (esp Indian students), unscrupulous foreign agents and the GFC as concerns but predicts that education has good growth prospects. He says it's a lack of capacity rather than a lack of demand that may hamper growth and this worries me somewhat. I fully support international students and would love to be one myself through the Universitas 21 program. However, if Australian universities offer more and more international places then surely, somewhere along the line, local students will have to miss out? Working at UNSW for over 15 years I feel that we don't have the capacity to support such a huge growth percentage each year (mind you, I realise the 18 per cent is Australia-wide, not just UNSW). It's an interesting scenario and one I hope the universities approach cautiously.

I took note of the advertised products in both BRW issues and PC and AH are dead right - they're very glossy! They obviously spend a huge amount of money on marketing. I am looking at managed funds so I will try to track down the actual fine print before I make any decisions. I would like to start up a spreadsheet to compare them - or perhaps there is a website like iSelect that may be helpful. I don't remember if AH said anything like that in his lecture slides - I'll have to check.

Anyway, I have a bit of catching up to do with my lecture slides and textbook but I have started my assignment. All in all, this course is doing a lot for me and I'm so glad I enrolled in it. I find myself at dinner parties saying "Did you know.." I hope I'm not too annoying!