"They [the Victorian government] think that new firms are going to appear out of thin air to provide all these new, good, hi-tech jobs," Healy said. "We're saying that with the right sort of financial and other support, many existing manufacturing firms can improve and refine what they are already doing, and generate not only new and better products for marketing globally, but can generate high level jobs in that process as well."

By consulting with prominent industry members such as Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson and Ford Australia, researchers found that while corporations worldwide have placed high value on Australian engineers, the country has not been producing enough tertiary graduates to capitalize on this advantage.

"In absolute terms, the sheer number of tertiary graduates that are being produced out of Australian universities as a whole since 1996 have not increased very much," Healy said. "The economy has kept growing, but the volume of tertiary graduates has not kept pace with the economy."

"We probably have a culture in Australia of not sufficiently valuing engineering relative to other areas," he suggested. "We may have a national cultural problem in engineering and engineers are not really something that we've placed a very high status upon in the past."

Researchers are now recommending that the Bracks government fund a larger number of university places for the training of engineers in Victoria.