Australian students studying for dying careers: study

Almost half of all Australian students are studying and training for careers that will be completely automated within 10 years, a new report has detailed.

According to not-for-profit group the Foundation for Young Australians (FYA), the current state of the national curriculum has not been updated for the future, leaving young Australians to pursue jobs that will not exist.

The FYA's chief executing Jan Owen said that many young people were not prepared to enter a modern workforce which could include up to five career changes and, on average, 17 different jobs.

She said that Australia's current curriculum would not prepare the students for changing economic drivers such as collaboration, automation and globalization.

"Many jobs and careers are disappearing because of automation," Owen told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"The second driver is globalization - a lot of different jobs that we're importing and exporting.

"And then thirdly collaboration which is all about this new sharing economy."

Owen said it was alarming to discover that up to 70 percent of students currently studying to enter the workforce were receiving outdated teaching for jobs that would cease to exist in the next decade or two.

She said a lot of the training methods currently used have been superseded by digital and future-ready technologies.

"Nearly 60 percent of Australian students and nearly 70 percent in Vocational Education and Training (VET) are currently studying or training for occupations where at least two thirds of jobs will be automated," she said in a statement.

"Over 50 percent of jobs will require significant digital skills and yet our young people are not learning them in schools."

Owen called on the federal and state governments to take warning from the report, saying it was "a conversation that everyone needs to have." Endi